Dragon aka Swordsman aka Wu Xia [Archive]

GeneChing

08-27-2010, 09:32 AM

I think with Ip Man (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52218), Karate Kid (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48261) & Bodyguards & Assassins (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53158), martial arts are already rebooted.

Chan returns to direct 'Wu Xia' (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/world/news/e3iaea240932b26c233837ba933a01cfd0b)
'Bodyguards' producer wants to 're-boot' martial arts
By Karen Chu

Aug 25, 2010, 08:19 AM ET
HONG KONG – Peter Chan Ho-sun will return to directing with “Wu Xia," a $20 million martial arts epic that reunites him with the star of his previous directing effort, 2007 “The Warlords” star Takeshi Kaneshiro, and sees reigning action king Donnie Yen (“Ip Man”) as both lead and action choreographer. Chinese actress Tang Wei, of Ang Lee’s “Lust, Caution” and this year’s Ivy Ho romantic comedy “Crossing Hennessy" rounds out the main cast.

“Wu Xia," Chan’s first foray into the martial arts genre -- which he said would reboot with a new visual style -- is produced and financed under Chan’s own We Pictures, and sales will be repped by his sales outfit We Distribution. Chan produced the award-sweeping “Bodyguards and Assassins” last year under We Pictures. That blockbuster grossed over 300 million yuan (US$44 million) in China alone.

Kaneshiro takes the role of a detective determined to catch a repentant killer, played by Yen, who has retreated to a remote village. Oscar-nominated production designer Yee Chung Man (“Curse of the Golden Flower”), award-winning costume designer Dora Ng (“Bodyguards and Assassins”), and director of photography Jake Pollock (“The Message," “Monga”) have joined the production.

Filming will commence at the end of August in Tengchong in China's Yunnan province. Release is scheduled for the second half of 2011.

Filming for Peter Chan's star-studded film 'Wu Xia' begins (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/entertainment/view/1077228/1/.html)
Posted: 26 August 2010 1249 hrs

YUNNAN: Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen, Japanese heartthrob Takeshi Kaneshiro and Chinese actress Tang Wei have begun work on director Peter Chan's new film, a martial arts movie titled "Wu Xia" in Yunnan, China, reported Chinese media.

"Wu Xia" revolves around a highly skilled swordsman named Liu Jin Xi (Yen), who is forced by circumstances to hide out in a remote village for many years. Tang will play Liu's wife.

The constable Xu Bai Jiu (Kaneshiro) is extremely curious about Liu, and unwittingly brings down a whole heap of trouble for the protagonist as the film progresses.

When asked about his new film, Chan, the long-time boyfriend of Hong Kong actress Sandra Ng, seemed very excited.

"Ever since 'Courching Tiger and Hidden Dragon', there have been no great 'wu xia' (martial arts chivalry) films for almost a decade, so I wanted to try [making one].

"I want to combine action, science, medicine and special effects to show just how strong 'wu xia' moves are, to show how different the effect of one strike is on the body of a person who has trained in the martial arts and someone who has not," Chan told reporters.

Kaneshiro appeared more muscular than before during the film's commencing ceremony which was held this month, lending credence to rumours that he and Yen will have a large number of fight scenes in the film.

Scott Larson

08-27-2010, 10:04 AM

This has some awesome potential. I think Takeshi Kaneshiro will work really well with Donnie.

Syn7

08-28-2010, 08:14 PM

how do you say wu xia??? is it like woo zee-ahhh or like woo zjow or what??? its hard to tell for a gwai loh(sp?) like me...

GeneChing

11-04-2010, 10:20 AM

Say it like 'woo shah'

Peter Ho-Sun Chan's film scored seven-digit presales to Singapore and Malaysia and also sold to Indonesia. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/martial-arts-actioner-wu-xia-35438)

Peter Ho-Sun Chan's martial arts action mystery Wu Xia, now shooting in China with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei, scored seven-digit presales to Singapore and Malaysia and also sold to Indonesia, We Distribution said at the American Film Market.

Luxuries Resources bought Chan's $20 million period film for Singapore and Malaysia, and PT Teguh Bakti bought the film for Indonesia, We said Wednesday.

Wu Xia marks Chan's return to the director's chair after producing last year's Teddy Chen hit, Bodyguards and Assassins. Chan last directed the Chinese box office hit The Warlords in 2007.

Wu Xia stars Yen (Ip Man) Kaneshiro (Red Cliff) and Tang (Lust Caution) currently are on set with Chan in remote Yunnan province in southwest China, near the border with Burma.

Yen plays a man with a past -- and wicked kung fu skills -- sought by a detective, played by Kaneshiro. Tang plays Yen's wife.

Also starring as the villain is veteran actor Jimmy Wang Yu, best known for his role in Chang Cheh's One Armed Swordsman. Wu Xia will be Wang's first onscreen appearance in 17 years.

At AFM, We Distribution also has the Chan-produced action-fantasy-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Incredible, directed by Vincent Kok and starring Sandra Ng and Louis Koo. That film will be released in Asia during the Lunar New Year period in late January-early February 2011.

Tang Wei portrays a village woman in Peter Chan's 'Wu Xia'
Updated: 2010-11-04
Actress Tang Wei portrays a village woman in Peter Chan's new movie "Wu Xia" ("Fighting Master") currently filming in Tengchong, a small town in Yunnan Province, Sina.com.cn reports.

http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/ent_images/3612_Tangwei%204.jpg
[Photo: Sina.com.cn]

Tang stars as the wife of a murderer who comes to the village to try to escape from government agents who are searching for him. In the movie, Tang also has two children - the first time she has been an onscreen mother.

Chan has invited two A-list actors to star in the martial-arts movie. Donnie Yen plays the murderer on the run, and Takeshi Kaneshiro is the detective who is chasing Yen. Yen also is the movie's action choreographer.

SPJ

11-04-2010, 10:34 AM

I am a big fan for sword fights.

actually, my main thing is still with staff and spear.

Jin cheng wu is a pretty face or not rugged enough

or the face too white.

He played well as zhu ge liang in red cliff.

--

looking forward to see the trailer and the movie.

gong li is kind of old now, compared with other younger chinese female leading actresses.

I meant that gong li may play an older female role.

cheng pei pei always looks younger than her age.

she played jade eye fox in crouching tiger

--

who are good chinese female actresses nowadays?

bai bing bing, fan bing bing, crystal liu-----

---

SPJ

11-04-2010, 10:36 AM

tang wei has the face but not the body

just saying.

:D

SPJ

11-04-2010, 10:37 AM

Wang Yu was and still is one of my favorite male actors

the du bi dao wang was classics

one arm sword man.

:cool:

GeneChing

11-11-2010, 10:29 AM

Thanks to Dean - he's always giving us great coverage!

* NOVEMBER 11, 2010, 12:22 P.M. ET
On Location With China's Movie Industry (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703523604575605632824688038.html)
by DEAN NAPOLITANO

TENGCHONG, China—In a remote and mountainous part of China's southwest Yunnan province on a cool autumn morning, three of Asia's top movie stars are waiting for the action to begin.

Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei have traveled with the rest of the 200-plus crew to this isolated spot near the border with Myanmar, where they have been camped out since late August.

"Wu Xia," from director Peter Chan, is a $20 million martial-arts drama slated for release next summer. The story, which takes place during the end of the Qing Dynasty, is about a repentant killer living a simple life in a secluded village and whose past catches up with him.

Mr. Chan, one of Asia's most-successful filmmakers, is looking to put a new spin on the martial-arts genre with "Wu Xia," which translates roughly as "martial-arts chivalry." He's assembled an A-list cast, two cinematographers, an award-winning costume designer, and a visual-effects team from South Korea to bring what he describes as detailed authenticity to the film. Its ambition underscores the current trend in Chinese cinema toward highly polished blockbusters.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-KV112_1111ta_G_20101110230541.jpg
On the run in 'Wu Xia'

Still, there is little Hollywood glamour out here on location.

Filming today is in a tiny village about an hour's drive from Tengchong, a city of several hundred thousand—relatively small by Chinese standards—in western Yunnan. Tengchong is home for the cast and crew during the shoot. Getting to today's location involves a convoy of trucks, buses, vans and cars—all of us sharing the road with villagers and livestock along a series of smooth two-lane highways and bumpy, unpaved paths through fields and forests. To get to the shoot, the crew and cast—sporting shin-high rubber boots to trek around in the mud—hike across steep terrain marked by rocks and puddles to the river valley below.

"It's hard going down and exhausting going up," Mr. Chan says as he arrives on the set.

Rain earlier in the week interrupted filming for a few days, but today the sun is out. "We've been shooting here for two months and I can't remember a single day other than today that it hasn't rained at least a little bit," he says. "We've been fighting the weather all the way through."

But irony has its revenge: For a scene the next day, the crew has to create rain using two enormous water hoses.

Actors and dozens of extras roam around the set in period costumes, looking more at home in the rural setting than the crew in their jeans and T-shirts.

Curious locals watch the bustle and activity. Their dialect is unfamiliar to most of the crew, who come from places like Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Some villagers from the area have been hired as extras. Li Xingli, a 51-year-old farmer, says she isn't familiar with the movie's star cast. "But it's fun," she says with a smile, "and my husband supports me."

Ms. Li, in fact, is working alongside three very recognizable actors.

Mr. Yen is arguably Asia's leading martial-arts star following a string of recent hits including "Ip Man" and its sequel, "Bodyguards and Assassins" and "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen." Mr. Kaneshiro—this is his third film with Mr. Chan—has been a top leading man for nearly two decades. Ms. Tang, with just a handful of films to her credit so far, is one of Asia's leading young actresses.

The cast also includes Jimmy Wang Yu, one of Hong Kong's biggest action stars from the 1960s and '70s, in his first film appearance in more than 15 years.

Mr. Chan sits under an orange tent about five meters from the actors. His blue director's chair faces a video monitor that shows what the audience will see.

Messrs. Yen and Kaneshiro arrive on the set in full costume—Mr. Yen dressed as an ordinary villager with a long, single braid of hair that was customary of the era, and Mr. Kaneshiro looking elegant in a gray robe and early 20th-century brimmed hat that reflects his character's city origins—and prepare for a scene on a small cliff over the riverbank. A few takes later, the director and Mr. Yen huddle in front of the monitor to watch a playback. Mr. Yen returns in front of the camera to shoot another take after a couple minutes of quiet discussion, although to the casual observer subsequent takes all look the same.

Mr. Chan later joins Mr. Yen, who also is the movie's action choreographer, for one of the film's action sequences. A character in the scene is pushed over a bridge. Above the heads of the crew, a highway of carefully placed cables and wires are wrapped around the forest trees. The stunt isn't simple. On one end are the men maneuvering the wire, and on the other end a stuntman dangles above the whitewater rapids far below. After several takes, they wrap for the day.

"With Peter Chan, everyone knows it's going to be a powerful, dramatic movie," Mr. Yen says. "That's one of the main reasons why I want to be in this film in the first place."

For Mr. Kaneshiro, he says working with Mr. Chan is more important than the script.

"The character changed as we talked about the script," he says. "I didn't know how to do this guy," but one day they decided to give the character a Sichuan accent and everything fell into place.

Ms. Tang also describes developing her character with Mr. Chan—a new experience compared with how she has worked on previous films. "He just told me … follow my instinct," she says. "I really love it, because it's really flexible and very similar to film as a student in college."

During the week, minor mishaps abound on the set: A stunt coordinator slips on a rocky ledge, leaving large scratches along the side of his body; the continuity girl is bitten by a wild dog in a bamboo forest; and an assistant production manager is shoved around by a group of tourists eager to get to a scenic waterfall blocked by the film crew.

"I think working in China is somewhere between Hong Kong and Hollywood," Mr. Chan says.

As movie budgets in China grow, the film industry has adopted a system that's more similar to Hollywood. "Production costs are getting higher and we have crews that are more professional," he says. "In a way we have developed, learned, adapted and adopted a certain management system of Hollywood big movies, but at the same time we still have retained a lot of flexibility."

