Movieline's Week in Review: There Is Not Enough Egg Nog In the World

A short week at Movieline HQ calls for a short Week in Review, so let’s hop right to it and get on with the holidays. We can make it through this together, folks. The office will be shuttered this weekend, but we’ll return bright and early Monday to hear all your fun stories of family, travel, gift-giving, gift-receiving, raising bail money and/or any combination thereof. Have a fantastic weekend!

· SNL got Jeff’d, and that rising tide lifted all (OK, most) boats.

· Many thanks to our illustrious interviewees, including Javier Bardem, Mike Leigh, Sally Hawkins, Jon Lovitz, Ali MacGraw, Michael Cristofer, Isaac Mizrahi and Verge designee Hailee Steinfeld.

· Sorry, Sarah Palin doesn’t even take holiday weeks off.

· Movieline’s first perfect 10 rating was balanced out with a unilaterally loathed “threequel from hell.”

· Iran threw director Jafar Panahi in jail for six years and banned him from filmmaking for another 14 to boot. Meanwhile, Pauly D got a Jersey Shore spinoff. Really, God?

· Don’t forget to browse the year-end goodies in our extensive, exhaustive — you guessed it — Year-End Section! Among them: A nice run through the year in TV, ridiculous scenes from terrific films, and a countdown of 2010’s most kick-ass movie females.

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DVD: Futurama Holiday Spectacular (and Other Classic Christmas Home Viewing)

One of the most welcome resurrections in recent TV history has been the Futurama revival on Comedy Central, and if you missed the show’s brilliant comeback, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is stuffing your stocking with Futurama: Volume 5 just in time for the holidays. That timing is key, not only because the set makes a great gift for the animation/comedy/Groening fan in your life, but also because it features the three-part “Futurama Holiday Spectacular,” in which the gang learns the true meaning of Xmas, Robanukah, and Kwanzaa. All of which got me to thinking about some other favorite sitcom viewing worth checking out at home this holiday weekend…

The Mary Tyler Moore Show: “Not a Christmas Story” (1974)
This classic show had several great Christmas-themed episodes, but my favorite involves a freak snowstorm trapping everyone at the station at the exact moment where no one is speaking to each other. “Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens tries to remedy the situation by making everyone eat her “Christmas in Many Lands” dinner, which doesn’t go all that well.

The Jack Benny Program: “Christmas Shopping” (1958)
While Seinfeld later got raves for staging an episode entirely within the confines of a Chinese restaurant, that sort of thing was common in TV’s early years. Here, the infamously cheap Jack spends the whole show in a department store picking out Christmas gifts, and literally driving a harried clerk (the great Mel Blanc) to suicide.

Family Ties: “A Keaton Christmas Carol” (1983)
Who better to fill the shoes of the greedy Ebenezer Scrooge than Reagan-era Young Turk Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox)?

South Park: “Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo” (1997)
South Park has made the holiday episode part of its stock in trade over the years, but this Season One entry about a singing piece of excrement who brings the holiday spirit to town let viewers know early that no taboo was going to be off-limits for this show. (This one’s about as un-Rankin-Bass as you can get.)

30 Rock: “Ludachristmas” (2007)
This one’s a winner for the title alone, but it also features the meeting of the terrifying Colleen Donaghy (Elaine Stritch) and Liz’s parents Dick (Buck Henry) and Margaret Lemon (Anita Gillette), as well as Henry uttering the immortal line, “It’s not a Lemon party without old Dick!” Alas, only Hulu Plus members can watch this entire show online, but here’s this year’s hilarious holiday episode, “Christmas Attack Zone”:

Share your own favorites in the comments section — and Happy Holidays!

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China Energy Shortages And Their Impact On Your Business

By Steve Dickinson

As the bone chilling cold of winter solstice approaches, we have been greeted here in China with a series of reports on shortages in primary energy for the winter season:

? Coastal China provinces have shifted strongly towards natural gas for home heating. For this winter, a shortfall of up to 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas is predicted. This constitutes around 30% of the total demand.

? The shortage in diesel fuel that began in early fall continues unabated. In fact, the shortage has spread to the entire country, causing transportation bottlenecks in many major transport hubs.

? Just today, newspaper reports carried the bad news that a coal shortage will lead to substantial electricity shortages in many provinces throughout this winter. The issue is not lack of electricity generation capacity. The issue is the lack of coal required to fire the existing generators. For example, reports are that electricity generators in Henan and Hubei provinces will operate at 40% of their maximum capacity due to this lack of coal. Coastal cities like Shanghai are less at risk because they can import coal to cover shortages from domestic consumption.

These shortages are likely to become increasingly common in China over the next five years. The issue with respect to electricity is especially acute. China derives 70% of its electricity from thermal coal power plants. This number is not expected to change substantially in the near future. China has more than enough thermal power plant generating capacity. The issue is whether China has sufficient coal to fuel those power plants.

For many years it has been accepted that China could meet its coal needs through domestic production. Recently, there have been reports that during the 12th Five Year Plan (2011 to 2015), China will cap its domestic coal output at 3.6 billion to 3.8 billion metric tons per year. China currently produces 3.4 billion metric tons per year. This cap would thus mean virtually no future increases in domestic coal production. By the most conservative estimates, China needs 5.0 billion metric tons of coal per year to meet its electricity generation demand for the year 2020. That means China will need to make up for the domestic shortage by importing more than 1 billion metric tons of coal per year. No country has ever imported that much coal in a year and it is not clear if China can pull it off. If China can increase imports, these imports will serve to fuel only the coastal regions of China. Interior provinces like Henan, Shanxi and Sichuan will be left to rely on China's domestic coal supply. All of this will be difficult to accomplish, if possible at all.

What does this mean for investors in China? As the expense of operating on China's coastal provinces continues to increase, many foreign manufacturers are shifting their operations to the Central and Western Provinces. The Chinese government supports/encourages these moves. In my work with clients who are considering where to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, I am finding very few who are taking into account the issue of the availability of energy.?

Any company considering manufacturing in China must consider two important issues:

1. What is my energy demand and will the energy be available in the area where I plan to locate. You cannot rely on Chinese government reports. You have to do independent research.

2. It is certainly cheaper to manufacture in the Central and Western regions. However, it is essential that you consider whether those regions will be able to supply energy consistently over the life of the project. The issues can be complex. For example, the Central and Western regions may have increased access to natural gas over the next ten years, since the major planned pipelines will be routed from Central Asia. On the other hand, shortages in coal and diesel will be met by increased imports. These imports will benefit primarily the coastal provinces and not the Center and West. Operations in the Center and West will not actually be cheaper if factories there are forced to close for extended periods due to coal shortages or if transportation is disrupted due to the lack of diesel.

