‘Lust, Caution’ box office numbers in Beijing

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SCREEN is an unofficial poll of audiences’ feedback on new released movie conducted by The Beijing News (新京报). They carried out an audiences’ poll about Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (色戒) on its debut day (November 1) in a Beijing theatre. The respondents (30 in total) gave the movie a score of 8.9 (tout of 10), which was the highest ever ranking in the 65 issues of SCREEN published to date. This was despite widespread grumbling amongst Beijingers that the sex scenes were censored from the Mainland release of the film. Here are some findings from SCREEN’s report:

– 47% of respondents thought that the movie was more or less the same as their expectations; 36% of them thought it was better than they had expected.

– 50% of respondents said they wanted to see the movie because of the director Ang Lee; the subject matter was the secondary reason why they rushed to theater.

– 67% of respondents showed that male lead Hong Kong heart throb Tony Leung’s performance was the best; 33% respondents voted for female lead Tang Wei (born 1979 in Zhejiang).

– 67% of respondents thought that it was hard to say if Tang Wei could become an international star.

– 64% of respondents showed ‘Lust, Caution’ had no weaknesses.

– 30% respondents voted for ‘Lust, caution’ as their favorite movie in all Ang Lee’s works; while ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (断背山) and ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (卧虎藏龙) were another two movies mentioned by 20% respondents respectively.

Finally, The Beijing News noted that the first week’s box office taking of ‘Lust, Caution’ have reached RMB 40 million, the best first week takings of any Chinese movie released in mainland China in 2007. “It is only a matter of time that the office box takings will reach a billion yuan as the movie will run for two months” says a theater spokesman interviewed the article.

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