Arts: The Most Popular Chinese Movie of All Time

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Culturebox The Most Popular Chinese Movie of All Time It's a Western. It's a comedy. It's a critique of corruption. It's a send-up of the Chinese movie industry. It's going to confuse the hell out of Americans. By Grady Hendrix Posted Wednesday, Feb 29, 2012, at 07:13 PM ET The easiest way to sell a Chinese movie in America is to slap the words "Banned in China" across its poster. Suddenly, the movie takes on an aura of authenticity. We assume that it must be speaking truth to power in a way that makes Chinese authorities uncomfortable. A lot of movies attempts to cash in on this attitude: Too low-budget for audiences back home, they play the political angle and hope to win favor at overseas film festivals, looking for an international buyer and awards prestige. Many of these movies aren't even actually banned. Most were never submitted to SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television) in the first place, or they were denied release because of legal problems like a lack of location permits, rather than their politics. Now the "Banned in China" label has become even more meaningless, because the most savage anti-corruption movie ever made in China, and the most cynical comedy about state-sponsored criminality, has not only received an official release, it has become the most popular Chinese movie of all time. Let the Bullets Fly came out in December 2010 and by the end of January 2011 it had shattered the previous record for highest-grossing Chinese language movie and become the second-highest-grossing movie ever released in China, second only to James Cameron's Avatar. Its director, Jiang Wen (also its star and its writer), is a popular actor turned art-house director whose Devils on the Doorstep played the Cannes film festival in ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Weigel: Five Lessons From the Michigan and Arizona Primaries How Bad Is War for the Environment? The Supreme Court Needs To Stay Away From Affirmative Action Cases. They're Too Political.	Advertisement
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