What are you seeing out there?

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Spider-Man Musical Mishaps are Adorable in Taiwanese Animation

· They’ve worked fast before, but the masterminds behind those Taiwanese CGI animations have struck again (in record time) with a tribute to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark’s insane snafus. [YouTube]

· The FCC just approved Comcast’s merger with NBCU. Chilling, somehow! [Deadline]

· Tom Hardy’s looking lovable in this candid glimpse of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. [Slashfilm]

· Criticwatch’s “Whore of the Year,” an honor bestowed upon the worst shills in film criticism, goes to a man who gave Twilight: Eclipse five stars and declared it “exhilarating!” [Efilmcritic]

· And finally, here’s my Christmas gift to you: A wonderful old video of legendary Vogue/Harper’s Bazaar editrix Diana Vreeland rhapsodizing on surfing, skateboarding and waterskiing. It will melt your tree and then set it on fire. Happy holidays!

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Litigating In China. Don't Lock Yourself Out.

By Steve Dickinson

The Chinese press has been very excited to report this week on an increase in foreign litigants making use of the Chinese courts. Under the somewhat misleading title of “Commercial disputes with foreign nation [sic] flood Chinese courts,” the reports state that the PRC Supreme People’s Court reports the following statistics:

? Through November of 2010, 13,131 cases involving foreign elements were heard by the Chinese courts. This is a 15% increase over the previous year.

? Companies from the United States were the most numerous litigants, followed by Japan, South Korea, Germany and Britain. This group accounted for 40% of the foreign related cases.

? The vast majority of cases were commercial, with only 4% of the cases concerning criminal matters.

Though 13,000 cases is hardly a “flood” of litigation, this report does show an increase in foreign acceptance and use of the Chinese legal system for resolution of commercial disputes.

Why would any foreign litigant want to make use of the Chinese courts? The most common reason is that there is often no alternative. Take a typical example. A U.S. company has a contract with a Chinese factory to manufacture a product. The Chinese manufacturer has no assets outside China and no contacts with the U.S. other than this one contract. The Chinese manufacturer delivers defective product and delivers late. The U.S. company as a result suffers substantial damage.

What legal recourse is available to the U.S. company? As a practical matter, the only recourse is litigation or arbitration in China. Why is this the case? Because if the U.S. company sues the Chinese company in the U.S. and wins, its judgment will be worthless because Chinese courts will not enforce it. Say the U.S. company thought ahead and provided for arbitration in China. China is a signatory to the New York Convention on the enforcement of arbitral awards. China should therefore enforce an arbitration award in favor of the U.S. company. Right? Not necessarily. China is one of a group of Asian countries (including Indonesia and Thailand) that do not have a very good record of enforcing foreign arbitration awards. In particular, Chinese courts rarely enforce foreign default arbitration awards obtained when the Chinese company fails to show up to contest the arbitration. This means that all the Chinese company has to do is refuse to participate in the U.S. arbitration and it will probably never need to pay on the default award.

All of this means that in the situation I described above, the best and perhaps only recourse will be to pursue legal action in China. Note that concerns about fairness of Chinese courts and arbitration panels are simply irrelevant in this situation. A legal action in China is the only course of action. So the rational foreign business will work to ensure that it makes the best possible use of the Chinese legal system to maximize their prospects of success. Our firm (always working in tandem with licensed Chinese lawyers/litigators have had excellent success pursuing litigation in China when the foreign company we are representing has used a contract that well-prepared it for a China lawsuit. ??

The most common mistake we see by foreign companies is using a contract that is not enforceable in China. By doing this, they ensure the contract is not enforceable anywhere in the world. How does this happen? They do this by writing a contract with these features:

? The contract is governed by U.S. law.

? The exclusive forum for dispute resolution is litigation in a U.S. court.

? The language of the contract is English.

Foreign companies are frequently quite proud that they have “forced” the Chinese side of the contract to accept these onerous terms. Apparently they think the terms protect the foreign side because it forces the Chinese side to file a lawsuit outside of China and subjects them to foreign law and procedure. However, this is an illusion. How many times does a Chinese manufacturer file a law suit? The party that will normally want to file a law suit is the buyer of the product, not the seller.?

The Chinese side is usually happy to sign a agreement with these dispute resolution terms because it fully understands 1) that if it wants to sue the foreign company, it will need to sue it in their home (foreign) country since very few countries enforce Chinese judgments and 2) it also knows that it will have now ensured that it is nearly free of any risk that an enforceable judgment will be entered against it. In other words, the Chinese company knows that it has just been "forced” by the foreign side to execute an unenforceable contract. Since the terms of the contract cannot be enforced, the Chinese side can then be quite relaxed about the contract terms.

Why does this happen? The reason is that at the start of litigation, a Chinese court will first look at the dispute resolution provisions of the contract. If the contract provides for dispute resolution (litigation or arbitration) outside of China, the court will refuse to hear the case. There are no exceptions to this. With respect to arbitration, as with most countries, Chinese courts will only allow arbitration in China if there is an explicit, exclusive China arbitration provision. A common trap is a contract that provides for an alternative of litigation outside of China or arbitration inside China. In that case, the Chinese courts have traditionally refused to honor a Chinese arbitration award because the arbitration provision is not exclusive.

It is therefore critical for every company that does business in China to ask a fundamental question: if there is a dispute under this agreement, am I most likely to be a plaintiff or a defendant. If your company will be a plaintiff, then you must ensure that your contract is fully enforceable in China. It is a complete disaster to close the door to the Chinese litigation and arbitration by insisting on litigation outside of China. The next step is then to draft your contract to maximize the chance that you will get a good result in China.

Even though this all seems obvious, I find that almost every week I have to give a potential client the bad news that their contract is unenforceable through their own efforts. When I get a call from a client who wants to collect on a debt or resolve a business dispute with a Chinese company, the first thing I ask about is the dispute resolution provisions in their contract. The client then emails me the contract and I discover that the contact is governed by Arizona law with exclusive jurisdiction in the Arizona courts. I then ask: does the potential defendant have any assets in the U.S. The answer to this question is nearly always "no," at which point I then have to tell them that their contract is unenforceable and they will have to consider another method for resolving their dispute. This is usually a conclusion that causes distress for the client, because this kind of provision is often included at the tail end of a long and detailed (and expensive) 50 page contract. Needless to say, it is much better to have a 7 page contract that you can enforce than a 50 page contract that is waste paper.

In a future post I will discuss the most important ways to make a commercial contract enforceable in Chinese courts under Chinese law.

