Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino Hatches ‘Star Trek’ Movie Idea; Paramount, JJ Abrams To Assemble Writers Room
(http://deadline.com/2017/12/quentin-tarantino-star-trek-movie-jj-abrams-1202220032/)
by Mike Fleming Jr
December 4, 2017 5:03pm

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REX/Shutterstock

EXCLUSIVE: Already busy prepping to direct the film he just set up at Sony Pictures, Quentin Tarantino is also planning to boldly go where he has not gone before. Sources said that Tarantino has come up with a great idea for a Star Trek movie at Paramount. After sharing his idea with JJ Abrams (who himself is busy prepping Star Wars Episode IX), I’ve heard the plan is to assemble a writers room of scribes who’ll hear Tarantino’s take and begin to put together a movie. If it all works out, Tarantino might direct it, with Abrams producing.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/jj-abrams.jpg?w=151&h=224&crop=1
JJ Abrams
REX/Shutterstock

While Tarantino has always come up with his own original films, many have wondered what he might do if he took the reins of an existing franchise. He has only done that on television, twice directing episodes of CSI and once an episode of ER. He has spoken about the appeal of taking on one of the James Bond movies, but the hard part of something like that is getting the rights holders to give him a wide creative swath that comes along with a final cut auteur like Tarantino. This would give a remarkable boost to the venerable franchise for Paramount, which is looking to build them under studio chief Jim Gianopulos.

As Deadline revealed last month, Tarantino agreed to make his next film for Sony Pictures. The untitled film is an ensemble that deals with a period in Los Angeles around the time of the Manson murder spree around 1969. He has asked Margot Robbie to play Sharon Tate, and has been discussing two great male lead roles with Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, though he hasn’t yet set final casting. Release date is August 9, 2019. That is the 50th anniversary of the death of Sharon Tate, but the description of the picture as a Manson Family pic isn’t really accurate, kind of like describing Inglorious Basterds as a movie about Hitler.

Paramount declined comment, and attempts to reach Tarantino’s camp were unavailing. Stay tuned.

Tarantino would be amusing, but I'd rather see David Leitch take the con. :cool:

[GeneChing]

Not sure if this new spin-off is Gotham City Sirens (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69944-Gotham-City-Sirens) or something else, but I'll post it here for now, as well as on Batgirl (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70192-Batgirl).


APRIL 17, 2018 8:22AM PT
Cathy Yan to Direct Harley Quinn Spinoff Starring Margot Robbie (http://variety.com/2018/film/news/cathy-yan-harley-quinn-movie-margot-robbie-1202755503/)
By Justin Kroll @krolljvar
Film Reporter

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/suicide-squad-harley-quinn.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
Suicide Squad Harley Quinn
CREDIT: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.

Cathy Yan has been tapped to direct a DC spinoff movie centered on crazed supervillain Harley Quinn. The girl gang movie will be based on the “Birds of Prey” comic, with Margot Robbie attached to star.

Robbie’s LuckyChap is producing with Sue Kroll and her Kroll & Co Entertainment, along with Bryan Unkeless of Clubhouse Pictures.

Yan, a former Wall St. Journal reporter who made her feature debut with Sundance entry “Dead Pigs,” will be the second female filmmaker to direct a DC film, following Patty Jenkins with “Wonder Woman.” She will also be the first Asian woman to helm a movie from the DC Comics universe. DC previously tapped Ava DuVernay to direct “New Gods,” which is still in development.

Christina Hodson, who was recently tapped to pen the “Batgirl” pic, wrote the script. The studio had been weighing several Quinn options, including a “Suicide Squad” sequel with Gavin O’Connor, before picking “Birds of Prey.” Sources add that script is still being worked on, but Yan is likely to take over directing reins once the script is done.

Production is expected to start at the end of the year after Robbie finishes shooting Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” for which she is currently in negotiations to play Sharon Tate.

The sequel to the Harley Quinn-starring “Suicide Squad” is also expected to begin production in 2018. Gavin O’Connor is on board to write the sequel and is also in talks to direct the film that co-stars Will Smith and Jared Leto.

Yan is repped by CAA. Deadline Hollywood first reported the news.

I suppose I should start a thread on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because if it's about Tate, it should include Bruce Lee.

[GeneChing]

I copied the post above from our kung fu star trek people thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?33187-kung-fu-star-trek-people&p=1306273#post1306273) (don't ask - blame Jamieson) and the other from Gotham City Sirens (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69944-Gotham-City-Sirens&p=1308316#post1308316). I think there's more about this here on the forum somewhere but I'm not going to search it out right now.


Quentin Tarantino Rounds Out Cast With Spencer Garrett, Martin Kove, James Remar, Brenda Vaccaro, Nichole Galicia, Mike Moh (https://deadline.com/2018/07/quentin-tarantino-rounds-out-cast-with-spencer-garrett-martin-kove-james-remar-brenda-vaccaro-1202424049/)
by Mike Fleming Jr
July 10, 2018 2:12pm

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Manfred Bauman/REX/Shutterstock

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino has rounded out his cast of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Spencer Garrett, Martin Kove, James Remar, Brenda Vaccaro, Nichole Galicia, Mike Moh, Craig Stark, Marco Rodriguez, Ramon Franco and Raul Cardona.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/brenda-vaccaro-e1531252258754.jpg?w=151&h=224&crop=1
REX/Shutterstock

They play a variety of characters alongside stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Burt Reynolds, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Dakota Fanning, Scoot McNairy and Al Pacino.

Garrett, best known for Syfy’s The Magicians and HBO’s Insecure, plays Allen Kincade, TV personality/interviewer to Hollywood’s elite.

Once Upon a Time takes place in Los Angeles in 1969, at the height of hippie Hollywood. The two lead characters are Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), former star of a Western TV series, and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt). Both are struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore. But Rick has a very famous next-door neighbor: Sharon Tate (Robbie).

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/nichole-galicia-e1531252275777.jpg?w=151&h=224&crop=1
Galicia
REX/Shutterstock

Stark previously worked with Tarantino in The Hateful Eight and Django Unchained. Remar also worked with Tarantino in Django Unchained and is a favorite of the director for his work in films including Black Lightning. Kove shoots the film as he reprises as the iconic karate bad guy in Cobra Kai, YouTube Red’s Karate Kid spinoff.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/mike-moh.jpg?w=151&h=224&crop=1
Moh
REX/Shutterstock

Garrett is repped by Abrams Artists; Kove is with Advanced Management; Remar is Gersh and Lighthouse Entertainment; Vaccaro is Stewart Talent; Galicia is Innovative and Silver Lining Entertainment; Moh is WME and manager Chris Lee; Stark is Framework Entertainment; Rodriguez is Ellis Talent Group and Mills Kaplan Entertainment.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/craig-stark-e1531252290884.jpg?w=151&h=224&crop=1
Stark
REX/Shutterstock

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is produced by David Heyman, Tarantino and Shannon McIntosh, and Sony Pictures will release it August 9, 2019.

Read Bruce Lee: A Life by Matt Polly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65795-Bruce-Lee-A-Life-by-Matt-Polly) to get the connection (if you don't already know).

[Jimbo]

Interesting concept. I definitely wanna see this when it comes out.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3SkoKk4Ezs

Mike Moh in 2015

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino Casts His Roman Polanski in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (http://collider.com/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-roman-polanski-actor/#images)
BY ADAM CHITWOOD AUGUST 28, 2018

http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/quentin-tarantino-slice-600x200.jpg

The cast for Quentin Tarantino’s new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just keeps growing, even as filming has been underway for weeks. To be fair, this film has a giant ensemble so adding bit players to do a scene here and there isn’t difficult to do during production—but one major role has now been filled: that of filmmaker Roman Polanski. Indeed, when it was first announced that Tarantino was moving ahead on a new movie, the initial reported plot details were that it was a film revolving around the Manson Murders. That turned out to be a bit inaccurate, as it soon became clear that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is about Charles Manson the way that Inglourious Basterds is about Adolf Hitler—that is to say, the figure appears in the film, but isn’t a main character.

The story of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes place in 1969 and follows a fading Western TV star (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double (Brad Pitt) who wonder where their place in Hollywood is at the turn of the decade. Additionally, DiCaprio’s character lives next door to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), who of course was brutally murdered by Manson’s followers.

http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/margot-robbie-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-600x600.jpg
Image via Sony Pictures

A major question arose, then, as to whether Tarantino would also be including Roman Polanski as a character in the film. We now know for sure that he is, and THR reports that Polanski will be played by Polish actor Rafal Zawierucha, who’s pretty much an unknown here in the States.

It’s unclear how much screentime will be given to Polanski, and we still don’t know for certain if Charles Manson is in the film and who’s playing him. THR says that Danny Strong, Sydney Sweeney, Clu Gulager, James Landry Hébert, and Mikey Madison have also now been added to the massive ensemble, but for those worried this thing is going to be overstuffed, it sounds very much like this will be an Inherent Vice-like situation. The film has already been described as Pulp Fiction-esque in structure and scope, so while there are a lot of people in this movie, it sounds like Tarantino is filling out every single role with a known performer, even if the role only has a couple of lines. Which is pretty perfect considering this is a movie about Hollywood.

Production continues and we still have a ways to wait until the film’s July 26, 2019 release date, but I wonder if Tarantino is aiming for a Cannes Film Festival debut in May as he’s done with some of his previous films. If that’s the case, we may get our first reactions to the film earlier than expected.

The announced ensemble for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood now also includes Lena Dunham, Maya Hawke, Timothy Olyphant, Burt Reynolds, Damian Lewis, Luke Perry, Dakota Fanning, Clifton Collins, Keith Jefferson, Emile Hirsch, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Scoot McNairy, Al Pacino, and Nicholas Hammond

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/carnage-roman-polanski-set-photo-01-600x400.jpg
Image via Sony Pictures Classics

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Image via Sony Pictures

Indeed, who as Manson? Interesting that Moh doesn't make the list in this article...

