Here's something interesting ... Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere posted a "salute" yesterday afternoon to Steven Spielberg, who announced yesterday that he's withdrawing as an artistic advisor to the Beijing Summer Olympics. Here's the kicker though ... Spielberg didn't pull out because of the Chinese government's continued human rights abuses within its own borders, or for its oppression in Tibet, but over Darfur.

According to this piece over on Variety, which broke the story, "I have made repeated efforts to encourage the Chinese government to use its unique influence to bring safety and stability to the Darfur region of Sudan," Spielberg wrote. "Although some progress has been made ...the situation continues to worsen and the violence continues to accelerate."

As Wells noted, Spielberg's "enlightment" about China may be due, at least in part, to Mia Farrow's ripping him a new one over China's human rights issues (and bankrolling of the genocide in Darfur) back in March. So kudos to Spielberg for finally getting on the human rights bandwagon here, but geez, how about getting on China for all its human rights issues, while you're at it? And while we're on the subject, how do you feel about celebs and political issues?

With his previous two features, Suzhou River (2000) and Purple Butterfly (2003), Sixth-Generation Chinese director Lou Ye has earned mostly unfavorable comparisons to Wong Kar-wai. However, he finally gets away from that with his new film, Summer Palace, which, instead, moves closer to seminal works by his own countrymen. Summer Palace is a tormented romance set between 1987 and 2001 in which a country girl, Yu Hong (Hao Lei), goes to school in Beijing, meets Zhou Wei (Guo Xiaodong), and gets caught up in a whirlwind of romantic and social changes. Two other Chinese filmmakers have attempted historical dramas of this type, set against a backdrop of real, fairly recent events. The best of the Fifth Generation team of filmmakers, Tian Zhuangzhuang, made The Blue Kite (1993), and the best of the Sixth Generation team, Jia Zhang-ke, made Platform (2000).

Quite frankly, Lou's work pales next to these twin masterworks, but Summer Palace also comes with its own collection of beautifully dislocated moments. At times the film feels forced, or squeezed, to include certain events. Somehow, during the course of this timeline, our heroes manage to make it to Berlin in time for the Wall to come down in 1989, and to Hong Kong in time for the handover in 1997. Far more appropriate is the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Yu Hong, Zhou Wei and their friends join the fray in high spirits, thrilled to be a part of something so big, perhaps without realizing just how far it stretched and what it all meant. It could be argued that they saw it as a giant party, and a chance to sing, dance, and perhaps meet someone and get laid.

We're always letting you know about the latest battle between Chinese filmmakers and Chinese censors. The most recent kerfuffle was earlier this month, when Peter Martin blogged about how the Lost in Beijing filmmakers were banned in China. After a seemingly endless deluge of stories like that, I'm very happy to report that there's a positive story coming out of China dealing with filmmaker Ruby Yang and the Chinese government. Making this even better -- it isn't a case of a filmmaker bending over backward for the censors, but her tackling what Reuters calls "China's thorniest issues."

An Oscar winner for the documentary short The Blood of Yungzhou District, Yang has been busy making films about HIV/AIDS, tobacco/smoking, homosexuality, and the environment will full support from China's state organizations. Just this November, she made public service ads about condom use featuring celebs like Jackie Chan, and she's now gearing up for a half-hour documentary on gay life a the pressures stemming from the country's one-child policy. Yang says: "There's a lot of pressure to produce an heir. Many gay men are married and live a double life. They lie to their parents, lie to their wives." Although she's gotten a lot of support, Yang doesn't expect this particular project to get a public release in the country, and is instead planning on international festivals.

On the bigger-scale end of things, she's also working on promotions for a smoke-free Olympics in 2008, citing that the number of smokers in China is larger than the population of the US. (Maybe the anti-smoking advocates should take an international trip...) More stateside, she also has a 60-minute PBS doc in the works on San Fran's Chinatown.

Well to be honest, my expectations for the latest installment of The Mummy aren't too high, so if I look on the bright side then maybe I will get a pleasant surprise after all. Director Rob Cohen has announced on his production blog that The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor has wrapped shooting in China. Starring Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell, this time, the O'Connells (Maria Bello, Fraser, and Luke Ford as their son, Alex) are bound for China to battle an immortal emperor (Jet Li). Rounding out the cast are John Hannah, who returns to play Evy's brother Jonathan, and Michelle Yeoh as a "double-crossing sorceress".

