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Everybody was kung fu fighting ‘08

Andrew Heskins — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:00:33 +0000

There’s something in the air all right… but Beijing Olympics or not, haven’t we seen it all before?

No prizes for guessing what that is in the air. It’s the whiff of Beijing smog, carried by the frenzy of excitement over the 2008 Olympics, and before you can say ‘what human rights record?’ or ‘where’s Tibet?’ reached choking point as all things Chinese clog up every part of our culture. It’s a (mainly) welcome wave of interest, well matched by some perfectly timed touring exhibitions, such as the First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum and China Design Now at the V&A, all helping to wet our appetites for the coming athletic throng. All 15 days of it.

Of course marketers and distributors, hardly known for their inspiring imagination or thorough knowledge of Chinese culture, first turn to martial arts and all things kung fu…

Not that I’m complaining by any means, but isn’t it all rather familiar? Remember when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the must see at the motion pictures, getting a wide release despite the often unmitigated handicap of being in a foreign language? The underlying interest in Asian movies we’ve always had over the years, Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven, Yojimbo/Fistful Of Dollars, etc etc, suddenly turned into overdrive. And thanks to the action director’s (Yuen woo-ping) work on another recent iconic film, The Matrix, suddenly everyone was kung fu fighting. And if Woo-ping could make most bodacious Keanu look good, then who wouldn’t want to give it a go? Charlie’s Angels, X Men, seems everyone had spent an inordinate amount of time stuck in a Shaolin Temple, waiting to get into that 36th chamber. Now it’s just part of our screen language.

What resulted in the most constant flood of Asian talent in to Hollywood, both actors – like Chow Yun-fat, Jet Li and Jackie Chan – and some directors – such as Hideo Nakata, Takeshi Shimizu (albeit both on remakes of their own films) and Ronny Yu, joining John Woo, Tsui Hark and others behind the camera – also resulted in some of the worst vehicles to date: Replacement Killers? Bulletproof Monk? Shanghai Knights? The Tuxedo? Just about any Jet Li movie made in the West except Kiss Of The Dragon. (Oh, and The One, I’ll let you have that but for all the wrong reasons.)

But there was a positive side effect. Suddenly an awful lot of Asian films were being released in their own right. Small independent distributors thrived on the scene, taking advantage of the budding DVD market. Ong-Bak re-invigorated martial arts with death-defying real stunts that literally made you hold your breath in the cinema. Infernal Affairs was even given a minor release before Scorsese had revealed his interest in remaking it as The Departed. (No one seems to have quite gotten round to the much mooted remake of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy.) An Japanese animation even won an Oscar, all be it perhaps one of the best ever made – Spirited Away. (Though it did benefit from a Disney release!)

Then 18 months ago it all went wrong…

It wasn’t so much in Hollywood, still happy to look eastwards for inspiration. There just didn’t seem to be enough room for Asian releases anymore, and retailers were quickly losing a grip on their market. Whether that was really the effect of peer-to-peer downloading, or just a fickle loss of interest that led to a lack of promotion for what Asian release there were, is hard to tell. But there just weren’t as many films being released, not just at the cinema, but also on DVD. Truth is, if the internet is to blame for anything, it’s that we can all get much better editions of Asian films directly from the East, and long before they come out here.

Before too long companies were going out of business. First Hong Kong Legends, which had built up a strong reputation throughout the world for good quality releases. couldn’t keep up with distributors in Hong Kong that were starting to release remastered versions of the same classic movies at a quicker rate. In their last few months of trading, industry contacts said they could hardly give their releases away, being lucky to move 80 units throughout the UK.

More recently Tartan Films, based in the UK and US, has followed suit. One of the longest surviving independent distributors, Asian films were certainly just a small part of their output, and had been greatly reduced over the same period. Considering the intelligent, bizarre and outstanding films they’ve helped bring to the UK, including notable US independent and horror releases, this is a real shame for all of us.

Things did not look good. According to those in the industry, all things Asian were pretty much dead… until now…

Once again, if anything Hollywood is leading the charge. The past few months have seen some several films cash in on Olympic-mania – the surprising part being if anything they’ve done it quite well. The Forbidden Kingdom united Jet Li and Jackie Chan for the first time, but with Yuen Woo-ping on board – who worked with both actors in the past – and a largely Chinese crew, combined with scriptwriter John Fusco’s obvious love of Hong Kong movies, the result was a warm-hearted kids film with some kick-ass fight scenes. Then there was Kung Fu Panda. Again drawing on those same Yuen Woo-ping/Jackie Chan movies, Dreamworks latest turned all those animal themed martial art moves in to, well, animals.

And once again, we’re seeing distributors (or at least, those that are left) a lot more open to releasing Asian movies. In the coming months Chocolate, from Ong-Bak director Prachya Pinkaew, finally reaches our shores, and we’ve seen Mad Detective given a small scale release, soon to be followed by Triangle. Let’s hope the interest sticks – at least for a while…

Of course it’s not all good. The latest installment of The Mummy franchise has taken a neat idea to spin put another yarn and missed the mark. The Pang brothers follow their disappointingly received Hollywood debut The Messengers with a Nicholas Cage vehicle Bangkok Dangerous – a remake (of sorts) of their own first collective effort. Gorillaz creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have made a musical about that irrepressible Monkey. And right now every advert under the sun is using Crouching Tiger style moves to sell their wares, from McDonalds to Frosties, and you know you’re in trouble when even Tony the Tiger is pulling some Shaolin monk moves. (Pretty soon we’ll all be sick of Chinese-themed anything!)

Ho hum, let’s see how much interest there is in a month’s time…?

Another one bites the dust: Tartan UK closes

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:00:38 +0000

Bit slow bringing you this news, but the Tartan label – whose responsible Asia Extreme label was responsible for exposing many of us to Asian classics such as Ring, Audition and Happiness of the Katakuris – has closed as of the end of last month…

As with Hong Kong Legends, which also recently closed, it’s a sign of how the industry is not recognising the changing habits of their audience. It’s far more than simply the effect of downloading films, or even the effect of a global market which makes worldwide DVD releases, often better packaged than UK ones, available at the same or even cheaper prices.

