Wedding bells send luxury brands into ad overdrive

While the upcoming March wedding of actress Barbie Hsu and the heir to a fortune, Wang Xiaofei, is expected to be a grand affair, they are planning to make the most of it commercially by promoting themselves and their sponsors. Basically, it looks like Hsu's big day will be a huge advertisement.

First off, the wedding will be held at a hotel owned by the Wang family in Hainan province, second, according to a China Youth Daily report, there will be a great deal of product placement. The luxury crystal brand that Hsu endorses has applied to sponsor her wedding jewelry, while drink manufacturers are also lining up to provide refreshments in the hope of getting exposure for their brands.

A Guangzhou Daily report says Hollywood star Christian Bale has joined the cast of Zhang Yimou's latest film, Nanking Heroes (working title), which depicts Nanjing under Japanese occupation. Bale has signed an eight-week contract that calls on him to shoot eight hours per day and have one day off per week, following the Hollywood work pattern.

A front-runner in the best-supporting-actor category of this year's Oscar awards for his performance in the boxing drama, The Fighter, Bale will return at the end of February to the US for the Academy Awards ceremony, after which he will be back in China.

Actress/director Xu Jinglei and film icon Jackie Chan appear to share a drunken smooch in a set of photos that has gone viral. However, Xu responded on her Sina Weibo micro blog that the kiss was "a joke that fell flat".

"It was only a polite goodbye kiss between friends," a public relations manager for Xu, surnamed Duan, later clarified.

The actress then went on the offensive, literally, by criticizing paparazzi who described the kiss as passionate. "From where can you tell I was drunk and the kiss was fervent? What a writer you are!" Xu tweeted.

Gong Rumin, the first prize winner in the World's Supermodel Contest China Final, had some photos published recently that, embarrassingly, appear to be a blatant copy of a Fan Bingbing cover shoot.

In the shots, she holds a shaver in her hand, bares her shoulders and looks at the camera, while having shaving foam spread over her cheeks. The images look like a duplicate of actress Fan's Esquire magazine cover shoot.

"Trying to be another Fan Bingbing? You poor girl," commented one netizen, on Gong's photo at Sohu.com.

Finally, Jay Chou's dream of going up against the cream of the NBA came true recently when he shot a soft-drinks commercial with Kobe Bryant. And if the footage is anything to go by, it wasn't easy for the Asian superstar to score against the basketball legend.

"It's unusual for someone like me, who is so confident (about my basketball skills) to feel so depressed," Chou said of the experience playing one-on-one with Bryant.

He said the NBA star was like a wall that was hard to break down on the basketball court, but added they had great fun shooting the segment. Bryant, in particular, seemed friendly and gave Chou a big hug.

"Jay is great. He surprised me actually 'coz he has more basketball moves than I expected ... it's been fun working with him," Bryant said.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/25/2011 page20)