Cohen has made this particular announcement on his blog a veritable love fest for his cast. Cohen gushes over his new stars, Maria Bello as the 'new and improved' Evy, saying, "Her beauty and intelligence, wit and courage were something I appreciated each and every day". Jet Li wasn't left out either, and Cohen says that he was everything that "epitomizes graciousness, spiritual depth, and physical grace". Just because shooting has finished, there is still a lot of work ahead on the film, including somewhere around "800 visual effects shots" to be completed.

Considering no one was all that anxious for a third film in the series, the blog has maybe managed to improve things just a little. I know my opinion on the film has fluctuated wildly based on the few pictures that have been released so far. Just for the record: those opinions varied from everything from "Well, maybe this won't be so bad after all" to something with a lot more expletives in it that I probably shouldn't get into here. The Mummy 3 is set for release on August 1st, 2008.

One of the most compelling films that played Telluride this year (and hopefully will be coming soon to a film fest near you) was Blind Mountain, directed by Li Yang, whose 2003 film Blind Shaft won awards at fests from Berlin to Tribeca and points in between. Blind Shaft told the tale of two Chinese illegal coal mine workers who plan an extortion scam to kill a co-worker they claim is a relative and make it look like an accident, getting themselves, as the "family" of the victim, paid off to avoid publicity for the illegal mining operation. In Blind Mountain, which played at Cannes earlier this year before heading to Telluride, Li examines a different marginalized community and illegal activity in China: the selling of young women as wives in remote regions of the country. As in Blind Shaft, Li presents the community to which he turns his lens as a unique social microcosm with its own set of rules and mores.

Nearly thirty years of the one-child policy in China has resulted in countless female fetuses being aborted and female babies abandoned for adoption or even murdered, as couples sought to have the more "desirable" male infants. Now the repercussions of this policy are becoming more clear, as women of marrying age are in short supply, making women a commodity. Blind Mountain tells the tale of Bai Xuemei (Huang Lu), who has traveled to a remote community for a job with a medicine supply company. The recent college graduate has had trouble finding a job and wants desperately to pay off the debt her parents incurred for her education, and to help ensure her younger brother is able to stay in school. She travels to the distant countryside in the company of her boss and his assistant, believing she is there to procure medicinal herbs from remote farms.

The words "China" and "piracy" seem to always go hand-in-hand these days, no matter what efforts are made to stop those sneaky buggers from releasing super-cheap pirated copies of high-profile movies. Just the other day, a student from South China won a short film contest entitled "Respect Copyrights, Stay Away From Piracy" with his one-minute short depicting students describing what the word "steal" means. Even though the 20-year-old will head to Hollywood to visit the MPA, Christopher Campbell's comment last month about $1 Spider-Man 3 DVDs seems to have come true...or so we thought?

After reports that copies of Spider-Man 3 had been sold on the streets of China for $1, Sony says that their investigation has found that it was actually the second installment sold in the third installment's boxes. Hmm. Are they fooling with the people anxious to see the third film, or did they totally pull the wool over Sony's eyes? Whatever the case, the MPA and companies are ticked and considering taking action. CEO Dan Glickman says that studios are backing the complaint made to the World Trade Organization and could choose to boycott the country. The complaints accuse Beijing of violating trade commitments and failing to stop piracy of U.S. media. (The possibility of blocking China from films is also inspired by the country's recent lock-down on U.S. influence.) Sure, blocking China would make it harder for pirates to nab illegal copies, but to me, it seems akin to the flawed thinking that releasing a film earlier in China will curb the problem. If this mess was handed over to you to solve, what would you do?

Is everybody ready to storm the multiplex on May 4? If you're like me, you can't wait for that date, and with it the chance to finally see Venom on the big screen in Spider-Man 3. Surely some of us will even be making the trek to a midnight showing the night before (keep in mind, this one is about 3 hours with ads and previews included). But we won't be nearly the first ones to see the movie, because it will bow in China a whole day earlier than it opens in the States. The decision for the head start was made in order to put a dent in piracy of the movie. Apparently it had nothing at all to do with Hollywood's current favoring of international markets -- as was the reported excuse for Spider-Man 3 having its world premiere in Japan on May 1.

I'm not an expert on film piracy, but a one day advance doesn't seem to me like it would matter to bootleggers, or to many of the people who buy pirated discs over seeing a film in the theater. Isn't it already good enough for Eastern countries to get a day-and-date release? With such a simultaneous release they still technically get to see the movies before us anyway. I actually don't mind not seeing the film first, and could even wait to see Spider-Man 3 on Monday, when the theater won't be so packed. And if I was a poorer or cheaper person who could easily pick up a copy on the street for as little as $1, I could probably wait even longer for whenever the pirates get the chance to distribute it illegally.

