By Min Lee, Entertainment Writer
HONG KONG (AP) --Hollywood’s top lobbyist said Tuesday the American industry will increasingly work with the growing Chinese private film sector to pressure Beijing to loosen its movie quotas and better combat piracy. The top American studios want to show more films in the booming Chinese market, but have been frustrated by Beijing’s annual quota of 20 blockbusters on a revenue-sharing basis. Chinese films accounted for more than 60 percent of the domestic box office revenues of 4.3 billion Chinese yuan ($630 million) in 2008. “I do not think there has been enormous progress made on that issue,” Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and Chief Executive Dan Glickman told The Associated Press in an interview in Hong Kong after attending the Shanghai International Film Festival. He said he expects to see more Chinese-Hollywood co-productions, which are exempt from the import quota. Glickman said the Hollywood trade group will increasingly work with private filmmakers in China, who have better connections with government officials and have a stake in intellectual property protection and more product for the growing number of movie theaters. China had about 4,100 screens by the end of 2008, a 16 percent increase from the year before. “I think ultimately working in that direction will be as or more effective than just working with the government because I think … there’s got to be more internal Chinese pressure on the government rather than just American and foreign pressure,” Glickman said. “If it’s just us pushing the Chinese government alone, it’s probably not going to get a lot of progress. We need to get much more Chinese engagement in the issue,” he said. The former Clinton administration agriculture secretary and former Democratic congressman said China has made progress on curbing piracy — although he came across a pirated DVD store in Shanghai that carried thousands of titles. Glickman said despite the lack of progress on access to the Chinese market, he does not expect Hollywood studios to shift resources to another major developing market — India. “I think there were some who believed that we were putting an enormous amount of effort here and not getting a lot of results in the process,” he said. “But notwithstanding that, they recognize this is the biggest potential market in the world. So I think they’re going to continue to work to get their product into the country.” Glickman said the Obama administration is well-versed on Hollywood’s interests in China, noting that Vice President Joe Biden was chairman of the congressional anti-piracy caucus when he was a U.S. senator. But he said he understood such issues may have to give way to more pressing matters, like North Korea.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More