Chinese experts warned on Tuesday that Chinese "super blockbusters" -- heavily-invested home-made movies -- are facing crisis after their rosy market debut.

Chinese film producers and Hollywood ended in a tie at Chinese cinemas in 2006, with Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower and Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet leading the way among the top 10.

Yin Hong, professor with the media college of the Tsinghua University, said domestic movies took up half of the box office at Chinese cinemas last year due to the good performance of Zhang and Feng's movies at the box office.

Yin dubbed the two movies "super blockbusters" because they were highly publicized and heavily invested that "even someone who did not like cinemas was tempted to have a look at it".

"However, the domestic audience begin to feel disappointed after the big fanfare around their market debut and people don't think they are as good as what they preached," said Yin at a press conference held by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Meanwhile both of the movies were not well-received at the overseas market, let alone reach the Oscars, he said, adding blockbusters often greatly depend on their performance overseas.

The Curse had earned 250 million yuan (US$31.25 million) by the start of January while The Banquet pulled in 130 million yuan (US$16.25 million) during its run.

The production of the Curse, a story of bloody palace intrigue in ancient China, cost 360 million yuan (US$45 million). Up to now, the movie has not made ends meet.

"Some domestic blockbusters cannot reflect any of China's culture and tradition. Instead, they put more emphasis on visual pleasure and take more resemblance to Hollywood movies," said Huang Shixian, professor with the Beijing Film Academy.

Those movies surely cannot attract overseas audience who expect to see more Chinese element in Chinese movies, said Huang, adding "Chinese movie" should be a well-known brand featuring strong oriental flavors.

"Fine art was not built on money. Extravagant and lavish scenes do not make a good movie," a Party school magazine article earlier pointed out.

Chinese director Jia Zhangke, who won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival with his Still Life, has warned the fixation with big budget blockbusters could erode creativity in China's film industry.

Jia said he hoped more Chinese films would portray the lives of common people, rather than being just commercial extravaganzas.

He denied he was against making commercially-oriented films, but he objected to the "money worship" attitude in producing blockbusters.

"The model for those commercial films is to gain huge profits by pinning hopes on big investments, which will remove creativity and imagination from Chinese films," said Jia.

"Chinese movie industry should readjust its development path in 2007. The first and foremost subject is to cultivate a movie-watching habit among Chinese," said Yin.
 
(Xinhua News Agency March 1, 2007)