Disney will be trying hard this summer to get Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End into Chinese cinemas despite the fact that the last installment of the franchise was banned by the country's censors. Obviously the studio is aware that many of China's movie fans at least got to see Dead Man's Chest via bootleg, and it understandably wants to profit from those fans' desire to see part three. But this isn't just about exploiting the expectant audiences, and it isn't exactly about fighting piracy. All of Hollywood wants to succeed in the Chinese market because it is a growing source of income for the studios.

What this means for the rest of the world may be nothing. Hollywood studios and distribs will likely start censoring for easy approval by China the same way they censor for the rest of the international markets. As I mentioned recently when The Departed failed with Chinese censors, the best way for a film to meet approval is for it to have no mention of China. However, the Chinese aren't only concerned with references to themselves; Dead Man's Chest was banned because it featured cannibals.

The Chinese version of our holiday season is coming up soon, and the titles looking for big box office are Night at the Museum, which has been performing brilliantly all over the world, 16 Blocks and South Korea's Joong Cheon (The Restless). These will be taking up three of the 20 quota slots that China allows to be filled by imported titles, and the last of these fills one slot that Hollywood missed out on. Following this month's big movie-going time, Hollywood will continue trying to fill in the rest of these slots, and so Chinese audiences may or may not get proper releases of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Pursuit of Happyness, Transformers and At World's End.

If you want your movie to (officially) play in China, don't feature any unfavorable Chinese. Also, don't include scenes that take place in China and definitely don't include any anti-China propaganda. In fact, be safe and don't mention or allude to anything Chinese whatsoever.

Movies right and left are being denied for Chinese distribution, some of which end up censored and eventually released. Mission: Impossible III had to cut out six minutes of China-related footage in order to open in theatres. Miami Vice got rid of 20 minutes! Now The Departed has a chance for distribution ... if it somehow omits scenes depicting a group of Chinese buying military equipment from the mafia.

However, according to Variety, there is no chance of the film being censored or altered. I would hope that this is out of respect to Scorsese and his cut of the film, but it is hard to imagine a studio siding with a filmmaker instead of box office income. But what other reason could Warner Bros. have for not altering the film? It isn't like the characters need to be nationally affiliated with China (Variety's source implies they could be referred to as Iranian or Iraqi, but that wouldn't look quite right).

None of this should upset any Chinese movie fans, of course. The Departed is already available in China in bootleg form.

More on China's distribution issues:

Bond Over the Great Wall: Casino Royale First Ever "Official" Bond Film To Open In China

Warner Brothers Moves Out of China

China Bans Korean Hit

China Pulls Da Vinci Code

It can sometimes be a battle to get a book onto the big screen -- if you want to see just how ugly it can get, I highly recommend The Devil's Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco. Juan Chang's Wild Swans: Three Daughters Of China was published over 14 years ago, but is finally making the transition to film.

Variety announced that Portobello Pictures have purchased the film rights to Juan Chang's award winning book. Chang chronicles the political and social changes in China through the personal stories of her mother, grandmother, and herself. Portobello Pictures' Eric Abraham acquired the rights with Christopher Hampton on board to write the screenplay. In the book, Chang's family stories are part of some of the most violent moments in China before, during, and after Mao Zedong.

Abraham plans to make the film in Chinese -- which can sometimes scare off North American audiences, even though the book was written in English. Chang has a personal connection to Abraham, which might explain why after all of these years she was finally willing to sell the rights. It's a dense book full of detail and history that might be hard to fit into one film. Abraham promises that while the film might be epic in scale, he would like to have the film ready for a 2008 release. We've already waited 14 years, what's one more?

Casino Royale will achieve what no other Bond film has done before, as it will be officially allowed to screen on Chinese movie screens. Since Dr. No in 1963, China's board of censors has denied entry to every single Bond movie. For those of you keeping count, that's nineteen films. It's the first time the film will be seen in Chinese cinemas, but definitely not the first time a Bond film has been seen on Chinese DVD players since they have such a brisk black market for pirated DVD copies.

This is a massive score for Sony, as it means a lot more box office take for this film (China expects it to be one of their highest-grossing films of the year), and that translates to more revenue. It also allows them to establish a more important foothold in the Chinese market. Sony is probably crossing their fingers that this will make it that much easier to release the next Bond film there. If they want to keep this relationship working well, then hopefully they will keep films like Bewitched out of the pipeline to keep the Chinese government happy. We wouldn't wish that film on any foreign power.

