Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

The German press loves Johnnie To: At Variety's Kaiju Shakedown blog, Grady Hendrix muses on why everyone (except English-language critics) is lauding Johnnie To:

Wong and To both use mood and style as valuable modes of expression, treating character psychology and narrative as just two more pieces of a singular cinematic experience they're trying to create. They use all the tools in their arsenal to make movies that are complete works of art, rather than making their movies simply vehicles to deliver a narrative. But whereas Wong has his feet in emo romance, To has his in macho genre. He's who Wong Kar-wai would have become if As Tears Go By was his true starting point, rather than a false start which gave way to Days of Being Wild, the movie that Wong and critics embraced as his "real" first film.

China, the bear, and the overseas carpet-bagger: Elizabeth MacDonald analyzes the reactions to the possible Bear Stearns/Citic Securities deal:

The issue of foreign money washing up on US shores is a big, big, controversial issue. I urge you to read through to the bottom of this blog to get a cheat sheet on the issue in this presidential election year.

Back to Bear-Citic. Some odd sound-bites on this one seem to be tendered by ivory tower nosebleeds with an extraordinary talent for dissimulation, who devote more time trying to sound smart rather than trying to examine the terms of a deal now yellowing, as the deal was struck months ago in October.

The passing of two translators: Noted translators Chen Bingyi (陈冰夷) and Cai Hui (蔡慧) have passed away. Jeff Keller translates Cai's obituary in The Beijing News:

Cai Hui, whose translations include Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead passed away in Shanghai from liver cancer on February 10th at the age of 77. Regrettably, he did not get to see his beloved translation of The Gadfly published, as this novel still has three years before it enters the public domain.

Farrow on Spielberg: Mia Farrow and Ronan Farrow have a piece in the Wall Street Journal about Spielberg's withdrawal from the Olympics titled 'One Olympic Victory', and they are now calling for action from corporate sponsors of the Games and George W. Bush, who plans to attend.