Write to Dean Napolitano at dean.napolitano@wsj.com

* November 11, 2010, 11:33 AM HKT
Director Peter Chan Takes on Martial Arts With ‘Wu Xia’ (http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2010/11/11/director-peter-chan-takes-on-martial-arts-with-wu-xia/)
By Dean Napolitano

http://online.wsj.com/media/1111talkfilm02_G_20101110224148.jpg
Actress Tang Wei on location in Yunnan province for ‘Wu Xia’
http://online.wsj.com/media/1111talkfilm01_D_20101110222514.jpg
Director Peter Chan on the set of his latest project.

Since his directorial debut 19 years ago, Peter Chan has become one of Asia’s leading filmmakers, cranking out box-office hits while filling his office shelves with best-director awards.

He began with a string of popular Hong Kong comedies and dramas in the 1990s, then ventured to Hollywood to direct the 1999 romantic comedy “The Love Letter,” which starred Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck. In China in 2005 he directed the musical “Perhaps Love” with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Xun, followed in 2007 by “The Warlords,” a period war epic starring Jet Li, Andy Lau and Mr. Kaneshiro. Now, he’s turning his hand to the martial-arts, or wu xia, genre. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Mr. Chan on the set of his latest film, itself titled “Wu Xia.”

Q: How do you plan to “redefine” the martial-arts genre with “Wu Xia”?
A: All our period films seem to be mixed with martial arts and action. But period films actually have many different genres—love stories, thrillers, crime dramas—and I think we never see these period films in complete authenticity. We never see the details of life, and we never feel like we’re transported in time.

Q: What attracted you to the story?
A: “Wu Xia” is about a man who’s in hiding, but his identity is unraveling and he needs to deal with his past. I always believed that wu xia and the gangster genre are pretty similar. Once you step into that world you can never get out.

Q: What’s driving higher production costs in the Chinese film industry?
A: There’s only one thing that drives up costs—demand versus supply. The camera operator that we’ve worked with three times has doubled his salary in every movie I’ve worked on with him. There are too many movies that need good people.

Q: How is working in China compared with Hollywood?
A: We still have the ability to improvise, which is not very possible in Hollywood because it’s so expensive to make films in America. The studios developed a system to be in complete control of production to make sure everything is scientifically calculated. It’s just like any big corporation.

GeneChing

05-11-2011, 09:17 AM

Wu Xia - Trailer 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2JHGPiYoEac)

The Weinsteins Ride 'Wu Xia' For World Outside Asia, France (Cannes) (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/weinsteins-ride-wu-xia-world-187374)
11:25 AM 5/11/2011 by Scott Roxborough

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2011/05/wuxiafilmstill_a_l.jpg
Cannes Film Festival
The acquisition of Peter Ho-Sun Chan's martial arts noir picture, premiering Saturday, is one of the first big deals at the festival.

CANNES - The Weinstein Company has landed one of the first big deals in Cannes this year, taking worldwide rights outside of Asia and French-speaking Europe for Dragon (Wu Xia), the martial arts film noir from director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Bodyguards and Assassins), which premieres in a Midnight Screening here Saturday. Dragon stars Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei and features Hong Kong legend Jimmy Wang Yu (One Armed Swordsman) in his first film role in 17 years.

Yen and Wei play a simple papermaker and his wife living in the late Qing Dynasty with their two sons. Their simple life is torn apart when Detective Xu (Kaneshiro) arrives in their village to investigate the death of two bandits killed during a robbery. His questioning dredges up dark secrets that threaten the lives of the entire village.

TWC picked up all rights to Dragon outside of Asia and French-language Europe from WE Distribution. TF1 picked up Dragon for France in an earlier deal. After the critical and box office success of his Bodyguards and Assassins and Warlords producer/director Chan is one of Asia's hottest talents and Dragon is hotly-anticipated.

"During the production, Donnie (Yen) was telling me that Wu Xia becomes more and moor like a Weinstein movie," said Chan. "So it's no coincidence that Harvey likes the film."

For his part, Harvey Weinstein called Chan "true artist and with Wu Xia he has created a dream project, combining two of my favorite genres: film noir and martial arts."

TWC expects to bow Dragon in the U.S. later this year.

doug maverick

05-11-2011, 02:46 PM

this trailer looks **** good...and this movie looks **** good. i cant wait. but im tired of seeing donnie in these wuxia/folk hero movies...he always shines brighter in modern day actioners.

GeneChing

05-12-2011, 09:43 AM

Come on now, Doug, would you rather see Donnie as play a beautician (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59679)? ;)

CANNES Q&A: 'Wu Xia' Director Peter Ho-sun Chan (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-qa-wu-xia-director-187902)
8:41 AM 5/12/2011 by Karen Chu

The director-producer talks to THR about his first official Cannes selection, "Wu Xia."

Peter Ho-sun Chan is one of the first directors from Hong Kong to set his gaze on the Chinese market, one of the blessed few who holds a place in China’s “Hundred Million Club,” and the most valuable filmmaker in Hong Kong by consensus. As much a producing magnate as a blockbuster director, Chan has established since the early 1990s a number of production and distribution outfits that have made their mark on Hong Kong cinema, from UFO (United Filmmakers Organization), Applause Pictures, to We Pictures, the rising powerhouse that made the award-sweeping hit Bodyguards and Assassins in 2009, and his latest directorial effort, Wu Xia, an eerie thriller about a murderous clan set in the martial arts world that is also his first entry on the Cannes official selection. In between flying across Beijing, Bangkok, South Korea, and Hong Kong to finish the film’s postproduction in time for the festival, he talked to The Hollywood Reporter’s Karen Chu about his new take on the martial arts genre, and how he navigates the film industries in Hong Kong, Hollywood and China.

The Hollywood Reporter: It’s the first time one of your films has been chosen in the Cannes official selection. How are you feeling?

Peter Ho-sun Chan: I’m very excited. Cannes has always been a special place for martial arts films. The films I made in the past weren’t usually suitable for Cannes, and the films I’ve made in China in recent years were for all the New Year or Chinese New Year period, so the timing didn’t work. Wu Xia fits the time frame because it’s set to be a summer release. Then again, the reason for us to decide to launch Wu Xia in Cannes went back to all the way to 1975, when King Hu’s A Touch of Zen was selected for Cannes; and the same thing for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cannes is the predominant launching vessel for martial arts film.

THR: You’re a fan of martial arts films. So why did you wait so long to try your hand in this genre?

Chan: I’ve never made a martial arts film before, to a certain extent because it’s such an established and even drained genre, there’s very little room for originality left. But at the same time, it gives me a chance to give it a new spin. I’ve also never made anything as visual-driven as Wu Xia. My films had always been dialogue- or character-driven. I’ve been thinking how to revitalize this genre and at the same time make it exciting to me. That’s when I saw a television program about the physiology of a gunshot, about the physical impact on the different organs and how it kills someone. Then it hit me that martial arts is the same. What we usually see is the choreography; we see how flashy it is, or how fantastical it can be. But all those seemingly fantastical moves can be explained in terms of physics. For example, I like to think about how does light body skill work, or acupuncture points, or the impact of a punch. How much physical damage would it do to our internal organs? How do people die from these injuries? It’s all a mystery; no one would question it. Of course I can’t explain all of it, otherwise I’d be a martial arts expert, but I’d like to find an explanation in a logical and medical way, in terms of physics or mechanics.

THR: What made you a fan of martial arts cinema?

Chan: It all started from Jimmy Wang Yu. My fascination with Wang and director Chang Cheh was founded on a sense of heroism. When I was a teenager, everyone in my generation idolized these martial arts heroes — from Wang, David John Chiang, Lung Ti, to Bruce Lee a little later. They existed in a fantastical world that appeals to all of us.

THR: You’ve made Wang one of the stars of Wu Xia, alongside Donnie Yen in the lead. He’s a bit ubiquitous nowadays, isn’t he?

Chan: The choice is first and foremost based on film business calculations. It just makes sense to try and get the hottest star, the box office guarantee of the moment. If I want to make a martial arts film with lots of fight scenes, it only makes sense to get a star that can perform the action scenes himself. Of course box office guarantee is also a flip of the coin, someone who’s a guarantee might become box office poison if he’s in too many films. But other than that, I’m also not used to making action films and shooting fight sequences. I might have a lot of ideas and ask a lot of questions, which helps in the sense that I’m asking these questions for the audience as well, and these questions might challenge whoever that’s choreographing these fight sequences and stimulate their imagination. Donnie helped me directed a fight scene in Bodyguards and Assassins, which I think is the most appealing fight scene that in all of my recent films. That scene made me realize if I were to shoot an action film one day, then I must find an action choreographer whom I trust. So the heart of it, although some people might not believe it, is that I might need Donnie as my action choreographer more than I need him as my onscreen lead. And there’s no way I could get him as an action choreographer and not as an actor, unless I pay him an actor’s salary for the work of an action director; he’s so in demand now.

THR: Your work has taken a turn away from the lighthearted romantic comedies that made your name in the 1990s, into epics like The Warlords, or Wu Xia. What was the reason behind this change?

Chan: After a certain age we’d all aspire to wisdom and the deeper meaning of life. Every time I make a film, it’s usually about some questions that I can’t find the answer to, and then I’d try and find the answer through a subject or a character. It’s usually about the why. The Warlords was about the corporate world and our lives nowadays. What if we have certain ideals and it turns out you can only achieve it at the expense of sacrificing your brothers, but those ideals are for the bigger good for humanity? Wu Xia is another exploration of people’s dark side. Can a murderer turn a new leaf?

GeneChing

05-12-2011, 09:44 AM

...continued from previous post

THR: You’re one of earliest Hong Kong directors to work and succeed in China in recent years, the second director ever to break the. What had been the upside and downside of your experience in China? How did it compare with your experience in Hollywood, when you made The Love Letter in 1999?

Chan: There are upsides and downsides anywhere you work. The Chinese film industry has turned out for much better in the last few years, the only remaining major problem is the censorship. But as I always say to my director friends, you haven’t worked in Hollywood, the censorship there is even trickier. The only difference being the censorship in Hollywood is not imposed by the state authorities but the studios. The studio bureaucracy is much more troublesome than the Chinese bureaucracy. At the end of the day if you know all the rules about censorship and you try to work around the rules, then theoretically it won’t be that difficult to deal with. Every place has its own rules. Hollywood has its rules, which are business rules, and principles that are fuzzier. They’re only made by a bunch of executives who don’t have the power to make decisions trying to outguess, speculate and challenge each other and to take credit from each other. They’d ask us to make cut after cut, and then when the moment came when someone had to make a decision they’d throw it out for test screenings. Wouldn’t that be harder to please than the Chinese censors?

THR: So compared with that, how hard could it be to deal with the film authorities in China?

Chan: In some ways it’s even easier to deal with the authorities in China, because they are official, they are not the investor, they are the authorities and they have their set of policies. I’m not saying it wasn’t difficult at first, but things can be difficult anywhere. Every place has its own censorship rules for film, however unfair. As for the upside, the finance, the market, and the audience are what is great about working the Chinese film industry right now. When the audience is more discerning, it’s harder to guess what works and what doesn’t. Then everyone needs to be more original, and relies less on formula. Without formula controlling you, filmmakers won’t be dictated by the investor asking you to put this star and that together and make a cookie cutter film. That was so prevalent in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s. We don’t need that anymore, because we know that the more formulaic and more seemingly foolproof a film is, the audience is less likely to accept it.

THR: How do you think all the hot money going into the Chinese film industry from investors who had never before been in filmmaking would affect the industry?

Chan: Let me give you an example. The new investors would certainly go to the top tier directors, there are maybe five or six of them, who have no worry whatsoever about financing their films. The finance model is beneficial to directors, which is not seen anywhere else in the world. A lot of the times the directors even own all the rights. My finance model at the moment is that I have a lot of minority investors and no majority investor; each of the investors contributes about 10 to 20 percent, not exceeding 30 percent for any one investor. Then, at the day’s end, I own the property. I don’t have to answer to anyone. Even if they have equity investment, they’d have profit sharing but not necessarily equity.

THR: What about your partnership with China’s Poly Bona, which dissolved last year?

Chan: When I had the deal with Poly Bona, each of us holds 50 percent, but I found it too restraining. Now I keep all the individual investors not more than 30 percent.

THR: Would you ever revive your partnership with Poly Bona?

Chan: No, not with Poly Bona, and not a partnership like that.

THR: Why not?

Chan: Well, I have a much better deal now.