It’s a sign of how an independent retailer, investing in hard to find, specialty releases, can no longer compete with the big retailers and their bargain bin prices on recent releases. But you have to wonder about the longterm effect of what’s happening to ’specialty’ retailers – at a point when the consumer should be benefiting from more choice than ever, the chances of them being exposed to anything that’s not – let’s be frank – from Hollywood, are becoming less and less.

Will we even know what a ‘foreign language’ film is in 10 years time…?

This is a real shame considering Tartan’s long standing as an independent retailer, some 20 years or more, and all the films that company has debuted both here and in the US. To the contacts that easternKicks had there – we wish you all the best for the future!

Death Of A Legend

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:22:38 +0000

Since 1999 Hong Kong Legends had released remastered versions of classics (relatively) old and new that had gained them an international reputation. But that wasn’t enough to keep them in business – why?

On 5 November 2007 affiliates for the DVD label Hong Kong Legends where told to remove all links to their site. The company would be no more. But why had this happened, and what does it say for the future of Asian film releases in the UK?

The DVD label Hong Kong Legends debuted in 1999, fresh faced, it entered the new and burgeoning DVD marketplace, releasing Kung Fu classics, iconic Bloodshed films and new films too. All remastered and restored to a level that many of them hadn’t even been in to begin with. Few of these films had even been available on Video in the UK, and back before the internet truly opened up international retail, getting hold of them was nearly impossible. Even if you could, most DVD transfers coming out of Hong Kong seemed straight off the Video or Laserdisc releases of films. (Often the original Laserdisc version was a better quality!)

In comparison, a HKL release had seal of class that swiftly got them an international reputation. Discs often bulged with heaps of extras, even if they could be of varying quality. And then there were those audio commentaries by Bey Logan. A HKL release became the definitive version of a film, the must have.

So what went wrong?

Wasn’t there a wealth of films waiting for the HKL treatment? John Woo still had a good (though swiftly tarnishing) reputation for action movies. Jackie Chan was only beginning to ruin his career with Hollywood films like Rush Hour. The same could be said of Jet Li. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was yet to captivate audiences.

Early releases reflected a predictable snapshot of the favourite stars of the time. The release of Jackie Chan’s double act with Simon Yuen in Drunken Master and Snake In The Eagle’s Shadow gave us a reason to see why he’d become so popular in the first place. But gaining the rights to release Media Asia’s back catalogue gave HKL incredible scope for the future, and of course that jewel in any one’s kung fu fantasy, Bruce Lee.

HKL backed up their release of Lee’s first three kung fu films, The Big Boss, Fist Of Fury, and Way Of The Dragon, with a seemingly impressive host of extras – for back in those days at least. And taking advantage of the relaxing attitude of British Film Censors, the films could finally be shown with their nunchuk scenes intact. But that was nothing compared to what they found for Game Of Death, Lee’s posthumous film, completed by the director of Enter The Dragon, Robert Clouse, long after Lee had passed away. They found 40 minutes of original footage, reduced to 12 minutes in the final film, re-edited it to how Lee had imagined it. (That didn’t, of course, stop the film itself from being a shameless cash in on Bruce Lee’s name.)

HKL even expanded to a sister label, Premier Asia – able to mop up those titles that weren’t strictly speaking, from Hong Kong. Now Japanese, Thai and Korean titles could also be included.

So far, so good, but following HKL seemed unable to capitalise on the success of Crouching Tiger to bring that audience to the films that inspired it. Their release schedule was slow, and the effort put into creating those extras waned over the years. And then there were still those commentaries by Bey Logan.

The magic was fading. Remastered versions of many of those films were now becoming available in HK and the US, and worse still HK was catching up on releasing new, improved versions of series like A Chinese Ghost Story and Once Upon A Time In China. Stranger still the label held off on releasing some of it’s most best known (or at least notorious) back catalogue, ignoring Sex And Zen for years, and overlooking John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow II and Last Hurrah For Chivalry for some of his lesser titles.

What exactly was going on?

Late in 2006 pr agencies began to seek opinions from Asian fan sites and magazines on HKL’s behalf. A large retailer was arguing that their audiences didn’t care about the quality of the films. Of course they did, often ALL they cared about. That was what made it different.

Soon HKL changed tactic. Releasing what it called the ‘Ultra-bit collection’ it concentrated on the quality of the movie rather than a wealth of extras. The schedule was changed to a title a month. Finally here was Sex And Zen and Last Hurrah For Chivalry. And bizarrely a host of early Jackie Chan movies. But it was too late, in more senses than one. The writing was on the wall.

The effort and research was sadly missing from these new titles, it wasn’t just about extras, it was about making the definitive release of a title. Jackie Chan’s mid-80s US collaboration The Protector, for instance, missed an obvious opportunity to include Jackie’s version of the film alongside the American original. And then, considering there wasn’t much in the way of extras, the cost still pushed the better part of £20.

Things have changed a lot since the turn of the decade, when most releases would cost the better part of £20 if not more. Now a new release can easily be obtained for little over a tenner, and if you want to wait a couple of months, well under. But then there was a very good reason for the price. By the end of HKL’s run, they were lucky to shift between 80 and 100 copies of a title.

Think about it. That’s less than one copy for every OTHER HMV store in the UK. Surely there are more fans of Asian films than that? Audiences may have waned since Crouching Tiger, but they are still there. Just where are they? It’s a catch 22 – in comparison with the rest of the DVD market the price precludes purchase, but, of course, can’t be lowered to stand any chance of making a profit.

