Went to a press screening of THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI last night, which is the new flick set in WW II China starring a couple of forgettable white people, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, and the first thing that struck me was, "Oh yeah, there's Shanghai Film Park again." Whenever you see old Shanghai in a Chinese or Hong Kong movie, chances are you're looking at the Shanghai Film Park. Although not as big or quite as the famous Hengdian studios five hours south where pretty much every period martial arts movie is filmed (and which has a documentary about itself) Shanghai Film Park is still a pretty impressive slab of real estate, with acres of old city streets recreated, sound stages and prop and costume rental houses.

It's a great place to film, I'm sure, but the problem with looking at these pictures is that you'll never look at Chinese movies set there the same again. Instead of enjoying the film you'll keep seeing the same shots from the same angles. They're angles that the architecture forces on filmmakers. They make sense, but when so many movies are shot there they all begin to look a little bit the same.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: 3, THE PAINTED VEIL, 2046 and dozens of other flicks have shot here, and it was Chris Doyle working on Chen Kaige's TEMPTRESS MOON who lamented that it was actually built with real buildings that had real walls rather than with gutters for cables and with walls and spaces cheated towards shooting movies. To keep afloat, they also do tours. It's one of those weird architectural anomalies that's going to baffle the aliens when they arrive.