Peter Ho-sun Chan's Vital Stats
Nationality: Hong Kong
Date of Birth: Nov. 28, 1962
Selected Filmography:
As Director: Alan & Eric: Between Hello and Goodbye (1991), He’s a Woman, She’s a Man (1994), Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996), The Love Letter (1999), Perhaps Love (2005), The Warlords (2007), Wu Xia (2011)
As Producer: He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father (1993), Twenty Something (1994), Jan Dara (2001), The Eye (2002), Golden Chicken 1 & 2 (2002 &3), Protégé (2007), Bodyguards and Assassins (2009)

GeneChing

05-16-2011, 10:26 AM

reviews are very positive...

Exhilarating martial arts film "Wu Xia" modernizes genre (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/sns-rt-review-us-film-wuxiatre74e3q7-20110515,0,39011.story)
Maggie Lee Reuters
May 15, 2011, 3:35 p.m.

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Bursting with light and color, and a torrent of martial arts action both swift and savage (arguably the best that lead actor Donnie Yen has choreographed for years), "Wu Xia" is coherently developed and stylishly directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan to provide unashamedly pleasurable popular entertainment.

"Wu Xia" created buzz before its premiere with acquisition by The Weinstein Company, which will release the title stateside as "Dragon." Almost as picturesque as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the film, showing out of competition at Cannes, has a chance of expanding overseas audience base beyond Asian genre ghettos.

Set in 1917, on the cusp of China's transition from monarchy to republic, "Wu Xia" depicts the internal moral struggles of a detective and a paper-maker who may be a renegade mass murderer. Unfolding like a noir mystery in which "Colombo" meets "CSI." It represents Chan's ambition to bridge the gap between Chinese and international tastes by giving a modern spin to the genre, while paying homage to the golden age of Hong Kong martial arts films through the special appearances of legendary action star Jimmy Wang Yu and Kara Hui.

Donnie Yen plays the said paper-maker Liu Jinxi, who has settled in an idyllic, hospitable village in Yunnan for 10 years after marrying single mother Ayu (Tang Wei). The peaceful life of his family of four is disturbed when he accidentally kills two robbers who threaten his paper workshop. The incident has detective Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sniffing in his backyard. Xu is convinced that Liu's real identity is Tang Long, a runaway member of the 72 Demons, a dwindling clan of Tanguts (former rulers of China's neighboring Xixia kingdom) for whom rape, pillage and massacre are a way of life.

What makes the exposition novel in the genre is the attempt to peel away layers of oriental mystique surrounding martial arts through Xu's quasi-scientific or homeopathic theories of investigation, such as forensic science, physics, acupuncture and qigong, which also adds an endearingly nerdy side to his character. However, the CG-rendered charts of human anatomy are used too frequently until they interfere with the flow of action.

As a self-conscious homage to the brawny, starkly violent martial arts films of which Chang Cheh's classic "One Armed Swordsman" series (starring Jimmy Wang Yu) is exemplary, Yen's devises close-contact combats with a graphic, muscular, vicious style that aims to kill with a single strike. The three-act structure each showcases a climactic combat in distinctly different styles. Liu's fight with a female Tangut (Kara Hui) is the most inventive, as it takes place in an ox pen where they have to skirt nimbly, yet dangerously around a stampede of buffalo.

After going through the motions in a recent string of dramatically unsatisfactory works, Yen and Tang both return to acting form, emoting in a quietly stirring manner. Aubrey Lam's subtle and understated script not only affectingly depict the pure but steadfast bonds of a simple family, but capture the neurosis of both Liu and Ayu, who separately grapple with their scarred pasts and fear that happiness is transient. The most fascinating character, however, turns out to be Xu, for whom the investigation becomes a personal moral and intellectual quest, in which he weighs the impartial efficacy of law against natural human compunctions of remorse and compassion. He too has to exorcise demons from the past, thus deepening the theme of redemption, which applies to Xu as well as to Liu.

Jake Pollock's luscious widescreen cinematography adds a dash of fairytale color to the moist, glossy rolling hills, meadows and bamboo bushes of the ethnically rich Yunnan countryside. While hard rock score of Peter Kam and Chan Kwong Wing (the composing duo of "Bodyguards and Assassins," produced by Chan) tends to be too relentlessly energetic at times, sound is used expertly for maximum threatening effect, especially in the presence of the chief of the 13 Demons (Jimmy Wang Yu).

Cannes 2011 Review: Peter Chan's Awesome Martial Arts Film 'Wu Xia' (http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/cannes-2011-review-peter-chans-awesome-martial-arts-film-wu-xia/)
May 15, 2011
by Alex Billington
Peter Chan's Wu Xia

I love most martial arts movies, but there are a few in particular that stand out above others, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which premiered in Cannes in 2000), and Wu Xia is one of those exceptional films. Now I know why Cannes chose to feature it. Wu Xia (being titled either Swordsmen and/or Dragon in English) is the latest film from Chinese director Peter Ho-Sun Chan, also of The Warlords a few years ago, and it's awesome. While it does have a few fantastic fight scenes, he never sacrifices story for spectacle, which pays off as it's a film that I enjoyed from start to finish and will definitely be revisiting in the future.

The easiest - and honestly best - way to describe Wu Xia would be to say it's A History of Violence but set in early 1900s China, about a paper maker named Liu Jinxi (played exceptionally by Donnie Yen) living peacefully with his family in a small rural Chinese town. Obviously that description hints at the fact that he has a rather intriguing past, and he may just be a martial arts expert even though he's hiding it now. When two thugs attempt to rob the town's general store, Jinxi miraculously defeats them, making it look like it was all just an accident. But when an investigator comes to town and starts to look closer at the incident, he begins to notice that Jinxi may not be the peaceful family man he claims, stirring up his sordid past again.

The one word that kept coming to mind watching this film was indeed "awesome". It's much more of a drama than a martial arts epic like True Legend, but it has a strong enough story to make up for that. And while there aren't a lot of fight scenes, the few we do get are awesome. When the investigator comes to town, he "revisits" the general store crime scene and watches (by putting himself "into the scene") the action take place, trying to discover how Jinxi was able to defeat them. Chan uses slow motion and beautiful cinematography which, unlike with Zack Snyder, is actually integral to the story because it's used to show how every tiny inflection, every last millisecond, is important in martial arts/kung fu. It's exciting to watch.

Donnie Yen is unquestionably the driving force in Wu Xia and carries the weight of the entire film on his shoulders, delivering a fantastic performance that has made him one of my favorite international actors. The rest of the cast, including Wei Tang as Jinxi's wife, is great as well. While I could complain about the lack of fights, that would be unnecessary for this film, and if anything would suggest that they trim about 10 minutes from some of the drama in the middle to tighten it up. But besides that, this is a film that I totally loved. It's exceptionally entertaining, even comical at times, and totally awesome in every sense of the word.

GeneChing

05-17-2011, 10:24 AM

Cannes 2011 Review: WU XIA (http://gordonandthewhale.com/cannes-2011-review-wu-xia/)
Joshua Brunsting
by: Joshua Brunsting
May 16th, 2011
Rating: 3.5/5
Director: Peter Chan
Cast: Kara Hui, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Wei Tang

It's not every day that a martial arts film heads over stateside with as much hype as one that just played here in Cannes.

Awaiting a release from The Weinstein Company, WU XIA (a.k.a. SWORDSMEN or DRAGON) is the new martial arts action film from director Peter Chan, and action director/star, the iconic Donnie Yen. Featuring a relatively solid cast and a premise to absolutely die for, WU XIA has become one of the talks of the first half of this year's Cannes Film Festival, and for just reasons.

WU XIA stars Yen as the loving father Liu Jin-xi, who may be someone wholly different than the person he appears to be. With a dark past and even more mysterious martial arts skills, a detective/doctor and Jin-xi's former master go on the hunt to not only figure out just who the hell this man is, but also bring him to either justice, or a much bloodier end.

Clocking in at just shy of two hours, WU XIA is an action-packed martial arts film that feels about double that length. The biggest flaw with this film is that, while it may be an already trimmed down version, it still needs to get some work done from Harvey Scissorhands over at The Weinstein Company. Using a repetitive gimmick throughout the film (one that I won't spoil here because it does work for a while, but ultimately becomes a baseball bat being smashed into one's skull), the film simply feels a bit sloppy. It feels as though the film was cut, just to cut it, without knowing what truly needed to be left on the cutting room floor.

That said, this is still one hell of a fun film.

Chan is a gifted filmmaker when it comes to the film's dramatic aspects, giving the narrative a distinct and singular sense of rhythm and infusing it with some really solid comedy and emotional resonance. However, it's Yen's action direction that will be the most memorable. Featuring a trio of really solid fight sequences, the film utilizes one in particular, the opening, to great effect. The first act or so of the film is both a fight sequence, and then a replay of that fight as seen through the eyes of the detective, played wonderfully by Takeshi Kaneshiro. It's such a remarkable and really engaging use of time and space within the film that I could have stood to have seen this film broken into two short features, as that is very much what they feel like. Finishing with a duo of equally engaging action set pieces, the film sets up an interesting mythology in the latter half of the feature that pays off the mystery that the film opens with. Given a bit more cleaning up in the editing room, and this thing could be a real box office draw for the always cash-hungry Weinsteins.

Both Yen and Kaneshiro are great here, giving the film an intriguing game of cat and mouse to play off of for the first half. While the film's latter performances aren't fantastic, the emotional core here held up by Yen's character's wife, played by Wei Tang, steals every scene. Not given much to say, Tang has this great ability to emote with only her face, allowing her to play as the WU XIA's center. Overall, while this is an action film, there is much more here than meets the eye.

That all said, while WU XIA is definitely a mess, it's out of this mess that an action-packed and emotionally resonante action film is born. Giving the Croisette a taste of something riding a bit harder on the throttle, WU XIA is a film that will be a welcome addition to anyone's martial arts film collection. It's a stylish actioner that doesn't mind having a sense of humor in the most thrilling way possible.We'll have to see the un-Weinstein-edited version, won't we?

Jimbo

05-23-2011, 08:01 AM

I definitely feel that when it comes out on DVD, it should also include the unedited version, too. I don't like it when American distributors think they know what parts of Asian films I should or shouldn't see.

GeneChing

06-01-2011, 09:38 AM

but a good interview...

[Cannes Interview] ‘Wu Xia’ Director Peter Chan and Actor Donnie Yen (http://thefilmstage.com/2011/05/18/cannes-interview-wu-xia-director-peter-chan-and-actor-donnie-yen/)

One of the highlights of my trip here in Cannes was walking aboard a million dollar yacht and interviewing martial arts icon Donnie Yen along with filmmaker Peter Chan, who directed Donnie in his latest film Wu Xia, or Swordsmen (our review here). Based on the classic wu xia style of films, a genre of Chinese fiction focusing on adventures of martial artists, made extremely popular by the prolific Shaw Brothers studio, the film is a perfect example of the unique and exciting cinema that could only come from China. Both Donnie and Peter were very gracious in explaining the challenges they faced in making this film, along with what makes their Wu Xia stand out above the rest.

The Film Stage: What inspired you to make this classic style of Wu Xia film?

Peter Chan: We actually tried to return to the old glory of the 1960’s and 1970’s martial arts film by the Shaw brothers, so in a way we were both big fans of that kind of film. It was from that starting point that we decided to do this and it was the first time in any of my previous development process that actually an idea like that or a style comes before the story, the script and the characters because most of my other projects have been densely plotted. And all the characters were multi-lead which takes 2 and a half hours just to get the story straight and we don’t really get to play with style and camera and fighting style, so this is a first time that we get to do it the other way around. The content is servicing the style rather than what it usually is.

What is it about that style traditionally that appeals to you?