[Jimbo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3SkoKk4Ezs

Mike Moh in 2015

I hope Tarantino gives the Bruce Lee character a bit of the depth of his actual personality, rather than making him a charicature of BL's movie characters. Which means havin him thumbing his nose, screaming "Waaasaaaahhhh!", and all the other BL imitation stuff (almost) everyone else has done. BL was a talker; by all accounts, he talked a LOT, which in itself would fit in perfectly in a Tarantino movie. I'd rather see the BL character doing more of that than prancing around like a puppet trying to mimic BL's MA skills (which almost always end up being his MOVIE MA skills as opposed to how he actually behaved).

I'm fully aware that Tarantino is all about alternative, revisionist history in which historical characters talk and act like modern-day people, and I'm not expecting the BL character to have much of a part in it. But I would NOT want him presented onscreen like Tarantino presented the "Pai Mei" character in Kill Bill 2; as a schlock cinema character to be spoofed to a ridiculous degree. BL had an interesting personality and sense of humor in real-life. I would hope that Tarantino has done some homework on him and attempts to capture some of that onscreen.

[GeneChing]

Enter The Legend: 'Dragon' Turns 45 (https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639343899/the-lasting-influence-of-bruce-lees-enter-the-dragon-which-turns-45)
Download Transcript (https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=639343899)
August 17, 2018 4:53 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
JUSTIN RICHMOND

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/08/24/gettyimages-607431140_wide-551a9ccd460922742eb0af495056793f34197aba-s800-c85.jpg
Bruce Lee on the set of Enter the Dragon.
Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

When the seminal martial arts film Enter the Dragon premiered in August 1973 — 45 years ago this weekend — it was exactly what Bruce Lee had been waiting for: A starring role in a Hollywood production.

Kung fu meets blaxploitation, and all action, Enter the Dragon was a hit at the box office. It grossed over $20 million in the United States, even beating out a Steve McQueen film, and was Warner Brothers' top grossing film internationally that year.

It sparked an explosion of martial arts movies — which until then had largely only existed in Hong Kong. It was supposed to make Bruce Lee a star.

"Enter the Dragon was really a very precious project for him," says Shannon Lee, Bruce's daughter. "And the one that he had been waiting for."


What Bruce Lee wanted to do was to create a heroic Asian male character, but it simply didn't exist.

Matthew Polly

But a month before the film's premiere, he died. Instead of becoming a star, he became a legend.

Before martial arts films, Lee was a child actor in Hong Kong.

He played mostly dramatic roles. One film, The Orphan, actually made him a bit of a celebrity there — his performance was compared to James Dean's in Rebel Without a Cause.

But any fame he had quickly disappeared when he left Hong Kong for the U.S., where he moved when his family felt he was getting in too much trouble at home. Lee, who had been a martial arts student since his early teens, decided to make a living as an instructor.

He didn't plan on acting but was discovered by a TV producer. William Dozier, who produced the popular Batman TV series, cast Bruce Lee as sidekick Kato in The Green Hornet.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFBxFrq7byk
YouTube

The Green Hornet debuted on ABC on Sept. 9, 1966. Oddly enough, the original Star Trek series, featuring George Takei as Sulu, premiered the same week. Both shows were significant for casting Asian-American males in prominent roles on TV.

That was far from the norm.

"Up until The Green Hornet, it really was pretty much a wasteland as far as Asian-American continuous representation on television," says Jeff Yang, a writer and host of the podcast They Call Us Bruce.

The Green Hornet didn't catch on like the Batman series and was canceled after only a year. After a few more guest spots on TV and a movie, Lee was ready to play a new type of character — one that didn't yet exist for Asian males in Hollywood.

https://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/b/bruce-lee/9781501187629_custom-1d04f3f182e50cddf5239330287a575e1da00bf7-s400-c85.jpg
Bruce Lee
A Life
by Matthew Polly
Hardcover, 640 pages purchase

"What Bruce Lee wanted to do was to create a heroic Asian male character," says Matthew Polly, author of the new biography Bruce Lee: A Life. "But it simply didn't exist. There were only two types of roles — Fu Manchu, the villain, and Charlie Chan, the model minority. And both of these characters were played by white actors in multiple films during the '50s and '60s."

It was about this time Lee caught a lucky break.

He went back to Hong Kong to visit family and was greeted at the airport by producers eager to cast him. It had been over a decade since his last role in Hong Kong, but The Green Hornet had been playing there — except there it was called The Kato Show. Lee was again a star.

He decided to make martial arts films for Hong Kong audiences. He made three: The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon. All were hits in Hong Kong. So Lee reached out to a producer he knew at Warner Brothers.

Which is where Enter the Dragon, well, enters. A co-production between Lee's Hong Kong studio, Golden Harvest, and Warner Brothers, it was the first martial arts film produced by an American studio. Lee was finally the heroic Asian star of a Hollywood movie. And he kicked butt.

Lee died a month before the film's release in the U.S. and didn't get to see the lasting influence it would have.


Without 'Enter the Dragon' most of the video games that we associate now with martial arts — certainly all of the television shows and films that have come afterwards ... would not be the same.

Jeff Yang

"Without Enter the Dragon most of the video games that we associate now with martial arts — certainly all of the television shows and films that have come afterwards ... would not be the same," Yang says.

"You know, we take for granted now that Hollywood action movies, they have martial arts, they have fight choreography, they do all this amazing stuff," says Phil Yu, the writer behind the site Angry Asian Man. "Before then we hadn't really seen martial arts in that context in a Hollywood film."

Lee's influence stretched beyond the screen. The Wu-Tang Clan's first album, one of the landmarks of hip-hop, was called Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in honor of Lee's last film.

"Man, I used to bang my hands on the wall trying to get iron palms, scrape my hands with beans," says the RZA. "I got stretch marks on my shoulders because of kung fu things I was trying to do."

Forty-five years after his death, Lee still turns up all over popular culture — just this week, Quentin Tarantino announced a new actor in his upcoming 1969 period piece, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. The role? Bruce Lee.

THREADS:
Enter the Dragon (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?26150-Enter-the-Dragon)
Bruce Lee: A Life by Matt Polly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65795-Bruce-Lee-A-Life-by-Matt-Polly)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)

[GeneChing]

Bruce Dern Replaces His Friend Burt Reynolds In Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ (https://deadline.com/2018/09/bruce-dern-replaces-burt-reynolds-quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-1202471986/)
by Mike Fleming Jr
September 27, 2018 10:51am

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/bruce-dern-quentin-tarantino.jpg?w=446&h=299&crop=1
Shutterstock

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino is setting Bruce Dern to play George Spahn in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. That was the role that Dern’s longtime friend Burt Reynolds was going to play but was unable to shoot before he died on September 6.

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Dern, who played the most ****ed-off man in the world as former Confederate general Sanford Smithers in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, will join a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Dakota Fanning, James Mardsen, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham, Emile Hirsch, Luke Perry, Scoot McNairy and James Remar. The film is a Pulp Fiction-esque tapestry of stories in an around Los Angeles in the summer of 1969, when Charles Manson and his followers massacred Sharon Tate and others. The film will be released July 26 by Sony Pictures. David Heyman is producing with Shannon McIntosh and Tarantino.

Two-time Oscar nominee Dern currently is filming Remember Me in Spain, but producer Atit Shah and director Martin Rosete rearranged the schedule so Dern could leave that production to shoot Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.

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Instagram

Dern takes over the role of Spahn, a near-blind 80-year-old man who rented out his L.A. ranch to be used as the location for Westerns. Manson convinced Spahn to allow him and his followers to live on the ranch, in the months before they murdered Tate and six others. In exchange for rent, Manson coerced his female followers into hopping into bed with the ranch owner and serving as his seeing-eye guides, per reports. Adding to the creepiness: Manson acolyte Squeaky Fromme, the woman who later would attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford, reputedly got her nickname because she would making a squeaking noise when Spahn touched her.

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Hallmark

Tarantino has ostensibly gotten another ’70s film icon to replace Reynolds, who waited years for a chance to prove himself in a big movie. He finally had gotten one when the director set him for the role, tapping a forgotten talent the way he did in past films with the likes of David Carradine, John Travolta, Pam Grier, Robert Forster and Michael Parks.

Dern and Reynolds appeared together several times over the years, including Hard Ground, a 2003 Western for Hallmark; the 1999 TV movie Hard Time: The Premonition on TNT; and a 1965 episode of the ABC WWII series 12 O’Clock High.

Dern has been turning in one strong performance after another lately. He currently co-stars opposite Matthew McConaughey in the Yann Demange-directed White Boy Rick and played bitter patriarch Joe Kennedy in Chappaquiddick. Before The Hateful Eight, Dern had a role in Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and he was nominated for an Oscar in the Alexander Payne-directed Nebraska. He’s repped by Innovative and Pure Arts.

Never knew that about Squeaky.

I'm a big fan of Dern's work. What an amazing career he has had.

[GeneChing]

Women of Action: Meet a Hollywood Female Stunt Coordinator (and a Favorite of Quentin Tarantino) (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/meet-hollywoods-first-solo-female-stunt-coordinator-a-major-film-1165843?fbclid=IwAR2-G8JFONBgL_3ETMj71H9z5zdp2-0CULOr5LGEvgYPxCoZ3wI-_Wgsod4)
6:45 AM PST 12/6/2018 by Mia Galuppo

Zoe Bell, whose credits include 'Kill Bill' and 'Inglourious Basterds,' says she never felt fear until the director hired her to oversee all the stunts on 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.'

Zoe Bell has been strapped to the hood of a speeding Dodge Charger and thrown off a building. But the 40-year-old stuntwoman never truly felt fear until she was hired by Quentin Tarantino as the stunt coordinator on the now-shooting Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. "As a performer, the more I scare the stunt coordinator, the better," she tells THR, during a break from shooting. "But now I'm the stunt coordinator, and I'm the one getting scared."

