Maximum Choppage

[GeneChing]

Luv that title. I bet it sounds even better when said with an Aussie accent.


New kung-fu comedy mini-series starts filming in Cabramatta (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/news/new-kungfu-comedy-miniseries-starts-filming-in-cabramatta/story-fngr8gwi-1226813110932)
Fairfield Advance
January 30, 2014 12:00AM

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Maria Tran performs a flying kick on Joe Le while Adrian Castro films below for a new kung-fu comedy. Source: News Limited

FILMING for Australia's first ever Kung Fu action comedy started in Cabramatta last week.

The mini series called Maximum Choppage will air on ABC Two at the end of 2014.

The plot is based in Cabramatta and follows the woes of Simon who leaves home to study at Melbourne's prestigious Marshall School of Art.

The trouble starts when Simon's mother misunderstands and tells the whole community Simon has gone to study Martial Arts.

And she threatens a group of local drug dealers by telling them her Kung Fu warrior son will give them a kicking on his return.

All of the fight scenes will be filmed using people from Cabramatta's very own Dong Tam school of martial arts.

Associate producer Maria Tran (who's also something of a budding martial artist) said Cabramatta may have a big future on screen.

"There's certainly a lot of potential here," Ms Tran said.

[GeneChing]

Can anyone from down under enlighten us about Cabramatta?

Kung fu fun in focus (http://www.fairfieldchampion.com.au/story/2126657/kung-fu-fun-in-focus/) By Ashleigh Milton March 4, 2014, 1:14 p.m.

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Lights, camera, action: On set with cast and crew from Maximum Choppage on Friday. Pictures: Simon Bennett

FILMING for Australia's first martial arts TV series began in Cabramatta last week.

The comedy series Maximum Choppage is being shot over six weeks and will be aired on ABC 2 later this year.

It follows Simon Chan who has returned to his hometown of Cabramatta, after his mum sent him to learn "the art" of kung fu — instead she sent him to art school.

It is based in a fictional Cabramatta where gangs terrorise the community.

Kathryn Yuen makes her acting debut playing the role of Simon's mother, Mrs Chan.

"I am a mother of four really jumping into the deep end here," she said.

"The whole process has been hilarious and I have been so lucky.

"Though Mrs Chan is a lovely role for a mature actress, I am acting. She is a woman with power but also vulnerable to an extent."

Maximum Choppage started out as a short film written by Cabramatta filmmaker Timothy Ly and was turned into a one-hour feature and approved by Fairfield Council.

Mr Ly then approached Matchbox Pictures and they decided to rewrite it as a television series.

One of the series producers, Julie Eckersley said that from the beginning Fairfield Council had been really supportive and allowed Matchbox to do the filming on location.

"It really is a Cabramatta story," Ms Eckersley said.

"Well, a fictional Cabramatta besieged by gangs, but it is really exciting for Cabramatta and it will show a side of the suburb that most people don't really know.

"We are trying to celebrate everything that is Cabramatta."

Mayor Frank Carbone said the council welcomed Matchbox Pictures to Cabramatta and the energy and excitement the filming had brought to Fairfield.

"The filming of Maximum Choppage will cast a positive light on Cabramatta," he said.

"Highlighting that it is not only a suburb renowned for its culinary delights, but also that it is a diverse suburb able to cater to the needs of many industries, including the film and television industry."

[GeneChing]

Kung fu 'hero' in Cabramatta (http://www.fairfieldchampion.com.au/story/2888284/kung-fu-hero-in-cabramatta/)
Feb. 17, 2015, 11:30 p.m.

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Fairfield local Timothy Ly is the director of the upcoming television show 'Maximum Choppage' on ABC2. Picture: Simon Bennett
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CABRAMATTA will star in kung fu comedy series Maximum Chopage that will air for the first time on ABC2 next week.

The comedy series started out as a short film written by Cabramatta filmmaker Timothy Ly (pictured) and was turned into a one-hour feature.