PC: I think that the key is that there is a certain charm and magic to old martial arts film. It’s traditional; it’s something about how people can do something that is humanly impossible. In a way it’s like a superhero movie. I always related to not just superhero movies, but sometimes even gangster movies or sometimes even crime movies in a way where we can do things that we wouldn’t normally do in real life. We could have the power of ten hundred times beyond what we could usually do. It’s a great feeling that if you get bullied and suddenly there are a hundred people behind you backing you up or you are Superman or Batman or whatever. I think in a way when we grew up as kids that’s the thing that…I mean I was very nerdy and small kid when I was young, so I think that sort of has something to do with it. It’s a sense of empowerment but at the same time because of the last 40 years, people keep doing the wu xia genre, the martial arts genre and we have to keep reinventing our self to make the audience happy who keeps wanting for more. Then we become more powerful and from straight shots comes choreography to cutting shots like 1 second, 2 second, shots that show the power. And then we start using trembling and out of that comes special effects, then the art of wu xia. So that art is gone and is substituted by special effects. Although there are a lot of great experiments in that genre and very great successes but it became totally at a world, for a kid, like myself, or when I was younger, or even now, who keeps asking questions about logic and its completely defined by any human possibility. So it’s actually an interesting irony that was what attracted me to genre, but that’s also something that got me, as I grew up, just got me more and more inquisitive and I started to not believe it. What happened was then I decided maybe we should go back to the origin of it but at the same time ground the possibility. Working with Donnie is a must for this film not just as an actor or as a martial artist, but more importantly as a partner in directing the movie because he directs all the action sequences. His action has also been the most powerful and it’s always been humanly possible. He never attempts to do things that completely defies logic, but at the same time you want to have another side to the classic wu xia genre. We decided to go into the anatomy, go into the medical aspect of it and I came across a Discovery channel documentary one day that shows a sniper shooting a bullet into a human body and it was completely CGI. It’s slow motion and depicts every step of the way how that bullet destroys a body and how it enters your vein, how it cuts though a certain body tissue and how it ultimately leads to heart failure and results in death.

The film deals with a character who undergoes a dramatic transformation. Since you have had such a transformative career these past 10 years, was that something that attracted you particularly to this project?

Donnie Yen: No. The name Peter Chan attracted me. I have always been a fan of Peter’s movies. I remember at the press conference I mentioned maybe 16-17 years ago, in Hong Kong in a hotel lobby, Peter was waving to someone, and I saw him and introduced myself to him. He knew who I was but I was never in his actors list. I introduced myself to him and said “I love your movies.” Deep inside I was wishing that he can cast me and then many years went by and we came across a project, bodyguards and assassins to be filmed and then one thing led to another and we built a relationship. He talked about directing a film and all these years I’ve been waiting for it.

There are lulls in the action in this film, were you ever worried that you might lose the audiences attention?

PC: I try to be innovative and try to be ground breaking in my movies whether acting or action directing, that is just my motive. I remember how some of the industry people and the people around me discussing, when you don’t see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park for 30 minutes and then it builds up to expectation and it finally appears, that’s really exciting. That’s why we had enough going in the beginning, where we had that little scene which I thought was masterful choreography. Then we also came to what we call the reveal, which is the revelation of what actually happened and what actually didn’t happen, but the imagination of Kaneshiro’s character. That was so perfect in a way that I thought we should just keep it at that and leave everything until Donnie is revealed, his character, when he fights with his stepmother in the plaza. Then its almost like that’s what the audience has been waiting for. It’s never been done and done well. For years I really wanted to escalate the standard of at least the audience point of view. All martial art films, you know all you see is a bunch of action but then to me, I think a good martial arts should be a good film itself, but then you got to find the right director and script. That’s when I was really excited to be able to work with him because I know he will bring everything together and escalate the whole genre.

GeneChing

06-01-2011, 09:39 AM

from previous post

Do you ever actually physically get beaten up?

DY: There that a shot and we were working with this camera and its 500 frames per second. There were a bunch of people that operate it and you have to playback. It has six or seven seconds play back and the whole reel is gone by the time you do playback. It really depends on when the guy pressed the button because sometimes you push the buttons two seconds too late, you will get the playback just before it hits. Then the playback doesn’t mean anything. We are trying to catch the most realistic impact. You keep hitting and the guy is almost spitting out blood and we still only got the first 4 seconds of the whole shot. We are in the other room watching the playback and we hear this loud punch. You have to understand that these martial art films are very unique in Hong Kong. One of the reasons we emphasized the person doing martial art themselves which is different from Hollywood films. When I choreograph a fight scene for example, while getting hit or hitting the person, I’m trying to cross the line of bringing the most realistic effect. So that particular close-up shot, I ask my assistants to really hit that person, most of them are martial artists and start off as stunt men. It’s a scene where his tooth falls out and he understood what was about to happen. It was pretty intense. We told him you got to take it for real because that is the only way we can do it in one take. We can’t repeat it because I don’t want to repeat the shots. I’m experienced enough to not hurt the person. I asked my stunt guy to hit the person getting hit. I asked Peter to rent the most expensive camera. Thank God it wasn’t me. In the other room I heard the sound and knew we got the take. We were happy and then we saw that the person who was supposed to push the button didn’t push it so we had to redo the shot again. When I started off in the business I was the one getting hit, but now I’m the one hitting other person. It’s part of the job. It’s not as barbaric as people think. Its formal arts and you have to be experienced as an action director and always watching out for safety. None of our actors got injured and safety comes first. I only chose to have that person getting hit determined by whether that person is physically capable of withstanding the impact. I will always try to push the barrier.

How do you hope American audiences will react to Wu Xia?

PC: Foreign films are tough anywhere and there is always a cycle where every ten years something happens. I don’t think we can rely on the fact that Asian film will continue to do well, but I think each film needs to find a hook and for this particular film, I’ve done this many times and learned it in the hard way. Most of my films are very densely plotted. When a film doesn’t work anywhere, its not the problem of the audience, its just whether you find the right audience. When you have a two and a half hour film filled with dialogue, then it is content over style. For foreigners it is not dialogue its subtitles, its like reading a novel. How do you expect the mass audience to go see it? Now the cost of marketing movies is extremely high and expensive and that will never change. The Weinstein Company is great at marketing, but Harvey is also the one that drives up the prices of distributing a movie.

Where does that leave this film?

PC: There’s a niche somewhere and I can’t say that I made it because this could go international but at least as a martial arts fan, I think this is something I would want to see and I think that the Chinese audience would be very excited about. If the western audience thinks they have seen movies like this, we have seen 10-20 times more and are still watching them. At least this is something that could give more and we invigorate the genre at least in China and I hope in the process, we can find an international audience. That would be great.

How do you feel about this subject based on what Peter was saying?

DY: Each film we create, I do a sense of style and flavor itself, especially Peter’s film. When we worked together before, we talked about finding a subject, telling a story where you can cross over to a mass audience instead of just the martial art fans and I think we have great potential based on the reviews. I was very proud to be part of this film and I hope it does cross over. It will be the perfect vehicle to expand.

PC: I think all cinema needs is new ideas and I was texting Donnie after our last movie because I knew he wanted to do something that would reach out to a bigger audience internationally and that film has no comparison to this one at all, but that film was District 9. Yes, that film is in English and not made within the studio system, and it’s a film that’s set in South Africa. We got to find a story that takes a genre in a completely new direction that you thought, “oh my God, the first 10 minutes is a Steven Spielberg movie condensed into 10 minutes of Newsweek and then the story begins.” It’s just amazing. We should try to find something that is actually from the genre that people are familiar with, but you got to find a new angle.

One of the things left in my mind after the film ended was that you were actually making an origin story for a remake of The One Armed Swordsman. Is there any credibility to that?

PC: There were a lot of speculations when we were getting ready to make the movie and the Chinese press kept asking if we are actually making The One Armed Swordsman and that was before we even asked Jimmy Wong to be in the movie because we are both big fans of the One Armed Swordsman and I kept denying it and when we were shooting the movie because we got Jimmy here. Then we were developing the script and improvising as we go, just before we shot the ending I said Donnie, “what are you going to do with the ending with the action?” We looked at Jimmy and he said, “why don’t we chop your arm off?” I think it’ll be a great homage to your film. The two of them were trying to figure out how to chop off the arm. There was no CGI involved.

DC: I will say this, I give a lot of credit to Jimmy Wong, because it is really difficult to fight with one arm!

GeneChing

06-22-2011, 09:36 AM

Wu Xia sets out Asia battle plan (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/wu-xia-sets-out-asia-battle-plan)
Wu Xia sets out Asia battle plan
By Patrick Frater
Mon, 20 June 2011, 21:26 PM (HKT)
Distribution News

Wu Xia (武俠), the martial arts detective film that premiered in Cannes, will start its commercial career in China and unspool across Asia throughout July (see table, below).

The Peter Chan (陳可辛) directed film starring Donnie Yen (甄子丹), Kaneshiro Takeshi (金城武) and Tang Wei (湯唯) will open on 4 July in China through investor and co-producer Stellar Megamedia, shortly before outings in Indonesia and Australia and New Zealand.

The film was widely pre-sold last year within the region and to France's TF1 on the strength of the director and cast. But it took until May this year for producer/distributor We Pictures/We Distribution to close a deal with The Weinstein Company for the rest of the world.

The story sees the quiet lives of a paper-maker (Yen) and his wife (Tang) disrupted when an unorthodox detective arrives in their village looking for clues into the surprising deaths of two bandits.

WU XIA — ASIAN DISTRIBUTION DATES
China 4 July Stellar Megamedia
Indonesia 7 July P.T. Teguh Bakti Mandiri
Australia/NZ 7 July China Lion
Singapore 21 July Golden Village (on behalf of Luxuries Resources)
Malaysia 21 July Golden Screen (on behalf of Luxuries Resources)
Taiwan 22 July Applause Taiwan
Thailand 28 July Sahamongkolfilm
Hong Kong 28 July UA FilmsNo dates on the rest of the world

SimonM

06-22-2011, 10:04 AM

No dates on the rest of the world

It will start turning up in Chinatown DVD stores probably on Jul. 3. :rolleyes:

GeneChing

06-24-2011, 11:17 AM

Another good interview from Napolitano

June 24, 2011, 10:11 AM HKT
Donnie Yen: The Last Action Hero (http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/06/24/donnie-yen-the-last-action-hero/)
By Dean Napolitano
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-OL011_0623do_G_20110623032047.jpg
Donnie Yen kicks his way to the top of his profession in director Peter Chan’s ‘Wu Xia.’

For three decades, Donnie Yen has kicked, punched and jumped his way up the rankings of martial-arts movie stars. “Wu Xia,” which opens next month, shows why he’s the genre’s current grand master.

“I think at a creative level I am at a peak,” says Mr. Yen, who’s vaulted to the top of A-list Asian actors in recent years, joining the ranks of legendary martial-arts stars Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.

Superstardom came late for Mr. Yen, who turns 48 years old this year. Back in the 1980s, when he started out, Hong Kong action movies were “like the wild west—guerrilla filmmakers, anything goes,” he says. “Those were the primitive days. Back then we didn’t really have the budget. Nowadays, safety comes first.”

After appearing in dozens of movies and television shows, he made leading-man turns in 2008’s “Ip Man” and its sequel—both based on the life of the 20th-century Chinese martial-arts master of the same name—that kicked his career into high gear.

In “Wu Xia,” from director Peter Chan, Mr. Yen plays a repentant killer living in a secluded village whose past catches up with him. The movie, set at the end of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century, cost $20 million and premiered last month at Cannes.

Mr. Yen spoke with The Wall Street Journal on the set of “Wu Xia.”

With action sequences, how much is preplanned and how much is improvised on the set?

It really depends. I also worked in Hollywood films—everything there is preplanned, written, as much as possible. Ideally, that is the best way, because everybody knows what’s going on and is well prepared. But it is not necessarily the most creative result. Sometimes we get motivated and stimulated on the set. I remember the old days when I first started in the Hong Kong industry— there was no such thing as planning. They start choreographing the moves on the set.

Does the drama lead the action or the action lead the drama?

I try to make films where the character drives the action. A lot of times films don’t turn out to be that way, especially commercial action movies. But with Peter Chan’s movies, everyone knows it is going to be powerful and dramatic—that’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to be in his film.

Did anyone ever tell you that to hit the big time, you had to go to Hollywood?

I don’t think anybody said those exact words, but for the longest time—in any country in the world— you have this image that if you’re in a Hollywood film, then you’re in international films. That is the ultimate. But I don’t think this is the case anymore, because the China market is getting so big. We have many, many years to catch up. But from a business point of view—and an opportunities point of view—in some ways we are very fortunate as Chinese filmmakers.

What makes a successful action scene?

To get you excited—off your seat. But I think nowadays, most importantly, the audience has to love the character. That is way beyond what an action director can do. It takes a director, a story, a script and all the elements put together. That’s why I’m very happy that I get to work with Peter. I know that drama-wise, story-wise, he’ll make sure you’ll follow the character— that you’ll like the character and, hopefully, you’ll love the character.