HKL are not the only label to have come a cropper since interests have seemingly waned. Momentum Pictures, for instance, secured domestic releases of the Shaw Brothers films restored by Celestial Pictures and released in Hong Kong by IVL. Oddly, these removed all the extras to offer the titles at about £12.99, still about four or five pounds more than you could get the original HK DVD delivered, overloaded with extras.

Whether it’s lack of interest, the global market, or simply cost, it doesn’t bode well for future Asian film releases in the UK. About 18 months ago, I complained about the wealth of great films by well-known Asian directors that remain unavailable in the UK. Directors like Zhang Yimou, who directed Hero, Raise The Red Lantern, and House Of Flying Daggers, or even Ang Lee himself. Not to mention easternKicks faves like Citizen Dog and King Of Masks. It’s hard to believe that no audience exists for these movies, they just have to know about them first.

In the States, a new label has been born out of the sort of titles that HKL would have released in the past, Dragon Dynasty. Can they make a go of it? And can anyone fill the gap in the UK? Let’s hope so… Let’s keep fighting till they do.

Jet Li versus…

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:00:30 +0000

To celebrate the release of Jet Li latest action yarn, War, we pick out five of our favourite fights from 25 years of his movies. And offer you the chance to submit your own to our list…

Originally a five times Wu Shu champion, Jet Li first entered the movies in 1982 with shameless 36th Chamber of Shaolin knock-off The Shaolin Temple. Since then he’s had hardly a chance to look back, maintaining box office stardom in Asia with films like Fearless and Hero, while making a credible stab at stardom in the US with films like Kiss Of the Dragon and The One, unlike rival Jackie Chan. (Forgive Shanghai Knights and Rush Hour 1/2/3 if you will… but Tuxedo?)

His latest film teams him with Jason Statham (The Transporter, Crank) under direction from Philip G. Atwell, previously best known for directing some of Eminem’s best and most iconic videos, with old friend Corey Yuan on hand to choreograph the action. But enough of that, let’s get on with it…!

1. Jet Li vs Donnie Yen: Once Upon A Time In China 2

We’ve all felt the pain of the slap from a wet towel across the back of the legs (haven’t we?) but Li uses that to his advantage playing folk hero Wong Fei Hung character is caught unprepared against Donnie Yen corrupt police official and his staff – fashioning wet laundry into a an equally solid pole with a nothing but a simple twist.

Sounds unlikely, impossible even, but you’ll soon be leaving your inquiring mind behind and enjoying one Li’s finest moments, choreographed by legend (and Yen’s mentor) Yuen Woo-ping.

2. Jet Li vs Billy Chow: Fist Of Legend

Perhaps the highpoint for Jet Li most devoted fans, Fist Of Legend is loosely based on the same events that loosely inspired Bruce Lee’s Fist Of Fury, also remade as Legend Of A Fighter. Yep, it’s China versus Japan once more, and a theme that has remained a constant throughout Hong Kong movies, even referenced again in Fearless.

Ubiquitous bad guy Chow plays General Fujita, whose pseudonym Supreme killer tells you ALL you need to know. This fights gonna be mean, it’s gonna be dirty, and it’s gonna be close. Woo-ping again choreographs the fast paced action.

3. Jet Li vs Sibelle Hu: Fong Sai Yuk

Corey Yuan directs Li as Fong Sai Yuk, another Chinese folk hero, who enters a local official Tiger Lu’s competition to win the hand of his daughter – all he needs to do is beat Lu’s wife Siu Lee Wan (played by Sibelle Hu) in combat. A Girl? Sure, but it’s not as easy as it sounds as the pair dive into, or rather onto, the crowd gathered to watch the spectacle, fighting whilst balanced on their heads.

When Fong mistakes an ugly girl for Lu’s daughter, he throws the fight, forcing Fong mother (Josephine Siao) to save the families reputation by entering the contest pretending to be Fong’s older brother. She (he?) beats Siu Lee, who in the process falls deeply for Fong’s mother. Cross gender hilarity ensues, but what do you want from a Hong Kong film, Shakespeare? (Hang on a mo, that is Shakespeare!)

4. Jet Li vs Brigitte Lin: Swordsman II

Hey Li – gentlemen don’t hit ladies – but hey, this sure ain’t no lady!

Ever beautiful in the most handsome way, Brigitte Lin plays Asia The Invincible, a warrior who has supernaturally castrated himself in order to become the more powerful, much to the disappointment of his girlfriend. (Do you spot a theme developing here?)

He/she’s even seems more preoccupied by his/her embroidery when confronted by Ling and his cohorts. Worse still, Ling is rather attracted to him/her (are you following?). It doesn’t help that Asia fooled Ling into thinking he made out with him/her, even though it was in fact his/her girlfriend. Right to the last Asia keeps Ling guessing as he/she (do keep up!) falls to his/her death.

(Unsurprisingly, it was Brigitte’s character that re-emerged for the sequel.)

5. Jet Li vs (ahem!) Jet Li: The One

Not his best by any means, but ex-X File and Final Destination creators James Wong and Glen Morgan direct Jet Li in a ‘parallel universe’ thriller that manages to avoid the most interesting parts of that concept in favour of a Highlander style rip-off. (Well, it did give the film it’s forgettable title?) Shame, as Li even gives pretty good performances as all the different versions of himself.

The highlight of the film, however, is the inevitable scene choreographed by Corey Yuen, where evil Li fights good Li. Both Li’s use entirely different style of fighting tied into their characters, and Corey and Jet’s imagined spirituality for them (not unusual for this pair!) – an entirely needless but actually quite noticeable detail for martial arts fans!

What are your favourite Jet Li fight scenes, let us know below in the format below and we’ll post ‘em here.

