Despite Years of Hollywood Kowtowing, Beijing Censors Reject Blockbusters

 

Communist officials are increasingly blocking American films.

Chinese cultural controllers blocked LeBron James’s shot at cinematic success last summer by refusing to release the NBA star’s $150 million film Space Jam: A New Legacy, providing a preview of the Middle Kingdom’s new, but poorly publicized, media policies.

American blockbuster films are no longer in fashion from Shanghai to Beijing, and the number of U.S. movies given distribution in the 1.4 billion-person nation has been nearly cut in half over the past two years.

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Halyna Hutchins: Husband reveals anger with Alec Baldwin failing to take responsibility over shooting

The husband of the late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has said it is “absurd” that producer Alec Baldwin is not taking responsibility for her death.

Matt Hutchins told NBC’s Today he felt “angry” seeing the actor talk publicly about his wife’s death.

Ms Hutchins was killed on the set of his movie Rust in October, after a prop gun Mr Baldwin was holding discharged.

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Police experiment reveals Alec Baldwin could have fired gun in Rust shooting without actually pulling the trigger

One of the most shocking claims to surface from the tragic incident that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust came from Alec Baldwin, one of the stars of the western.

During a recent ABC News interview, the actor said he “didn’t pull the trigger” of the gun that fatally wounded Hutchins, even though he was pointing what he thought to be a harmless prop in her direction when it fired during a rehearsal for the film. New details from the ongoing investigation suggest this assertion is not as implausible as one might think.

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How China ghosted Hollywood

Studio slavishness to the CCP was for nothing

Filmmakers often end up as propagandists. Hollywood’s biggest directors went to the front lines, cinematically speaking, during the Second World War. Luminaries like Frank Capra, John Ford and John Huston made Why We Fight films to rally a war-weary nation. The series was so effective that Franklin Roosevelt thought they were “dangerous”. Movies were another way of making war.

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The Decline and Fall of the Hollywoke Empire

A love that should have lasted years — but Hollywood had to wear out its welcome.

It is painful to watch an art form die, especially the most popular one in history. Cinema has enthralled more people, across every stratum of society, than all others combined. In just over one hundred years, works by past masters — Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, Wilder, Welles — and living ones — Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Lynch — continue to attract billions, including folks who can’t tell a da Vinci from a van Gogh. With an appreciative audience still awaiting, Hollywood might have outlasted the Roman Empire. But like Rome, it is rotting from the inside, sacked by leftist hacks who could never have built it. And like a modern Gibbon, media critic Christian Toto picks apart the spoils and spoilers of moviedom in his incisive, indispensable, yet breezy new bookVirtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul.

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China’s Industry-Takeover Playbook

Once lauded as “a storytelling medium that can…convey American ideals, including free expression itself, to foreign populations around the world,” the American film industry has largely abdicated its role in exporting Western values in hopes of catering to a Chinese market that’s now vanishing. The allure of a billion new moviegoers made kowtowing to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors seem like a savvy business move, and short-term paydays made selling out seem worth it. But as China has clamped down on market access once again, Hollywood’s ordeal now serves as a cautionary tale: China has a playbook for taking over industries, and yours could be next.

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Halyna Hutchins’ estate edges closer to filing wrongful death lawsuit in ‘Rust’ shooting

Halyna Hutchins’ family is one step closer to filing a wrongful death lawsuit after the cinematographer was shot and killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of “Rust” last October, court records show.

A Sante Fe, New Mexico, attorney filed a petition Wednesday asking the court to appoint her as the personal representative of Hutchins’ estate “solely for the purpose of investigating and pursuing a lawsuit under the New Mexico Wrongful Death Act,” the records show.

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Spotify will remove Neil Young’s music after his Joe Rogan ultimatum

Spotify will remove Neil Young’s music after he demanded that it be removed from the streaming service in a blazing row over vaccine misinformation spread by podcaster Joe Rogan.

A representative for Spotify confirmed to Variety that the music is expected to be removed later today.

‘We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators,’ a representative told Variety.


Why Neil Young (and Most Celebrities) Are Fascists

Why would an anti-establishment hippie like Neil Young suddenly turn fascist and want to blacklist Joe Rogan to protect the establishment from criticism?

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Alec Baldwin finally hands over his cellphone to cops investigating his killing of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins

Alec Baldwin has finally handed over his cellphone to cops investigating his accidental killing of a cinematographer a month after they requested it.

The 63 year-old actor’s lawyer Aaron Dyer confirmed the device had been handed over to authorities in Suffolk County, New York, on Friday, close to where Baldwin lives.

It is being sought by Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza and his investigators probing the death of Halyna Hutchins, 42, on the set of Baldwin’s western Rust in Bonanza City, New Mexico, on October 21 last year.

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Hollywood stars back Emma Watson after Palestinian solidarity post

Celebrity idiot.

Major figures from the world of film, including Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Capaldi and Charles Dance have issued a statement in support of Emma Watson and Palestinian solidarity.

Last week, Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, was accused of antisemitism after she posted an image on Instagram showing a photograph of a pro-Palestinian protest with the banner “solidarity is a verb” written across it. It was accompanied with a quote about the meaning of solidarity from the intersectional feminist scholar Sara Ahmed.

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‘Rust’ armorer blames Alec Baldwin for shooting because he skipped a ‘cross draw’ training session in lawsuit against firm that she claims supplied live ammunition

The armorer for doomed western ‘Rust’ – where a cinematographer was shot dead by a live bullet in October – is laying part of the blame on gunman Alec Baldwin for failing to attend a training session.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed filed a lawsuit in a Bernalillo County, New Mexico court on Wednesday that claims Baldwin, 63, ignored a request to attend a ‘cross draw’ session about a week before the tragedy.

The rookie armorer also faulted assistant director David Halls for failing to follow set protocol when he allegedly handed Baldwin the weapon without first calling on her to inspect it, according to the lawsuit.

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