Have you reached that goal in your recent films?

Look at “Ip Man”—it’s the same thing. The audience feels it: They clap, they cheer, they cry. It’s a simple concept: When you watch a movie, you want to pull yourself out of reality. You want to live in that world, and you want to live in that action moment. That’s my ultimate standard of a good action sequence.

Are audiences today more demanding?

Absolutely. When I first started doing action movies, there was no acting requirement. That’s why at the beginning of my career I could not act—I’m very blunt about it.

How do you compare your work with that of other dramatic actors?

On one hand, we shouldn’t look at action artists separately from any other kind of actors—actors are actors. As a matter of fact, I think being an action actor takes more skills because they need to tell a story with their body. When I’m fighting or being hit, I’m not actually hitting a person or really being hit. I’m acting. It takes more than just the conventional dramatic approach—especially martial-arts movies, because martial-arts movies take kung-fu mastery.

What’s next for your career?

I don’t want to do action forever. There are too many things in life. I spend too much time on the road. I’ve got to spend time with my family. I think everyone has to draw a line no matter how much passion they have for one thing. I’ll do as much as I can for the next few years. My goal is to take a step back— maybe direct, maybe produce—share my experience of all these decades in the action world. Hopefully, I can find some newcomers and push the standard a little bit more.

Have you found anyone?

I’m still looking. The action standards of today are so high. You can’t just find some young, good-looking kid that does great kung fu and expect him to carry the film. He has to have acting experience. There has to be chemistry between him and the audience.

Release Dates for “Wu Xia”

July 4: China

July 7: Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand

July 21: Singapore, Malaysia

July 22: Taiwan

July 28: Hong Kong, Thailand

GeneChing

06-29-2011, 09:52 AM

In the wake of Cannes...
武俠 [HD] (全新港版預告) Wu Xia (New HK Trailer) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxKSWgrnSLc)

SimonM

06-29-2011, 09:56 AM

I hope this movie lives up to my expectations because, gotta be honest, they're pretty high.

GeneChing

07-01-2011, 09:53 AM

But you know me. I'm hopeful for every martial arts flick to come out. A good film does wonders for our industry and as I make my living here (along with many other forum members) I'm always wishing for another Karate Kid or CTHD.

The science of martial arts (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-07/01/content_12813844.htm)
By Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-07-01 08:11

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/attachement/jpg/site1/20110701/0013729e47710f775c4912.jpg
Wu Xia, starring Takeshi Kaneshiro (left) and Donnie Yen, will be released on July 4, giving martial art films a new spin. Provided to China Daily

The science of martial arts

Veteran Hong Kong director Peter Chan's latest film aims to demystify martial arts, while also tackling moral dilemmas. Liu Wei reports.

It requires courage to name a film after its genre, as audiences will expect it to be all encompassing.

But that does not seem to worry veteran Hong Kong director Peter Chan whose latest film is titled Wu Xia, or literally "martial arts chivalry".

"Wu Xia will redefine martial arts," he says.

Set in a small village in South China, the film has a storyline that has echoes of CSI or Discovery Channel's Crime Scene.

A paper-maker kills two robbers and becomes the hero of his village. But a detective, a Chinese version of the fastidious doctor House of the eponymous TV medical drama, discovers from the bodies that only a kungfu master could have rendered the killing blows.

As his investigation unfolds, the paper-maker's real identity is revealed and poses a catastrophe for the village.

The film is 49-year-old Chan's first martial art film, although like other Chinese of his generation, he grew up on a steady diet of such films.

His first exposure to, and favorite of, this genre are the films of Jimmy Wang in the 1960s and 70s, known for his robust masculinity. However, as the genre evolved into gravity-defying fantasy after the mid-1990s, he felt estranged from it.

"I find many martial art films too illusory," he says. "The only one that has thrilled me recently is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ang Lee achieves a breakthrough by making characters fly for a reason."

He, too, wanted to give the old genre a new spin, but could not figure out how until 2009 when he saw a television program, which depicted in detail how a bullet penetrates a person's skin, flesh, veins and heart.

"I had my concept - to explain Chinese martial arts through physiology and medicine. I then made a story to fit it."

Thus, he sets the film in 1917, a time when Western science had a growing influence on the Chinese.

Like in House or CSI, the detective played by Takeshi Kaneshiro analyses the impact of kungfu attacks on one's body.

While martial art films may show a master killing his enemy with what appears to be a light finger tap, Chan makes the detective tell the audience it is because the tap hits an important acupuncture point and causes a clot to form in a blood vessel. Frequent close-ups of organs and nerves enhance his explanation and create the film's unique visual style.

"I consulted with acupuncture specialists, cardiologists and brain surgeons," Chan says. "To shoot a film about swordsmen flying is a safe choice, but I don't see a reason for me to do it. This is an established genre, which leaves little room for originality, but at the same time I see a chance to revitalize it."

Not everything is new, though. Action remains a critical part of the film, to be released on July 4.

Chan ropes in Donnie Yen, the star of Iron Monkey and the Ip Man series, to choreograph the fight scenes and play the mysterious paper-maker. With his mastery in both Chinese kungfu and Western mixed martial arts, 48-year-old Yen has built his name as the new kungfu superstar after Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

Both Yen and Chan dislike wires, and agreed that the fighting would be dazzling but more grounded.

Characters do not suddenly fly off the ground or race on water, but there is dramatic close-contact combat on the ground and even one scene on a rooftop.

The Hollywood Reporter calls the action sequences "swift and savage", and "arguably the best that lead actor Donnie Yen has choreographed for years".

The film's ending has Chan and Yen paying their homage to traditional martial art cinema and the signature figure of its golden days. The 68-year-old Jimmy Wang, China's John Wayne and star of Chang Cheh's One Armed Swordsman series, has a fierce fight with Yen, which ends in a dramatic twist.

Chan presents his own world of swordsmen, where the hero's moral struggles and self-discovery are as painful as those of the common people. The detective has to decide between sticking to the law or giving the criminal a chance, while the paper-maker is haunted by his complex past.

Variety's Justin Chang said he was reminded of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence when watching the film in Cannes in May, noting that "this clever if over-amped thriller tackles themes of identity, honor and the latent killer instinct with a playful spirit that's never at odds with its underlying seriousness".

Chan describes the film as another exploration of answers to life's problems.

"Westerners go to shrinks when they have confusions about life and themselves, but in China we don't usually do that. We find our own ways," he says. "For example, I make films. I spend two years shooting a film to find answers."

In the war epic The Warlords, he questions if one should be forgiven for sacrificing brothers if that creates welfare for a larger group. In the acclaimed romantic tale Comrades, Almost a Love Story, he seeks the answer to what is true love.

"In Wu Xia, I want to know, can we really wipe out our past?"

And the answer, he says, is up to the audience.

SimonM

07-01-2011, 03:42 PM

LOL! I'm trying to publish Wuxia stories in the western genre market Gene so I hear you loud and clear with that one!

Another "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon," particularly one BRANDED with the name that I'm trying to generate consciousness of could do wonders for my literary career. :p

GeneChing

07-07-2011, 09:21 AM

This is off the AP from our fav correspondent, Min Lee. That's a good sign when a film gets AP attention like this. Keep those fingers crossed, SimonM.

Donnie Yen Calls Film Fight With Wang a Milestone (http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=14017425)
By MIN LEE AP Entertainment Writer
HONG KONG July 7, 2011 (AP)

Donnie Yen has faced off against the likes of Jackie Chan and Jet Li over nearly three decades in action films. With Jimmy Wang now added to the list, Yen feels his dream of fighting Chinese cinema's leading kung fu stars is complete.

The veteran actors duel in a heated battle between gang leader and estranged son in the Peter Chan thriller "Wu Xia," which was released in China on Monday. While Wang may not be well-known in the West, the largely retired actor is considered a pioneering action star. He shot to fame with the hit 1967 film "One-armed Swordsman," which spawned three sequels, then directed the 1970 release "The Chinese Boxer," another hit credited with popularizing unarmed combat.

"He is the elder of elders. I was a fan of 'One-armed Swordsman' when I was a child," Yen told The Associated Press in an interview on Thursday. "Working with Jimmy Wang fulfills my wish of working with everyone."

He said Wang was still in good shape for his age. Wang said in a behind-the-scenes documentary about "Wu Xia" that he still works out daily.

"He is a strong opponent for someone in his 70s," Yen said.

In "Wu Xia," Yen plays a former assassin who tries to escape by settling in a rural village and marrying a local woman (Tang Wei). His past catches up with him when he is forced to use his kung fu background to kill two robbers and a martial arts-savvy detective (Takeshi Kaneshiro) investigates.

But Yen, who choreographed the action in the movie, said his face-off with Wang isn't his favorite — he favors an elaborate chase-and-fight sequence with Hong Kong actress Wai Ying-hung, who plays one of Wang's wives.

He said he loves the emotional arch — his character stubbornly hides his kung fu prowess until Wai breaks him down with repeated attacks, and a segment that sees the two dash across tiled roofs before engaging in a small barn filled with cows.

"We did not use a single safety wire ... It is not Donnie Yen style. I like action that is real. When you see two people actually running on a roof, you are impressed with how much more difficult it is," he said.

Yen also praised director Chan, who made his name with subtle love stories, for innovating the kung fu film genre by mixing in elements of detective suspense and medical mystery. Chan illustrates the physical impact of a fighter's blows with computer animation that shows the inner workings of human organs and blood vessels in the style of U.S. medical shows.

"This is the only way to achieve a breakthrough," he said, decrying the repetition in recent kung fu films.

Yen is looking for another hit after the success of his recent biopics of Bruce Lee's martial arts teacher, "Ip Man" and "Ip Man 2," but "Wu Xia" has come up against a formidable opponent — a star-studded Chinese propaganda film that marks the 90th anniversary of Chinese Communist Party. Mainland multiplexes have been flooded with screenings of "Beginning of the Great Revival" and just this week allegations surfaced of at least one multiplex chain trying to inflate its box office numbers with substituted movie tickets.

Yen was careful to sidestep the controversy.

"I don't believe it. I don't want to take a position before all the evidence is laid out," he said.

Asked about the timing of "Wu Xia," Yen responded, "That doesn't concern me. I was focused on making a good movie. I think this is a very good movie."

SimonM

07-07-2011, 09:28 AM

This is off the AP from our fav correspondent, Min Lee. That's a good sign when a film gets AP attention like this. Keep those fingers crossed, SimonM.

Sort of hoping the "CSI" angle that I've heard mentioned elsewhere gets played up in the States.

SimonM

07-10-2011, 07:34 AM

Wuxia is getting good buzz on Twitter. People are calling it Donnie Yen's best film in years, saying it is a better film than Ip Man was.

Zenshiite

07-10-2011, 02:02 PM

So can I torrent it yet? :eek::eek:;)

SimonM

07-11-2011, 06:04 AM

So can I torrent it yet? :eek::eek:;)

Not before I buy a totally legal, yeah, legal copy in Chinatown.

doug maverick

07-11-2011, 08:40 PM

Not before I buy a totally legal, yeah, legal copy in Chinatown.

actually those chinatown copies are technically bootlegs too. they have no us distributor most of the time, they are just directly shipped here, which means the production company isnt seeing a profit off of it.

SimonM

07-12-2011, 05:33 AM

actually those chinatown copies are technically bootlegs too. they have no us distributor most of the time, they are just directly shipped here, which means the production company isnt seeing a profit off of it.

Say it ain't so! :eek: ;)

doug maverick

07-12-2011, 06:16 AM

come on dude, china is the movie pirate capital of the world!! you dont know that?

SimonM

07-12-2011, 06:18 AM

Yes, I know that. Gawd, sarcasm does not communicate well over the interwebz.

doug maverick

07-12-2011, 09:45 AM

Yes, I know that. Gawd, sarcasm does not communicate well over the interwebz.

no it doesnt...ive said this for years, sarcasm doesnt work well in text, lol unless you ad :rolleyes: to it...lol

GeneChing

07-14-2011, 09:56 AM

July 14, 2011, 10:45 AM HKT
Donnie Yen Tops Chinese Propaganda Film (http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/07/14/donnie-yen-tops-chinese-propaganda-film/)
By Dean Napolitano

It wasn’t the fact that kung-fu star Donnie Yen topped China’s box office that was surprising. The surprise was what it pushed aside on the charts.