In the meantime, if you wish to read more about pursuing claims against Chinese companies, check out the following:

On another note, we are seeking to win the American Bar Association best law blog award for the fourth straight year in our category and to do that we need your vote. To vote for us, please register here: http://lnkd.in/v_CzG3 and then vote for China Law Blog here: http://lnkd.in/iE4M5E. ?Anyone can register and vote. ?THANKS!

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Vote China Law Blog. Because We Don't Want Anyone Else To Win.

I hate blog contests. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em. They are just popularity contests for the well-established blogs, and as such, they inherently favor blogs on more mainstream topics. A China law blog ought to be able to beat a Palau law blog every time, regardless of any quality differential.?

So for years, we have made absolutely no effort to get in on any blog competitions nor once chosen, have we made any effort to prevail. In fact, our standard operating procedure is to ask the blog contests to remove our name. You should either like us or not; our popularity with others should be irrelevant.?

Having said all this, I freely admit to being a hypocrite in that there is one blog competition in which we keep competing and that is the ABA (American Bar Association) Journal competition. I guess my excuse is that it is so prestigious among lawyers that I went along with it the first year and then when we won in our category, it became addictive. We have been in that competition for all three years and we have won in our category all three years.?

I was planning to ignore it this year and with less than two weeks left in the competition, we have made absolutely no mention of it anywhere. But now I just can't take it any more. The thought of anyone else winning this competition is really bugging me and so I have decided to make a late effort to try to win it. Four years would be so nice.

And for that we really really need your help. ?

So if you have enjoyed this blog please go here and register and then go here and vote for China Law Blog. You do NOT need to be a member of the American Bar Association to register, nor do you need to be a lawyer.

Thanks much.

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2010's Most Pirated Films: Avatar Refuses to Lose

Did you think Avatar was going to settle for being the highest grossing movie of all time and then just fade away quietly? No way! This record-breaking juggernaut is also the most pirated film of 2010. On one hand, this makes no sense at all since Avatar seemed like the last film you would want to download, given that its visual, 3-D experience was the main selling point. On the other hand, I guess the hype behind any movie making that much money is hard to ignore, even for internet pirates. In any case, while 20th Century Fox is probably okay with this distinction since the film already killed it at the box office, a few other films on the top ten list probably aren’t so happy.

I’m especially looking at Kick-Ass and Green Zone, both of which were more or less considered failures. If, for example, half of the people who downloaded Kick-Ass had gone to see it in the theater at, let’s say, eight dollars per ticket, that would have added an extra $45.6 million to its gross. Granted, those numbers of who would and wouldn’t have paid to see it are totally hypothetical, but I’m sure the producers are trying to guess about the same figures right now. Ah yes, and we already knew that the Hurt Locker producers were made about piracy.

1. Avatar / 16,580,000
2. Kick-Ass / 11,400,000
3. Inception / 9,720,000
4. Shutter Island / 9,490,000
5. Iron Man 2 / 8,810,000
6. Clash of the Titans / 8,040,000
7. Green Zone / 7,730,000
8. Sherlock Holmes / 7,160,000
9. The Hurt Locker / 6,850,000
10. Salt / 6,700,000

[Via Reuters]

Tagged: Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Green Zone, Hurt Locker, Inception, Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, Piracy, Salt, Sherlock Holmes, Shutter Island

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CBS Reveals Midseason Plan: What's New? What's Moved?

CBS on Tuesday announced its midseason game plan, and given the network’s embarrassment of riches, none of the changes merits any cause for alarm. Kicking things off — as a sort of placeholder/possible test drive — Tom Selleck’s Blue Bloods, which has been handily winning Friday nights, will move to Wednesdays at 10/9c for four weeks starting Jan. 19.

Come Feb. 16, the spin-off Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior will claim that Wednesday spot (where it will fittingly lead out of Criminal Minds proper), as Blue Bloods returns to Fridays at 10.

Suspect Behavior was introduced last spring via an episode of Criminal Minds (see photo). It stars Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Janeane Garafolo ( 24 ), Matt Ryan, Michael Kelly, Beau Garrett and the original series’ own Kirsten Vangsness (pulling double duty as Garcia).

What of The Defenders, you ask? Starting Feb. 4, it will find a new home on Fridays at 8, after Medium airs its series (yes, series) finale.

Elsewhere on The Eye’s midseason slate:

Survivor: Redemption Island is set to premiere Wednesday, Feb. 16.

Mad Love, a comedy about a quartet of New Yorkers, premieres Monday, Feb. 21, at 8:30. Rules Of Engagement will in turn move to Thursdays at 8:30 starting Feb. 24, after $#*! My Dad Says wraps its freshman run.

Chaos, a Brett Ratner-produced comedic drama about a group of rogue CIA spies, premieres Friday, April 1, once The Defenders concludes its first season.

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Lost ALF Bloopers Feature Terrible Racist Slurs

· In what might be a reference to a certain L.A. Law episode featuring a witness with Tourette’s Syndrome, this blooper reel from ALF features the cat-eating puppet yelling the N-word wildly. That just shows you how under-evolved Melmac is. [Bad TV Blog]

· TLC’s new series My Strange Addiction sounds like our new strange addiction. [ONTD]

· Justified returns to FX on February 9th. [TV Guide]

· Gayle King will moderate a series of horrifying OWN-network specials called Ask Oprah’s All Stars starring Phil McGraw, Mehmet Oz, and Suze Orman. [Deadline]

· And lastly, let’s end this slow news day with an update about how Gwyneth Paltrow has it kind of hard. Lighters in the air, y’all. [PopEater]

Tagged: alf, fx, gayle king, gwyneth paltrow, justified, l.a. law, mehmet oz, my strange addiction, oprah winfrey, phil mcgraw, suze orman, tlc

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SNL Scorecard: Did Jeff Bridges Host the Best Show of the Year, Son?

Perhaps I’m in the holiday spirit (maybe), perhaps it’s the amount of wine consumed from back-to-back holiday parties (more likely), but last night’s Jeff Bridges-hosted installment of Saturday Night Live was, well, quite great. Not the laugh-out-loud funniest show of the season, but, from top to bottom, there wasn’t a whole lot of “bad.” I mean, it was so good that the best sketch of the night was the third to last of the show. Bridges, who last co-hosted in 1983 with his brother Beau, did an admirable job as host but, more importantly, did an admirable job of not getting in the way of a cast that was obviously on a mission before they took a break for the holidays.

Also, a side note, for anyone out there who wants to take 20 years off his appearance: Seriously, just shave your beard. Bridges went from “grizzled coot” to “Hey, isn’t that the guy from Starman?” with one shave. Honestly, Tron: Legacy, you could have saved a lot of money on that young, CGI enhanced Jeff Bridges if you would have just given the guy a razor and a can of Gillette Foamy. Having said that, on to the scorecard!

