In recent years, Hollywood has striven to attract the Chinese audience by inviting Chinese actors to make an appearance, shooting scenes in China, or showcasing elements of Chinese culture.
In Roland Emmerich’s latest sci-fi disaster movie Moon fall, a variety of Chinese elements, including the appearance of several conversations in the Chinese language, have impressed Chinese viewers, not to mention its visual effects. Opening on March 25 in China, Moon fall tells of how a team of heroes, including two seasoned astronauts, try to save Earth from the collision (碰撞) of the moon, driven by an unknown force. Emmerich already has a strong reputation, built on such blockbusters as 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, a fact that has drawn the crowds. But the movie has also gained attention due to its easily identifiable Chinese elements.
An audience surnamed Zhao was impressed by the re-entry capsule used by the team at the end of their mission, Many fans of Chinese manned space missions believe that the capsule is “made in China”. Such capsules have appeared in TV broadcast programs showing the successful landing of Chinese astronauts returning to Earth after their missions in space. Zhao said, “The Chinese are making contributions in the face of a disaster. This not only proves the unity of mankind, but also shows the country’s international status and influence.”
“As its overall national strength grows, the influence of China’s science and technology output, as well as the Chinese language, has been constantly improving,” said Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association, Rao, however, pointed out that most Hollywood movies present Chinese elements in a symbolic way. “Many are not properly introducing true Chinese culture,” he said, “and there is still some room for improvement.”
Market observers expressed the hope that Hollywood can gain a deeper understanding of China and do a better job in cross cultural communication so as to present Chinese elements more actually.
1. What does the underlined word “striven” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Hated. | B．Refused. | C．Pretended. | D．Struggled. |
| A．Its noticeable Chinese elements. |
| B．Its director and the interesting story line. |
| C．The Hollywood’s powerful film production team. |
| D．The superb cinematic stunts and beautiful scenes. |
| A．Ridiculous. | B．Annoyed. | C．Proud. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Make more films about saving Earth. | B．Further comprehend Chinese culture. |
| C．Meet satisfaction of the Chinese audience. | D．Make more movies featuring scientific elements. |
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【推荐1】Reunions offer a chance to reflect on how much has changed. One happened in Hollywood when Here premiered (首映), bringing together the actors, director and writer behind Forrest Gump 40 years later for a new film. The stars were “de-aged” using new AI tools, making them more youthful in some scenes and enabling the filmmakers to see the transformation in real time while shooting.
With the use of generative AI in film making come things worth watching. The first is how AI will be used to tell new types of stories, as storytelling becomes more personalised and interactive. No one is quite sure how the nature of storytelling will change, but it is sure to. David Thomson, a film historian, compares generative AI to the advent of sound. “When movies were no longer silent, it changed the way plot points were made and how deeply viewers could connect with characters.” Cristóbal Valenzuela, who runs a company providing AI-enhanced software, says AI is like a “new kind of camera”, offering a fresh “opportunity to reimagine what stories are like”. Both are right.
Another big development to watch is how AI will be used as a time-saving tool. Generative AI will automate and simplify complex tasks like film-editing and special effects. For a glimpse of the future, watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023. It featured a scene that used a “rotoscoping” tool to edit out the green-screen background and make a talking rock more believable. It shortened into hours what might have otherwise taken days of video-editing.
What is also noticeable is more dramatic conflicts between creators and those running AI platforms. This year is likely to bring floods of lawsuits (诉讼) from authors, musicians and actors about how their works have been used to train AI systems without permission or payment. Perhaps they can agree on some sort of licensing arrangement, in which AI companies start paying copyright-holders.
It will probably be a few years before a full-length film is produced entirely by AI, but it is just a matter of time.
1. What can we learn about the film Here?| A．It relates a story about youth. | B．The theme of the film is reunion. |
| C．AI tools are employed in the film. | D．It is adapted from Forrest Gump. |
| A．Available. | B．Impressive. | C．Representative. | D．Transformative. |
| A．To show the high efficiency of AI tools. |
| B．To demonstrate the influence of the film. |
| C．To analyse a novel way of video-editing. |
| D．To praise the hard work behind the scenes. |
| A．Conflicts between man and machine. | B．AI’s huge effects on film production. |
| C．Drawbacks of dependence on AI tools. | D．Hot debate on the use of technology. |
【推荐2】At the beginning of the century there was a big farm called Hollywood Ranch. It was near Los Angeles in California. A few years later Hollywood was one of the famous places of the world. From 1910s to the 1950s Hollywood was the film center of the world. Every family knew the names of its film stars Charlie Chaplin, Grete Garbo, Bergman and hundreds more.
