WASHINGTON, July 31 (Xinhua) — U.S. President George W. Bush said Wednesday that U.S.-China relations are good and important, and he is “honored” to be invited to attend the Beijing premiere of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a new Jet Li/Brendan Fraser fantasy film.

“The fact that both countries are honoring the 30th anniversary of the relationship is a statement about good relations,” he told reporters from China, South Korea and Thailand at the White House ahead of his upcoming trip to the three countries. Also, the fact that both China and the United States are opening new Magic Johnson Theaters in each other’s capitals is “a signal of how important the relationship is,” Bush added.

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• Hollywood loves the energy crisis! Not only is there evidence that “higher gas prices boost boxoffice by prompting consumers to opt for the local multiplex over longer trips,” but foreign oil investors, prompted by a desire to avoid taxes on windfall profits, “look more favorably on the film biz — any film, really — because it means that even if a movie loses, say, 20% or 30% of its money, investors still come out on top because those losses pale compared with what a government might have taken.”
• “There’s a superhero summit under way at Warner Bros,” says David S. Cohen at Variety, as the studio and subsidiary DC Comics meet to work out a “master plan” for shilling superheroes going forward.
• The Chinese censorship board is demanding that cuts be made to the third Mummy movie––which shot for three months in China, and incorporates a replica of the Great Wall––but they’re not publicly specifying what it’ll take to let the film be shown in the country. Is anyone else starting to suspect that the Chinese censors just have really good taste?
• The AMPTP won’t accept any of SAG’s counter-offers, and SAG won’t settle for the AMPTP’s “final” deal. So what now? No one knows for sure, but with SAG members continuing to work with no contract, it’s possible that the studios will “declare an impasse and impose the terms and conditions of the new offer.”

Exciting news from David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, co-directors of a couple of our favorite recent docs, Kamp Katrina and Intimidad: they’re expanding the purview of their production company, Carnivalesque Films, in order to start distributing DVDs. Their first release will be their own film, the 2005 Sundance premiere Mardi Gras: Made in China, and it’ll be available, to quote David, “everywhere,” on July 29. In the coming months, Carnivalesque will distribute two festival favorites: Ry Russo-Young’s SXSW Special Jury prize winner Orphans, and The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. The Mardi Gras trailer is embedded above; we’ll pass along more details on Carnivalesque’s upcoming releases as we get them.

Strange confluence in my RSS reader today. First, the above video pops up on Google’s Top 100 most watched clips feed. It compares and contrasts unadulterated clips from Basic Instinct with the versions altered for TV. Then, this story from the Hollywood Reporter: Sharon Stone, apparently trying to defend her “good friend” the Dalai Lama, told a reporter at Cannes that she thought the massive earthquake that has decimated China and killed 65,000 people is karmic retribution for China’s policies against Tibet. The relevant quote:

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else,” Stone said in a brief red carpet interview with Cable Entertainment News of Hong Kong. “And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

Now the head of one of China’s biggest theater chains says he’s not going to book Stone’s films. Which we’re sure would be a devastating loss for the people of China––first the earthquake, now this!––except we can’t remember the last film Sharon Stone appeared in. Maybe that’s just karmic retribution of a different sort.

• Disney celebrated Earth Day by announcing Disneynature, a new production shingle exclusively devoted to making documentaries about the environment. Films in the pipeline include Oceans, the lastest from Winged Migration director Jacques Perrin.
• Jackie Chan has been recruited by the MPA as the poster boy for a new campaign targeting piracy in China. The action star will appear on a “huge” anti-piracy billboard, to be displayed in Beijing’s Silk Market for two weeks.
• The RAAM Conference on British and Irish film distribution will lure surely reluctant attendees to an advance screening of Iron Man, by first presenting an award to Variety porn analyst/editor-in-chief Peter Bart.

TIME has a story about Steven Spielberg’s departure from his post as creative consultant to the Beijing Summer Olympics, and most interestingly, how China will need to scramble to save face in the wake of it.

