Just when you thought the media coverage would stop, Blue Ocean Network steps up.
This six-minute news feature on Ultimate Frisbee, centered around last month's Beijing-hosted China Nationals tournament, is one of the better segments on the sport I've seen anywhere (kudos to Howard Pan, who listened closely to tournament director Alicia). For an additional 38 seconds of bonus footage, click here.
Ultimate Frisbee in the US, despite having a professional league, would kill for the type of publicity China Ultimate has been getting recently. (Recap: CCTV, Hennessy, Sports Illustrated China, Beijing Today.) So why wouldn't a creative company called Niurenku, for which BJC contributor Zozo works, produce a five-minute video about China Ultimate and China Nationals?
Shaq is a spokesman for Harbin Beer while Tracy McGrady shills for Sedrin. Who's better in their respective ads, shown back-to-back in the above?
I think I've had Sedrin before, but it obviously was not very memorable. Also, the name reminds me of sleep medicine. Harbin, meanwhile, is absolutely non-notable in every way. I'd call it "insipid," but that's much too fancy a description for such a bland, bland thing.
In the wake of the “British rapist” and Russian cellist, this won’t help Chinese-foreigner relations: a basketball team called the New Orleans Hurricanes — possibly this one from Texas – was in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province yesterday for an exhibition against the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions that ended in the worst way possible. In the above video (and below, on Youku,... Read more »
56.com video for those in China after the jump. Li Ming, a 12-year-old who plays on Qingdao’s Chengyang Experimental No. 2 Primary School, captured Chinese soccer fans’ attention recently with his ball-handling, passing, set-piece kicks, and lob shots over goalies’ heads. All the above can be seen the in embedded video, a game vs. Qingdao... Read more »
We spent 10 hours filming in a chilly underground parking garage off East Fourth Ring Road last month to produce the 30-second clip you see above (and after the jump, on Youku for those in China). We tossed around a regulation Discraft disc rigged with lights along the inside of the rim and in the middle. At one point, we played a mini game, a three on two within the confines of parking garage columns, and it was a damn miracle that none of us collided with the extras going back and forth on the skateboard and mountain bike. Goddamn skateboarders and mountain bicyclists, always ruining a game of Ultimate Frisbee. It's like Central Park pickup all over again.
The black spume of incendiary waste. The drifting snowflake relics of plaster and concrete. The mangled spine of a charred Eiffel Tower, and eviscerated high-rises, and a manmade earthquake rocking our cradle of rubble upon which humanity slinks toward a final reckoning.
And that's only the first 10 seconds of Hong Kong-based NOW TV's advertisement for this summer's UEFA European Football Championships. Did I mention the only thing that stands tall is the Euro 2012 trophy, glittering with the light of what can only be thermal radiation -- a nuclear flash?
For those of you who play Ultimate Frisbee (disclosure: I do), you'll be interested to know that Chinese state media's sports channel, CCTV-5, came by and did a piece on the Beijing tournament over the weekend that was organized by BJC contributor Alicia. More than 400 players and 24 teams were part of the sixth annual China Nationals, won by Speed, a team of college students from Tianjin Sports University.
This weekend marks the sixth annual China Nationals tournament, organized by Alicia (disclosure: I'm her assistant), and the fifth year it's been in Beijing. While Ultimate Frisbee may be of negative interest to most of you, realize that Sports Illustrated China, Blue Ocean Network, film companies from Beijing and Tianjin, CCTV-5, and Beijing Today will all be there, interested. In other words, this tournament is getting more media coverage than every Ultimate tournament from 1968 to circa 2009 in the U.S. combined.
Stephon Marbury may never make it onto the cover of Sports Illustrated (unless Sports Illustrated China counts), but he has made it onto the front page of Beijing Evening News, seen above.
I hope I'm not burying the lead here, but he also has his own life-sized statue. Stephon Marbury does. A bronze effigy.