Sketch of the Night

“Jeff’s Prank Show” (Bridges): Jeff Bridges, as he admits, loves pranks! So he stars in a new show where he pranks the likes of Sam Elliott, Billy Bob Thornton, Forest Whitaker and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Sample prank: Gyllenhall is expecting a telegram, roses show up instead. You’ve been Jeff’d! The only thing that I don’t understand, how could this sketch air so late in the show?

Score: 9.0

The Good

“Underground Holiday Event” (Sudeikis, Pedrad, Moynihan): We finally get our sequel to Kickspit. This time featuring more bands with those crazy names, like Scrotum Fire and Third Eye Blind. Also, finally, the return of Ass Dan!

Score: 8.0

“Digital Short: I Just Had Sex” (Samberg, Taccone, Akon): Two solid weeks in a row for the crew from The Lonely Island. Jorma Taccone returns to the screen, along with Samberg and Akon, for this ode to having sex. Samberg has been a quite a run recently with his Digital Shorts; it seems the holidays always do bring out the best in this series, for whatever reason. In tone, this was more, “I’m on a Boat,” though, than “D*ck in a box.”

Score: 8.0

“Message from Mark Zuckerbeg” (Hader, Samberg): Mark Zuckerberg was named Time Magazine’s person of the year, and now he has some things to say about that. Well, that is if Julian Assange didn’t, for the third week in a row, hack the transmission to deliver another message. And the sketch has a good point: Why, in 2010, is Zuckerberg the person of the year? If _The Social Network _ was never released, would this have happened? Love him or hate him, at least Assange is currently making his mark. I mean, seriously, three sketches in three weeks based on Assange!

Score: 7.0

“Weekend Update” (Meyers, Killam, Thompson, Hader, Armisen, Moynihan): “Weekend Update” has hired a new weatherman and his name is Brad Pitt. Honestly, I can’t tell is this is an accurate Brad Pitt impression or not, but, for some reason, I couldn’t stop laughing. Also, even in a limited role, no “Update” is complete without Stefon. Kenan’s Michael Steele, unfortunately, fell flat but… did I mention Killam’s strange but funny Brad Pitt impression?

Score: 7.0

“Jeff Bridges Monologue” (Bridges): Played surprisingly straight, yes, Jeff Bridges sang a duet of “Silver Bells” with Cookie Monster. And surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. Again, it may have been the lasting effects of last night’s wine, but the fact that Bridges looked like he was having the time of his life won me over. I mean, seriously, did you see that charming, unbearded fellow?

Score: 6.5

“White House Christmas Cold Open” (Armisen, Sudeikis, Wiig, Samberg, Bayer) When did it become a prerequisite that every single cold open has to be political? Regardless, this week’s installment of “Fred Armisen’s serviceable-at-best impression of Obama” was a fairly funny installment. Obama, Clinton, Emanuel, Pelosi and Biden all stare out of the window, imagining the the headlines they would like to see in the upcoming year. It’s funny because — including Biden’s “Live Gorilla Runs on Basketball Court, Dunks” — they are all pretty much true.

Score: 6.5

“General Store” (Bridges, Hader, Moynihan, Wiig, Sudeikis): I am an absolute sucker for the weirder last sketches of the night. And the weird has unfortunately been missing since, it seems, Will Forte’s departure. I mean, when was the last time we saw something like Forte’s showdown with Sudeikis over a potato chip during an interview for NASA? Regardless, this come really close: An Old West general store with a gift-wrapping department. I loved Moynihan’s honest, ” I do not know what that means.”

Score: 6.0

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The 13 Most Anticipated Movies and TV Shows of 2011 -- Dixon's Picks

As 2010 wends its way to its eternal pasture, we can reflect on the movies and television we so hotly anticipated back in the early suckling days of this year. Some, like Toy Story 3 and The Walking Dead, turned out even better than we had hoped. Others, well, others were Alice in Wonderland. But like Charlie Brown, we can’t help but line up in front of the football again and again, each year, because maybe this time will be different. Here are my picks for the 13 Most Anticipated Movies and TV Shows of 2011.

X-Factor
Simon Cowell’s new TV venture has a lot riding on it. Will people really watch two very similar talent shows? Will it outperform American Idol? Will Paula be there? Either on the panel or wandering around the parking lot in a ether-soaked daze, I mean.

Skins
MTV imported this bleeding-edge teens-behaving-badly show from the UK where they can freely curse, drink, drug and screw their limey brains out on TV. But MTV has to deal with the hordes of American busybodies and schoolmarms who flipped their collective shit when they saw a split second of a black nipple. Can MTV produce a show that’s true to the raw teenage experience while still selling ads for Coca-Cola and XBox?

Shameless
And its kissing cousin in filthy behavior is Shameless, another Brit import, which follows the Gallaghers, a dirt-poor family that shows the Bundys what it’s really like to be a dysfunctional family that nevertheless loves each other. The original launched James McAvoy’s career, and the American version has the advantage of both being on Showtime (swear away, bitches!) and having some real acting firepower in the form of William H. Macy and Joan Cusack.

Parks and Recreation
The Amy Poehler-led mockumentary was MIA for the Fall season but is off the bench come January 20th. Combined with 30 Rock, the Office and Community, NBC’s Thursday night is trying to re-establish itself as the premiere place for laffs. I’ll just be happy to get some Pawnee-love back in my life.

Game of Thrones
The Pacific and Rome showed that HBO handles big-screen style spectacle just as well the more mundane adventures of city-bound shopaholics. But in Game of Thrones, HBO takes on a beloved fantasy epic that’s equal parts Sopranos and Lord of the Rings. But if there’s a network that’s equal to the challenge, it’s HBO. Well, maybe also Showtime. Probably AMC, too. But HBO’s still good!

Episodes
Much like his fellow Friend Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback, Matt LeBlanc’s new show spotlghts the absurdity of Hollywood and how hard it is to get your concept past the guardians of middle-of-the-road mushheaded network executives. But extra points for LeBlanc to playing himself, desperately scratching around for his own comeback.

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Weekend Receipts: Tron: Legacy Logs In At Number One While Reese Witherspoon Takes One On The Chin

Tron: Legacy managed to avoid being de-rezzed its first weekend out, coming in safely at number one, while Yogi Bear came in at respectable number two. But pity poor Reese Witherspoon whose latest foray into Rom-Comdom bombed at number eight. Your weekend receipts are here.