So it’s Jet Li vs…? (actor name)

What’s the film? (name it here)

Why does it rock? (your reasons why…)

Don’t like what’s happening in the real world? Blame the movies…

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:45:17 +0000

In the wake of the tragedy at Virgina Tech, all the media can seem to fixate on is the fact that the assailant may have watched Oldboy a few times too many…

As the whole world still reels from the events of 16 April 2007, when Korean-born Cho Seung-hui shot down 32 fellow students at Virgina Tech in the States before killing himself, important questions need to be asked. Questions such as: Why does this keep happening? How can a youngster become so detached from both his peers and reality? What can be done about the seeming ease of availability of guns in the States? That, and just what had he been watching that turned him so violent?

Yep, it didn’t take long for the media to find out that Cho had watched Oldboy once or twice. And didn’t some of the poses in photo’s he took of himself look uncannily like they were from a John Woo film – look, he had a gun in each hand, just like his movies. (Just like his movies… and every action movie since The Killer, in the East and West.) Was he just recreating scenes from the movie? (Yeah, surely you remember the scene where Oh Dae-su ran amok in a University? And in real life, Cho Seung-hui had an incestuous relationship with his daughter?)

And so the hysteria begins again.

Perhaps we can look forward to Oldboy (and maybe every other Asian action movie to boot) being pulled off our shelves – the influence is obviously too strong for our impressionable minds to withstand, we’ll all bound be running outside with guns a blazing. Obviously.

Other than a few iconic poses, it’s hard to see what influence Park Chan-wook’s film may have had over Seung-hui. Chan-wook’s so-called Vengeance trilogy of Oldboy, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengeance. Despite his reputation as an Asian Tarantino, he looks at the core theme of retribution intelligently. Acting as a powerful diatribe against violence, it only breeds more violence, vengeance a hollow victory, and only his final leading character in comes close to any kind of redemption. Hardly a glamorisation of violent death, and proof that those keen to report such stories have either never seen them, or at least seem keen to fuel the general publics horror.

Throughout the years, publications, radio and movies have been picked out as culprits for behaviour that seems to have no connection with our daily lives. Tragedies in particular seem to necessitate the need for an easily recognisable cause. More often than not movies have taken the spotlight as the chief offender.

Back in 1993, struck dumb by the James Bulger murder by two 11 year-olds the media played particular interest to the video in the possession of one of the boys father. The boys, it was presumed, had been influenced by this violent movie and tried to copy it with a small child – even though it was never proved either of the boys actually watched the film.

(Again, media interest didn’t seem to dwell on the fact that the film itself was more cheesy than scary.)

Films can’t make a normal, well-grounded human being commit such atrocities against their equals. It’s just an acute manifestation of how detached from reality they really are.

When Guardian writer Jon Ronson made his documentary about the six pupils from the small town of North Pole in Alaska, who plotted a Columbine style massacre last April, he found that their disconnection with the real world almost startlingly laughable. After the shootings, the pupils had planned to run to the station and catch a train to Anchorage. They hadn’t however, bothered to check the train times, meaning they’d have had a five hour wait for the next train – hardly a quick getaway.

That same detachment allows them to get totally wrapped in movies, but the movies aren’t the cause. These people obviously have something very wrong with them. Even if these problems are recognised, often we are too late to stop these murders form happening.

Maybe sometimes there is no easy answer to explain away these tragedies; we just have to live with it.

The cutting blade

Andrew Heskins — Tue, 16 May 2006 08:52:38 +0000

The Contender Group are doing a great job of distributing Asian movies in UK cinemas, but are they going to far to get them a Western audience?…

The Contender Group, who run the Premier Asia and Hong Kong Legends labels in the UK, are beginning to get into the worrying habit of ‘fiddling’ with films they release theatrically. Often this has been little more than giving Asian films a new musical soundtrack, like Ong-Bak and Initial D: Driftracer. In the case of the latter droping Jay Chou’s power ballads for a new drum n’ bass/dance driven soundtrack by Fuel definitely added to the films appeal – especially for it’s audience of boy racers, who seem to enjoy damaging their eardrums with thunderous sound systems at the best of times.

For the theatrical release of Seven Swords, however, this meant cutting approximately 15 minutes of running time from a movie that already had underdeveloped characters and subplots. The deleted scenes, included on the DVD – though divorced from the film itself – may not appear drastically important to the plot, partly as their significance may be lost on a western audience, but losing them seems more a portent of what’s to come.

It’s not so long ago that Asian film fans united against Disney and affiliated companies like Miramax in their treatment of movies from the east. Dubbed, cut, seemingly deliberately delayed release (anything to do with Kill Bill?)- Shaolin Soccer was left on the shelf for three years when Miramax brought the distribution rights, while Legend of Zu neve even appeared – yet also made it impossible to get the original versions outside of Hong Kong or China, treatment which caused fans to even set up an online petition against them.

Point is, how far should you go to entice an audience to see a film? Some believe that as long as it helps brings the crowd in, that’s enough – at least if the original version is included in some form, perhaps on the DVD? But should we change films at all? Shouldn’t they reflect the different culture they come from, without hesitation?

When Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki agreed to allow Disney to release his movies in the State, he made one stipulation – you can dub them into English, but they couldn’t change one scene. Forcing them to translate every minute of the movie, each beautifully weird second.

Do Contender risk making the same mistake? It’s rather like they’ve opened Pandora’s box, and now they can’t help themselves. A tweak here, an edit there, a new soundtrack booming in the background – but where does it stop?

Forget art. Forget allowing a movie to find an audience on it’s own merits. Just cynically alter it to suit the market? Come on, let’s leave that to the Americans…

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Please release me: wanted on DVD…

Andrew Heskins — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 10:02:19 +0000

In the UK we’ve never had a wider selection of titles to watch on DVD – so why are so many classics being overlooked?…

There’s no doubt that the choice for film fans in the UK has greatly increased in the last couple of years. Even the way the British buy and enjoy movies has made a dynamic shift towards collector, even hoarder (though some of us were already), which has helped a buoyant and ever-expanding market to the point where the choice seems almost endless.

