Sixth Tone

4 stories

Sixth ToneChinaChinese Users Find Little Money in ‘Selling’ Their Faces to AI Companies that let users license their likenesses for use in AI-made short dramas and ads promise high income in a short period. But users report few real financial gains.

10.15

Sixth ToneChinaDivorcés Starring in TV Romances? China’s Internet Isn’t So Sure “Against the Current,” the country’s current top TV drama, features a high-ranking Ming dynasty divorcé who marries his former maid, part of a trend of shows featuring divorced men.

10.14

Sixth ToneChinaChina’s DeepZang AI Aims to Improve Tibetan Translation Released in March, the model, which can convert speech and writing between Tibetan, Mandarin Chinese, and English, will undergo a series of linguistic upgrades.

10.08

Sixth ToneChinaThe Enduring Appeal of China’s Eight Immortals Long before their latest animated version, the legendary Taoist figures were being reshaped by religion, folklore, art, and popular culture.

09.29

Our mark is 銀幕, ginmaku — the silver screen, and the same two characters in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.

I came to Tokyo at twenty-three for a summer job at a Shibuya mini-theatre and the job never quite ended. Fifteen years of festivals later I still think the only review that counts is the one the room gives you: where the laugh lands, the moment three hundred people stop moving at once, whether anybody stays for the credits.

Cinepuuulse follows Asian cinema — Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand — across about a hundred and twenty sources. A good number of them are Spanish, French and Portuguese, because those countries programme this work seriously and write about it better than most of the English-language trade. Genre and art-house get the same seat here. I am not ranking them, and nothing is scored out of ten.

Each story is a headline, a short excerpt, one still and a link to the outlet that did the reporting. We never republish the piece, and the still belongs to its studio or its photographer. A Korean trade paper appears in Korean, a French review in French. We point at the work; we do not put words in anyone's mouth.

— Daren Wise, Tokyo