1. Tron:Legacy
Gross: $43,600,000 (new)
Screens: 3,451 (PSA: $12,634)
Weeks: 1

At the risk of losing my dorky bona fides, I never much cared for the first one and was sorta perplexed by its legions of loyal fans who had been waiting for this sequel for such a long time. Let me know when there’s a Krull sequel, though.

2. Yogi Bear
Gross: $16,705,000 (new)
Screens: 3,515 (PSA: $4,752)
Weeks: 1

I look forward to seeing stacks and stacks of the DVD of this movie in the remainder bin at Target come Christmas 2011.

3. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Gross: $12,400,000 ($42,764,000)
Screens:3,555 (PSA: $3,488)
Weeks: 2 (change: -48.3%)

Hey, remember when that studio chief said that if Dawn Treader doesn’t do well, the Narnia series is dead? Well, the Narnia series is probably dead now. Resurrect that, Jesus Lion!

4. The Fighter
Gross: $12,200,000 ($12,634,000)
Screens: 2,503 (PSA: $4,874)
Weeks: 2 (change: +3,966.5%)

It’s a good enough movie and Christian Bale is fantastic in it, but I’ll be honest: for the first 30 minutes or so, it felt like that Mark Wahlburg sketch from SNL. “Hey Amy Adams, what are you doing here? You’re not a boxer. You’re a lady! Say hello to your mother for me.”

5. The Tourist
Gross: $8,700,000 ($30,791,000)
Screens: 2,756 (PSA: $3,157)
Weeks: 2 (change: -47.2%)

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the best movies of the year! According to a bunch of doddering old bauble-crazed junket whores, I mean.

8. How Do You Know
Gross: $7,600,000 (new)
Screens: 2,483 (PSA: $3,061)
Weeks: 1

Speaking of which, how bad must this movie be if they couldn’t convince the buzzards from the Golden Globes to toss a nomination their way? Eighth-place bad, I imagine

[Numbers via Box Office Mojo]

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Sam Worthington Admits Clash Of The Titans Was Terrible, Hopefully Will Try To Work On His Terrible Acting Next

May 2010 go down as the year that movie stars stopped being polite and started getting real. Shia LeBeouf led the charge, saying he recognized how let down everyone was by the last Indiana Jones chapter. Then Mark Wahlberg admitted that the “f*cking trees, man” of The Happening were horrible. And as we noted, Sentient Pile of Pudding Sam Worthington has joined the truth brigade and tells us, yup, Clash of the Titans was absolute crap.

Speaking to Moviefone, Mr. Pudding recognized how let down everyone was by Titans and how the sequel will be better:

I just think we can improve on it.I think the first one, we kind of let down some people. And yeah, I totally agree. The only point of doing a sequel is either the audience demands it or you believe you can better the first one. What we’re setting out to do with this one - the writers and the director and myself - is improve. I think I can act f*cking better, to be honest … Just take all the notes from people that I have been reading about on the ‘net and give them a movie they f*cking want. This one I want to kind of try to satisfy a lot more people.

Well, good on Sam for realizing that no one had an enjoyable time at Clash of the Titans, though I do wish that he had give a little nod as to how truly horrendous the quickie 3D conversion was. And even more props to him for admitting he turned in a terrible performance — but now it’s incumbent on him to actually do a bit of acting.

I’ve seen him in three movies now — Avatar, Terminator: Salvation, and Titans — and each time was treated to a performance so bland and unremarkable that you could’ve slapped a pair of googly eyes on a stack of manila folders and the effect would’ve been the same. Friends have told me he had a great performance in some Australian film a few years back (Dingo Vegemite G’Day, I believe it was called), but I’ve yet to see any indication that he’s anything other than a fleshy equivalent of a tennis ball in a green screen shot used to demarcate where a CGI creation will be added.

But if he’s smart enough to realize that he’s turned in a crap performance in a crap movie, than perhaps he’s smart enough to fix it. Since Hollywood is determined to put him in movies again and again, I certainly hope he will.

· Sam Worthington Admits ‘Clash of the Titans’ Let People Down; Promises Sequel Will Be Better [Moviefone]

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China's Tax System. When "Equal" Is A Very Bad Thing.

In the good old days, China gave foreign companies all sorts of tax breaks. In fact, China's taxation system so favored foreign companies, many Chinese companies would form a company overseas and then enter China that way. This tactic came to be known as round-tripping and it became quite common.

Those days are truly over.

China recently put one more, pretty much final nail in the separate but unequal column earlier this month when it "unified" a few more rather obscure taxes. A friend of mine recently sent me an email from a China-focused accounting firm that nicely describes the most recent China tax changes further harmonizing the tax structures as between foreign and domestic enterprises. The email was from Kaizen Certified Public Accountants Limited/Yen and Associates Limited, and it stated the changes so clearly, I am going to just quote it directly:

Commencing from 1 December 2010, foreign enterprises, foreign funded enterprises and foreign individuals will begin to pay Urban Maintenance and Construction Tax and Educational Surcharge.

Urban Maintenance and Construction Tax (城市维护建设税) and Educational Surcharge (教育费附加) are two types of surcharges, levied on taxpayers who pay Value Added Tax ("VAT"), Consumption Tax (CT) and Business Tax (BT). Specifically, each surcharge is calculated as a percentage of the actual amount of the VAT, CT and BT paid by the taxpayers. The rate for Educational Surcharge is 3%. Depending on the location, the rates for City Maintenance and Construction Tax differ:

• In city areas, the rate is 7%,
• In county and township areas, the rate is 5%,
• In other areas, the rate is 1%.

Since their introduction in 1985 and 1986 respectively, the two surcharges have been imposed on domestic enterprises and Chinese individuals only. Foreign enterprises, foreign invested enterprises and foreign individuals have been specifically exempted from these two surcharges.

The extension of Urban Maintenance and Construction Tax and Educational Surcharge to foreign enterprises and foreign funded enterprises, following the unification of Vehicle and Vessel Usage Tax in 2007, Enterprise Income Tax in 2008, Farmland Occupation Tax and Urban Real Estate Tax in 2009, is the last of such moves to unify the different tax systems applicable to domestic and foreign funded enterprises. This very last move signifies that the unification of the two tax systems has been completed and the beginning of a new era of “unified tax system and fair taxation” and now that there is one and only one tax system applicable to all enterprises doing business in China or with Chinese enterprises.

At the end of 2009, I did a post, entitled, "China's Top 5 Business Law Trends For 2010." In that post, I predicted 2010 would see China stepping up its tax collection efforts:

China will increase its tax collection efforts. This has been going on at a rapidly accelerating pace over the last six months or so. If your China operations are not making a healthy profit, do not be surprised if the government imputes healthy profits to it. In particular, the government will look very closely at your transfer pricing and in many cases it will not like what it sees.?