Almost. Yet there are still some fantastic titles that have fallen through the net. Some of these may have been released on video years ago, but have yet to be reissued onto DVD. Some have yet to be released. Sadly, many don’t easy ‘fit’ categorisation – a common trait of Asian films. The following is a list of a few of our own favourites that you won’t be finding in your local HMV or Blockbuster store.

Now some of our international readers may find this all rather ponderous – why so much fuss if you can’t find it in your own country, why not buy it online? Well, for many the film company imposed fascism of Region control still dominates the viewing habits of those who haven’t been lucky enough, or bothered, to track down a hack for their machine. Many of those machines won’t even play ‘Region free’ (or Region 0) discs. And the rest may just not trust retailers based in other countries (not that I’ve ever had a problem).

I’m sure even those based in Asia and The States will have titles to add to this list, so please let us know.

First up is a recent movie that seems to have been rather overlooked generally. Despite being popular at festivals wherever it’s been shown – including the London Film Festival – and despite being director Wisit Sasanatieng’s follow-up to his successful (and highly promoted) Tears Of The Black Tiger NO ONE has picked up Citizen Dog (2004).

This tale of a simple farm boy who moves to the big city has everything: romance, chain smoking teddy bears, zombie taxi drivers. It’s a highly enjoyable adult fairytale, often favourably compared to Amelie, and it’s crying out for a proper release! How long will we have to wait till the big companies realise? Come on, guys, buck up your act!

Until recently, there wasn’t even an English subtitled DVD available for this.

Not that’s it’s unusal for the odd film to be missed from a directors work, even if everything else has been released by them. Take Kim Ji-woon, for example. The director of My Bittersweet Life and A Tale Of Two Sisters has had pretty much his entire back catalougue made available in the UK.

Everything -even his debut The Quiet Family, which was remade by Takashi Miike as The Happiness of the Katakuris - except perhaps his finest hour (or two to be precise), The Foul King.

This comedy about wrestling (bear with me) starring Song Kang-ho (JSA, Memories Of Murder, Sympathy For Mr Vengeance) is one of the funniest films I’ve seen for a long time – so why no interest over here? Like many of the following films, this is available on DVD in the States…

Next in line is a beautiful, intelligent ghost story that turned all my expectations of Hong Kong movies on their head. Rouge (1988) stars ‘Chinese Madonna’ Anita Mui as Fleur, a ghost who returns from the underworld to find out what became of her fiancé, played by Leslie Cheung.

An exquisite musing on both a changing Hong Kong, and what true love really means (would you kill yourself for your beloved?), Rouge is a real treat from start to finish. Made all the more poignant by the recent tragic death of both leads.

Originally released on video, even the plain old Hong Kong disc of this is now hard to find, let alone the Limited Edition remastered version released a few years back. In the States, distributor Tai Seng has made the budget version available. This version has poor picture and sound quality, and many amusing spelling mistakes on the English subtitles. However, it’s all there is! Surely it’s time for an astute UK based distributor to pick this up and release a newly-remastered version?

The King Of Masks is one of those movies that, when you see it, you wonder why more people don’t go on about it. (Allow me to…) It’s a beautiful, touching story of a street performer who adopts a boy to continue his family tradition, only to find it’s actually a girl. It’s intelligent treatment allows the themes the story touches to be subtly explored, without them getting in the way.

The Hong Kong DVD may have many of the defects from the original print, it is a distinct improvement on the US DVD release that takes an equally poor print and Pan & Scan’s it, loosing a considerable amount of the original picture. Again, another film crying out for a new remaster and release?

In fact Chinese movies often get ignored, take for instance the work of Zhang Yimou. You might have expected the theatrical and retail success of Hero and House Of Flying Daggers might have made DVD distributors check out his back catalogue? Think again.

In the UK none of his films before the late 90s have been released, including the Oscar nominated Raise the Red Lantern – which explored the themes of Memoirs of a Geisha far better – Story Of Qiuju and the BAFTA winning To Live (aka Lifetimes). All of which are fantastic and certainly more intelligent than his more recent films.

The same is true of Yimou’s rival, Chen Kaige. Again his Oscar nominated work Farewell My Concubine is not to be found in your local store, and if you try looking for Temptress Moon… Forget it!

Stateside, however, at least they’ve had the sense to release them.

And if one director seems criminally overlooked, it would be King Hu. His innovative movies from the sixties and seventies broke new ground how ‘wuxia’ swordplay movies were filmed and influenced everything that came after.

From his first wuxia movie, Come Drink With Me, his films still as fresh as the day they were released. In fact, considering Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a homage come ripoff of his work, it might come as a surprise that only Touch Of Zen – with it’s iconic (and familiar Mr. Lee!) swordfight in the bamboo forest – has made it to DVD in the UK. That and Swordsman, a Tsui Hark produced 90s comeback that sadly went wrong, forcing action director Ching Siu-tung to complete it (uncredited).

Even now, the only place where his talent seems truly recognised is Japan. Dragon Inn, the follow-up to Come Drink, has only just been released in the states. While in Hong Kong his earlier Shaw Brother productions are only just being released thanks to the Celestial Pictures remastered versions, including the fantastic Come Drink With Me. Come on Momentum Asia, I know you’ve been releasing some of the more ‘boysy’ titles from Celestial – how about it?

This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg, and one you can bet we’ll be returning to in the near future. In the meantime, let us know your top films that you’d like to see released on DVD, either in the UK or worldwide.

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Bruce’s Legacy

Andrew Heskins — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:33:06 +0000

More than 30 years after his death, the ‘Little Dragon’ has never been more popular – but isn’t it time we left his memory alone?

Growing up in the seventies it was impossible to miss just how cool Bruce Lee was. His image was everywhere – posters, magazines, t-shirts, alongside Al Pacino as Serpico on Tony Manero’s wall in Saturday Night Fever. (How did I see it at six? Older readers may remember the edited, no fun ‘A’ version.) All pretty important stuff for an impressionable six-year old. I even enjoyed the Kung Fu TV series, long before I knew he’d been involved in creating it. In fact the only place I didn’t see him was in his own movies – this being before the advent of video, at least affordably, and well after his films had been on at the cinema (though I would have been too young anyway).

