Friday, August 15, 2008

Zhang Yimou takes another Olympic hit

Do you suppose Zhang Yimou wishes he'd never heard of the Olympics? Doubtful, but the director of such great movies as "Raise the Red Lantern" and more recently of the martial arts epic "House of Flying Daggers" has taken a lot of heat since the opening-night ceremonies, which he directed. Early on, we had the lip-synching scandal (see Aug. 13 post). Now comes word, via The Hollywood Reporter, that the kids who marched into the stadium in various Chinese ethnic costumes weren't from those ethnic groups. All this may be minor stuff in the big scheme of things, assuming there is a big scheme of things, but I hate to see Zhang take a beating for things that seem entirely avoidable. What's next? Someone counted, and we find out that there were only 2007 drummers instead of 2008?

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