The New Zealand native trained as a gymnast and was beginning to study martial arts when her father met a stunt performer at his job as an emergency room doctor. “[He] came home with a phone number.” Bell laughs, “My dad looked at this guy with a concussion and thought, ‘My daughter should do that!’” Six months later, Bell, then 19, was on the set of cult fantasy series Xena: Warrior Princess, doubling star Lucy Lawless. (“They must have been desperate!” she jokes). What followed has been a decades-long career that included doubling for everyone from Sandra Bullock in The Proposal to Cate Blanchett in Thor: Ragnarok.

She started working with Tarantino back in 2003, when she landed a gig as Uma Thurman's double on Kill Bill. "Quentin asked me what my motivation was," she recalls of shooting the film's action sequences. "He wanted me to think like an actor. It wasn’t just about doing a left, a right and a side kick. I had to be [the Bride] doing a left, a right and a side kick.”

Bell and Tarantino continued working together on films like Planet Terror and Inglourious Basterds, and she even starred as herself in Death Proof, the Tarantino film that stars Kurt Russell as a murderous stunt driver. But her job on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio as players in Charlie Manson-era L.A. — is her first time as the woman in charge on a production of this size. “[Tarantino] threw out of the possibility of me coordinating and I was like, ‘Holy crap!’” says Bell, who had begun to make the jump to the director’s chair, herself. She had just been admitted to the AFI's Directing Workshop for Women and is planning to take the year off to dedicate herself to the program. “It was the epitome of champagne problems,” she says of the crossroads. “Ultimately, I thought [Once Upon a Time] is family. It’s Quentin. Also, women don’t often step into this role.”

A stunt coordinator oversees the production's entire stunt department — from budgets to equipment to on-set safety to, of course, hiring. When it came time to build out her crew, Bell, now a department head, made a point to hire inclusively. “I posed the question: ‘What about girls for safety [positions]?’ I only had to ask it one time before my team, men and women, started throwing out names. But it took me stopping to realize that I hadn’t asked the question.”

While female stunt coordinators are a rarity, Bell says she hasn't had any issue commanding authority. She credits her tight-knit crew of Tarantino regulars who've seen her entire journey. “I was a baby and now I am heading a department,” she says. “I have come a long way from a girl with pigtails and acne showing up and going, ‘Hey guys, I’m here! Where do you want me to fall over?’”

And while Bell worked to ensure safety behind the scenes on Once Upon a Time, she will also be featured onscreen in a particularly meta role: “I play the stunt coordinator’s wife.”


A version of this story first appeared in the 2018 Women in Entertainment Power 100 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

This article came with an embedded vid, so here's a pic.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgxMzU5MTY2OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzMzNTkxMzI@._ V1_SY1000_CR0,0,692,1000_AL_.jpg

Nice to see her get some recognition.

[GeneChing]

Martial Arts Studio Owner Plays Bruce Lee in Film (https://www.athleticbusiness.com/fitness-training/martial-arts-studio-owner-plays-bruce-lee-in-film.html)
by Paul Steinbach December 2018

https://www.athleticbusiness.com/images/Magazine/2019/Jan/Featured/OneOnOne119_feat.jpg

Mike Moh grew up in Minnesota idolizing Bruce Lee. On June 26, the 35-year-old father of three will appear on the big screen as Lee, the legendary martial artist and actor, in Quentin Tarantino's new film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." How did the proprietor of a martial arts school in Waunakee, Wis., wind up in the same cast with Kurt Russell, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino and Leonardo DiCaprio? With a fighting spirit, as AB senior editor Paul Steinbach learned during a conversation with Moh on Lee's birthday, Nov. 27.

What's your day job like?
I started by teaching in a little community center that we have here and then we've just been outgrowing everything. We've had four different locations, so hopefully this new studio that we've just opened up will last us a few more years. I went from 3,400 square feet to about 9,000, and this was the first space that I actually had full control over the layout. About 40 percent of it is dedicated to an "American Ninja Warrior"-type gym for kids, with a lot of the same obstacles you'll see on that TV show, but then the main part of it — about 60 percent — is our martial arts training facility.

How would you characterize your clientele?
We're a family martial arts school, so I would say 70 percent is kids, but we have a lot of parents training with their kids, and we do also have an adult program. We definitely have students of all ages — from as young as four to students in their 60s. We have over 400 members now, and that's just on the martial arts side. With our ninja gym, it's not really a membership base. We do a lot of birthday parties. We do classes in sessions as opposed to an ongoing membership.

To what extent has the entertainment industry helped popularize martial arts in America?
In America, martial arts really took off when a guy named Bruce Lee became mainstream. He was a big catalyst for the big popularity jump in martial arts in America. Then in the '80s, when "The Karate Kid" came out, that was huge — a huge boost to the martial arts industry, as well. Martial arts, for as long as I've been alive, has always had a big place in mainstream media, whether it's cartoons or video games or movies, and Taekwondo, with all the kicks that we do, is very visually appealing, to kids especially.

What draws clients to Moh's Martial Arts?
I would say the number one thing that gets the parents to sign the kids up is they want their kids to build their confidence and self esteem. Some schools focus strictly on self-defense. Some are very heavy into competition. Our school's main focus is life skills. It's kind of like a school of life, but the vehicle to teach that is the discipline of martial arts. And I think that goes hand in hand — the discipline that they need, the respect they need to show themselves and others and their teachers. I think that's the reason we've grown so fast, especially in this community. It's a very family-centric community and people value high morals and values and work ethic. We like to think of ourselves as partners in parenting.

Can you summarize your school's curriculum?
We teach about 80 percent traditional martial arts, the traditional forms or the katas. We do sparring with rules sets of Taekwondo. We do board breaking. We do weapons practice. And then the modern martial arts is some of the more modern takes on self-defense, as far as mixed martial arts, and we integrate a little bit of kick boxing. We just kind of take from different styles that I feel are applicable and exciting for the students to learn, that are outside of the traditional realm of Taekowndo curriculum.

Do you see martial arts as an effective fitness regimen?
Absolutely. The movements that we're doing are pretty high-intensity. Our classes in particular are fast-paced and energetic. We have some really high-level athletes and competitors in our school, and they're very fit just from the nature of our difficult training.

When did you personally get started?
I started at 12. I grew up playing video games that had martial arts in them. I watched the Ninja Turtles. I watched all the Jackie Chan and the Bruce Lee movies with my dad, and I remember my dad telling me that he — as a part of his military service — had done Taekwondo as a young man. I just kind of gravitated toward martial arts. When I first started taking classes after convincing my parents, I just kind of fell in love with it and that became my thing.

What about Lee, in particular, appealed to you?
What was cool about Bruce is he had a very unique perspective and philosophy on life — not just martial arts, but life. When I talk about our school mixing in different elements of different martial arts, not necessarily that we're teaching UFC-style fighting, but when I say mixed martial arts, we're not just stuck to one style of Taekwondo. I'm open to bringing in different useful and exciting things of other martial arts and mixing it in with our curriculum. Bruce Lee was famous for doing that. Back in the day, you were either a Kung Fu guy or a Karate guy or a Jiu Jitsu guy. There was no mixing the arts. It was frowned upon. He was the first person to step outside and say, "To hell with that." He would do what he thought was useful and effective.

Can you describe how his philosophy has impacted you?
I think one thing that's kind of stuck with me through the past two years is that all the challenges that we have are still blessings, but we don't really know what's next. That's been exciting, but also kind of a challenge having three kids and trying to balance that and not knowing exactly what my next job will be or where I'm going to be for the next few months. My wife recently left her job to take on the lead role of the ninja gym. It's been a lot of change, so the thing that I really like to live my life by that Bruce shared was to be like water. When the water needs to be strong, it can crash. When the water needs to creep and flow, it can find its way around a problem. So adapting to different life circumstances that are presented and using different methods to problem-solve — going with the flow sometimes, and sometimes barging straight through if you need to.

Are there parallels to be drawn between martial arts and acting?
Absolutely. I think the kind of mental toughness that I built from martial arts has prepared me well for the acting career. I took the same approach to becoming a good actor that I did with being a martial artist. It's just a process. You start at the bottom. You start as a white belt, and then with every little challenge that you accept, or little role that you get, you get more experience and you build your confidence. Now I feel like I'm reaching the point where the momentum is starting to roll downhill after such a really tough upward battle. But even in martial arts, I'm a white belt in Jiu Jitsu. I just started taking another style. And even with Taekwondo, there are many kicks that still are challenging for me and forms that I'm not very good at, so I'm still a student myself. I think that's another mindset I try to pass on to my students of all ages. Even if you accomplish something, you're always going to be a student. You should always approach every challenge with a white-belt mentality, that there's always more to learn.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

How did you land the role of Bruce Lee?
I spent about eight or nine years in Los Angeles as an actor. I've been on different shows and smaller movies, but that kind of led me to get the right team in place. I have a team of managers — an agency out in Los Angeles — and they're always looking out for different things that might be right for me. They contacted me about this film and were able to get me an audition.

Was it a long process?
It's not very common for an actor to live in Wisconsin, so I have this unique setup where I tape my auditions. I send it to my team, and they forward it on to casting. And if they like me, it's kind of known that I'm willing to fly myself out to meet them to do a second audition or meet the producers or directors. That's kind of how I've gotten jobs in the past couple of years. I did a Marvel TV show on ABC called "Inhumans," which was short-lived but an exciting ride. And then this audition came up, and for this one, the project was so secretive, they would not allow me to tape it. They didn't want any of the material out on the internet, so I had to fly with maybe 12 hours notice. My agents called me and they said, "Hey, we need you to be out here." So I caught a flight a couple hours later, and I auditioned with the casting director and they showed it to Quentin Tarantino. Then a couple weeks later I had to fly out again to meet him, because he responded to my audition so well. It was a process of about two months that I had to fight to win the role. I think I flew out there a total of three separate times. I jumped through a lot of hoops. They also tested my martial arts ability. I had to do some intensive training before we went on camera. I was doing three weeks of training and then a full week and a half of filming. It was a really exciting but stressful time in my life, but now looking back, it's all good.

