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The coming Oscars ceremony may be threatened by the ongoing writers' strike, but Chinese entertainment reporters and cineastes have one less reason to worry about it. This week, it was announced that all three Chinese language movies submitted for Best Foreign Language Picture consideration - from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan - failed to get on the nine-nominee shortlist. This may not say much about the quality of these films. Voting for a best artistic work is capricious at best because art, as beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. Case in point: this year, many of the most promising movies - the Chinese submissions not included - were snubbed in this category. We may not like to admit it, but we look towards Western confirmation for the excellence of Chinese films, or the lack of it. Chen Kaige did not become a "master" until his Farewell, My Concubine took the coveted Palme d'Or. Zhang Yimou did not secure his status until he was consistently lauded by the big three European awards. Our lack of an aesthetic authority or standard of our own is the result of many factors: Our own prizes are often pretenders. They may be preceded by lavish stage productions, but the selection process is opaque and whatever yardsticks that can be detected smack of outdated mentalities. Our entertainment press rarely looks beyond the box-office champions, and our academic journals are laden with second-hand research at least 20 years out of sync with the times. | 
