China’s film industry grossed a record 10.17 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) at the box office last year. Mindful of its powerful impact, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television asked the nation’s filmmakers this week to make their productions free of smokers and tobacco products. In the administration’s eyes, TV and films should not encourage smoking, especially among young people. A survey by the Chinese Associati ... Jump to full article >>

It’s taken 30 years for John Carpenter’s film biography of the King to arrive in Britain. It’s a strange fact that just as Elvis Presley fans in Britain hoped to see their hero perform here, but were repeatedly denied the chance, so most of them have never seen a hugely popular American biopic that covers the first half of his astonishing career. Elvis, as the film was simply called, was broadcast on ABC-TV in the US in February 1979, to g ... Jump to full article >>

Young adult smokers will light up immediately after watching smoking in movies, U.S. researchers found. Dikla Shmueli, Judith Prochaska and Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco, randomly assigned 100 cigarette smokers ages 18-25 to watch movie montages, some depicting smoking and some with no depictions of smoking. The researchers then observed the subjects’ behavior during a 10-minute break to see whether or not p ... Jump to full article >>