What was it like meeting Tarantino?
It was really surreal. He's one of the top directors of all time, and you can see why he's so successful, because he's just passionate — super passionate about film — and loves doing what he does. It's infectious. It's something I will always remember and hold dear, just this whole process.

Were you a fan of his going into that face-to-face?
I'd seen a lot of his movies. I definitely knew of his work, but it wasn't something like I studied all his movies or anything. Anytime any actor hears that name, it's synonymous with greatness. My nerves were high, and I knew that this would be a big moment in my entertainment career moving forward. The stakes were definitely high.

How does it feel seeing your name among Russell, Pacino, DiCaprio?
It's a little wild. They recently finished filming, so my wife and I got invited to the wrap party. We flew to Los Angeles, and I got to meet a lot of the cast that I did not get a chance to work with in the film. You know, I feel like a fan with unprecedented access to some of this Hollywood stuff. But in reality, I'm an integral part of the film, and it's going to be a really memorable thing to be a part of. When you say those names, it's like I definitely don't feel I'm worthy to be mentioned among them, but everybody's got to start somewhere, and hopefully somebody will mention my name and be humbled and honored to work with me someday. That's the goal.

How important are your physical skills to your marketability as an actor?
I knew when I first started out in this business that my martial arts ability would be my edge, so I knew going in that I was going to market myself somebody who can do that. When I first started, I did a lot of commercials as a ninja or a martial-arts-type guy. As I progressed, slowly and surely, I played a waiter on the show "House" on Fox years ago. I said one thing. A little tiny role. But, you know, you start somewhere. I prefer action roles that require both action and acting. That's kind of like my wheelhouse. But I'm really proud of the fact that I've been hired just for my acting ability, as well — things where they don't know that I'm a martial artist. I think that's what has allowed me to continue to work, where I'm not just one-dimensional. Obviously, this role that we're talking about now with Tarantino is kind of like a dream come true. I get to do both. Moving forward I'd love to do more of just straight acting roles, as well.

Would you ever give up teaching to act full time?
I don't think I'll ever stop doing martial arts, and I love to teach. It's a passion of mine. Would I step away full-time, doing it every day? I think I would have to. Something would have to give. But I've been working really hard the past few years on building my team up, knowing that if my goal is to act in movies and be on TV series and fulfill that goal part of my life, then I don't want to be the guy who leaves my students high and dry. That's why I've been training my team to make sure that when I'm gone for long periods of time that the experience doesn't drop off and that everybody is in good hands. I would love to be able to stay in Wisconsin and teach when I'm able to and then try to balance it all. Who knows what reality will bring? But I do know that whether my acting career takes off or whether this is just kind of like a fun little thing, I'm very happy doing both. So there's no pressure. It's just kind of riding the wave and seeing what comes next. I think I would still own my school or maybe in the future I'll have more than one and continue to just mentor my team to make sure that they have the tools and the recipe for success.

Is there any evidence of your acting alter ego in the studio space?
I don't throw it in anybody's face and make the studio all about me, but it's not something that I hide. I do share my victories with the students as a point of inspiration once in a while. They know that I've worked on this film, that it was a big dream of mine, and that I accomplished it. I think that's powerful for the kids to know that, hey, I still have goals and dreams that I'm working to achieve. It doesn't always go the way I want, but look, I didn't give up. I got to celebrate the victory with them. And I do cool little things, like every summer we do a movie star camp where I help the students make a film. I get to share a lot of experience that I've had in my life and create opportunities for kids that I'm pretty confident no other martial arts school can provide. It's been fun.

This article originally appeared in the January | February 2019 issue of Athletic Business with the title "Martial arts studio owner goes Hollywood as Bruce Lee." Athletic Business is a free magazine for professionals in the athletic, fitness and recreation industry.

Whatever happens, his school attendance will blow up. Good for him.

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scf8nIJCvs4

[GeneChing]

Everything to Know About the Martial Arts Expert Playing Bruce Lee in Tarantino's New Movie (https://people.com/movies/mike-moh-bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/)

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/mike-moh.jpg?w=450
Mike MohRichard Harbaugh via Getty
Mike Moh is going viral for facing off against Brad Pitt as Bruce Lee in the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

By ERIC TODISCO
March 20, 2019 03:35 PM

The first teaser for Quentin Tarantino‘s massively anticipated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood dropped on Tuesday. And while Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate all made expected appearances — one major newcomer made a surprise splash playing Bruce Lee. (He even faces off against Pitt in the footage, leading the Internet to go wild.)

The late famous martial artist and actor, who died in 1973, will play a potentially significant role in the upcoming film. He’ll be brought to life by Mike Moh, a performer who not only bears a striking resemblance to the late icon, but is also an accomplished martial artist in his own right.

News first broke of Moh’s casting in August 2018 when Tarantino selected him for the part. The film explores DiCaprio and Pitt’s characters who venture into the Los Angeles film industry around the same time of Sharon Tate‘s murder at the hands of the Manson family.

Here are five things to know about Moh.

1. He is a black belt in martial arts

Moh has plenty of martial arts experience that undoubtedly helped him land the role. He earned his fifth-degree Taekwondo black belt when he was 14 years old — just two years after he began the sport.

He has also won several Taekwondo world championships, and both owns and is the chief instructor at Moh’s Martial Arts in Wisconsin.

2. He has appeared in several TV shows including Empire

Moh brought his martial art talents to his acting career when he starred in the web series Street Fighter: Assassins Fist as Ryu. The series aired on YouTube for 12 episodes.

After his role in Street Fighter, Moh began to venture further into the small screen. From 2015 to 2017, he played the role as Steve Cho in Fox’s hit drama Empire. Following that nine episode run, he joined the cast of ABC’s Marvel’s Inhumans as Triton.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/mike-moh-1.jpg
Mike Moh Michael Muller via Getty

Moh’s role in Inhumans was very daunting, as he spent three to five hours every day in the makeup chair to prepare himself for the part. The series was ultimately cancelled after 10 episodes, three of which Moh appeared in as Triton.

3. Jackie Chan is one of his inspirations

Jackie Chan has been one of Moh’s chief inspirations for years. The pair first met in Hong Kong over 11 years ago while Moh was working as a stuntman on the film Rob-B-Hood. In March 2018, Moh posted an Instagram photo of their first encounter, calling Chan “the man that inspired my Acting journey.”

“He made an incredible impression on me,” Moh said in his post. “This man was the hardest working and most humble person on set. Nothing was beneath him. He was sweeping the floor, directing the action, eating lunch with the stunt team, etc. His attitude and demeanor set an amazing example for everyone.”

4. His wife and children also compete in martial arts

For Moh, martial arts has become a family affair. He met his wife Richelle Kondratowicz via martial arts while they were children. In fact, Kondratowicz received her black belt before Moh did, and technically outranks him today.

The married couple’s three children, two boys and one girl, are following in their parents’ footsteps. The three are training at Moh’s Martial Arts to one day potentially earn a black belt of their own.

5. He made a tribute video to Bruce Lee in 2015

Three years before he would land the role as the martial art legend, Moh made a tribute video to Lee back in July 2015. The video was in honor of Lee’s 42nd anniversary of his death, and Moh performed some of Lee’s most iconic stunts while explaining how Lee, like Chan, was a source of major inspiration.

“He has been an inspiration to me and so many others around the world,” Moh said. “He transcended ethnicity, he showed us how amazing it is to be a part of the human race.”

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opens July 26.

There are several embedded vids and instagrams in the article but everything opened a new tab (ads) so I'm not going to bother transferring them.

[GeneChing]

Cannes: The Buzz Films That Won't Be at the Festival (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-festival-buzz-films-wont-screen-1202963)
4:22 AM PDT 4/18/2019 by Scott Roxborough

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2018/09/once_upon_a_time_in_hollywood_still_1_-_publicity_-_h_2018.jpg
Andrew Cooper
Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' will not be ready for Cannes, the festival said.

There will likely be no Quentin Tarantino on the Croisette, even though the festival says his latest film could still make the cut if the director finishes it soon, with high-profile omissions from the lineup including Ari Aster's 'Midsommar,' Benh Zeitlin's 'Wendy' and Hirokazu Kore-eda's 'The Truth.'

Cannes, once the undisputed heavyweight champion of international film festivals, has been on the ropes of late.

Last year's lineup included some impressive titles — Palme d'Or winner Shoplifters and Alice Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro were two standouts — but the buzz and awards attention were elsewhere, thanks in part to the festival's ongoing spat with Netflix, which sent Alfonso Cuaron's Roma to Venice for its world premiere.

Netflix is skipping Cannes again this year, so the French festival will have to do without such potential awards contenders as Martin Scorsese's mob epic The Irishman, Meryl Streep starrer The Laundromat from director Steven Soderbergh and Noah Baumbach’s period drama The King, starring Timothee Chalamet.

But Netflix's absence was expected. More surprising were the high-profile omissions from the 2019 lineup that many had predicted were sure things for the Croisette this year.

Top of the list is Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, which looked like a lock for the 72nd edition of the Cannes festival. But the feature — which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Timothy Olyphant —wasn't ready in time, the festival said Thursday. Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux said the post-production on the film, which Tarantino shot in traditional 35 mm, has been particularly time-consuming and he was “in a sprint” to finish it in time for its scheduled release this summer. Fremaux did hold out a smidgen of hope that the movie could still be a late addition to Cannes, should it be ready before the festival kicks off on May 14.