Landing Spielberg in the first place was a coup, considering that China’s main goal with the games is to sell the idea “that China has returned to its rightful place as a world player whose opinion matters.” That’s not necessarily a fiction––Spielberg, after all, dropped out of his commitment in frustration over China’s “opinion” on their trading partner Sudan and Darfur––but the idea that China is ready to play on the world stage without facing the blowback of various human rights issues and international political, trade and manufacturing controversies certainly seems like a fantasy worthy of Hollywood. Can they pull off this globalist fairy tale without the guiding vision of the man who brought us Hook?

It’s a situtation that’s going to require serious damage control. As a spokesman for Human Rights Watch puts it in the article, “They are trying to have a perfect Games and present a picture of unmitigated success to the world. And here is something that is not a success.” Part of the problem is that protest groups, emboldended by the Speilberg exit, have started lobbying other Hollywood types associated with the Games (Ang Lee is another creative advisor), as well as the event’s corporate sponsors. China can probably survive the loss of their hired Hollywood cred, but if Coca-Cola drops out, their dreams of joining the big boys on the global-pop cultural stage will be dashed for good.

Yung Chang’s documentary Up the Yangtze had the honor of being the first sale at a Sundance that has turned out to be a rather quiet marketplace. The film explores the area of the Yangtze River currently being flooded by the Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydroelectric project in the world. As millions are being displaced by rising waters, luxury ships known as “farewell cruises” tour the coastal areas soon to be submerged. Chang’s film follows two young employees on once such boat, as they navigate the difficulties of working their first jobs, set against the back ground of a rapidly changing China.

Also on SpoutBlog: Karina writes about the film’s sale to Zeitgeist Films, and Chris offers his thoughts about the trailer.

 

 Yung Chang interview [3:33m]: Play Now | Download

There are many reasons to review the trailer for Up the Yangtze today. First it was recommended viewing by one of our readers. Then it had the honor of being the first sale at Sundance. And now it’s about to have its first screening at Holiday Village (at 12:15 PM Mountain Time). The documentary, from Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang, has already played at a few film festivals, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, where it won the prize for Best Canadian Documentary, and it is now competing for the World Cinema - Documentary prize at Sundance. While it may be possible to see Up the Yangtze someday courtesy of its new distributor Zeitgeist Films (Manufactured Landscapes), the doc sounds like a safe bet for those of you looking for a quality non-fiction film to see while in Park City.

The film deals with China’s construction of the controversial Three Gorges Dam, a hydro-electric operation located on the Yangtze River that is significantly affecting the local environment and people. But Chang’s focus appears to be on the people, who are being forced to relocate or become exploited by the tourist trade. Not being too familiar with the issues related to the dam, it took me two viewings of the Up the Yangtze trailer to somewhat get what the doc is about (I was mostly perplexed by those awful tourists dressed in Chinese costume). It’s a good thing to be left a little confused by a trailer, though, especially if it leaves one curious enough to watch the video again. Now I am intrigued enough to want to know more, which should obviously be the goal for a documentary trailer. Variety’s John Anderson has already written that the DV cinematography in Up the Yangtze is “spectacular” and the Montreal Mirror’s Matthew Hays wrote that the film, “is one of those experiences that reinvigorates and restores your faith in the documentary film medium.”

After today’s screening, Up the Yangtze will also play in Park City tomorrow night, Sunday morning and Monday at noon. It is also screening tomorrow in Salt Lake City.

• Variety looks into reports from the British press that Steven Spielberg is gearing up to make a movie about the Chicago Seven, starring Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman. Spielberg apparently won’t confirm nor deny it; Aaron Sorkin signed a deal to write a script six months ago, but there’s no progress to report on that. Apparently.
• Not much has changed in the box office picture since Monday––National Treasure and Alvin and the Chipmunks are still dominant––but business was up seven percent over the comparative week last year, and that’s worth remarking on. Apparently.
• Chinese censors have issued an order asking producers to refrain from depicting “hardcore activities, rape, whoring, obscene sex exposing human genitals or sex freaks.” Not only would films involving such content be banned from receiving national awards, but their makers could “face a total ban from the biz for five years.”

