Movie New Year

t's no surprise that top Chinese comedy movie writer-director Feng Xiaogang's latest release, Big Shot's Funeral, is playing to full houses in Beijing. No big deal either, it might be said, for this level of response is routine for every hilarious tale he has masterminded. The difference now is that Hollywood might well sit up and take notice, just as it did for another Chinese director, Ang Lee, for his Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which climaxed a long run of productions that also made it big in the West.

While in the West cinemas tend to do their best business during Summer months, the most profitable time in China is during the run-up to Chinese New Year. This is also the period when competition between Chinese movies is at its most intense because of he sui pian, which translates as "New Year-greeting movies".

This year, Feng's comedy-which has received rave media notices -looks to be leaving the dozen or so competitors far behind when it comes to box-office success. Here he has a particular advantage, the fact that during this time of year, Chinese audiences prefer comedy to cops 'n' robber dramas or anything else that rates as "heavy". Indeed, Feng's name has become almost synonymous with Chinese New Year films.

According to Feng, Big Shot's Funeral, whose stars include Hollywood great Donald Sutherland, is a satire about how advertising has saturated every part of life, and about people's insane lust for money."This is the story of what happens when a famous American director [Sutherland] travels to China to film a historical epic about the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty,� he explained.

The big-shot, artsy American director becomes emotionally paralyzed as he makes his own version of a Last Emperor-type film. When a studio executive flies in from Hollywood to fire him, the floundering director goes into a coma, and through a tangle of miscommunications becomes the focus of the tasteless funeral.

In the story, said Feng, the sale of advertising to pay for the funeral somehow gets ahead of the actual demise of the director. The sponsors� giant blowup ads and billboards are already in place when the director's unexpected recovery leads to an ending that everyone involved with the film has sworn not to reveal.

The bald Ge You, China's most famous comic actor, plays the leading role. Along with him and Sutherland are Paul Mazursky and leading Hong Kong actress Rosamund Kwan and top TV actor-director Ying Da. The two imported western stars are pledged to helping Big Shot's Funeral enter the Hollywood market.

"I think China is now in a comic era," said Feng. "A lot of things that scholars see either as problems or tragic I see as very comical." His movies always contain humorous chatter in Beijing dialects, witty street-talk, and self-satire when confronted with frustrations. Feng's black humor is deeply rooted in Beijing culture, hence his masterful handling of traditional Beijing-speak, and ordinary people's humor and smartness in dealing with life.

"Beijing people know where and how to use humor," said Feng. "They are experts at getting themselves out of awkward situations by joking about life."

The Beijing-born writer-director, 43, spends a lot of time chatting with, and drawing inspiration from, ordinary people and close friends-longtime collaborator Ge You in particular. In fact, the idea for the new film stemmed from a casual talk with the actor.

Sutherland said he was shown the script last Spring while appearing on stage at the Lincoln Center, New York, in Jon Robin Baitz's 10 Unknowns. Sutherland said the script, which Feng wrote with a prominent television writer and a young Chinese novelist, was "just deliciously funny".

Feng is among rare directors who can pull crowds into Chinese cinemas despite the pervasive street sales of pirated discs. For now still little-known in the West, where attention is mostly on directors he mocks as the art-house crowd, he nonetheless comes under fire from critics for being a "commercial" director who allegedly cares only about the box office. Little account is paid to his talent and creative depth. Feng's response: "I make films for the audience, not the critics.

James Wang, producer of Feng's film Sigh, defends the director with: "People now like to see something which is close to their life, something which is less alien than Hollywood-type stories. His audience really trusts him, and like his work. His movies talk are about real issues which are close to the hearts of audiences."

Now Feng is grabbing the hearts, and purse-strings, of Hollywood's money men, who more and more see him in bottom-line terms as a "good investment�. Aware that all his movies have been successful, and thus have attracted financial backing largely on his home turf, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia bankrolled Big Shot's Funeral, as did Sony Pictures Entertainment through its Hong Kong office.

Meanwhile, word is that the movie will go global in March this year.