WonK
January 24, 2006, 5:17pm
41
Some of my friends at the YOUR MOMS BASEMENT forums posted some of my Asian film reviews on their webpage.http://www.yourmomsbasement.com/archives/2006/01/won_kims_forieg.html#more
Any feed back would be great!
WonK
January 27, 2006, 11:57pm
42
Early Reviews of Ronny Yu, Yuen Woo Ping and Jet Li’s last martial arts film together: “Fearless” . The film is a prequel of sorts to Jet Li’s remake of Fist of Fury, Fist of Legend , this time telling the story of the teacher who was poisoned, prior to the start of that story, whose body is exhumed, and whose students seek vengeance in the earlier film.
Xu Wei
For a long time, Chinese action star Jet Li has been known for his dazzling kung fu and “heroic bloodshed” action movies, but now he announces that his latest film “Fearless” is an end to his martial arts movies. JUST knowing that you can do something is enough. That’s been a key tenet of dozens of martial arts movies, and even a certain TV series about a Shaolin monk travelling through the Old West, over the years. A highly trained and focused fighter can cripple or kill an opponent with a single blow but gaining this ability then becomes, in itself, a deterrent to actually using it. Of course, after saying stuff like that, the protagonists of those shows would then proceed to beat the living heck out of their opponents who considered themselves lucky if they could even limp away.
In Fearless, however, that principle is strongly adhered to in two important moments… “The movie has expressed all I want to say in this genre,” says the 42-year-old. “I have been typecast as almighty heroes — Wong Fei-hung or Fong Sai-yuk — but this time you will find how an ordinary man with conflicting emotions turns into a hero in his later years. It is different from any earlier characters I have played.” The movie by veteran Hong Kong director Ronny Yu portrays Chinese martial arts master Huo Yuanjia (1869-1910), who knocks out the nation in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) with his dignity, independence and unparalleled kung fu. … Huo dreams of continuing the legacy his father established as a world-class fighter in China. After reaching his goal, however, a personal tragedy causes him to disappear and reflect on his past for several years. He’s not heard from until the honor of defending his country in an international tournament surfaces. …
Read the Rest at:http://www.shanghaidaily.com/art/2006/01/26/237964/Fighting_for_a_change.htm
Davin Arul.
JUST knowing that you can do something is enough. That’s been a key tenet of dozens of martial arts movies, … A highly trained and focused fighter can cripple or kill an opponent with a single blow but gaining this ability then becomes, in itself, a deterrent to actually using it. Of course, after saying stuff like that, the protagonists of those shows would then proceed to beat the living heck out of their opponents who considered themselves lucky if they could even limp away.
In Fearless, however, that principle is strongly adhered to in two important moments. The first brings shame to a child who cannot understand why his father, clearly the superior fighter, would let himself be humiliated by another; the second, ironically, brings redemption to that same child years later. The Zen-like lesson of the latter incident may be hard to accept for many genre fans who, let’s face it, just want to see the hero open an economy-size can of whoop-@$$ on the bad guy. But, in another departure from the norm, the bad guy isn’t in the arena with the hero. Fearless pits two highly honourable men against one another in its finale,… This contributes to the film’s one problematic area – its somewhat anticlimactic finish – but you have to salute the filmmakers and star for choosing philosophy over panache.
A tough decision, considering what Jet Li fans would expect from the man’s final martial-arts epic: a generous helping of smackdown delivered in period costume, as in his beloved HK epics like the Once Upon a Time in China and Fong Sai Yuk series. Don’t get the wrong idea. There’s action in big, bone-crunching doses, make no mistake. In a way, Fearless is exactly what Li’s fans have been craving these past few years. Yet Li chooses to exit the genre on his own terms, satisfying his legion of admirers but also making a strong statement about a frequently ignored aspect of martial arts.
Read the rest at,… http://star-ecentral.com/movies/reviews/review.asp?file=archives/movie_reviews/2006/1/25_1_Fearless&title=Fearless&id=1026&rid=1098&sec=Movies
More Reviews:
http://www.mmail.com.my/Current_News/MM/Thursday/Entertainment/20060126110623/Article/index_html http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/guide/story/0,4136,101029,00.html
WonK
January 28, 2006, 7:36am
43
I love period martial arts epics for the view.
(… God Bless Good Cinematographers…)