• From the Is That Even Legal? file: With the writers strike seemingly neverending, CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler is asking film producers “to dust off any unproduced scripts that could be turned into TV series.” The part of the story I really love? Shoddy pastiche is encouraged: “Because most movies tend to run around two hours in length, Tassler isn’t looking to produce the full scripts. Instead, she’s asking producers to identify key scenes or passages that could be filmed and cobbled together into a pilot or shorter pilot presentation.”
• China has banned the import and release of American films for at least three months. This will effectively eliminate the Chinese release of at least five major studio films, including Beowulf and Enchanted.  The Chinese government probaby, in part, is looking to lessen competition for locally-produced films; there’s also a wee chance this might have something to do with the fact that it’s kind of a crap time for U.S./China relations.
• Morgan Spurlock, Alex Gibney, and Jesus Camp directors Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing are among a host of documentary stars that have signed on to direct a segment of a doc based on Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics. The film is being co-produced by Seth Gordon of King of Kong fame.

• A strange, 800-word “how I spent my summer vacation” piece from Todd McCarthy in Variety. The critic apparently stayed in a hotel in Barcelona adjacent to the set of the film Woody Allen’s currently shooting there. He spotted Allen and Harvey Weinstein from the other side of the barricades; he tried to get on the set, but the production assistant he spoke to was unyielding. Very bloggy, but in a depressing way — if this is the closest Variety’s film critic can get to Woody Allen, what chance do the rest of us have?
• Speaking of Harvey, at a party for The Nanny Diaries in New York, he explained the decision to bump the film’s release date up two weeks to August 24: “There is nothing for females right now.”
• Jamie Foxx will star in The Soloist, a musical biopic about “a homeless musician with schizophrenia who dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall.”
• With a major Communist conference coming up this fall and the Beijing Olympics on tap for next year, writes Clifford Coonan, “Anything controversial is being delayed in favor of patriotic propaganda movies.” This includes Lost in Beijing, one of the most talked about films from the Berlin and Tribeca film festivals, which is currently on its third release date. With it’s realistic depiction of modern sexuality, the film has already rankled censors–the distributor even pushed it back once to “make room” for TMNT– and now it’s unclear whether or not the internationally-acclaimed drama will hit local theaters at all.

So apparently Hollywood is more worried than ever about the future of movies. Kids everywhere are increasingly ignoring traditional forms of entertainment–no big surprise–and have increasingly short attention spans–again, no big surprise. The recent worry was boosted by the emergence of special camps in China for kids who are too addicted to the Internet. Many articles and posts have been written on this topic lately, including one in Variety last month, “Invasion of the Techie Tots.”

I have kids, their friends are around a lot, and I find it a bit difficult to believe that we’re reaching the end of an era. Can you imagine–children not captivated by movies? Sure, there’s only so much Hollywood can do to protect itself (and the realist in me assumes they aren’t going about it right, anyway), so parents have to get involved. But kids are kids. They always have had and always will have a built-in sense of wonder. They’re captivated, creative, sponges. They’re made that way, and as far as I know, the way kids are made hasn’t changed even as new technologies and modes of entertainment have been developed. It seems like in order to dull those inbred characteristics of wonder, you really have to lock a kid in a room on a daily basis with a computer and video games and an iPod Video.

But most kids aren’t raised in that grim of a setting. And giving them some positive influence isn’t really that much work. All any kid really needs is a bit of balance (sorry, you can’t play video games all afternoon), some encouragement (let’s finish this book before we start something else), and exposure to good books, music and movies. Her amazing imagination will do the rest.

A Wall Street Journal article over the weekend by Joe Morgenstern, titled “YouTube Youth,” summed up my thoughts rather nicely. I’ll end with this:

Market forces and the inexorable march of technology will determine what’s going to be seen on what sorts of screens in what settings. Still, we can help to assure the continued existence of a receptive audience by infecting our children and grandchildren with the movie bug. Doing so effectively, though, means knowing which battles can’t be won, and which ones needn’t be fought.

The enemy, in whatever medium, is incoherence along with its partner in crime, indiscriminateness. In this fevered media environment, kids need not only to be restricted in their access to commercial junk, but exposed to what will delight and nourish them–first to children’s literature, and then to our endlessly rich heritage of motion pictures.

Exposing them is all we can do; what happens next must be an article of faith. I’m certainly a congregant, though. I believe the same lures that hooked me on movies as a kid–the spectacle, the mystery, the roiling emotions and the suspense about what happens next–can hold their own against whatever enticements the new media may serve up. First, though, our techie tots must see the flickering light.