There is no doubt the same will hold true for 2011 and beyond. ?

My friend had this to say about the above changes: ?

My 2-cents on the tax increase are that I don't really mind but wish there had been more advance notice. The amount is small and for a company with decent margins it shouldn't be too harmful. But how do I know what other changes are just around the bend? In any case, the move to bring taxes for foreign and domestic enterprises in line is no surprise (especially to CLB readers!) and this is exactly the kind of thing we've learned to roll with. Maybe we can ask knowledgeable CLB readers to guess what other changes might be on the way...

So what tax changes do you see for China? For foreign businesses operating in China? ?

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Sexism In China. A Good Thing For Foreign Business?

Had an interesting lunchtime discussion the other day with two very dynamic international entrepreneurs on global prejudices. Both told me of how they "take advantage" of it. These two take advantage of it by hiring women, the disabled, and ethnic minorities in countries where other businesses are either reluctant or refuse to hire these people. And let's face it, these prejudices exist, at least to some degree, in every country.

One guy told me of how his small factory in Russia had hired one physically disabled person and of how that person ended up recommending a whole slew of his disabled friends and of how in fairly short order, 22 of his 40 employees were physically disabled. This guy then bragged of how he was able to cherry pick the cream of the crop from the disabled population of this mid-sized Russian city. He paid his disabled employees the same wages as his non-disabled employees (which he said was about 10% more than the market rate) and that he was constantly looking for more. He said that he became guilty of reverse prejudice, favoring the physically disabled over those without disabilities. He said that his disabled employees missed work "way less often" than his employees without disabilities, they were far more productive when at work, and they never left. On top of this, they had much better attitudes. As he put it, by being one of the only employers in town who actively sought out the physically disabled, I was able to "arbitrage" some pretty incredible employees. ?He even said that by the time he sold this factory, a number of other companies in town had come to realize the benefits of hiring based on real performance, not on perceptions.?

The other guy talked of how he so much favors hiring women in China because they are almost always "20 percent better then men." "Look at the foreign SMEs in China," he said, "I think about 75% of them that are run by local Chinese are run by women. There's a reason for that. Chinese women know that American companies are less likely to engage in sexism than Chinese companies and so they choose to work for us. As long as Chinese companies discriminate against women, I am going to be scooping them up." He then referred me to an Economist article that backed up what he was saying about how foreign companies in China prefer women due to "sexism in China."

The Economist piece on "sexism in China" and it actually is about Korea, but what it says about Korea almost certainly holds true of China as well. The article is entitled, "Profiting from sexism:?If South Korean firms won’t make use of female talent, foreigners will" and it does back up my clients' thesis on how foreign companies are wise to take advantage of other country's prejudices. The article starts out noting how sexism in Korea creates "obvious opportunity" for those who eschew it:

Working women in South Korea earn 63% of what men do. Not all of this is the result of discrimination, but some must be. South Korean women face social pressure to quit when they have children, making it hard to stay on the career fast track. Many large companies have no women at all in senior jobs.

This creates an obvious opportunity. If female talent is undervalued, it should be plentiful and relatively cheap. Firms that hire more women should reap a competitive advantage. And indeed, there is evidence that one type of employer is doing just that.

Korea (and I believe China is the same) is the ideal place for gender arbitrage by foreign companies because the bulk of the sexism comes in the workplace, not the education system:

Jordan Siegel of Harvard Business School reports that foreign multinationals are recruiting large numbers of educated Korean women. In South Korea, lifting the proportion of a firm’s managers who are female by ten percentage points raises its return on assets by one percentage point, Mr Siegel estimates.

South Korea is the ideal environment for gender arbitrage. The workplace may be sexist, but the education system is extremely meritocratic. Lots of brainy female graduates enter the job market each year. In time their careers are eclipsed by those of men of no greater ability. This makes them poachable. Goldman Sachs, an American investment bank, has more women than men in its office in Seoul.

Only 60% of female South Korean graduates aged between 25 and 64 are in work—making educated South Korean women the most underemployed in OECD countries. That may change, however. Marriage and fertility rates have plunged. There were 10.6 marriages per 1,000 people in 1980, but only 6.2 last year. South Korean women have an average of only 1.15 children, one of the lowest rates anywhere. That has troubling implications for the country, but should help women in the workplace. Firms will have to use all the talent they can find. If they don’t, their rivals will.

I completely buy it.?

I previously wrote on sexism in China in a post entitled, Sexism China Style. Not A Good Thing.?

When I first read this post over at the Josh in China blog (why are there so many Joshs in China, anyway?), I smiled. But then I frowned. Okay, I didn't really frown, but I'm going for literary effect here.?

The post is entitled, "Interesting Cultural Differences" and it astutely (albeit reflexively) notes how the women at Chinese toll booths are uniformly "extremely good looking girls." When Josh discussed this observation of his with a cab driver, the cabbie responded by saying, "Of course! These are the people welcoming you into the city. They have to be beautiful!" Josh then tells us that the pay for these jobs is "three or four times that of a typical retail job." Probably better job security and benefits too.?

Now at first this seems harmless, but it really isn't. Now before anyone calls me a prude or anything, trust me I am not. But I also have two daughters and I would never want them either to be hired or not hired for any job based on their looks. Now I also know full well that nearly all of us have our own prejudices when it comes to looks and there is no way those can be fully excised when hiring, but blatant sexism is a bad thing and that is exactly what we have here. With any sexism on the up side (truly no pun intended) in terms of hiring means there has to be a concomitant sexism on the downside. For every attractive woman hired for this job, there is one less attractive woman who missed out on it.?

If I had to rate China on a sexism scale among the countries I know best, it actually does fairly well. It is not as good as the United States, but it is considerably better than Korea and better than Japan as well. I would say it is about the same as Russia. My sense is that pretty women in China are favored more in employment than in the United States, but that women who do their jobs well (no matter what their looks) are taken seriously. I am basing nearly all this analysis on observations in law firms and on conversations with female lawyers so it is about as far from scientific as one can get.

So what about sexism in China? How does it compare to other countries? Is it confined only to certain industries? Is it getting better? ?I have to say that I have seen virtually none of it in the Chinese law firms with which I have worked, but I hear it is rampant in other industries and, of course, my interactions with Chinese law firms has not been enough for me to really know. ?So really, what is going on with sexism in China?

Please speak up. ?