Another surprising absence this year is The Truth, Hirokazu Kore-eda's follow-up to Shoplifters, which won Cannes' Palme d'Or just last year. Sources near the Japanese filmmaker said Kore-eda had been angling for a Cannes opening- night slot — the film is his first feature shot outside Japan and features French stars Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Cannes said the movie was not ready in time. The Truth will now likely premiere in Venice instead.

One Cannes regular who won't be making the trip this year is James Gray, whose Ad Astra was not among the 19 competition titles announced Thursday. The American auteur has bowed four of his past five films in Cannes and, with Fox setting a May 24 release date for his new sci-fi picture starring Brad Pitt and Ruth Negga, most expected Ad Astra to touch down on the Croisette. It was not to be.

Ad Astra was just one of several hotly-anticipated U.S. features that were tipped for Cannes, but will be missing the fest. Midsommar, Ari Aster's follow-up to Hereditary, will not be scaring folks on the French Rivera this year. Fans of Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild will have to wait a bit longer for his second feature, Wendy, about two children from different worlds stranded on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued. And First Cow, indie film heroine Kelly Reichardt's adaptation of Jonathan Raymond’s The Half-Life: A Novel, a period drama set in the 1820s Pacific Northwest, will also not be making the trek to Cannes.

Fans of Justin Kurzel — many of whom discovered him in Cannes, where he premiered both The Snowtown Murders and Macbeth — hoped the Australian director would return to the festival with The True History of the Kelly Gang, an adaptation of the Peter Carey book starring Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult and Charlie Hunnam. But the film didn't make the 2019 cut. Perhaps the movie is a bit too mainstream for Cannes' liking. Or maybe the festival is still recovering from Kurzel's video-game adaptation Assassin Creed.

On a more serious note, Zhang Yimou's One Second will also not screen in Cannes. The drama was slated to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival before being ignominiously yanked at the last minute, officially for “technical reasons.” It is widely assumed Chinese censors have blocked the movie, which is set during the politically sensitive period of China's Cultural Revolution. There had been hope that a version of the film would be available for Cannes. Now it is unclear if the movie will be seen at all.

Cannes Film Festival poster 2019

SCOTT ROXBOROUGH
Scott.Roxborough@THR.com
sroxborough

THREADS
Cannes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?53853-Cannes)
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One Second by Zhang Yimou (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71172-One-Second-by-Zhang-Yimou)

[GeneChing]

Never mind the post above (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?53853-Cannes&p=1313504#post1313504). :rolleyes:


Cannes Adds Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' to Competition Lineup (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-adds-quentin-tarantinos-once-a-time-hollywood-1203730)
3:01 AM PDT 5/2/2019 by Rhonda Richford

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2018/09/once_upon_a_time_in_hollywood_still_1_-_publicity_-_h_2018.jpg
Andrew Cooper
'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'

The addition will bring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie to the red carpet, while Abdellatif Kechiche and Gael Garcia Bernal also join the lineup.
Quentin Tarantino's highly anticipated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the film festival unveiled Thursday.

The addition means that Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie will be adding a burst of star power to this year's festival.

The film had been expected in the original lineup, unveiled on April 18, but artistic director Thierry Fremaux told reporters that day that the film wasn't ready.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said he was “really, really, really focused” on Tarantino finishing the film in time to make the festival. He compared the director to Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese and said Tarantino was part of the Cannes family.

While Fremaux had hinted there would be one or two titles named to the lineup, he added a slew of films in the announcement Thursday.

Alongside Tarantino, Palme d'Or winner Abdellatif Kechiche will also be in competition with the second part of his Mektoub, My Love epic series. The Intermezzo installment of the young love story will unspool at four hours.

Out of competition, Gaspar Noe's mid-length Lux Aeterna starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beatrice Dalle will take a midnight screening berth, apropos for his story about witches.

Gael Garcia Bernal's Chicuarotes will join the lineup as a special screening, alongside Patricio Guzman's La Cordillera de los Suenos, Leila Conners's Ice on Fire and Dan Krauss's Ward 5B.

Lorenzo Mattotti's La Famosa Invasione Degli Orsi in Sicilia and Larissa Sadilova's Odnazhdy v Trubchevske will join the Un Certain Regard lineup.

Festival regular Tarantino, who won the Palme d'Or for Pulp Fiction, screened Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds in competition in Cannes and served as president of the jury last year, will join Pedro Almodovar, Terrence Malick and Ken Loach among the famed directors in this year's lineup.

RHONDA RICHFORD
THRnews@thr.com
@thr



THREADS
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[GeneChing]

‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Gets 7-Minute Standing Ovation After Cannes Premiere (https://deadline.com/2019/05/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-cannes-standing-ovation-quentin-tarantino-premiere-1202620039/)
By Nancy Tartaglione
International Editor
@DeadlineNancy

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-cannes-2-e1558467671106.jpg?w=450&h=253&crop=1
Quentin Tarantino Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

The crowd that was able to get into the Cannes Film Festival’s world premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gave the film a seven-minute standing ovation at the end of one of the most anticipated screenings at the prestigious festival in recent years.

“Thank you for being such a fantastic audience for the first time we’ve ever showed it to an audience,” Tarantino told the crowd after the screening in very brief remarks, thanking the studio, producers, cast and crew.

It was an enthusiastic response to the film, Tarantino’s ninth and most recent film in Cannes since Inglourious Basterds in 2009. He won the Palme d’Or 25 years ago for Pulp Fiction.

The plot revolves around TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who make their way around an industry in 1969 Los Angeles they hardly recognize anymore. It is Tarantino’s tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age. Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry and Margaret Qualley lead the loaded ensemble cast.

Sony dropped the trailer for the pic just before the screening began. The film from Columbia Pictures hits theaters in the U.S. on July 26.

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-e1558465313941.jpg?w=1024&h=576
Leonardo DiCaprio, left, Quentin Tarantino, Daniela Pick, David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt on Tuesday
David Fisher/Shutterstock

It had been foul weather in Cannes for the fest so far, but the sun came out for the Hollywood red carpet Tuesday. Just before 6 PM local time, Tarantino and the cast including DiCaprio, Pitt, Robbie and Dakota Fanning elicited hoots and applause from the crowd inside the Palais who watched as they appeared on the giant screen and, as is custom, signed autographs for the throngs of fans lining the Croisette.

(At the same time, some ticket holders were held back between security and the red carpet, wondering if they would make it into the cinema — many didn’t get in.)

On the red carpet, the crew posed for photographers in a scene that felt more subdued than when Inglourious Basterds was here — Tarantino danced his way up the Palais steps with Melanie Laurent on his way to the screening.

Also mounting the steps on the 25th anniversary of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction world premiere were Sony’s Tom Rothman and producers David Heyman and Shannon McIntosh.

Inside ahead of the screening of the 2 hour, 39 minute film, Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux told the audience not to reveal spoilers — an unusual onstage opening here. “It’s a bit exceptional because the production and Quentin Tarantino asked me to ask you not to discuss the film,” Fremaux said. “They would greatly appreciate that you not reveal anything that would prevent audiences worldwide from experiencing what you do today.”

He then introduced the cast and Tarantino, who had the crowd on its feet as he flashed his trademark peace sign.

Without giving anything away, Deadline’s Pete Hammond who was in the crowd Tuesday, already was formulating his take:


Pete Hammond
@DeadlinePete
Tarantino’s onceUpon A time In Hollywood Is justendind. A terrific and entertaining and highly satisfying film. Unexpected in one way but absolutely right on. Pitt and DiCaprio are great!

10
11:56 AM - May 21, 2019
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Pete Hammond
@DeadlinePete
Once upon a time In Hollywood is a true love letter to LOS angeles of the 60’s. QT just thanked the audience and studio. “See you on the Crroisette” he said .

5
12:01 PM - May 21, 2019
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THREADS
Cannes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?53853-Cannes)
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[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAA

[GeneChing]

You know Mike Moh is my angle if I get invited to a screener.


Meet Tarantino's Bruce Lee: From Running a Martial Arts Studio to 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/once-a-time-hollywood-actor-mike-moh-playing-bruce-lee-1208321)
4:00 PM PDT 5/21/2019 by Mia Galuppo

Mike Moh — whose credits include roles on Fox's 'Empire' and ABC's Marvel series 'Inhumans' — opens up about working with the director and his once-in-a-lifetime gig: "Ever since, I have had an epic hangover, creatively."
At a table read last summer for Quentin Tarantino's top secret ninth feature — which would eventually be titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — Mike Moh was seated between Dakota Fanning and Luke Perry. Al Pacino made a point of greeting Moh, and Tarantino introduced him to "my friend, Burt [Reynolds]," while Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie chatted nearby.

"Then Leo [DiCaprio] walked in and we started," recalls Moh. "I just kept thinking, 'Don't look like the outsider about ready to pee your pants. Just stay cool.' "

At that point, Moh had not been formally offered a part in the movie. He had flown out from his home in Wisconsin for what he was told would be a chemistry read, but was then led into a room with what seemed like half of Hollywood. During a break, he made conversation with his maybe castmates.

“I said to Dakota, ‘I haven’t even gotten the role yet,’" remembers Moh. "And she said, ‘I think it is looking pretty good.’”

Months earlier, Moh, whose credits include roles on Fox's Empire and ABC's Marvel series Inhumans, had flown to Los Angeles to audition for the new season of Issa Rae's HBO comedy Insecure. The session was run by Victoria Thomas, who at the time also happened to be casting for Tarantino's 1960s-set film, They were search of a Bruce Lee and asked Moh to audition.

"This is literally what I had been waiting for," says Moh, who first saw Lee's Enter the Dragon in grade school and started practicing tae kwon do at 12. He moved to L.A. after college to pursue acting, but Moh and his wife, Richelle, chose to raise their children (ages 4, 6 and 8) in the small Madison suburb of Waunakee, where — like Lee — he runs his own martial arts studio: Moh's Martial Arts.