The martial-arts movie “Wu Xia” starring Mr. Yen powered to the top of China’s box office last week by overtaking “Beginning of the Great Revival,” a heavily promoted, government-supported propaganda epic about the early days of the Communist Party.

“Wu Xia,” which opened July 4, pulled in 101 million yuan ($15.6 million) for the week ending July 10, according to Beijing-based media-research firm EntGroup Inc., more than three times the 31.3 million yuan earned by No. 2 “Revival.”

That film, whose all-star cast includes Chow Yun-fat, Fan Bingbing, Andy Lau, Liu Ye and Daniel Wu, covers China’s history from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 to the founding of the Communist Party in 1921. Pushed hard by the government as part of the Communist Party’s 90th-anniversary celebrations, “Revival” has earned a total of 348.45 million yuan since opening on June 15. Movie chains in the country vowed “all-out efforts” to promote it and nearly 30 other less-prominent films that were produced for the anniversary, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported last month.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jeremy Page reported earlier this month that many government employees were required to see “Revival” and cinemas were ordered not to premiere Hollywood summer blockbusters during its run. But this best-laid of plans seemed not to take into account that a homegrown product like “Wu Xia” might knock the government’s champion off its perch.

“Wu Xia” is a cat-and-mouse thriller about a repentant killer whose past catches up with him as he hides out in a remote village. The $20 million drama from director Peter Chan also stars Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tang Wei and Jimmy Wang Yu.

Mr. Yen’s career has taken off in recent years, as a string of hits showcasing his martial-arts prowess made him a top box-office draw in mainland China. Mr. Chan said Wednesday he was pleased his film managed to top the box-office charts last week despite the “competitive environment.” The film is opening gradually in other markets around Asia this month, and a U.S. release is expected later this year under the title “Dragon.”
This is related to the article I just posted here (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1115087#post1115087).

GeneChing

07-20-2011, 10:28 AM

We have enough police procedurals nowadays, especially on broadcast TV. I'm kind of sick of them. If this is just a twist on that - a kung fu genre police procedural - I'll be disappointed. Hoping for more.

Melodrama meets Kung Fu (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/reviews/view/1141989/1/.html)
By Han Wei Chou | Posted: 20 July 2011 1802 hrs

SINGAPORE: Hong Kong director Peter Chan's "Wu Xia" tells the tale of Detective Xu Bai-jiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who tries to unravel the mystery of how an unassuming paper maker Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen) managed to slay Yan Dong Sheng, a murderer on a killing spree.

His investigations slowly reveal that Liu may not be who he claims to be and inadvertently puts Liu as well as his wife Ah Yu (Tang Wei) on a collision course with the leader (60s action star Jimmy Wang) of the 72 Demons, a clan of vicious killers.

Chan's decision to meld science and martial arts in his film, via cutaways showing blood vessels being constricted and hearts stopping within the human body when precise martial arts strikes find their mark, is well-publicised.

But if you take a similar approach and look beyond the surface of the film, you'll notice that these "CSI"- like sequences are little more than a gimmick to capture your interest early in the film.

They even break up the flow of the fighting somewhat in certain action scenes.

Still, these sequences are a novel touch and give the film a refreshing visual style.

Fortunately, the cutaways aren't the only draw of "Wu Xia" - the film's strong dramatic elements will also get you hooked.

Everything - from Xu's internal struggle over how compassion figures into law enforcement, to Liu's relationship with his family - has been lovingly crafted to make audiences care for the characters, and amplify their emotions when traumatic events befall their favourites.

These melodramatic portions of the film provide the context and the "why" behind the fight scenes that punctuate each act.

There is nothing much to say about Yen's action choreography in "Wu Xia" except that it is really fluid and realistic.

Yen's decades of experience in the martial arts film genre shows in the way he devises the fight scenes, with every punch and bone-crunching kick clearly presented to the audience.

Look out for an amazing sequence where Liu has to fight off a knife-wielding assailant in a small shack, while the oxen housed within get more and more frightened and threaten to stampede.

However, as an actor, Yen's performance was only satisfactory.

The same can be said of Tang, who managed to cry and look frightened as the film required but failed to give any more.

Kaneshiro was better, turning in a nuanced, convincing performance as the decidedly offbeat Detective Xu.

But even he could not outshine Wang.

Wang's gravitas was unmatched and viewers squirmed in their seats as he stalked onto the screen exuding malice with each step near the end of the film.

All in all, Chan falls short of revolutionizing the genre like he had hoped with "Wu Xia".

He does, however, offer an interesting twist on the standard wu xia film by going under the skin of the Kung Fu duels in his film, while reinforcing the strong dramatic traditions on which every classic wu xia film is built.

A few more fight scenes and it would have been perfect.

"Wu Xia" opens July 21.

GeneChing

07-20-2011, 10:32 AM

Wise not to go that "this is my last kung fu flick" route like Jet (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37638) and Jaa (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57381) tried.

Fine, I'll be an action star, says Donnie Yen (http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Showbiz/Story/A1Story20110720-290075.html)
my paper
Wed, Jul 20, 2011

AFTER attempting to branch out into genres like comedy and drama, Hong Kong's Donnie Yen has resigned himself to being a martial-arts hero on film.

"When people hear the name Donnie Yen, they associate it with someone who does martial arts. I can accept that... It is not easy being an action star these days," said Yen, 47.

He was in town yesterday to attend the gala premier of his latest film, Wu Xia, at VivoCity.

Despite his words about being an action star, Yen - who also served as Wu Xia's action director - still hopes "to allow the audience to see a different side of me".

"As an actor, it is my responsibility to...continue to challenge myself," he added. That is why the Ip Man actor took on roles in the contemporary rom-com All's Well, Ends Well (2011) and the upcoming The Monkey King.

Tellingly, when photographers later asked the actor to strike a "fight" pose, Yen politely refused. The former stuntman revealed that, in the next couple of years, he will be taking a break from period films, focusing instead on contemporary action films, a genre he personally prefers.

Yen broke out in the 1984 action film Drunken Tai Chi, and is finally enjoying a boom in his career. His turn as Bruce Lee's wing-chun master in 2004's Ip Man pushed him firmly into the limelight.

Since then, he's helmed movies like Bodyguards And Assassins (2009) and The Lost Bladesman (2010).

Hollywood has even come calling, with studios sending Yen scripts to consider. He has rejected them all, he revealed, adding that he hasn't read one he likes. Besides, he said, the scene has changed and the West is eyeing China, which has become an important market for American film companies.

Wu Xia, helmed by Hong Kong director Peter Chan, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival with much fanfare earlier this year, and the movie will reportedly be screened in the US. The movie also stars Taiwan-born Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro and Chinese actress Tang Wei.

Reporters yesterday could not resist asking Chan, who was also in town, about rumours that he will direct a film about Singapore's independence. Called 1965, the buzz is that Tony Leung may play Singapore's first prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

Chan was quick to shoot down the speculations. "I am not the director," he said, adding that he will be, at most, a "consultant".

"I did promise to help...but nothing was confirmed because I am busy and am not familiar with the material," he said.

The movie is a co-production between Singapore's Homerun Asia and China's Zonbo Media. Chan described the script as "good", but said he has no idea who has been cast.

Talk turned back to Wu Xia.

Though Chan praised Kaneshiro as "one of those rare few actors who is so good looking and yet so non- aggressive", his highest praise was saved for Yen, whose role as an action director was crucial.

"It couldn't be done by anyone else... Without him, I wouldn't have been able to make the movie," he said firmly.

SimonM

07-20-2011, 10:37 AM

Wise not to go that "this is my last kung fu flick" route like Jet (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37638) and Jaa (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57381) tried.

100% in agreement - although I think that trend started with Jackie Chan who once said Rumble in the Bronx would be his last kung fu movie.

GeneChing

07-27-2011, 10:18 AM

Given what's happening in China film now (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57225), everyone wants that next CTHD. You can feel it in the buzz factories and Wu Xia is the prime candidate now.

July 27, 2011, 9:45 AM HKT
‘Wu Xia’ Opens in Hong Kong (http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/07/27/wu-xia-opens-in-hong-kong/)
By Dean Napolitano

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-OX223_wuxia_G_20110726213759.jpg
Tang Wei in a scene from ‘Wu Xia.’

Scores of movie fans swarmed the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on Tuesday night for the local premiere of director Peter Chan’s $20 million martial-arts thriller “Wu Xia.”

Stars Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei joined Mr. Chan, along with co-stars Jimmy Wang Yu and Wai Ying-hung, on stage for the opening. Mr. Chan and his cast also rolled out a huge birthday cake in honor of Mr. Yen, who turns 48 years old on Wednesday.

Mr. Chan has spent the past several weeks traveling around Asia for the film’s premieres in China, Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere. “It’s good to be home again — finally,” he said just before Tuesday night’s screening.

“Wu Xia” is a cat-and-mouse thriller set in rural China in the early 20th century, with Mr. Yen playing a repentant killer hiding out from his ruthless clan and living a seemingly simple village life with his new wife and two young sons. But his past eventually catches up with him as he’s pursued by both a persistent big-city police inspector and the leader of his vengeful clan.

The film offers one of Mr. Yen’s most complex roles in recent years. It also marks the return of Mr. Wang, the legendary 1960s Shaw Brothers martial-arts star, after an absence on screen of nearly two decades.

Mr. Kaneshiro plays the detective, while Ms. Tang — who gained stardom four years ago in Ang Lee’s film “Lust, Caution” — plays Mr. Yen’s wife. Rounding out the cast is famed martial-arts actress Ms. Wai as a brutal warrior.

Unlike most martial-arts movies, “Wu Xia” explores in vivid scientific detail the physical effects of kung fu on the human body — and the physics behind an accurately placed lethal blow.

The film opened July 4 in mainland China, where it has earned 169.10 million yuan ($26.2 million) through July 24, according to Beijing-based media-research firm EntGroup.

Mr. Chan told Scene Asia that he wasn’t “entirely satisfied” with the mainland Chinese box-office tally so far, but that his expectations were “probably too high.” He described the film as “experimental” in a traditional market.

The U.S. release of “Wu Xia” is expected later this year under the title “Dragon” and will be distributed by the Weinstein Co.

SimonM

07-27-2011, 10:54 AM

Dragon? Seriously? Dragon...

Somebody sat down and said, we've got a Chinese movie coming out for the US market. Let's put the word "Dragon" in the title - because that won't confuse ANYBODY....

:rolleyes:

SimonM

08-07-2011, 04:41 PM

I just wrote a long review of Wu Xia over at my blog. Short of it was - beautiful movie, decently acted, good fights, BAD use of deus ex machina spoiling large portions of the plot.

Gave it 16/25

Jimbo

08-07-2011, 11:48 PM

Given what's happening in China film now (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=57225), everyone wants that next CTHD. You can feel it in the buzz factories and Wu Xia is the prime candidate now.

I'm not sure there will be another CTHD in the States. The novelty of subtitled Chinese wuxia films seemed to have dried up with Curse of the Golden Flower, as far as major theatrical releases. I'm certain it will get a limited or art-house theatrical release, though. But I don't see anymore Chinese MA movies being nominated for any more Academy Awards again anytime soon.

I would rather have seen a modern-day MA action film, like Flash Point in major theatrical release. Although its story isn't so great, the action scenes are like nothing your typical American audiences have seen onscreen, and were shot in the old-school fashion...with outstanding camerawork, intensity, etc. Plus the mixing in of BJJ-style techniques in more creative ways than just your typical American MMA tournament movie. But they didn't do that and they blew it.

Regardless, I'm hoping Wu Xia does well however it can. But they definitely could've titled it with something more original than "Dragon."

doug maverick

08-08-2011, 07:01 AM

I'm not sure there will be another CTHD in the States. The novelty of subtitled Chinese wuxia films seemed to have dried up with Curse of the Golden Flower, as far as major theatrical releases. I'm certain it will get a limited or art-house theatrical release, though. But I don't see anymore Chinese MA movies being nominated for any more Academy Awards again anytime soon.

