Thursday, September 27, 2012

Shanghai Calling

I suppose I need to see this movie:



A few notes:
  • The film is shot on location in Shanghai.  All those places (except for the Wall Street 2/3 station) are really here.  I've been to most of them.
  • Bill Paxton doesn't live here.
  • It wouldn't shock me at all, however, if it turned out that Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Of does live here.
  • I've yet to meet a person of Chinese descent in Shanghai that doesn't speak at least as much Chinese as I do.  That isn't to say they don't exist -- there are probably tons of Chinese American tourists that come through every day -- they just aren't all over the place.  So I'm not sure this guy is representative of a huge class of people.
  • That's a real Shanghai taxi cab, and whoever is driving it either is a real Shanghai taxi driver or has been in many of them.  That whole scene is pretty darn realistic.  Except for the fact that the base price of a Shanghai cab is 14 RMB instead of 12.  The difference isn't much, but I've heard that prices of little things like snack food and taxi cabs have been skyrocketing here, as evidenced by the fact that this movie is already economically out of date.
  • Expats sent specifically from the US to China to work really do get a sweet deal.  For example, my roommate Franco is on an Expat package: his housing is entirely paid for and he gets a free trip home to the US once per year.
  • I wish I had an Awesome Wang.  Okay that came out weird.... 
  • I'd like to think of myself as slightly less clueless than the protagonist, and far less taken care of.  He appears, it seems, to have been given the Expat package.  I most certainly do not have a relocation expert whom I get to kiss on the Bund.  I also understand all of the Chinese in this trailer, which he does not.  But it's certainly pretty good timing for this movie.  Sign me up. 

No comments:

Post a Comment