“As a kid growing up in suburban Minnesota I was one of the only Asian kids, so I was the class clown and a big part of that was me wanting to fit in," says Moh. "Then I saw Bruce Lee and I was like, 'Wow, this guy can kick ass, the girls want him, he is super-strong and -confident.' I hadn’t seen someone like that before.”

After his audition with Thomas, a one-on-one with Tarantino, the table read and a two-hour stunt test, Moh was cast.

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/2019/05/moh_as_bruce_lee_in_once_upon_a_time_in_hollywood-publicity_still-embed-2019.jpg
Andrew Cooper/Sony Pictures
Moh as Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Weeks before filming, he came to L.A. for fight rehearsals with stunt coordinator Zoë Bell and fight choreographer Robert Alonzo, perfecting Lee's patented style of Jeet Kune Do and sparring with his scene partner, Pitt. When not in rehearsal, Moh would listen to Lee’s interviews to master the star’s voice.

Production blocked out an entire day for Moh's fight sequence. On the third or fourth try, they got their take, but Tarantino wasn't through. "He says, 'That is the one that is going in the movie, but we are going to do it again. Why?' " Moh recalls. "And everyone in unison says, 'Because we love making movies!' " The cellphone-free shoot often was filled with music; Moh was surprised one day to be handed a piña colada on set. "After every 100 rolls of film," he explains, "they have a party."

When the trailer hit the internet, Moh became an instant standout, with comments on YouTube like, "I was very excited when I saw that Brad and Leo... but I lost my ****ing mind and almost dropped my phone when I saw Bruce Lee."

Moh has action-thriller Killerman, with Liam Hemsworth, lined up, and is looking for more high-concept action projects, citing the Matrix trilogy as a personal holy grail. "I am continuing to get better as an actor and I'm very confident in my martial arts skills," he says. "And, I know that if I can make my mark, I think that I can be the best at putting them together."

Still, Moh knows that a Tarantino film is a once-in-a-lifetime gig. "Ever since, I have had an epic hangover, creatively," he says. "I don't think I will ever have a moment like that again — where I felt, for the very first time, like I belonged on the A-list."

[GeneChing]

He knows how to stage a sensation...


'I reject your hypothesis': Tarantino lashes out at criticism over female actors (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/22/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-tarantino-lashes-out-at-criticism-over-female-actors)
Director reacts angrily to questions about limited screen time for Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, and violence against female characters
Gwilym Mumford
Wed 22 May 2019 07.49 EDT Last modified on Thu 23 May 2019 04.58 EDT

Quentin Tarantino responded sharply to questions about the portrayal of women in his films and disgraced director Roman Polanski at a press conference in Cannes for his new drama Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood.

The director, whose latest effort premiered to rave reviews at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday evening, was in no mood to discuss difficult topics, at one point snapping “I reject your hypothesis” at a journalist who asked why Margot Robbie had so few lines in the film.

Robbie plays Sharon Tate, the actor and wife of Polanski who was murdered by followers of Charles Manson, in the film which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as a washed-up actor and his stuntman navigating a changing late-60s Hollywood.

When asked by another journalist whether he had any hesitation over depicting tragic real-life figures such as Tate in his film, Tarantino responded with a single word: “No.” The director also refused to speak about the issue of violence against women in his film, suggesting that to do so would spoil it for viewers. “I can’t really address that,” he said.

Tarantino was slightly more forthcoming in discussing Polanski, declaring himself a fan of the Polish director’s films. “I’ve met him a couple of times. I’m a fan of Roman Polanski’s work, particularly Rosemary’s Baby. I like that a lot.” However, the director said that he had not spoken to Polanski before making his film.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/06f7b1bebbbd07539ee7fb323f7c5238309cc58d/0_100_5000_3000/master/5000.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tarantino and Margot Robbie at the press conference. Photograph: JOHN PHILLIPS/POOL/EPA

When asked why there was such fascination around the Manson murders, Tarantino said that he felt it was because they were “unfathomable”. “The more you learn, the more concrete it gets; it doesn’t make it clearer, it makes it more obscure the more you know,” he said.

Unlike Tarantino, Robbie was more forthcoming in explaining why she had so few lines in the film. “I think the moments on screen show those wonderful sides of [Sharon Tate] could be adequately done without speaking,” she said.

Robbie added that she agreed to agree to the role because she “felt that I could honour the memory of Sharon Tate”. “Quentin said to me she’s the heartbeat of the story. I saw her as a ray of light,” she said.

Brad Pitt, meanwhile, described Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood as “a rage against innocence. When the tragic loss of Sharon and others happened, what scared many even so today; it was a sobering dark look at the dark side of human nature. That pivotal moment was a real loss of innocence, and that’s what the film addresses.”

Despite Tarantino’s terseness, the director was happy to discuss his recent marriage to actor Daniella Pick. “I’ve never done that before,” he said of the marriage. “Now I know why: I was waiting for the perfect girl.”

Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood has been received warmly by critics, and currently holds a score of 86 on review aggregation site Metacritic. “I just defy anyone with red blood in their veins not to be bounced around the auditorium at the moment-by-moment enjoyment that this movie delivers,” the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote in his five-star review of the film.

[EqualStage]

Quentin Tarantino ... What a pity that the film didn't win any awards. But still, I look forward to watching it.

[GeneChing]

Variety.com
Menu MAY 28, 2019 8:37AM PT
How Quentin Tarantino Saved Cannes, While Abdellatif Kechiche Set It Back a Decade (https://variety.com/2019/film/opinion/cannes-2019-analysis-quentin-tarantino-saved-abdellatif-kechiche-trashed-1203226682/)
By PETER DEBRUGE
Chief Film Critic
@AskDebruge

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/onceuponatime.jpeg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: SONY

Once upon a time in Cannes, a wild-eyed rebel kicked his foot through the basement window of Hollywood, stealing helter skelter from his favorite B-movies and lowbrow genres, and splicing them into the king of all cult movies. Mind you, that was a quarter-century ago, the year Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” won the Palme d’Or.

It’s a different world now, and Cannes is a different beast. Unspooling 25 years to the night after “Pulp Fiction,” Tarantino’s latest meta-movie remix, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” may have been the hottest ticket of the event, but the film hardly made the same impact. Ultimately something of a disappointment, the 159-minute fetish exercise — an epic homage to dirty feet, neon-lit classic L.A. dives and showbiz in-jokes, set half a century ago, on the eve of the Manson Family murders — got the customary standing ovation following its red-carpet premiere (that’s standard practice at Cannes), but elicited nary a clap at the press screening two hours earlier (unusual for such a hotly anticipated title, but a clear sign that this is far from Tarantino’s best). On closing night, the Alejandro G. Iñárritu-headed jury, which gave prizes to nine of the 20 films in competition, didn’t so much as mention the movie (instead, their prizes mostly went to worthier films).

What a curious situation: Tarantino’s film (a last-minute addition to the lineup) — together with the rhinestone-embellished Elton John biopic “Rocketman” — may have saved Cannes’ reputation for another year, but premiering at the festival may not have done it any favors. Set in 1969, Tarantino’s “Hollywood” contends with how television changed the film biz. That’s ironic, considering that worldwide, more people were tuned to the finale of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” than what was happening in Cannes. Had either of those two glitzy pics skipped the Croisette, however, it would have made the festival’s decline undeniable.

Where Cannes once stood undisputed as the most coveted place to premiere serious works of film art — and by extension, a kind of cinema mecca for filmmakers and critics — it’s been losing ground in recent years to a trio of end-of-summer showcases: Venice, Telluride and Toronto. Cannes has felt less crowded these past couple years, and in terms of sheer auteur wattage (on paper, at least, not to be confused with overall breadth and quality), not a single edition this century can rival last year’s Venice lineup, which boasted not just “Roma,” “A Star Is Born” and “First Man,” but new films from Yorgos Lanthimos, Mike Leigh, Jacques Audiard, Carlos Reygadas, László Nemes and Olivier Assayas — all directors traditionally associated with Cannes. Quality matters, of course, and Cannes is to be applauded for passing over some of these established directors in favor of newer voices, but in terms of perception, Venice’s strategy of inviting the big names (at the expense of women and emerging voices) is having the desired effect: To the American press and industry, Venice now feels more vital. And while it’s still far from rivaling Cannes in terms of either glamour or press coverage, Venice is clearly on the ascent.

You could blame the shift of power from Cannes to the fall festivals on changes in Hollywood’s awards-season strategy, as well as the rise of a single disruptor — namely, Netflix. A desperate strategy of banning the streaming service’s offerings from competition in Cannes has sent the new-media studio looking elsewhere to launch its choice titles: independent, auteur-driven works that have every right to be shown alongside those destined for theatrical distribution. Don’t be surprised to see Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” premiere at a fall festival, the way “Roma” did at Venice, or “The Outlaw King” kicked off Toronto last year.

To make up for those films getting away, festival director Thierry Frémaux needs to convince Hollywood distributors that it makes sense for them to premiere their prestige films in Cannes. In his favor, there’s Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which became a major contender in the Oscar race after playing Cannes. But that strategy backfired on David Robert Mitchell’s “Under the Silver Lake” for A24, all but destroyed by bad reviews from critics who come with knives sharpened (for whatever reason, the press is kinder in Venice, seldom booing the way they do in Cannes). When films skip Cannes, the standard explanation is that they “weren’t ready,” but it’s still telling that James Gray’s “Ad Astra” (previously dated for a May release), Benh Zeitlin’s “Wendy” and Miranda July’s upcoming feature appear to be eyeing fall festivals instead.