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The Top Seven Most Ridiculous Controversies of 2010

In the yesteryears, a controversy had to really work up a head of steam to make the papers and the magazines, slowly gathering strength until it erupted into a full-bore gossip hurricane. But nowadays, all it takes is an errant tweet and every Blog, Dick and Harry is up in arms. Sometimes the outrage is merited, as in the case of Mel Gibson’s (alleged!) vile phone calls. But other times, it’s simply a lot of sound and fury ultimately signifying nothing. Join us for the Top Seven Most Ridiculous Controversies 2010

7. Glee Star Uses Botox
Sure, it’s a little weird that 18-year-old Charice got Botox before her big American TV debut, but lord knows there are plenty of young ladies here in Hollywood who’ve injected themselves smooth and have kept it under their hats. But what makes the controversy extra lame is that she’s only been on one episode this season thus far.

6. Blue Valentine’s Brush With NC-17
Sometimes it feels like we’re all pawns in Harvey Weinstein’s game of chess. When his Blue Valentine got slapped with an NC-17 for seemingly no good reason, folks whipped themselves up into a lathered outrage. But now it’s rated R, didn’t have to lose a single frame, and hey, how about that! All that press increased awareness of its existence. Well played, Harv.

5. John Travolta and Kevin Spacey Live in the Smallest, Most Transparent Closet in the World
I had no idea that on the eve of 2011, it would cause such a kerfuffle to call two gay men gay. It’s not 1954, and you’re not Rock Hudson and Monty Clift, boys. Breathe a little.

4. Bristol Palin’s Run on Dancing with the Stars
Sure, she was absolute crap and didn’t deserve to get as far as she did. But hell, neither did Danny Gokey on American Idol and no one accused him of being part of an Illuminati plot.

3. Liam Neeson Accidentally Reveals Existence of Wise Religious Figures Other Than Jesus
Yes, Aslan is meant to be a Christ figure. Yes, Narnia is an overtly Christian tale. But, blessed shoes of the fisherman, an actor is allowed to take inspiration from more than source! I really do think that the moment someone says “Islam” or “Muhammad” a good chunk of the populace immediately thinks “durka durka Muhammad jihad.”

2. Mike and Molly No Longer Jolly, Just Touchy
Essentially, you can base a whole program around the joke “hey, get a load of how fat these people are!” but the moment someone points how dangerous and unappealing it is to be grotesquely, morbidly obese, well then, that’s the moment to fly into a collective buttery apoplexy.

1. The Last Airbender’s Race-Bending Casting
When M. Night Shymalan cast some white kids in the roles of the (proto)Asian-seeming protagonists of Airbender, you would think that he had called for a purge of Saipan or something. Besides, all this sturm and drang of who had the proper racial background to play whom obscured the most important fact of all — this was a terrible movie. Protest that!

Tagged: blue valentine, Bristol Palin, charice, Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, dancing with the stars, glee, john travolta, kevin spacey, last airbender, liam neeson, mike and molly

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Jeff Bridges Shaves His Beard For An SNL Promo, Because Why Not?

Until he was convicted in 2008, Jack Abramoff was a wearer of many hats: Washington lobbyist supreme, bedfellow of right-wing creeps like Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed, bilker of Indian nations, sometime film producer, restaurateur, observant Jew. Within the past…

Movieline rating: 6 || read more

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Isaac Mizrahi on This Week's The Fashion Show: 'She Wasn't Too Trashy, Yet Just Trashy Enough.'

Once again, The Fashion Show: Ultimate Collection served up a delicious episode: Housewives from Bravo’s Orange County and New Jersey wings wore the contestants’ fashions, and some of them looked elegant! Really. Pick your jaw up and join us for our weekly interview with judge Isaac Mizrahi, who thinks the best designers this week infused their work with just the right amount of trash.

The housewives were great to watch, and pretty drama-free, mysteriously. What do you think they brought out in the designers?
I think the good thing was that the designers got a taste of what it was like to work with actual clients. For the most part everything on the show is ready-to-wear, but often you’re called upon to do clothes for actual special clients. More and more, in the world of expensive clothes, the more service you offer someone, the better. The closer you make it to something they want to buy, the better. I think it was an incredibly good lesson to work with special clients.

Was House of Nami’s win inevitable? Was it a tough decision at all?
No, I actually thought it was really close this week. I didn’t think House of Nami was definitely going to win, especially because, to me, what I noticed more this time were the women. I didn’t notice the clothes as much. The women are stars, so it was kind of difficult for me — and I’m a fashion judge, all I do is look at fashion all day long — because I thought the House of Emerald did a really good job too. Those girls looked fine. They were all fine. Somehow I was focused on the women, their jewelery, and the way they came across the runway. That said, they’re all stars. It was much more difficult for me to see that the House of Nami’s clothes were better.

Did the champagne color palette lose it for Emerald?
Well, I think honestly that the House of Nami’s color palette worked because it was darker colors and it’s just more flattering. [Emerald’s] beige-y, ecru-y colors are really hard to do on actual women. In 24 hours? That’s like adding another challenge to the challenge.

Honestly, those women have beige hair and skin. Maybe they were doomed to look washed out?
I think so too, I think so too. That idea of it being gold? They didn’t go gold enough. It ended up beige and ecru, and they’re starting with people who have beige hair and beige nails and beige lips.

I can’t take credit for this observation, but Eduardo’s winning dress and Golnessa’s losing dress were pretty similar. Did you notice that?
Well, I mean, yeah, but the handling of it is everything. The detail, the drama of Eduardo’s dress and the turning of the rustle and the flattery of the body, it came out really great. Gretchen is a good-looking specimen, but I thought that Golnessa’s look made her look terrible. The way it was put together, the whole lack of knowing — the way that flap was chewed up and slapped on that dress? I do realize it’s a 24-hour challenge, but you have to just choose another design. The dress that was on Dina, I don’t know — yes, it was definitely flawed, but for some reason he really worked all of Dina’s assets. If you put Dina and Gretchen side by side, you’d have a good chance that half the room is going to like Gretchen better, but when you put her in that beige dress with the top that worked well and the bottom that was too tight with that crazy banana? And then that the scary brown that didn’t match anything? Or it didn’t mismatch enough? Nothing about it worked.

Plus, Golnessa had that weird beanbag-chair thing affixed to the bottom of her dress. Was that her waterloo?
Yes. That was what did her in. I can’t explain it — maybe in food terms, it’s like if someone made a butter sauce and it cracked. You can’t serve a cracked butter sauce. That’s like slapping everybody in the face. That was Dress 101 bad. For instance, take a look at Cesar’s dress: It didn’t work. It was a failure, I’d say. But you at least get the impression he’s going somewhere. He finished it the right way. He’s great at that, finishing clothes. Somehow, it didn’t slap you in the face as something really terrible. The fabric didn’t end up looking like remnants, whereas it looked like she had remnants of things.

