Chairman Mao hits the big screen

REEL NEWS:No space robots until you've watched the tender historical portrait of Mao. That's the message from the People's Republic of China, where release dates for the latest Harry Potterand Transformersflicks have been postponed.

Instead, local movie punters can choose between Beginning of the Great Revival, a romantic epic based on the swashbuckling life and times of Mao Zedong, made to commemorate the PRC's 90th anniversary, or a reissue of The Founding of a Republic, a film made to commemorate the PRC's 60th anniversary.

The new Mao movie has not been received well: "I was confused throughout the entire movie," a young Tsinghua medical student told the New York Timesthis week. Wait until she sees Transformers: Dark of the Moon.