Frémaux has no control over when films will be ready, and is ultimately limited to the titles available to him in late spring — which presumably explains why films such as Claire Denis’ “High Life” and Mike Leigh’s “Peterloo” skipped Cannes last year. But it’s telling that certain producers are no longer rushing to get their films done in time for the festival’s cutoff: In the past, the prospect of premiering in Cannes has been so important to some that they’d scramble to be considered (in 2004, a work-in-progress print of Wong Kar-Wai’s “2046” arrived still wet from the labs) or turn down invitations from Berlin and other festivals in hopes of debuting in Cannes (with “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick held off an entire year for the honor). Now that DCPs have taken the place of 35mm prints, filmmakers can cut it closer than ever, working right up to the last minute, which leads to a different set of problems.

Afraid of losing an important film (or several) to Venice, Frémaux is often forced to accept movies that aren’t yet done when he screens them. This is normal practice for film festivals, by the way, although I can’t think of a more exasperating example than Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo,” a continuation of the “Blue Is the Warmest Color” director’s sprawling, body-ogling 2017 “Canto Uno” (which Frémaux may have regretted letting go to Venice instead) that runs an monotonous 206 minutes, centered around a three-hour nightclub sequence in which his actresses twerk the night away — interrupted for 13 minutes to accommodate a marathon oral-sex scene, in which Kechiche explicitly demonstrates how gluteophiles express their appreciation. Practically any shot from the film might be considered gratuitous, but the sum total is downright punishing. It’s enough to make “Cheeky” director Tinto Brass blush, and in no universe does it deserve the kind of platform Cannes gave it.

Rumors suggest that Frémaux screened 25 minutes of the unfinished sequel in late April, and on the strength of what he saw — the film is so repetitive that a random core sample taken from any point should have been fairly representative — invited the Palme d’Or winner to screen in competition. It’s hard to imagine a worse decision on the part of Frémaux, who’s been obstinate about his reasons for not including more female directors. As he told Variety in 2018, “Many of these films directed by women are first or second films. They are still young filmmakers, and I wouldn’t be doing them a favor by putting their films in competition.” (Whereas men, he seems to imply, can take the scrutiny of that spotlight.)

Granted, the press reactions at Cannes can be harsh, and though I’ve never heard boos at a red-carpet premiere, they’re not uncommon in press screenings — which is no doubt one of the reasons why Frémaux canceled the practice of showing competition films in advance to critics, as no director wants to walk the red carpet knowing that his film had been rudely received earlier that day. But putting “Mektoub” in competition is nothing short of scandalous, revealing just how deep the festival’s chauvinist double-standard goes. Publicly, Frémaux says loud and clear that Cannes won’t lower the bar to include works by women, when it’s abundantly clear that they’ll take whatever garbage a more established man tosses their way. (Personally, I loved Malick’s “A Hidden Life” — a woozy, wide-angle meditation on heaven and earth from an artist who’d lost his way — but its detractors found it to be another case where the festival accepts familiar works from male artists, but doesn’t stretch to accommodate innovative forms from avant-garde women.)



continued next post

[GeneChing]

Meanwhile, it says something that of the four female-made movies in competition this year, three earned prizes: French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” (acquired by Netflix), Jessica Hausner’s “Little Joe” and Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” There’s no question that juries are now more motivated to celebrate the cinematic achievements of women. So are critics and audiences, who’ve been forced to rely on more inclusive showcases — such as Sundance, SXSW and Toronto — to find the female talents whose work festivals like Cannes and Venice refuse to accept.

Of these films, Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” distinguishes itself as the most political, dramatizing via an 18th-century encounter between two women — one a female artist, the other the noblewoman whom she’s been commissioned to paint — the way that so much of the female experience went undocumented. When art, literature and cinema are forbidden from depicting certain forbidden practices — such as an abortion, or erotic love between women — then everyone who dares to engage in such behavior feels as if she is inventing it for the first time. “Portrait” captures the thrill and challenge of that discovery, and beautifully makes the case that every artist perceives things differently, and that female artists in particular have much to add to our understanding of the world, if only because their outlook has been suppressed for so long.

Contrast the way Sciamma portrays sex and the female form from “Mektoub,” and it’s instantly apparent that Kechiche — with his leering, hot-and-bothered gaze — is literally taking the place from someone more deserving in competition. He’s entitled to his point of view as well, but it repeats and exaggerates the worst tendencies in hyper-sexualized objectification, and carving out a space for such a stunt (for there’s no doubt that Kechiche is baiting and antagonizing his critics, without adding anything meaningful to the conversation) denies other original voices a spot in competition.

We should be grateful for those others who, offered entrée by their reputations, are doing something new in their latest films. Ken Loach’s “Sorry We Missed You” and the Dardenne brothers’ “Young Ahmed” both feel like the work of young directors, despite the fact the filmmakers each have two Palmes already to their names. I’ve often resisted the work of Bong Joon-ho, but have no complaints about him winning this year’s festival with his latest, “Parasite,” which puts his slick, genre-melding skills in service of a venomous class portrait. And just when I thought queer Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar had gotten comfortable in his late career, he caught me completely by surprise with his latest — and best — film, the intimate autofiction “Pain and Glory,” in which Antonio Banderas delivers the performance of his career as a director partly inspired by Almodóvar himself.

Which brings us back to Tarantino — the 800-pound gorilla in this year’s competition. Where nearly every one of the director’s previous works has rocked the film world, leaving audiences bristling with excitement for every minute of their deranged running times, this one feels unforgivably self-indulgent. It’s bogged down by long, dull stretches (into which the director crams excerpts, real and imagined, from duly forgotten film and TV episodes of the time) during which we experience none of Tarantino’s usual gift for tension. The auteur’s signature strategy is to manipulate anticipation and suspense on a scene-to-scene level, creating situations of imminent and unpredictable violence — a diabolically polite Nazi officer searching for hidden Jews, two gun-toting hitmen tasked with recovering a stolen briefcase — and stretching them to all-but-unbearable lengths via directorial showmanship and colorfully written dialogue, before letting these risky situations snap back on themselves like the elastic band of a slingshot.

Here, instead of masterfully playing our nerves at such a micro level, Tarantino attempts — and stumbles — with a different high-wire act. Early on, he indicates that events are pointing to Aug. 8, 1969, the night the Manson family murdered Roman Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate: The film’s co-dependent protagonists, faded star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his trusty stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), live on Cielo Drive, where the bloody home invasion took place; Hollywood history buffs may recall that a stuntman was murdered around that time at Spahn’s movie ranch; and Tate, radiantly oblivious to her fate, even appears as a character (played by Margot Robbie). Confident those elements all point to who-knows-what kind of confrontation to come, Tarantino no longer focuses on generating electricity within individual scenes, trying instead to make it span the entire picture.

Between Tarantino’s indulgence, Malick’s resurgence and Kechiche’s concupiscence, the festival was heavy with men who felt they’d earned the right to fill hours of screen time with their most personal preoccupations. Such is the luxury of the established filmmaker. But where Cannes really ought to be using its power — and the fact that, for what could be a limited time, it has first dibs on new work — is in finding the emerging voices who don’t yet presume to have audiences’ attention, but have the freshest things to say. It’s the paradox of being first: The world expects big names, but relevance depends on bold, outside-the-box choices.




THREADS
Cannes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?53853-Cannes)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)


Quentin Tarantino ... What a pity that the film didn't win any awards. But still, I look forward to watching it. I dunno, man. QT got more publicity out of Cannes than anyone. Who needs awards?

[GeneChing]

How Bruce is represented in this film is the most interesting aspect of it to me.


Jin Hyun·May 23, 2019·4 min read
People Aren’t Happy That Brad Pitt Thinks He Can Take On Bruce Lee in Tarantino’s New Film Trailer (https://nextshark.com/bruce-lee-quentin-tarantino/)

https://nextshark-vxdsockgvw3ki.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Untitled-collage-4-3.jpg

Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” is already facing backlash after its debut at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for its portrayal of Bruce Lee.

In what some Twitter users have dubbed a “white male power fantasy,” Brad Pitt’s character can be seen taking on martial arts legend Bruce Lee in a short clip from the movie’s trailer.

Bruce Lee, portrayed by actor and martial arts instructor Mike Moh, tells Pitt’s character, “My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you, I go to jail.”

To which Pitt’s character arrogantly replies, “Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight they go to jail, it’s called manslaughter.”

The two begin to face off as Pitt effortlessly manages to keep up with the martial arts legend — a scene many Asian American audiences found to be cringe-worthy and somewhat disrespectful to the real Bruce Lee.


View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Olivia Truffaut-Wong
@iWatchiAm
So, we're supposed to believe that Brad Pitt would stand a chance against Bruce Lee in a fight now? #OnceUponATimeInHollywood

498
6:14 AM - Mar 20, 2019
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Laura
@lsirikul
· Mar 20, 2019
Replying to @lsirikul
It's obviously a fight scene, guys. The movie is set on a movie set. It's only annoying to see Brad Pitt's cockiness first & ultimately knowing that the white guy has to win in the fight against this fantasy version of Bruce Lee bc Hollywood back then, and still, was super white.


Laura
@lsirikul
Please note, Bruce Lee walked away from roles that would tarnish his image because he knew he could kick ALL OF THEIR ASSES. #OnceUponATimeInHollywood pic.twitter.com/jutIFXZPpA

128
8:43 AM - Mar 20, 2019
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Mallory Yu
@mallory_yu
A white male power fantasy, thinking it’s anything other than pure nonsense that Brad could “take on” a master like Bruce Lee

Fandango
✔
@Fandango
Brad Pitt takes on Bruce Lee in...#OnceUponATimeInHollywood

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6:41 AM - Mar 20, 2019
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Brandon David Wilson
@Genius*******
Replying to @wtm5012
My point is Quentin Tarantino has a ****ed up track record with POC and I, a POC, am highly suspicious of his use of Bruce Lee. That is my point.

8
2:29 PM - May 21, 2019
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John Wong
@JohnIsASound
What? Really Quentin Tarantino? You gonna do Bruce Lee like that? #OnceUponATimeInHollywood

2
10:22 PM - May 21, 2019 · Chicago, IL
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Angry Asian Man
✔
@angryasianman
**** Quentin Tarantino.

