Entertainment: I am the peak

Chapter 714 Skr! Skr!

A new question has appeared on an online Q&A community: "What are your thoughts on Liu Yifei winning the Best Actress award at Cannes for her role in the film 'Marriage Story'?"

Three days after this question was asked, it has garnered 1100 diverse responses.

If we add questions about Liu Yifei and the Cannes Film Festival, such as "Why did Liu Yifei win the Cannes Best Actress award?", "What will happen to Liu Yifei's future after winning the Cannes Best Actress award?", and "How will the landscape of the Chinese entertainment industry change after Liu Yifei wins the Cannes Best Actress award?", the number of views on Zhihu (a Chinese Q&A website) generated by Liu Yifei's award in the past few days has been enormous.

In the question of how to view Liu Yifei winning the Cannes Best Actress award, a highly-rated answer, from a professional perspective, traced the evolution of Liu Yifei's acting skills from childhood to adulthood. When discussing "Be With You," it stated:

"Liu Yifei must thank Han Yan. Han Yan is a director who is very good at training actors. Liu Yifei's performance in 'Be With You' is visibly different from all her previous roles. This is also the reason why she was nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards last year. The professional judges are not blind."

Following "Now I'm Going to See You" is "Marriage Story," the answerer wrote:
"I happened to be in Cannes recently and missed the premiere, so I saw the second showing. Sitting in the theater, Liu Yifei's performance on the big screen kept reminding me of another actress—Zhang Manyu. It's said that the character of Zhu Xiaoyan, Li Qiutang, was based on a 30-year-old Zhang Manyu, but I don't know if that's true. If Liu Yifei's acting in 'Be With You' was a transformation, then 'Marriage Story' truly helped her unlock the secrets of acting. Liu Yifei's performance on the big screen is so natural; every gesture is fluid and harmonious. I boldly predict that Liu Yifei has finally figured it out; from now on, every role she plays will be perfect."

Finally, the respondent summarized:

"Don't get worked up, other fans. It's better to be realistic. Liu Yifei can't do everything by herself, and she can do amazing things on her own. Why compare her to others? It's not worth getting upset if you can't compare. You might say she was lucky to marry into a wealthy family, but her acting skills have definitely improved a lot. Her Best Actress award is fantastic. You're not even in the same league. Skr! Skr!"

Another answer was much simpler: "The resources she had before were already outrageous enough, and her commercial value was off the charts. I thought she would never win an acting award before she turned 40, but I didn't expect her to win the Cannes Best Actress award at the age of 30. She didn't even have the script of a leading lady; she had the script of a rising star in the Chinese entertainment industry. There's no logic to it."

Meanwhile, our celestial star, Ms. Liu Yifei, is now on a plane, flying towards Urumqi, preparing to continue filming "Mulan".

The Best Actress award was a hot topic for a few days, but after the excitement subsided, everyone went back to their own business.

The film "How Long Will I Love U," released during the 520 holiday season, has achieved considerable success, accumulating a box office of 300 million yuan in its first five days of release.

The single-day box office actually surpassed that of "Avengers: Infinity War," and the on-screen couple of Tong Liya and Lei Jiayin was surprisingly well-received by the audience.

For a romantic comedy directed by a newcomer with a budget of only 4000 million, this achievement is something Su Lun can be proud of.

At noon on Thursday the 24th, Cui Yongyuan, who had been silent for 13 days, posted again, directly targeting Fan Bingbing, the actress who played Wu Yue in "Cellphone 2". Regarding the so-called National Spirit Creation Award that Fan Bingbing received many years ago, Cui Yongyuan said: "One dares to give it, and the other dares to receive it."

This is a dubious award, but it's quite common in the industry. Many people use dubious awards to enhance their credentials, since no one else knows about them anyway.

This isn't a big deal in itself, but it's disgusting.

Li Qiutang was busy and didn't have time to pay attention to the news. However, during dinner, he received a call from Mr. Hu, who asked him what was going on.

Mr. Hu is in politics and doesn't have much contact with the front lines of the entertainment industry.

Only after hearing what Lao Hu said did Li Qiutang realize that something bad was about to happen.

Li Qiutang reminded Lao Hu, "If Fan Bingbing still listens to you, tell her to shut up. No matter what Xiao Cui says, don't talk back. His target is Feng Xiaogang and Liu Zhenyun." But based on Li Qiutang's understanding of Fan Bingbing, Fan Bingbing has a strong personality and she will definitely curse back. She wasn't afraid when Xiao Wang cursed her back then, so why would she be afraid of Xiao Cui?
Old Hu still cherishes old friendships. Although Fan Bingbing is now married and has nothing to do with him anymore, reminding her is a way of saying that his past kindness wasn't wasted. Li Qiutang thought for a moment and then said, "If she's on the set of 'Cellphone 2' right now, tell her to find an excuse to run away." Just calling her to shut up won't work. She's on set, spending all her time with Feng Xiaogang. Who knows what Feng Xiaogang might say to her? The best way is for her to run away.

What Li Qiutang said struck Lao Hu as alarmist: "Is it really that serious? It's just a few insults online."

“This time it’s different. I feel like it’s going to escalate a lot. The smart thing to do is to run away, regardless of whether it’s a breach of contract or not. Go away for half a month and see how it goes.”

Having given this reminder, Li Qiutang felt she had done enough as a friend. Now, it was up to Lao Hu to see if he could persuade Fan Bingbing.

As the saying goes, "Good advice is hard to persuade a damned ghost," and that was all Li Qiutang could do. In fact, he didn't think Fan Bingbing would listen to Lao Hu.

However, upon re-examining Fan Bingbing from this perspective, it becomes clear that she also has significant personality flaws.

Of course, everyone has personality flaws.

Perhaps it's related to her career path; Fan Bingbing is keen on riding the wave of trending topics and taking sides, which makes her unable to distinguish when to speak and when to shut up.

She confronted Xiao Wang back then because, in the end, crashing the red carpet is just a bit of fun. Xiao Wang is a troublemaker; he won't play pranks on people, so there won't be any extra entanglements.

But this time, she clearly misjudged Cui's intentions.

Since returning from France, Li Qiutang has been dealing with the Maoyan issue.

The controversy surrounding "Us and Them" has passed, and the State Administration of Radio and Television said it would deal with it seriously, but in reality, that's about it.

But Li Qiutang wouldn't let the cat's eye go; this was indeed a good opportunity to strengthen control over it.

After Li Qiutang returned from France, she received Maoyan's so-called self-inspection report. They still tried to fool themselves and pushed out a distribution manager to take the blame.

Li Qiutang was very dissatisfied and immediately fulfilled his promise, giving the vice president of Maoyan Pictures an internal warning and dismissing the distribution director of Maoyan Pictures and 50% of his team!
A vice president from Autumn Cinema Management Company was transferred to Maoyan Entertainment to serve as the distribution director of Maoyan Pictures. With the assistance of Xu Lin, the vice president of distribution at Autumn Pictures, Maoyan's distribution team was reorganized.

"I don't want to see such a stupid thing happen to the company again. The company has only been established for a few years, and it shouldn't be so arrogant!"

After uttering this harsh remark, Li Qiutang left Maoyan headquarters.

On the way back, Li Qiutang opened Weibo. Fan Bingbing did not post a Weibo saying "Wu Yue is very happy" to provoke Xiao Cui.

Li Qiutang didn't know how Lao Hu persuaded Fan Bingbing, but the course of events was already unpredictable.

(End of this chapter)