I remember pestering my folks for a poster magazine of him, my enthusiasm for martial arts and Asian culture had already been cast, and there he was – his face typically snarled, three scars on his cheek as given to him by the evil Han (Shek Kin) during Enter The Dragon.

When I finally got to see him at the video store, my admiration somewhat cooled.

Okay, so Enter the Dragon, my first introduction, was great (at least for a ten-year old). This American lead production did everything a great 70s action movies should: Get everyone together, team them up, kill-off a lead or two. A real Bond on a budget, executive producer Fred Weintraub managed to mix in cult martial arts and blaxpoltation elements too. Though film might have been invaluable to the Hong Kong film industry, it didn’t always show off Bruce Lee’s real flair except in the major action scenes (when director Robert Clouse made the smart move leaving him too it). Alongside Lee’s undeniable screen domination, Shek Kin as Han, a man who’d made his name as bad guys in Hong Kong films, making an impression as the greatest Bond villain that never was (surely he could have actually played Dr. No?

But then came my next attempt at the video shop. A badly dubbed, pan and scan copy of The Big Boss In fact, I think it might have even been known under its confusing American title Fists of Fury. Not the best way to see it. Then there were all the pitiful cash-ins, all with the tenuous use of Dragon in the title. (Though even I realised that there was little chance of seeing Lee in The Black Dragon.)

By the time I got to see Bruce Lee’s trilogy of Golden Harvest productions properly, it was too late. I’d fallen in love with the 80s so-called ‘new wave’ of filmmakers like Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and John Woo. And later, the much overlooked King Hu, surely one of the most intelligent and beautiful directors to come out of Hong Kong. I wondered why people had stopped making films like that…

It wasn’t that Lee’s film weren’t good, far from it – it was the first time such martial arts excellence had been seen on screen. Particularly in the first and only completed film he directed in which he co-starred with Chuck Norris in a duel that was both well filmed (with location photography around the Colosseum, Rome) and darkly comic, as Lee grabs hair from Norris’s fluffly Western chest. Oh, that’s WAY Of The Dragon for fans of The Office.

But suddenly the 70s seemed like a wasteland between the glorious 60s and the golden age of the 80s. Not that it was Bruce Lee’s fault by any means, but his immeasurable success made imitators of his peers, all trying to repeat his achievement. All taking Zhang Che’s basic template of masculine dominated stories, his self-styled ‘yanggang’, and dominating the cinema with hardly a decent role for women to be had. (A complete opposite to the situation in the mid 60s, when female actors had been the crowd pullers.) And, when Bruce Lee died, all were looking for the successor to his crown.

Which never really happened.

Jackie Chan didn’t do it. Jet Li didn’t do it. And Tony Jaa, well, only time will tell…

Part of Lee’s dominance over martial arts to come can be attributed to his tragic death. On the eve of the release of Enter The Dragon, and what would have been his international (most importantly, Stateside) success. Like James Dean, River Phoenix, Jim Morrison and nearly every other notable rock musician of the late 60s, and, of course, Jesus Christ, Lee is eulogised by friends, family and fans who lament what could have been – often with a passion only matched by the latter’s supporters.

It all seems somewhat over blown for such a small body of work.

Mind you, isn’t it strange that Lee’s childhood and teenage career as an actor in Hong Kong cinema seems to have been all but erased from history (and the motion picture Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story? Just because it doesn’t fit with the image of our diligent martial arts disciple? It was, however, as much a factor on his career and aspirations as his martial arts creation, Jeet Kune Do.

When he finished Enter The Dragon he returned to the film he’d left behind, what would have been his second as director, Game Of Death. Using his experience on Dragon, he began to draw up plans to change direction of the existing material towards more of an American audience, arranging a meeting with one-time George Lazenby on the evening of his death.

Despite his incredible success in Hong Kong, he was born in America. It’s obvious that it he always saw it as home, where he wanted to return triumphant (particularly after the prejudice he faced in Hollywood). Who knows what would have happened next? But then that’s the point, who knows?

There’s a mountain of documentaries on the ‘Little Dragon’, hundreds still waiting to be interviewed, all with their own insight. For every informative documentary, another 10 are shameless cash-ins. For every revealing interview, another 20 have nothing we haven’t heard a hundred times before. The level of material is seems unwarranted and often rather offending to his memory.

And you know what, I’d rather praise Jackie Chan. Not just because he is a better actor and has a better understanding of how to use the camera, but because he’s also produced some of the best Hong Kong art house movies ever – particularly Stanley Kwan’s Rouge and Actress. Jackie Chan! Art house! Fancy that?

Or Jet Li, a gold medal winning martial arts champion who could probably beat Lee in hand-to-hand combat, and at least has been around long enough to get a chance to act (though only rarely!)

And what about all theories and conspiracies that surround his sudden death aged 32. A triad hit job? Drug abuse? The equally tragic death of his son Brandon Lee certainly adds flames to the fire. He died at the same age, working on the film that would catapult him into mainstream success (The Crow) in an accident that echoed the plotline of the first ten minutes of Game Of Death. (The bit that Robert Clouse finished.) Such coincidences would make the X Files Scully shudder, but perhaps that’s all they are after all. Perhaps the simplest explanation is true. Perhaps Lee did just die of an epilepsy condition?

