Not to beat up on China or anything but Lu Chuan, a young Chinese director, wrote in China Daily, “I cannot help wondering when China will be able to produce a movie of this caliber.” More from the story:
Lu said the government was stifling the creativity of China’s filmmakers, explaining how he had been asked to make an animated film for the Olympic Games, which will be hosted by Beijing in August, but decided to walk away from the project.
“I kept receiving directions and orders on how the movie should be like,” he said. “The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity.”
An advisory body to the country’s rubber-stamp parliament debated this week why a film like “Kung Fu Panda,” produced by DreamWorks Animation, had not been made in China, Xinhua reported.
Rob, wrong article, eh?
Every parent thinks, or wants to think, that their child is mature and can handle it, but 10 year olds should not by watching Psycho and Vertigo. There are better choices that are just as artistically valid. Sadly most parents are just unwilling to argue with their child and say this is not appropriate for children. I am a retired school teacher and I saw the results – too often!
This reminds me of the incredible STUPID restrictions that the Soviet Union government had on artistic media, of how religion could only be mentioned “if to point out the fallacy of it compared to communism” or whatever….and no sex, no cursing, nothing fun.
How Andrei Tarkovsky was able to thrive in spite of all that bullshit, is a testament to his talent.
Indeed. This is surely an embarassment to the Chinese artistic community, but hardly surprising, considering the stifling restrictions, and hence an inability to match the progess with a country, whose artistic freedoms are unparalelled. Of course it doesn’t help that KUNG FU PANDA is a marvelous display of animation excellence (if WALL-E didn’t come out the same year it would surely have been a front-runner for a number of awards) that any country outside these borders would be hard-pressed to match for various technological concerns.