China's film industry is now in its annual New Year and Spring Festival peak season. There are more than 50 movies competing to attract cinema goers over the next 80 days, surpassing previous seasons.

2009 also sets a new record in box office revenue for China's film industry.

In December, ticket sales at movie theaters reached 750 million yuan, or about 110 million US dollars. That's 50 percent increase over 2008. It also set a record for monthly income at the Chinese box office.

PYONGYANG, Sept. 28 - A Chinese film week celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)was opened on Monday at the Taedong Gate Cinema of Pyongyang.

Five Chinese feature films, including Li Shuangliang, Postmen in Mountains, the Knot, When Ruoma was Seventeen, and Huayao Bride in Shangri-La, will be screened during the period from Monday to Friday.

FOR the ruling Communist Party it is China's version of The Greatest Story Ever Told. For Jesus Christ substitute Mao Zedong in The Founding of the Republic (Jian Guo Da Ye), a lavish feature film about the communist leader's rise to power, which today will be given the widest release of any feature in China.

BEIJING, Aug. 6 -- Director Teddy Chan has a vision of a different kind of martial arts movie. One that doesn't neglect emotions and storyline in favor of the action. "Bodyguards and Assassins" is to be released in December. Hong Kong filmmaker Teddy Chan's 10-year dream has finally come true as his highly anticipated period epic "Bodyguards and Assassins" finished its three-month shooting recently at a huge replica of 1905 downtown Hong Kong built in Shanghai's suburban Songjiang District.

"March on! March on! March on, on!," a series of activities to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic China, starts in the China National Film Museum on July 31, 2009. The name of the event was inspired by the final line of the Chinese national anthem.

In the next four months, audiences will be able to watch about 200 movies produced by China's four major film studios over the past sixty years, as well as many posters and still photographs. They will also have the opportunity to talk with directors and actors.

Was it worth the six-month wait? The answer is a resounding affirmative. John Woo's second and final segment of the epic battle extravaganza "Red Cliff" picks up with a monstrous, 800,000-strong army led by invading warlord Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) about to close in on Jiangdong, the province of young prince Sun Quan (Chang Chen). The closing scene of Part I had Woo's signature scene of a white pigeon flying out over the sea.

A joint project between Chinese and Korean investors started in 2007 and released in April 2008 in Asia, Resurrection of the dragon was marketed as an epic movie based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel; sadly for us, it turned out to be more of an epic trailer than anything else.