Keep the popcorn coming

I'm slightly more inclined than usual, in part because of this article, to sympathize with those unseen who worked in connection with films such as these. Whether the choice on the part of former 金融家 is due to the free will of those movie patrons or active direction from state-directed initiatives (it's tough for me to tell individual will from state direction thataways nowadays), it looks like they're consciously shifting to output from their own movie industry, and the second link has the numbers to show it.

It must be excruciating for those more visible this side of the ring, the knowledge that selling parts of themselves by changing details within films and learning how to kowtow fluently is no longer enough to win over a market that by this time has seen enough of the formula films. Their contemporaries on the side opposite have built their own resources to the point where they have the choice to walk away, and they do. (Bit of a digression, but what term applies to a relationship where one side makes more compromises to their own values than the other? I've come up with two possible answers; there may be more.)

However, have no fear, local markets - the shifting front of one clash of cultures does not preclude the ability to entertain oneself. If one's own stars are fading, fictionalizing another person's life is a form of entertainment that's still perfectly accessible.

Moving from a clash between two cultures to a clash within one - what, another ban? Looked up a synopsis online (because my paperback's in a box somewhere) to remind myself of the main story line, the defense of an innocent in a court of law. What I picked up was that race isn't a criterion to refuse a person that defense, that All who need help get the help they need. (I meant what I capitalized.)

Humans continue to be weird.

Ending with this partial answer to an earlier question - brought up the memory of this video and a manor house retrofitted with a modern heating system involving an outdoor pond. (Old-school radiators with contemporary innards? Oddly hot.)