The reason why people went to Hollywood to make films was the sun. At first people made films in New York on the east coast of the United States. But then they heard about Los Angeles where there are 350 days of sun every year. As they made all the films by sunlight, the west coast was a much better place to work.
Also near Hollywood you can find mountains and sea and desert. They did not have to travel far to make any kind o film.
When TV became popular in the 1960s, Hollywood started making films for television. Then in 1970s they discovered people still went to cinema to see big expensive films. After twenty years they are still making films in Hollywood and people watch them all over the world.
1. Hollywood used to be a .| A．cinema | B．big farm |
| C．parks | D．market |
| A．it was a beautiful place | B．you could find many film stars |
| C．there was a lot of sunlight there | D．it was a famous place |
| A．The west coast was a better place to make films |
| B．There are no mountains near Hollywood |
| C．People no longer went to cinema after television became popular |
| D．Hollywood began to make films for television before the First World War |
Time: Oct.21, 23-25
Venue: China National Film Museum
Price: 40 yuan
Le Havre is a comedy-drama. It centers on a shoeshiner who takes pity on an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre. He tries to save him by inviting him to his home. The film premiered(初次公演) in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the FIPRESCI Prize.
Mia et le Migou (2008)
Time: Oct. 29
Venue: China Film Archive
Price: to be announced
Also known as Mia and the Migoo, this animated film describes the adventure of a young girl named Mia. Motivated by a premonition, Mia sets out on a journey across mountains and jungles to search for her father. The film won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature. Director Jacques-Remy Girerd will also show up at China Film Archive.
Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902)
Time: Oct. 22, 24-25
Venue: China National Film Museum
Price: 20 yuan
Also known as A Trip to the Moon, this silent movie was inspired by the French novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, by Jules Verne. It follows a group of astronomers who travel to the moon and explore it. They meet lunar inhabitants and capture one before returning to Earth.
Find schedule and ticket information about the French movie panorama at http://www. gewara.com/
The China Film Archive will also present a short lecture before each French movie on how to understand it.
1. If you are free on Oct.29, which venue would you like to visit?
| A．China Film Archive | B．China National Film Museum |
| C．China Film Museum | D．International Cinema |
| A．Oct.21 | B．Oct.23 |
| C．Oct.25 | D．Oct. 29 |
| A．Newspaper | B．Magazine |
| C．Textbook | D．Science fiction |
【推荐1】Workers at the National Galleries of Scotland recently experienced quite a surprise after they X-rayed a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Hidden on the back of the painting Head of a Peasant Woman, which Van Gogh completed in 1885, was a self-portrait (自画像) of the Dutch painter. No one had ever found it.
The hidden self-portrait had been covered by glue and cardboard that had been attached to the back of the painting. “It was absolutely exciting,” Lesley Stevenson, the museum’s worker, said about the discovery. “We weren’t expecting much of the little painting when we performed the scans,” she said. But museum experts quickly changed their expectations when they looked at the X-rays. “We didn’t see much of the peasant woman, but we saw the lead white that Van Gogh used for his face showing up after the X-ray went through the cardboard,” she added.
Van Gogh painted Head of a Peasant Woman as part of a series of works focused on the working-class residents of Nuenen, a small farming community in the southern part of the Netherlands where he lived briefly in the 1880s. The woman in the painting is Gordina de Groot, a farm worker. She wears a white headpiece. In a letter that Van Gogh penned about the series in 1885 to Anton Kerssemakers, a friend, he described his excitement at his working-class subjects. “I’m working with great pleasure these days, for I would rather paint people than paint anything else,” he wrote.
Van Gogh also loved creating self-portraits, producing about 20 paintings of himself by the end of his life while he was living in Paris. Recreating his own image was a cheap way for him to practice portraiture as he didn’t have to spend money hiring models, according to a report.
Art historians at the National Galleries hope that the hidden self-portrait may help us understand the life of the artist. The museum is currently considering how to best remove the unwanted protective materials without harming the painting.
1. What can be learned about the self-portrait on the back of the painting?| A．It isn’t in very good condition. | B．It describes a well-known woman. |
| C．It wasn’t known to exist for a long time. | D．It was sold to another artist by Van Gogh. |
| A．It was a wonderful surprise. | B．It failed to meet her expectations. |
| C．It was the result of her great efforts. | D．It deepened her understanding of Van Gogh’s life. |
| A．He was encouraged to try different subjects. |
| B．He was glad to find his love for figure paintings. |
| C．He was attracted by the lifestyle of people in Nuenen. |
| D．He wanted to improve the living conditions of the farmers. |
| A．X-rays can do harm to artworks |
| B．Van Gogh sent a secret message to his friend |
| C．Modern technology has a great influence on art |
| D．Van Gogh’s hidden self-portrait draws public attention |
“Energy independence” and its rhetorical (修辞的) companion “energy security” are, however, unreliable concepts that are rarely thought through. What is it we want independence from exactly?
