chop socky: Cinema hong kong

[Hieronim]

anyone seen this documentary about martiala rt cinema on ifc? I personally prefer the style of kung fu movies where no one gets hit for 5 minutes to bruce lee stuff, cause it makes the hero or bad guy seem alot more skilled. I wonder how could they do stuff like that when probably none of us including ufc people could fight that way for 5 minutes even when trying not to hit the other guy, you would miss a parry or block evenmtually and get hit fi theyre coming so fast.

[Banjos_dad]

i know what you mean. ever see the "the one," with Jet Li? Where the evil Jet Li character was batting the cops up into the sky with their motorcycles?? it gave me a hollow feeling. and after a couple minutes of the one sided crush fest it seemed kind of pointless... i am still a fan, it's just not his most entertaining movie so far.

now, about the other kind of movie, i think it was those old hong kong style movies that maybe more than anything else, that sparked the fascination & planted the seed in my mind, that has led to me today's reality of being involved with kung fu.
i started noticing them when i was a kid in northern california. We could just barely get channel 2 from san francisco, it was an independent non network station, so they didn't have battlestar galactica or CHiPs or anything lol... but they did have Kung Fu Theatre on the weekends, and i got my introduction to kung fu at the feet of the Hong Kong Masters. Ti Lung. Kwan Tak-Hing. i didn't know their names then, but everyone recognized them.
The way when two elders or young adepts fight, it's a constant backl and forth exchange of techniques and counters so that they stay in balance, it implies that they are so close in ability, or that both the arts are "perfect" in that they have an answer to every possible attack. or a lot of times, the bad guy has to resort to cheating (using secret techniques, or special finishing techniques that 'fell into the wrong hands') or using trick weapons, just to be able to land an attack.
There is some variation in that style of choreography, sometimes there is not much precision or the techniques are very low on energy...it's a matter of production values and how motivated and or skilled the performers were. i don't mind though, because a lot of times the whimsical dubbed dialogue distracts me.

dubbing's a whole other avenue of entertainment...it's like sometimes they watched the movie and made up a dialogue to fit the scenes independent of the original dialogue script.
I like when they dub it into english, and in english the sentence only takes a few words, but in chinese the actor has to say a lot more... so they have the guy stop to chuckle between the phrases of the sentence. like:"I think i would like to tell you now.....heh..heh..heh....you are going to die, hah!"

[jethro]

It's best to see with like jet lie and jackie and all those old school movies. But the peking or wushu style choreography gets even better when they do miss. Check out when jackie takes that kick from hwang in drunken master. he also takes some good shots in snake in eagle's shadow. Also the documentary art of action has one of the greatest kicks ever, I wanna say from magnificent warriors, but I don;t think so, if anyone knows, tell me. There is a guy going to do like an axe chop on somebody in like an office room, when this chick comes out of nowhere and lands the greatest backwards superman I have ever seen, the guy goes flying HARD against the wall and she lets out a great scream which just added to the effect:D