Though we should never forget his importance, in films and tributes, trying to relive every moment seems desperate and unhealthy. Not so long ago plans were revealed to breathe new life into Lee using CGI. (It was even claimed his family had given their permission for it.) Thankfully the project never came to fruition, but isn’t it time we just left his memory alone? Let’s enjoy what he left us – The Big Boss, Fist Of Fury, Enter The Dragon and Way Of The Dragon – and move on.
Have I gone too far this time? Share your opinion on Bruce Lee…

Young at heart

Andrew Heskins — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 07:39:18 +0000

Hong Kong directors are ditching young stars for old veterans who’ve hardly been on screen in twenty years or more, but the real surprise is they’re giving them the best roles

It’s not the sort of thing you’d find in Hollywood. Tinsel town so covets and prizes youth above all else that the whole idea would turn the place on its head. Yet in Hong Kong directors are casting older actors who’ve faces have rarely graced the big screen in decades – not just in cameos, but some of the best roles. It’s nothing new in Asia, where filmmakers have always had a greater respect for their elders. But the frequency with which it happens, and the quality of those appearances, is truly gaining momentum.

For instance, Ang Lee thought he was being very clever casting Cheng Pei-pei as the villainous character Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It made a direct link to the work of the director that Lee’s film so diligently, er, paid homage too, King Hu, as Cheng was the lead in the first wuxia film he made Come Drink With Me. (What Lee failed to realise, of course, was that his action choreographer had done exactly the same some years before, casting her alongside Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun.)

The film had given Cheng Pei-pei had a brief but commanding position as the leading action lady in the late sixties – before filmmakers realised that cinema audiences were just as happy to watch male leads, and ironically, as the rest of the world became aware of feminist issue’s, women in Hong Kong took a back seat. Her daughter recounts how, as a child growing up in America she was always surprised at the reverence other Chinese adults paid to her mother – she had no idea of her earlier life as a Hong Kong movie star.

Plucked from the verges of obscurity? It pales into comparison with Yuen Qiu. A one-time Bond girl with a minor role in The Man with the Golden Gun, she had hardly appeared on the big screen in nearly twenty years. But when she accompanied a colleague to an audition for actor/director Stephen Chow’s first film after his international success Shaolin Soccer he was rather more interested in her – later stating he cast her because of how she smoked. That film was, of course, was Kung Fu Hustle – a guaranteed success and massive exposure for Qiu, especially as he cast her in one of the lead roles, the landlady of Pig Sty Alley.

The film was also a renaissance for her onscreen husband Yuen Wah. Like Yuen Qiu, Wah was a pupil of Hong Kong’s Chinese Opera School, and one of the Seven Little Fortunes alongside Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and Jackie Chan. Wah’s career, however, never faired as well as his former classmates. In the 80s and 90s he built a reputation as the ‘magnificent villian’ with mainly anonymous bad guy roles, rarely given the chance to flex his acting (let alone comedy) muscles like on Iceman Cometh. Yet Chow perfectly cast him as the landlord in Kung Fu Hustle, a role which won him Best supporting actor at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards.

And it’s not just Stephen Chow, other directors are taking full advantage of their antecedents. Johnnie To, for instance, cast Tian-lin Wang in a crucial role in Election. A director with three decades of experience from the 50s, and father of the prolific writer, director and producer Wong Jing, he brought a genuine candidness and humour to the film. To also cast David Chiang as a police inspector, Chiang had once been one of Hong Kong’s biggest stars, when he was director Zhang Che’s actor of choice in the early seventies in films like Vengeance and Blood Brothers.

Then there’s Tsui Hark, who cast Lau Kar-leung (Liu Chia-Liang) as one of the leads in epic gritty wuxia movie Seven Swords. Lau also choreographed the action for the movie – and why not? Kar-leung gained a reputation as one of Hong Kong’s greatest choreographers working on Shaw Brothers films throughout the 60s and 70s, before directing some of the greatest kung fu movies of all time, such as 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Spiritual Boxer.

Of course, though it’s fantastic that Hong Kong filmmakers have definitely not forgotten their predecessors, it belies a more serious situation for cinema there – that few fresh faces, if any, have captured the imagination and support of audiences.

The biggest names, the ones that guarantee box office draw, all come from the ‘golden age’ of HK cinema, many having made the transition from television to the big screen in the mid 80s to 90s. Andy Lau, Tony Leung (Chiu-wai and Ka-fai), Aaron Kwok, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh, Ekin Cheng, Leon Lai, Eric Tsang – all of them. Even younger actors like Daniel Wu and Shu Qi still debuted in the late 90s.

Few new stars have that same impact, China’s Zhang Ziyi, perhaps Cecilia Cheung, Edison Chen, maybe Angelica Lee, but can you possibly count pop act The Twins? And will Jackie’s son Jaycee Chan break through?

So what does this mean for Hong Kong cinema? Well, while it’s good to see that the older generation have not been forgotten, filmmakers are going to have to find a whole new generation for us to fall in love with, and quick…!

John Who?

Andrew Heskins — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 10:10:47 +0000

Sorry, I thought you were someone else. You know, that fella that made The Killer and Hard Boiled? What, you are? Then what is all this business with that Ben Affleck geezer, a man who could take acting lessons from the cast of Thunderbirds, his acting’s so wooden?

Somewhere down the line I can’t help but feel you lost your way. I remember all those wonderful movies you made with Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung and Danny Lee. Like most fans of Asian films I was brought up on the A Better Tomorrow series, Hard Boiled and the classic The Killer. They might have been great action movies but first and foremost they also had a lot of heart – ultimately you cared for the characters.

Like many, you learnt your trade from one of the most influential of all Hong Kong directors, Zhang Che. You might have absorbed your mentors interest in relentless masculine tales of honour and betrayal, yet you rarely dealt your female characters such a bad hand – even if they still didn’t account for much screen time. Stepping out from his shadow you made films like Last Hurrah for Chivalry. In those days you might have used swords instead of guns, but the relationships between the male leads was quite recognisably ‘Woo’.

Teaming up with seventies Shaw Brothers star Ti Lung, tv star Chow Yun-fat and pop star Leslie Cheung you helped rewrite the book for Hong Kong movies in the eighties with the incredible successful A Better Tomorrow. A mix of high octane action scenes and melodrama, it began a series of films that would spread your fame to the west. A sequel followed, where you showed you had the confidence to parody your own work, then the one that floored them all, The Killer. A violent yet beautiful love story of an Assassin with a heart of gold who wants to give it all up, but must commit one last hit to afford his love the surgery she needs to see again. There isn’t a bloke on the planet who hasn’t cried at the end of that film.