Later, Ly approached Matchbox Pictures, where a team of writers developed his ideainto a television series.

"It is amazing and highly original," he said. "The most important thing for me is that it represents cultural diversity."

The show follows martial arts professional, hero and defender of the weak, Simon Chan, but he has a secret - he's just an ordinary guy.

While everyone thinks Simon has been training at a legendary martial arts school in Beijing, he has really been studying at Marshall's Art School, Melbourne, and it's only a matter of time before the truth is discovered.

Now back in Cabramatta, armed with a fistful of pastels and a crippling sense of obligation, Simon knows that eventually the truth will hurt . . . literally.

He could lose his life - or worse - disappoint his mother.

Maximum Chopage will be on ABC2 at 9pm on Tuesday, February 24.

Anyone know if this is viewable online somewhere?

[GeneChing]

I must say I'd rather watch this than Fresh off the Boat (http://abc.go.com/shows/fresh-off-the-boat). :o


Maximum Choppage star Lawrence Leung fights in a whacked-out kung fu universe (http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/maximum-choppage-star-lawrence-leung-fights-in-a-whackedout-kung-fu-universe-20150216-13frvl.html)
Date February 19, 2015 - 12:15AM
Nick Galvin
Journalist

http://images.smh.com.au/2015/02/16/6264890/Article%20Lead%20-%20wide6624099313frotimage.related.articleLeadwide .729x410.13frvl.png1424055402208.jpg-620x349.jpg
Stickability: Maximum Choppage co-writer and star Lawrence Leung as Simon Chan. "He's very much a wannabe Asian, which is very close to my personal story." Photo: Supplied

Simon Chan has been away studying at Marshall's Art School in Melbourne.

However, his wacko mother is under the serious misapprehension that he was in fact attending a martial arts school and that instead of skills with pastels and video installation he is returning as a finely-honed fighting machine.

Which is a big problem for sensitive, lily-livered Simon, especially when he is expected to clean up the lawless, gang-infested streets of Cabramatta.

If this all sounds a little ... er ... far-fetched, it makes much more sense when you remember that in the world of martial arts movies, cheerfully bonkers plots have long reigned supreme.
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Maximum Choppage is co-written by Lawrence Leung, who also plays the lead in the new home-grown comedy, although he insists he is not the "star".

"I never like to think of myself as the star of something, more like the actor with the most lines," he says.

Martial arts movies are a topic very close to his heart.

"I love this genre," he says. "I grew up watching all the Hong Kong action films – Jackie Chan, Jet Li ..."

Leung also identifies, in part at least, with his goofy underdog character, Simon.

"As someone who has been a lifelong coward it's not beyond me to play risk-averse characters, although I am pushing myself more in this one because my character pretends to be a hero half the time," he says.

"My character can't actually fight despite everyone thinking that he can so I spend all my time pretending that I can fight and avoiding dying. Which is kind of like real life – be brave but not die."

Maximum Choppage began life as a short film by Cabramatta filmmaker Timothy Ly, who brought a one-page pitch to Matchbox Pictures. Gradually the idea morphed into a six-part action comedy written by Leung, Duncan Sarkies (Flight of the Conchords) and Josh Mapleston (Home and Away).

"It's a kind of genre-breaking hybrid of action and comedy," explains Leung. "It's promoted as Australia's first kung-fu comedy series. As far as we know a TV series like this has never been made before.

"Every episode is a different genre. The audience is going to see what is, in a way, six short movies. There's a whodunit, there's a horror movie, there's a sports movie but it's all done under this Maximum Choppage world."

And that world is, viewed objectively, ludicrous – not that the characters are ever aware of the fact.

"The world is heightened and dangerous and crazy but for us it is about playing it as if we are in a drama despite some of the lines being quite ridiculous," says Leung.