I would rather have seen a modern-day MA action film, like Flash Point in major theatrical release. Although its story isn't so great, the action scenes are like nothing your typical American audiences have seen onscreen, and were shot in the old-school fashion...with outstanding camerawork, intensity, etc. Plus the mixing in of BJJ-style techniques in more creative ways than just your typical American MMA tournament movie. But they didn't do that and they blew it.

Regardless, I'm hoping Wu Xia does well however it can. But they definitely could've titled it with something more original than "Dragon."

i disagree with something on the level of CTHD came out im more then sure it would be a hit. its all about the level of MA action.

GeneChing

09-08-2011, 09:22 AM

Artsy enough for the art house crowd? Perhaps. Wu Xia is a very entertaining film. The sets and costumes are rich and detailed, just what we are now coming to expect from Chinese productions. The CGI stuff is very amusing - I love the way dim mak is depicted. It's a gorgeous film. The action...well, there's not enough of it. Donnie's choreography remains top notch - this is his Shaw Bros choreographic homage. But I could have used like two more fight scenes.

It was great to see Jimmy Wang Yu again. There's an in-joke with his appearance, but it's kind of a spoiler. That being said, this film could serve as a creation tale for Donnie's next franchise.

I enjoyed Wu Xia a lot. It has a unique vision for a martial arts film that is very refreshing. If this film had just two more fight scenes, it would have been perfect for me.

doug maverick

11-20-2011, 05:17 PM

this was hands down the best kung fu or movie with kung fu in it...in years!!!! yes in years, im including the yip man films...yes the story was essentially history of violance, but adding that element of a relentless detective stepped it up a notch...in history there was no question that the main character was a badass...this movie keeps you guessing, and just when youve figured it out another element pops up...the father character was down right scary, my girl actually cringed. what killed for me was the end fight scene...i wont spoil it, but it was so out of element with the movie as to deem it ridiculous...other then that, peter chan did a fantastic job. donnie was FANTASTIC!!!! he actually showed some acting chops here, and the fights.....some great hung ga by donnie! i brought a projector with awesome sound and have a great backdrop so i felt like i watched it in a theater ill def. watch this again.

Hebrew Hammer

11-21-2011, 02:00 AM

No, seriously...how was it?

MightyB

07-02-2012, 06:01 AM

Just merge it if I missed the thread. but...
I didn't see a thread here when I did a basic search, but this Donnie Yen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_IkZILl3qw&feature=player_embedded) movie looks pretty cool.

Jimbo

08-29-2012, 09:55 PM

I just watched it, the Media Asia DVD release of it. IMO, this is not only Donnie Yen's best film, but it's the best film from mainland China that I've seen. I liked it more than Donnie's Ip Man films. It actually brings something unique to the genre. I'm not a fan of the CSI shows, but it's clear that they were a big influence on Wu Xia.

Kudos also to Takeshi Kaneshiro, Jimmy Wang Yu, and Tang Wei. The acting is top-notch. Wang Yu, in particular, looked really good...in fact, more imposing, and he even moves better in his fight scene than he did in his prime. And it's great to see Kara Hui back, this time as a villain.

I wasn't going to wait for the U.S. release of it with the stup!d title "Dragon". If you get it now, make sure to get the uncut foil cover edition, the quality is excellent. I hear there's another release that's a poor-quality bootleg.

I give this one a 10/10.

Hebrew Hammer

08-29-2012, 10:47 PM

That's a glowing report Jimbo, I've been trying to find it online with no luv. Action sequences good too?

Jimbo

08-29-2012, 11:46 PM

Hi, HH.
I got my copy off of Amazon.

The fights are good, but it's more about the quality than the quantity. I won't say the fights are THE BEST, because they aren't, but they are very good. They take a while to roll around, but IMO the story and acting are good enough that I enjoyed the whole movie. It's interesting that the featured art seems to be Hung Gar (cinematic, of course). I love it when Donnie does "shapes".

And a big thing for me is there is NONE of the nationalistic cr@p that's so prevalent in Chinese films today.

GeneChing

10-16-2012, 12:44 PM

iTunes trailer (http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/dragon/)

In theaters: November 30th, 2012

I'm changing the thread title from "Wu Xia (Swordsman) starring Donnie Yen" to "Dragon aka Swordsman aka Wu Xia"

SimonM

10-16-2012, 12:57 PM

Am I seriously the only person who was really bothered by the deus ex machina?

enoajnin

10-16-2012, 01:35 PM

I'm sure it is here in a million places, but I can't find any reference to it. My forum fu is weak.

But what do we know about the new Donnie Yen film, 'Dragon' starring Donnie Yen and directed by Peter Ho-Sung Chan? Comes to iTunes on the 26th and to theater on Nov 3. You can see the trailer here: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/dragon/

I'm sure there is a KFM contest for tickets that I am not seeing either.

enoajnin

10-16-2012, 02:21 PM

This plot seems very reminiscent of "A History of Violence" starring Aragorn and Mario Bello.

GeneChing

10-17-2012, 10:14 AM

This would be good on the big screen. If memory serves, it had outstanding cinematography.

Weinstein Co sets Wu Xia release (http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/weinstein-co-sets-wu-xia-release)
By Patrick Frater
Wed, 17 October 2012, 14:48 PM (HKT)
Distribution News
http://www.filmbiz.asia/media/BAhbB1sHOgZmSSIyMjAxMi8xMC8xNi8yMy81MS8xOS8yMDQvZH JhZ29uX3Bvc3Rlcl82MzAuanBnBjoGRVRbCDoGcDoKdGh1bWJJ Ig01MDB4MTAwMAY7BlQ?suffix=.jpg&sha=5d8e5fc2
The Weinstein Company has finally set a date for the theatrical release of Wu Xia 武俠 in North America, where the film is known as Dragon.

Through its Radius TWC arm, the company will give the film a video-on-demand release on 26 Oct via iTunes and other platforms. That will be followed by a limited theatrical release on 30 Nov.

The martial arts detective story stars Donnie YEN 甄子丹, KANESHIRO Takeshi 金城武 and TANG Wei 湯唯. It was directed by Peter CHAN 陳可辛.

TWC acquired rights for most of the world at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, where the film played out of competition in a version supervised by Harvey WEINSTEIN.

It was released in much of Asia in July 2011 and in South Korea in November last year. But distribution in most other territories, where it is either handled or re-licensed by TWC has awaited the US release.

Wu Xia recently played at the New York Asian Film Festival and previously at the Palm Springs International Film Festival festival in January and the Seattle International Film Festival in May.

GeneChing

10-26-2012, 10:04 AM

Donnie Yen Exclusive Interview: Discussing 'Dragon' And The Censored Ending Audiences May Never See (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/donnie-yen-dragon-interview_n_2017197.html)
Posted: 10/26/2012 10:30 am EDT Updated: 10/26/2012 10:30 am EDT

Donnie Yen is Asia's biggest action star, or as he's often referred to in Hong Kong, the "Strongest Man In the Universe." He's also the star of the upcoming kungfu/action/detective film "Dragon" ("Wu Xia").

I had a chance to sit down with Yen and talk about "Dragon'" while he was in New York City for the New York Asian Film Festival this summer.

Important questions first, what does he think of his nickname?

“Better to be called something positive and inspirational than something negative.”

Classic Donnie.

Like his nickname, playing the lead character in "IP Man" was an inspiration for Yen. "IP Man" is the movie he's known best for, and he knows it. Yen told me, “'IP Man' was the most successful and influential movie I’ve done.”

“I certainly hope 'Dragon' can leave some legacy behind," he added.

In "Dragon" -- which was called "an exhilarating martial arts entertainment that modernizes the genre while re-emphasizing its strong points" by The Hollywood Reporter -- Yen plays Liu Jinxi. Jinxi at first appears to be nothing more than an innocent and oblivious villager caught up in the middle of a random act of crime in a small village in 1917 set to the backdrop of China’s transition from monarchy to republic. Naturally, there is more to Jinxi than initially meets the eye, and as events continue to unfold, more and more is revealed about the character. Eventually, the audience is unsure if he's the protagonist or actually the antagonist.

Its a tricky role for a traditional action star to take on.

Yen said his role in "IP Man" changed the minds of producers in Hong Kong, who may have previously seen him solely an action star. "We are usually typecast in certain category, action hero, at best an action icon. I’ve had many opportunities to play many roles since 'IP Man.'"

A bit of good fortune doesn't hurt either. “How do you change the mind of people’s perception of an action actor? Most of the time it takes more luck (for a big part) than ability,” Yen said.

Yen's inspiration for playing the character of Liu Jinxi also drew much from his role and experience in "IP Man."

“I gained a lot of confidence after 'IP Man' as being a true actor. I went on to tackle what it is an actor is supposed to do before a film. Do a lot of research, get into the character. That’s what I did with 'Dragon.' Liu is actually two characters in one.”

So was it difficult to play a non-action character, for at least half of a film?

“After two weeks of research I found out it wouldn’t be as difficult to play a non action guy," Yen said. "All you have to do is tune down all the martial arts experience you have. You have to forget about your 40 years of martial arts experience and be just a normal guy, a farmer, a guy that never went to school. It really didn’t take me too long to penetrate and feel comfortable as that character.”

Peter Chan directed "Dragon," but Yen handled the action sequences and fight choreography as he often does for his films.

“As an action director I always try to bring something fresh and new. We wanted to bring something totally poetic [to Dragon']."

The poetry in a Donnie Yen film is usually poetry of fight, not plot. "Dragon" was a true attempt by both director and actor to merge classic detective film elements with kung fu, and they in large part succeed in doing so, with much thanks to Yen's strong performance and reliably ingenious fight sequences.

WARNING! "Dragon" Plot spoilers ahead!

In a particularly impressive fight scene, a one-armed Donnie Yen takes on a character being played by the legendary Jimmy Wang.

“It was difficult but it wasn’t as difficult to me because it's adjusting to the situation," Yen said before adding, "It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated.”

“It's like someone twits your arms, and imagine trying to move while they are doing that. And we didn’t rely on the CGI, so I really had to try and hide any of the arm that might be sticking out from the wardrobe.”

That still wasn't the most difficult part of choreographing the fight. “The most difficult, was fighting the legend Jimmy Wang, he’s an older senior. In all due respect, the gentleman is a 70-year-old guy. You really cannot expect some sort of competition when working with him. So, the way I choreographed his movements, I had to both think of the possibility of 'can he do it?' at the same time having the face and respect for him to not embarrass him. I have to work with him, work with the actor, and then come up with something to allow him to showcase his stuff, and at the same time bring out the best in the character. If he’s a martial arts master, his level should be up here [Yen holds hand up high].”

The environment also added to the difficulty of the sequence. “It was raining every day, really really hard. We couldn’t even walk properly without thinking about falling. It was that slippery. Every shot we had to put layers of empty sandbags.”

And yet, as tricky as that scene was to film, it wasn't the original ending to "Dragon."

"We actually have an alternative ending which I thought was quite innovative and unfortunately we had to cut it out because of [Chinese] censorship," Yen said, shaking his head.

"Jimmy Wang was chasing me to the second floor and he was beating me up and my son came out and stabbed him from behind," Yen explained. "So it was like the father is beating up the son, and the grandson is hurting the grandfather. The grandfather turns around and is looking at the grandson and giving no reaction. And the kid is obviously crying, and I was holding Jimmy’s leg to restrain him from hurting my son. The whole triangular emotion of the situation was really awkward. Which I thought could be the essence of the whole scene, the odd way the grandfather turned around and looked at his grandson and actually smiled, like the grandson had his blood.”

“Right away Peter [Chan] knew that it crossed the censorship line, so we shot it and took it to all of the China censors and they thought it was too powerful. He [Chan] played it safe, said he loved the ending, but we couldn’t have it.”

Yen wasn't sure if the alternate ending will even make it onto special edition DVD releases in the future. “I don’t know if Harvey [Weinstein] will recognize that ending because, I believe, when he bought the film it was already edited out."

END SPOILERS

You can check out "Dragon" on Video On Demand on October 26 and in limited theatrical release on November 30. It's worth nothing that the upcoming releases of "Dragon" will feature a trimmed down version from of the original Asia release -- by 19 total minutes, streamlining the film to a more briskly paced 97 minutes.