Most people would probably say that they want to be independent from imported oil. But there are reasons that we buy all that oil from elsewhere.
The first reason is that we need it to keep our economy running. Yes, there is a trickle(涓涓细流) of bio-fuel(生物燃料) available, and more may become available, but most biofuels cause economic waste and environmental destruction.
Second, Americans have basically decided that they don’t really want to produce all their own oil. They value the environmental quality they preserve over their oil imports from abroad. Vast areas of the United States are off-limits to oil exploration and production in the name of environmental protection. To what extent are Americans really willing to tolerate the environmental impacts of domestic(国内的) energy production in order to cut back imports?
Third, there are benefits to trade. It allows for economic efficiency, and when we buy things from places that have lower production costs than we do, we benefit. And although you don’t read about this much, the United States is also a large exporter of oil products, selling about 2 million barrels of petroleum products per day to about 90 countries.
There is no question that the United States imports a great deal of energy and, in fact, relies on that steady flow to maintain its economy. When that flow is interrupted, we feel the pain in short supplies and higher prices. At the same time, we get massive economic benefits when we buy the most affordable energy on the world market and when we engage in energy trade around the world.
1. What does the author say about energy independence for America?
| A．It sounds very attractive. |
| B．It will bring oil prices down. |
| C．It ensures national security. |
| D．It has long been everyone’s dream. |
| A．They keep America’s economy running healthily. |
| B．They cause serious damage to the environment. |
| C．They prove to be a good alternative(substitute) to petroleum. |
| D．They do not provide a sustainable energy supply. |
| A．It wants to expand its storage of raw oil. |
| B．Its own oil reserves are quickly running out. |
| C．Its own oil production falls short of demand. |
| D．It wants to keep its own environment untouched. |
| A．It makes for economic recession． |
| B．It brings benefit only to the sellers． |
| C．It improves economic efficiency． |
| D．It saves the cost of oil exploration． |
| A．To explain the increase of international oil trade. |
| B．To raise Americans’ awareness of the energy crisis. |
| C．To argue for America’s dependence on oil imports. |
| D．To stress the importance of energy protection. |
【推荐3】The number of birds in North America has declined (减少) by almost 3 billion since 1970, according to a study published in Science. The researchers estimated changes in the populations of 529 species using long-term bird-monitoring databases. Those data showed that the number of individual birds across all of those species had decreased by 29 percent, from around 10 billion in 1970 to just over 7 billion in 2017.
“The data they used provide probably the best long term, large information on species abundances (物种丰度) for any group of animals or plants anywhere in the world,” Natalie Wright, a bird biologist tells The Atlantic. “There’s always uncertainty, but if they are wrong, they are likely underestimating the size of population declines.”
The team also examined 10 years’ worth of data from a network of 143 weather radars, which pick up bird migrations, and found a reduction in migratory biomass of about 14 percent since 2007. “Two completely different and independent monitoring techniques thus signal major population loss across the continent,” the authors wrote in their paper.
The results are particularly concerning because many of the species showing declines are not considered rare or in danger, but are almost everywhere and potentially act as important contributors to food webs and ecosystem (生态系统) function. More than 90 percent of the loss in abundance in the survey data was due to declines in 12 families including sparrows and blackbirds. Some other species, including many ducks, instead showed increases in abundance-possibly as a result of focused conservation efforts in recent years.
The findings should be a wake-up call. Many of the birds studied spend time in multiple countries within and beyond North America. What our birds need now is a historic, global effort that unites people and organizations with one common goal: bringing our birds back.
1. How does the first paragraph show the bird reduction?| A．By comparing figures. | B．By doing experiments. |
| C．By using experts’ words. | D．By listing some examples. |
| A．It’s wrong. | B．It’s formal. |
| C．It’s helpful | D．It’s useless. |
| A．The population of widespread species is declining. |
| B．Few species across the continent show the increase. |
| C．Some ducks are likely to lose their ecosystem function. |
| D．The focus of conservation efforts has turned out wrong. |
| A．To point out the importance of raising birds. |
| B．To call on people to work together to bring birds back. |
| C．To analyze the concerning results of long-term research. |
| D．To inform people of the dangers many species are facing. |