What would really be nice is if this would open up the possibility of a Bond film shooting in China. Imagine Bond being sent deep into the Orient on assignment to track down the source of pirated DVDs. Come on, that sucker just writes itself. As long as Daniel Craig doesn't try to wear an Asian disguise like Sean Connery did in You Only Live Twice, we should be okay.

This is me on the weekends: I sit around twiddling my thumbs and waiting for a new Stephen Chow movie. (It used to be Terry Gilliam, but that's over between us until I hear he's really doing Good Omens.) It seems like ages and ages since I laughed my way through Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer. I've been grabbing eagerly at any crumbs of news about Long River 7, aka A Hope, the film Chow is currently shooting in China. The film has been described as "the Stephen Chow astronaut movie" and "the Stephen Chow sci-fi film" and "whatever we have to wait for him to finish before he does Kung Fu Hustle 2."

So you know, I jumped like a rabbit when MonkeyPeaches posted a photo from the set of A Hope (MonkeyPeaches isn't very good about linking to individual entries -- you'll have to scroll down the page to find the story and picture). It's not even a picture of Chow, but of a spaceship that's part of the movie. MonkeyPeaches also quoted a summary of the plot that appeared in a Chinese newspaper: Chow plays a single dad who loses his job and gives his son a toy he found in the trash ... except the toy turns out to be a powerful object from another planet. Compare this summary to the one MonkeyPeaches reported in September (which also includes a few pictures of Chow on the set of the film). Then compare it to the storyline that Martha heard about back in July. It's like one of those group games where you whisper something from one person to another down a long line and it keeps changing in weird ways. All these slightly varying stories are making me even more curious and eager about the film. At least it's stopped sounding frighteningly like a heartwarming family drama, and more like something with potential for some goofy comedy. That spaceship does look wonderfully cheesy. We'll just have to wait, and wait, and wait to find out for sure.

[via Twitch]

When is piracy good for movie fans? When it causes Hollywood to fight back with more aggressive distribution that benefits the impatient. That's how it is seems to be working in China, anyway. While the rest of the world has to wait at least two more months to get their hands on a Superman Returns DVD (hitting shelves in the U.S. on November 28th), the lucky people of China can already purchase their copies. Plus, their version, which is dubbed in Mandarin, is selling for a mere $1.77 (14 yuan) -- or $2.78 (22 yuan) if they want a special feature documentary. Why so early and so cheap? To compete with the pirated discs, of course.

Well, they may not be the better option, as they are still more expensive than the bootlegs (typically 10 yuan), but that Warner Bros. strategy is notable for its attempt to flood the market, including distributing to smaller stores that normally prefer illegal copies, with something more attractive than their usual alternative.

Now, the only problem could be if pirated copies of the Chinese DVDs make their way to other parts of the world. Sure, I wouldn't be able to enjoy a Mandarin-dubbed copy, but there are a good amount of Mandarin-speaking people in the States. ...

Not only do movie pirates ruin things for the studios and the cinemas, but now they're hurting the innocent citizens with no connection to the business, too. Thanks to such heavy piracy in all of Asia, there will be no iTunes movie store for billions of people living in that part of the world. Apple, who just announced their new movie downloads Tuesday, has said their new services are not available in Asia, and there's a good chance it will not be available anytime soon, if ever. Currently the music-only iTunes software has versions in Japan and Australia, but it isn't clear whether they will be given access to the new movies.

It's important to remember that before Apple introduced iTunes to the U.S., we had a huge problem with illegal music downloading, which, subsequently, was curbed significantly after its arrival. So, for Apple (or could it be the MPAA?) to deny nations with rampant piracy a service that may actually be beneficial to them and their anti-piracy campaigns is pretty stupid.

Normally the big studios would let the MPAA deal with international pirates, and the MPAA would work with individual governments on the arrests and punishments of these criminals. But in a rare case, the five majors are investing in an actual trial in order to sue a Chinese bootlegger. The difference this time is that the pirate in question is not an individual or part of an illegal group, but a company. The Beijing Shiji Haihong Commerce and Trade Company, to be exact.

The studios are seeking 2.5 million yuan ($312,000) in damages for the company's copying and distributing of titles including The 40-Year Old Virgin and The War of the Worlds to their subsidiary video stores. The amount may seem pretty small considering the trouble that Hollywood will encounter while following through with the suit, but I guess, to the studios, money is money, and the message that it sends to other Asian companies should be significant, too.