Though you might have filled you films with more firepower than both world wars, you never let the action get in the way of some great performances form your leads, who were fantastic actors anyway. And nothing could be more emotionally powerful than A Bullet in the Head, your personal take on three friends from Hong Kong who become involved in the Vietnam conflict. Then Hollywood came calling, and with the handover of Hong Kong back to China only a scant few years away you answered.

Hard Target was a lesson learnt the hard way, it allegedly wasn’t the film you wanted to make. But how could it have been, with Jean Claude Van Damme cast in the lead? Then favourite for action roles if you couldn’t afford Arnold, it completely ignored the fact that all your leads had been actors, not martial artists. Like, even if you do come from Hong Kong, not everyone is Bruce Lee, are they?

Your next move turned out be a clever manoeuvre. Hard Boiled returned you to Hong Kong with a much bigger budget, you used that to concoct some of you finest actions scenes ever – some so bizarre they touched ridiculous. Yet you got a way with it! The image of Chow Yun-fat fending off the bad guys with a baby in his arms is one of the great icons of the genre (and you have been responsible for a lot of them).

But your return to Hollywood wasn’t much of an improvement, Broken Arrow. Heck, the calibre of your cast had gone up, now you had Christan Slater and John Travolta to call on, but the best thing to come out of it was that Travolta was brilliant as the bad guy – and he loved it!

So along came Face/Off, and no American produced film better caught the narrative of a Hong Kong movie, that all important male bonding between the leads. And this time you had Travolta and Nicholas Cage. Yes, the story was ridiculous! Who cared?

If Mission: Impossible 2 might not have fired on all cylinders, it still did the job. And as you rubbed shoulders with one of the most powerful (short) men in Hollywood, Tom ‘Napoleon’ Cruise you even had the chance to take the mickey out of your own movies again. But then came Windtalkers, the most insulting post-9/11 schmaltz to have made it to the big screen. Nicholas Cage or not, things looked pretty bleak for one of the worlds best action directors – which, by the way, wasn’t particularly well directed.

Now we have Paycheck, with Ben ‘will he won’t he’ Affleck, a man whose dubious relationship with multimedia star J-Lo has increased his stock beyond any proved talent or box office success. Have you forgotten what made your films truly work? That you had such a strong calibre of actors, usually two powerful leads that played off each other? And lets face it, Philip K. Dick is pretty much unfilmable in its original form. So I’m rather apprehensive of what the result might be…

So how did it happen? Were we wrong about your talent?

Those early days must have been tough. Making the best of a meagre budget so that it never showed on screen. At a time when Hollywood began pouring in the big money (and big stars) into the action film you had a couple of decades head start on them. And hell, did it show. For all the millions they had, you still literally blew them out of the water.

You’re by no means alone, directors like Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam have made those same tentative steps into American movies with that same obligatory lead – Jean Clod – with Double Team and Replicant respectively. The results, unsurprisingly, are pretty terrible. But fortunately both have made amends to their original audience by returning to Hong Kong and making films like Time and Tide and Looking for Mr. Perfect.

And its not just Hong Kong directors, as China’s Chen Kaige, director of the fabulous Farewell, My Concubine and The Emperor and the Assassin would no doubt love us to forget the ill-conceived thriller Killing Me Softly. And Japan’s gun totting ex-stand up comedian, ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano, fared little better with Western co-production Brother.

Of all the Hong Kong directors Ronny Yu, of The Bride with White Hair fame, seems to have fared best. Admittedly, he only just bypassed the ‘Van Dammed’ factor for Teenage Mutant Ninja Kangeroos in the form of Warriors of Virtue. With bizarre choices like Bride of Chucky he gave us a knowing revision of everyones least favourite talking doll. Then with The 51st State he gave us an equally knowing action movie, which cast Meat Loaf against Robert Carlyle and a kilt wearing Samuel L.Jackson. No, they might not have been the best movies ever made, but they were fun. And perhaps part of their success is down to Ronny keeping his Hong Kong team together throughout, like cinematographers Peter Pau (who won the Oscar for his work on Crouching Tiger), Poon Hang Sang and editor and sometime director Daniel Wu. That was until his latest, Freddy vs. Jason. Oops!

Actors don’t seem to have fared any better. Least of all Chow Yun-fat, whose destiny now seems linked to you, Mr. Woo. Forced to star in lamentable action movies like The Replacement Killers and Bulletproof Monk, his only decent Western action role so far and been the non-all singing, all-dancing version of The King and I, Anna and the King. Besides Jackie Chan and Jet Li few others have even made it over. And let’s face it, they haven’t made the transistion too well.

So what worked. Of all the collaborations perhaps the most promising have happened in France. Firstly Luc Besson, keen to make amends for his wonderful The Killer ripoff Leon, wrote and produced Kiss of the Dragon, for Jet Li and the star of the Hollywood remake of his Nikita, Brigitte Fonda. He was also behind the debut movie for Jet’s choreographer Corey Yuen, The Transporter.

Then came Chistophe Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf. Part Horror, part period drama and part martial arts epic, no one could really tell what it was – which covered up some of the poor plot exposition. Heck, it was still one hell of ride. And again, had some pretty heavy involvement from Hong Kong players like choreographer Philip Kwok and, again, editor Daniel Wu. Could we be emphasising the importance of the director too much?

So what’s the lesson? Maybe if we are going to move forward we have to create something new. You’ve helped teach America how to at least make bearable action movies. You even got ‘Napoleon’ Cruise thinking he can make The Last Samurai. But if you really want to make another really memorable action movie, you’re gonna have to rewrite the book. Just remember – and I’m sure you’ve heard this before – you’ll never find anything original in Hollywood.

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