feeling listless

Film Weekly, articles appear in newspapers and magazines grumbling that although a great number of films are made in Britain each year, plenty with much to recommend them, the American owned cinema chains have a stranglehold on the marketplace, making the distribution of films an expensive and often loss-making exericise. Lack of visibility, leading little or no word of mouth, onward to no success. In China the opposite is true. Here, the domestic film industry accounts for almost the entire box office, with only ten Hollywood film released each year. The China's entry into the World Trade Organisation means that is set to double, sending shockwaves throughout the industry, especially amongst distributors, presumably eyeing the situation here. The most staggering aspect of this article from The Shanghai Star is the revelation that China does not have a film rating system: "The Crimson River", a French thriller, is showing in Shanghai Film Art Centre at the moment. A mother brought her child to the cinema but had to go out before the film was over. "My child was terrified," she told the staff at the centre. "We had to take care of the child for over half an hour so that the mother could go back to the cinema and finish the film,"