Playing alongside Leung in this whacked-out kung fu universe are a host of familiar comedy faces, including Darren Gilshenen (The Moodys) who gleefully plays the "highly ambitious, highly corrupt, megalomaniacal mayor of Cabramatta".

Gilshenen describes Mayor Crawford as a cross between Clive Palmer and Baby John Burgess "with a bit of Les Patterson thrown in".

Another Moodys alumnus, Dave Eastgate, plays Simon's best friend, Egg, so called because he is "white on the outside and yellow on the inside".

"He's very much a wannabe Asian, which is very close to my personal story," says Eastgate. "I lived in Japan for five years and I speak fluent Japanese – I've done my time as an Egg. You are always outside the circle."

Eastgate is also well known for his stand-up work, which brings an extra dimension to the action, say Leung.

"It's great to work with people who have really good comedy instincts and chops," he says. "As a stand-up comedian I get to bring to it the timing that I don't often have when I'm just by myself in front of an audience. To play off someone who has natural comic instincts is an absolute joy."

Leung wrote three of the six scripts and being both writer and actor also brings with it some unusual tensions.

"When I'm on set I start to hate the writer," he confesses. "When I first started writing for it I was never thinking of myself as acting in it. I always wanted to concentrate on being a writer and concentrate on the stories and making sure the character breathes and lives and has maximum stakes and jeopardy put on them.

"And now I'm performing the character, I'm like, 'Too much stakes, too much jeopardy, too much fight choreography to learn'.

"I have to do all this stuff because the stupid writer put it in the script."

Maximum Choppage, ABC2, Tuesday, 9pm.

[GeneChing]

An accidental kung-fu hero and pugilistic fish (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/television/an-accidental-kung-fu-hero-and-pugilistic-fish/story-fn9d34el-1227255546158)
The Australian
March 10, 2015 12:00AM
Graeme Blundell
TV Writer
Sydney

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Dave Eastgate, Lawrence Leung and Stephanie Son in Maximum Choppage, 9pm, ABC2. Source: Supplied

PICK of the day: Maximum Choppage, 9pm, ABC2.

IN this cleverly modest series — it makes up for its lack of budget in comic ingeniousness and straight-out quirkiness — comedian Lawrence Leung is Simon Chan, mistakenly believed to have trained at a legendary martial arts school in Beijing when in fact he was at Marshall’s Art School in Melbourne. It’s subtitled A Kung Fu Comedy , and since it began Leung and his collaborators have been traipsing through a fictionalised, almost comic-strip version of the very real Sydney suburb of Cabramatta.

The trick of the show is the way they have ransacked many familiar Asian motifs to create a different kind of storytelling that moves along at great speed with a kind of rough and tumble comic gusto. Leung isn’t really a satirist; one is tempted to call him that, but the barbed bitterness and the *****y adrenalin are absent. What replaces them in his work is a simple-minded love of silliness. But have no doubt: a very astute mind is at work.

In tonight’s episode Cabramatta is gripped by fish-fighting fever and Mrs Chan (Kathryn Yuen) is on a winning streak with Little Simon, her champion fish.

But our hero, morally opposed to the blood sport, is determined to make a stand. He protests outside the fish-fighting venue, but it falls on deaf ears, until the mayor’s daughter Elle (Georgina Haig), moved by his activism, signs his petition.

Inside the warehouse, Mrs Chan and Kai Le (Felino Dolloso), ferocious leader of the local gang of Cambodian-Chinese thugs, do battle with their fish, doubling up the value of their bets until Mrs Chan puts her shop on the line. Kai Le’s fish, Killer Minogue, a grotesque product of genetic engineering, is triumphant and he wins Mrs Chan’s shop. Will Simon stay true to his principles or fight to save his mother’s shop? Well, it doesn’t take long before he is deeply involved in his own intense training regime with a legendary fish-fighting trainer.

Still hoping for some member from down under to enlighten us as whether or not this show is worth watching. Where's our FIRST FORUM REVIEW?