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The Lion King Starring Eminem, Kim, and Rage

· I saw The Lion King twice in theaters, and both times I remember thinking, “This needs more rap and misogynist rage.” Sixteen years later, YouTube is fixing these egregious errors with a horrifying video. Behold: Simba throwing down 8 Mile angst and scaring the hell out of Nala. NSFW! [YouTube]

· In fantastic news: Glenn Close looks smokin’ in drag! [People]

· There’s a chance Michael C. Hall’s marriage was ruined by a Dexter love triangle. [ONTD]

· Jimmy Kimmel is being sued by a rabbi who claims his image was “used without consent in a video segment on the show that poked fun at basketball superstar LeBron James’ free agency hunt last summer.” [Reuters]

· Any requests for Matthew Morrison’s tour? Besides spontaneous nudity? [EW]

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China Business. It Helps To Know The Culture: Responses to Comments

A week or so ago, Jason Patent wrote a three part series on incorporating knowledge of Chinese culture to better your business in and with China. I asked Jason to write these posts after having listening to?Jason give the best talk I have ever seen/heard on the cultural differences between China and the United States as those differences relate to business. Jason's first post was entitled (by me), "China Business. It Helps To Know The Culture," his second post was entitled (again by me), "China Business. It Helps To Know The Culture. Part II. Dealing With The Ethical Gray Zone," and his third post was entitled (yes, by me), "China Business. It Helps To Know The Culture. Part III. Stereotypes As Excess Baggage."

All three posts generated a substantial number of excellent comments, both pro and con. Many of the comments raised issues to which I thought it would be helpful for Jason to respond. So I asked Jason to write another post addressing the comments and he graciously agreed to do so and here it is.

Audiences are often polarized by the claims I make about differences between Chinese and Western mindsets. It's been no different here, in the comments left on my three guest posts. Most everyone falls into one of two camps: "This is great," or "This is bunk." The "bunk" camp has roughly four critiques, which I'll address here.?

Critique #1: (a) This abstract mindset stuff can't possibly account for the dirty details of everyday business — (b) which makes it useless.?

On (1a), absolutely. Mindset is one piece of a huge set of puzzles and challenges that have to be addressed in running a successful business anywhere in the world. Three brief blog posts are simply by necessity going to be somewhat abstract and vague. (And woe to the company that hires a consultant to write blog posts and do nothing else!) Any serious consulting engagement has to go way beyond mindset and into the organizational and operational nitty-gritty that real businesspeople face every day.?

As for (1b), for the best chance at success you need both the abstract and the specific. To the extent that the day-to-day work of running a company can be informed by high-level principles like mindset, it is likely to be more effective. Unless one thinks the findings themselves are inaccurate, which is a separate conversation.

Critique #2: (a) Current political and social circumstances can explain all the relevant mindset differences. (b) Societies change over time (a form of evidence for (2a)).

I can't do justice here to the volumes of statistically validated social science research that demonstrate the surprising stability of mindsets over time. For cultural issues generally, I'll refer you to the work of Geert Hofstede and his team. For U.S. and China, pick up any of the 19th-Century works by U.S. missionaries in China (my favorite is Smith's Chinese Characteristics. Or, better yet, read Lin Yutang's 1935 classic My Country and My People, and see how well it's held up over time.

Critique #3: Stereotypes may have some business use.

There's a terminological distinction in the field of intercultural communication between stereotyping and generalizing. Generalizing is the act of making statements about a group of people, realizing that there is variation within any population. Stereotyping is taking a perceived characteristic of an individual and claiming, on the basis of this, that all people "like this person" share this characteristic (and probably other negative characteristics too). I simply don't see the business value in this latter act. Generalizing, yes; stereotyping, no.

Critique #4: Don't be too easy on the Chinese: they could in fact be out to mess you up.

True. No businessperson should act without a duly critical stance toward people with possibly competing interests. What I find disheartening is the certainty with which Westerners often attribute certain behaviors to this or that "Chinese characteristic," which then often leads to broader, more negative generalizations, and ultimately to an unproductive, and ill-deserved, distrust.

There is no one best window through which to view the Chinese, or anyone. But the more possible windows we allow ourselves, the richer our set of cognitive tools for solving complex problems — intercultural and other.

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Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon Join the Circus in the Water For Elephants Trailer

While the Water For Elephants trailer certainly doesn’t skimp on the elephants, it’s oddly lacking in clowns, lion tamers and all of the other outcasts and oddities that make the circus so fascinating. I suppose that seeing Robert Patinson and Reese Witherspoon hang out with an elephant is almost as interesting, but still, if Hollywood is going to go to the circus, it’d be nice if they went all the way.

But yes, it’s insuppressible romance under the big top between Witherspoon and Pattinson, with the jealous Christoph Waltz doing his damndest to suppress it. An elephant hangs out in the background for most of the movie and sometimes the two leads rest their head on it or pet it. I’m betting they also bring it water, unless that’s a metaphor.

It really is a likable trailer: The production design and cinematography look great, the actors look great; hell, even that elephant looks pretty sharp. And with Sara Gruen’s much-loved best seller as the source material, it initially seems like an an unstoppable package. But, part of the romance of the circus is the dirt and the jagged edges, neither of which are present in this glossed-over trailer. The book supposedly features supporting characters like a dwarf named Kinko and an old man named Camel who can’t move his arms, but I didn’t see them in the trailer. Here’s hoping that they’re in the film because everyone here looks like they could just as easily be in The Great Gastby.

Verdict: Still holding out for the U.S. release of The Last Circus.

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Topher Grace Can't Hardly Wait in the Take Me Home Tonight Trailer

Well, if nothing else, maybe Take Me Home Tonight will go down as the death rattle for the 80s nostalgia coming-of-age film. It’s set in 1988, so I suppose maybe we’ll see one in a few years set in 1989, but based on this trailer, I’d say it’s about time to move on. It’s actually bizarre how comfortable the marketing for this film seems with every single overused last-great-party-of-youth cliche known to man. That said, the film does have one secret weapon, and as with Yogi Bear trailer, it’s extremely under-utilized here.

That weapon is Anna Faris, who has proved in Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face and the surprisingly charming House Bunny that she’s one of the funniest, most talented actresses working in comedy. She has the funniest dialogue in this trailer, but then mostly disappears after that. Instead we get Topher Grace doing the self-deprecating thing and Dan Fogler doing the outrageous fat sidekick thing. They go to a huge party. Wacky hijinx ensue. Grace crushes on a hot girl from school. And then, right as the DJ spins Eddie Money’s unforgettable hit, they all find themselves. The end.

Verdict: Pass.

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