Dragon Official US Release Trailer #1 (2012) - Donnie Yen, Takeshi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe6xIOCbcR8)

GeneChing

11-26-2012, 06:18 PM

Another limited theatrical release, although this one just might be worth the trip. I can't seem to find an official US website. It is released through RADiUS-TWC, and I've got their facebook (https://www.facebook.com/RadiusTWC), youtube (http://www.youtube.com/radiustwc) and twitter (https://twitter.com/radiustwc), but no site that reveals where exactly this film will be playing. Anyone?

Lucas

11-27-2012, 09:42 AM

Watched this recently. Xbox 360 has a cool trend of putting kungfu movies up for rent a month or two before they hit american theaters. Could have used a few more fights, but the fight with the main thugs come to collect was awesome. I loved the stylized animal kungfu donnie yen used in that fight. The action was so smooth. What would be cool is to see a sequal to this like the one arm boxer lol

doug maverick

11-27-2012, 10:17 AM

its playing at the village cinema here in new york.

doug maverick

11-27-2012, 09:38 PM

write up in the village voice

Dragon (Wu xia)
Comments (0) By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Nov 28 2012http://media.villagevoice.com/dragon-wu-xia-film-review.8372334.40.jpg
Details
Dragon (Wu xia)
Directed by Peter Chan
The Weinstein Company
Opens November 30

The roaring popular success of Peter Chan's Wu xia in China—renamed Dragon for export—is no mystery: It's an adept genre exercise with rare primal depths. Liu Jin-xi (Donnie Yen), a paper-mill worker and by all accounts a meek family man, blunderingly dispatches two bandits who attempt a robbery in his sleepy Yunnan Province village, and so becomes the center of an investigation by the paranoiac detective charged with covering the inquest, Xu Bai-ju (Takeshi Kaneshiro). Xu, using circa-1917 forensics that draw heavily on his knowledge of acupuncture, begins to suspect that Liu is someone other than who he says, his "accidental" valor in fact being the work of a trained killer. The script, by Aubrey Lam, bears a marked resemblance to David Cronenberg's A History of Violence and a score of old westerns beside—the retired bad man rustled out of retirement by figures from the past—while the fleet spirit of the film evokes happier days of Hong Kong cinema. Although Yen does not catch every facet of his character's ambivalence, he choreographs himself flexibly shot, lucid fight duets with Kara Hui and Jimmy Wang, whose considerable bulk proves impervious to blade strikes—Wang's 1967 The One-Armed Swordsman is, for reasons which become apparent after a rather gruesome plot twist, another partial inspiration. Dragon itself has been dismembered, shorn of nearly 20 minutes for its U.S. release, but what remains is more than sufficient to do the job. Nick Pinkerton

GeneChing

11-30-2012, 11:35 AM

'more hand-to-hand combat than that Kate Capshaw vehicle' - luv that line.

From A Rom-Com Director, A Subtle Kung Fu Flick (http://www.npr.org/2012/11/29/165683695/from-a-rom-com-director-a-subtle-kung-fu-flick)
by Mark Jenkins
http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/11/26/dragon5_wide-3dd79ac037e3b3947d8b79a50a483465f7793d20-s4.jpg
Radius/The Weinstein Co.
Donnie Yen stars as Liu Jinxi, a quiet mountain-village family man who turns out to have a complicated past, in Dragon.

Dragon
Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Genre: Action
Running time: 98 minutes
Rated R for violence
In Mandarin with subtitles
With: Wei Tang, Wu Jiang and Takeshi Kaneshiro

November 29, 2012

The latest movie from versatile Hong Kong director Peter Ho-Sun Chan has been given not one but two generic titles: In China, it's Wu Xia, which means "martial hero" and is the overall term for kung fu films; in this country, it's called Dragon, which has similar connotations.

The joke is that Chan doesn't really make action flicks, even when working within the genre. He's so known for romantic comedies that he got to direct one for producer Steven Spielberg, a 1999 misfire called The Love Letter. Dragon has a lot more hand-to-hand combat than that Kate Capshaw vehicle — and probably had more before it was cut by 18 minutes for U.S. release. But it's still primarily a mood piece, not a brawler.

The movie opens gently, with the morning routine at the humble mountain-village home of paper-worker Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen, who also choreographed the fight scenes). Jinxi is married to pretty Ayu (Lust, Caution's Tang Wei) and is the doting father of two boys, the older from Ayu's first marriage.

Jinxi happens to be in the local general store when two thugs demand the elderly shopkeeper's cash. The merchant and his gray-haired wife fight the robbers, but Jinxi holds back. We already know he's a vegetarian; perhaps he's a pacifist, too. Or simply a coward.

Nope. Jinxi eventually joins the melee and reveals why he hesitated. His handling of the two hoodlums shows he's an experienced fighter.

In the first version we see, the showdown is a nasty, believably sloppy scuffle. But then detective Xu Baijiu (Taiwanese-Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro) arrives and insists that Jinxi recount what happened. This cues a flashback in which Jinxi fights the bandits again, this time with more command. As the three men struggle, Baijiu walks through the flashback, observing precisely.

The detective is an existential type, possessed of extraordinary detachment. He's also versed in Chinese medicine and the latest — it's 1917 — in Western physiological knowledge. He can't throw a punch, but he can bring down an enemy with a perfectly placed acupuncture needle.

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/11/26/dragon2-8e59b634a6f2724a81b29e60f3cd1afec30be097-s2.jpg
Radius/The Weinstein Co.
Ayu (Tang Wei) starts her life over with Liu Jinxi after being abandoned by her first husband.

Baijiu correctly surmises that Jinxi is a former criminal, whose modest new life is in fact a refuge from justice. Jinxi offers a confession, but says he's served his time. Baijiu doesn't buy the admission, and so makes plans to arrest the man. But it turns out that Jinxi is a defector from a fierce criminal gang, the 72 Demons, whose martial-arts skills are uncanny. When the Demons arrive to bring the renegade back to the clan, Baijiu and Jinxi have little choice but to become allies.

Dragon is partly an homage to One Armed Swordsman, a 1967 kung fu classic whose star, Jimmy Wang Yu, plays the new movie's arch-villain. But there's much Western influence: Jinxi's plight recalls David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, and Baijiu's cerebral and flashy style of detection — complete with animated glimpses of victims' innards — suggests Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes series. Dragon is also one of several recent Chinese crime movies that borrow from CSI-style TV dramas.

The story becomes less distinctive as the two protagonists' wary, believably human relationship is overshadowed by the grandiose supernatural threat of the 72 Demons. But the widescreen cinematography and mountain rain-forest locations retain their interest, as does the deftly incongruous score, which ranges from samba to hard rock. And the best of the action set pieces are dynamic enough to demonstrate that Chan can make a wu xia movie if he really feels like it.

JamesC

12-08-2012, 02:07 AM

Just watched this. I was really disappointed after all the hype. Especially with the comparisons to history of violence.

I found it mediocre at best. To me, the best part of the whole movie was when the detective was figuring out the fight. The way his dad died made no sense. At all.

GeneChing

12-11-2012, 10:06 AM

This never did play around here. I searched via zip code and nothing local turned up. BOM (http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=dragon2012.htm)only listed 14 theaters.

December 10, 2012, 3:00 PM
Actor Donnie Yen on His Kung Fu Film, ‘Dragon’ (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/12/10/actor-donnie-yen-on-his-kung-fu-film-dragon/)
By Dean Napolitano

Martial-arts actor Donnie Yen has been on a tear over the past few years, becoming one of the world’s busiest action stars and rivaling Jackie Chan and Jet Li for dominance in Asia.

Although his movie career spans 30 years, it wasn’t until 2008 that Yen catapulted to the top ranks of leading man with “Ip Man.” The film, based on the life of the 20th-century Chinese martial-arts master of the same name and whose students included a young Bruce Lee, was a runaway success and spawned a hit sequel two years later. Since then, the 49-year-old actor has starred in a string of high-profile movies, including 2010’s “Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen,” taking on the same role that Bruce Lee played in “Fist of Fury.”

Yen’s latest film is “Dragon,” a cat-and-mouse martial-arts thriller in which he plays a man — Liu Jin-xi — living a seemingly simple life with his wife and two children in a remote village in early 20th-century China. After Liu — using masterful kung-fu moves –kills a pair of bandits trying to rob a local shopkeeper, a police detective investigating the case uncovers Liu’s true identity: a former member of a brutal criminal clan who’s now in hiding. (In Asia, the film was released under the title “Wu Xia,” which translates roughly as “martial-arts chivalry.”)

Director Peter Chan’s clever art-house spin on a popular genre pays homage to the stylish Hong Kong kung-fu movies of the 1960s and ’70s. “Dragon,” which opened in New York and Los Angeles on Nov. 30 and is now available on iTunes, also stars Takeshi Kaneshiro (“Red Cliff”), Tang Wei (“Lust, Caution”) and legendary Shaw Brothers Studio martial-arts stars Jimmy Wang Yu and Kara Hui.

Speakeasy caught up with Yen, who talked about his role in “Dragon,” pulling dual duty as star and action choreographer, and working in Hollywood.

Edited excerpts:

The character you play in “Dragon” is more complex than your other recent roles: He’s a man seeking redemption from his murderous life but ultimately is forced to confront his past. Why did you take on the role?

I think every actor wants to try out different things. When audiences look at an action actor like myself, sometimes we are very easily stereotyped or characterized as one type. They forget that we are actors, too. We just make a lot of action movies. I was very fortunate — although I didn’t come from a classic background, I do have 30 years of experience making films. It’s just that marketing-wise, I’m always chosen to play these straight-up heroic roles.

How did you prepare for the film?

Like any other actor, I draw on life experience. I have always been a great fan of Peter Chan and many other great directors who specialize in anything outside of action. I watch any type of film, I do my homework, and I have a high appreciation of the acting art. Over the past few years, the majority of my films were big box-office successes in Asia … and then I was given an opportunity to take on different roles.

You also were the action choreographer for “Dragon.” How did you balance the responsibilities?

I’ve been juggling dual positions for a long time. I guess I’m used to that type of work load. As an actor — to play the character truthfully — you have to be as subjective as possible. But as a director, you have to be as objective as possible and try to look at it from every angle. I don’t get a lot of sleep at night because my brain is constantly thinking of every detail. I plan everything in my head for the next day and how to shoot it. But I’m also thinking: Am I taking this role in the right direction?

How did you approach the action scenes?

“Dragon” [which is set in a Chinese village at the end of the Qing Dynasty] created certain rules for me. The character wouldn’t look right if I had him doing mixed martial-arts or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or Thai boxing. [I thought] it would be a good mix if I put in these ’70s Shaw Brothers kung-fu movies. So I thought: Let me create that kind of action for this character. That’s how I create action scenes, I start off with the character and then it expands. I don’t have a storyboard. Everything is created in my head before I walk on the set, so when I’m on the set I know exactly what to shoot and how to shoot it.

How much preparation do you get for an action scene?

Preparation is not a luxury for Asian martial-arts films. I worked in Hollywood films [“Shanghai Knights” and “Blade II”] — there’s a lot of preparation. I support that, and I wish we could do a little bit more of that in Asia. But that is not our industry’s practice. There’s a lot of focus of putting everything together and saying “Let’s shoot it.”

How is working in Hollywood compared with Hong Kong and China?

We are a lot more sophisticated nowadays, but compared to Hollywood, where we have two months of preparation and rehearsal — we don’t have rehearsals [in Asia]. It’s purely my experience and the experience of my crew, my stunt team. I try to give my guys as much time as possible [when it comes to] safety and protection. But as far as creativity goes, we create while we are there.

You’ll be 50 next year. How much longer do you plan to perform in martial-arts movies?

Obviously, I’ve had a lot injuries — not from just accidents but from years of wear and tear on my body. I still feel very good about my performances — I’m still fast and strong. Maybe I have a good lifestyle balance. I don’t have a night life, I don’t really drink, I don’t smoke, no drugs — a very clean family life.

Mentally, I feel more inspired and motivated than ever. I don’t know what it is. Sometimes it’s not just pure physical energy. I think it’s also the mind. But, of course, I’ve got to give myself a deadline. I don’t plan to do this all my life. I want to do other things.

Such as?

I’ll probably produce my own films, and I’ll want to scout some new talent. But for now I’ve got to finish up seven more movies … then I’ll think about what I’m going to do — whether I’m going to be in front of the camera or go back behind the camera and be a producer before I retire.