Digital vandals attack movie promotion. Millions of pixels injured.

Villains armed with PhotoChoppers took a heavy toll on the massed ranks of still photographs called into duty for the promotion of the Zhang Ziyi Aaron Kwok epic A Tale of Magic. The film's producers and publicists not only allowed the massacre to occur but in a move inexplicable to seasoned observers of movie industry allowed the images to intrude into the first major press conference hyping the film.

CRIEnglish downplayed the worst of the atrocity, perhaps as a nod to their many overseas readers, with shots of the principals at the press conference and a few of the photoshopped images that survived the slaughter. Here is Zhang Ziyi preparing to address the media with a wall poster of the images behind her:

Here is Aaron Kwok who plays the other half of the married couple in front of the same shocking backdrop:

Following are two of the images, possible showing stages in the life of the couple, still from CRIEnglish:

xinhuanet.com, on the other hand, showed the entire collage which can be seen here. Clicking on the large image or on any of the 23 buttons below it will produce pictures usually not considered suitable for a mainstream audience. For example:

The head of the Film Office had no comment. PhotoshopPolice are pursuing several promising leads but say that no arrests are immenent.