336
5:20 PM - May 21, 2019
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Although Tarantino’s new film has yet to be revealed to the public, it has also drawn criticism over its treatment of female characters and scenes featuring “rage against women.”

With strong disapproval already coming from both female and Asian audiences long before the film’s premiere date, it appears Tarantino’s new film could be the subject of controversy once it is unveiled to the public in the coming months.

“Once Upon a Time In Hollywood” is set to be released on July 26, 2019.

[Jimbo]

How Bruce is represented in this film is the most interesting aspect of it to me.

Yeah, I find that interesting, too, but not unexpected. Supposedly, BL is one of the many actors whose movies 'inspired' QT, but the very few Asian characters presented in QT movies have mostly been poor at best. Probably his only decent Asian portrayal was the 'Hattori Hanzo' character played by Sonny Chiba in Kill Bill 1, which is odd, considering that QT is supposedly such a stickler for quality and characterization.

Maybe QT doesn't actually respect BL at all, but like he seems to view the entire kung fu movie genre, just sees BL as something to spoof or be topped by a 'white savior'. I hope that's not the case. I guess we'll just have to see the movie to see if the complaints are justified or not. If asked about it, I'm sure QT would say, "I reject your hypothesis" again.

I was hoping the BL character would at least play a semi-decent, if not minor, role in the storyline, since there was a connection between BL, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, and the investigation of the Tate murders (BL, along with John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, were among the people that Polanski had a private detective investigate after the murders). Polanski had been a private student of BL, and Polanski thought it was possible that BL could have killed the 5 victims by himself.

[GeneChing]

Roman Polanski’s Wife Blasts Tarantino for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/roman-polanski-emmanuelle-seigner-quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time)
The upcoming movie, which revolves around Hollywood in 1969 and the grisly Tate–LaBianca murders, features an actor playing Polanski—and Polanski’s wife, actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner, is not happy about it.
by YOHANA DESTA
MAY 29, 2019 9:21 AM

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5cee872083074827abbd1efd/master/w_960,c_limit/GettyImages-688920420.jpg
Emmanuelle Seigner and Roman Polanski attend the Based On A True Story photocall during the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
By Mike Marsland/Getty.

Emmanuelle Seigner, the actress and singer who has been married to filmmaker Roman Polanski since 1989, is taking Quentin Tarantino to task over Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood. The movie, Tarantino’s ode to Hollywood in 1969–the year of the Manson Family murders— features actors playing Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha), who were married and expecting their first child together when Tate was gruesomely murdered by followers of Charles Manson. In a recent Instagram post, Seigner wrote that she thought it was in poor taste for Tarantino to feature Polanski in the film without reportedly consulting him.

“How can you take advantage of someone’s tragic life while trampling on them?” she wrote in French, as translated by The Hollywood Reporter. “Something to think about (I’m talking about the system that tramples Roman).”

She shared the caption beneath an old photo of Tate and Polanski together. Seigner also explained that she wasn’t criticizing the movie itself.


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emmanuelle.seigner (https://www.instagram.com/p/BxzihCJo6LB/?utm_source=ig_embed)
Verified
Comment peut-on se servir de la vie tragique de quelqu’un tout en le piétinant .... a méditer ( je parle du système qui piétine Roman )
Petit ajustement car je vois que des gens ne comprennent pas mon propos . Je ne critique pas le film . Je dis juste que cela ne les dérange pas de faire un film qui parle de Roman et de son histoire tragique et donc de faire du business avec ca , alors que de l autre coté , ils en ont fait un paria . Et tout cela sans le consulter bien sûr.
Que le film soit bien , heureusement , j ‘ai envie de dire . Mais le concept me dérange .


“A little explanation because I understand that people don’t understand my point-of-view. I am not criticizing the film. I am just saying that it doesn’t bother them [in Hollywood] to make a film about Roman and his tragic story, and make money with it . . . while at the same time they have made him a pariah,” she wrote. “And all without consulting him of course. Let’s judge the film as a good one, but the idea is this is bothersome.”

Regarding her “pariah” comment: Polanski has mostly been out of Hollywood’s spotlight since 1977, when he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. He fled the U.S. after serving 42 days, and has stayed out of the country ever since. Before the scandal, Polanski was a widely respected director. He was married to Tate, a rising star, and was helming classics like Rosemary’s Baby and, after Tate’s death, Chinatown. His reputation shifted dramatically after the events of 1977, when he was largely excommunicated from Hollywood.

However, he wasn’t entirely kicked out of the industry. Polanski continued making films overseas and, in 2003, was awarded a best-director Oscar for The Pianist. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the tide more recently turned on Polanski again, with the Academy voting to boot him out of its ranks—a decision Polanski is fighting against. In the meantime, his upcoming film An Officer and a Spy was recently shopped at Cannes, where Once Upon a Time also made its splashy debut—a sign that though Polanski may be a pariah in Hollywood, he’s still being backed overseas.


I guess we'll just have to see the movie to see if the complaints are justified or not. Agreed. QT gave BL a major nod with Uma's Kill Bill (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18892-Kill-Bill) jumpsuit. We shall see...

[GeneChing]

Like he split Kill Bill (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18892-Kill-Bill) into two because he couldn't edit it down enough?

Or like he made the extended version of The Hateful Eight (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69217-The-Hateful-Eight&p=1313628#post1313628)?

:rolleyes:



Tarantino's Dilemma: Tinker With 'Once Upon a Time In Hollywood' After Cannes? (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tarantinos-dilemma-tinker-once-a-time-hollywood-cannes-1215664)
6:45 AM PDT 6/6/2019 by Tatiana Siegel

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/06/tarrantino_illo.jpg
Illustration by: The Sporting Press

Although his latest won praise at the festival, the famously fussy filmmaker could re-cut the Leonardo DiCaprio-Brad Pitt feature amid Sony's high expectations for the $90 million project.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood emerged from the Cannes film festival with stellar reviews but no Palme d'Or. Now, the major question for Sony is whether Quentin Tarantino will re-edit the film before its release July 26?

Sources say the director, who headed out on vacation after the Cannes closing ceremony May 25, hasn't indicated that he will shorten or lengthen the film, which is currently 159 minutes, or make any changes. But Tarantino worked up until the last minute on the film and has nearly two months to make a nip/tuck, so insiders would not be surprised if he tinkered. Even the film's trailer features shots that didn't appear in the Cannes cut. Sony film chief Tom Rothman says he is in the dark about Tarantino's plans. "You'd have to ask the maestro himself," Rothman deflects.

The R-rated Once Upon a Time marks a gamble for the studio considering that its budget came in at $90 million, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, after qualifying for the California tax credit and recouping more than $15 million.

The director's highest-grossing film, 2012's Django Unchained (165 minutes) earned $425 million worldwide, while his last directorial effort, 2015's The Hateful Eight (167 minutes), rounded up just $155 million globally. Other films that have been famously recut after their Cannes debuts include 2004's epic Troy and 2014's drama Grace of Monaco, though not great comparisons given that the former received middling reviews out of the festival and the latter featured a standoff between director Olivier Dahan and Harvey Weinstein.

Heading into the Cannes festival, the director’s biggest concern was keeping spoilers under wraps for the next two months. After all, there remains a great deal of intrigue about how the auteur deals with the infamous Manson murders of 1969, when the film is set (Sharon Tate, who was murdered by Manson cult members, is a central character played by Margot Robbie).

But for his first film without Harvey Weinstein running interference (all of his previous films were made by the since-disgraced mogul), Tarantino faltered even at the film’s Cannes press conference. When asked by a female reporter why an accomplished actress like Robbie had so little to say or do in the film, he shot back, “I reject your hypothesis.”

The PR road will inevitably get bumpier for Tarantino over the ensuing weeks. The film features graphic depictions of violence against women as well as a Robert Wagner-esque reference to Pitt's character having gotten away with murdering his wife. In another choice certain to spark outrage, Tarantino again puts his star (Brad Pitt) behind the wheel of a blue Karmann Ghia convertible while it maneuvers twisty Hollywood hills (despite the fact that Uma Thurman famously suffered neck and knee injuries as a result of a crash in a similar car in his Kill Bill).

Then there’s the casting of Emile Hirsch —who served 15 days in jail after he plead guilty to beating and choking a female Paramount executive at a Sundance party — in the key role of real-life Manson victim Jay Sehbring. Even Roman Polanski’s wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, is calling out the film for making money off of her husband Roman Polanski’s tragedy (he was married to Tate at the time of the murder) without consulting him.

But the Pulp Fiction director appears to have at least reached a détente with Thurman, if a supporting role is any indication. The actress' daughter Maya Hawke plays a Manson follower in the film. "We can't let originality die," Rothman says of the film, adding, "The truth of the matter is the Quentin Tarantinos of this world are few and far between."

A version of this story first appears in the June 5 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.


TATIANA SIEGEL
tatiana.siegel@thr.com
@tatianasiegel27

[GeneChing]

Does Shannon realize she just gave OUATIH more publicity? Or maybe she's trying to coattail on the OUATIC buzz machine. Either way, this is all about how Bruce is depicted for me too. :o


Bruce Lee’s Daughter Irked That Quentin Tarantino Didn’t Contact Her About Father’s Portrayal In ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ (https://etcanada.com/news/461838/bruce-lees-daughter-irked-that-quentin-tarantino-didnt-contact-her-about-fathers-portrayal-in-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/)
By BRENT FURDYK. 7 Jun 2019 5:18 PM

https://shawetcanada.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/d2gz6krwsacysyp.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=670&h=446&crop=1&zoom=2
Sony Pictures Entertainment/YouTube

Quentin Tarantino has been making a splash with his upcoming ninth film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, which features actors portraying various Tinseltown celebrities in the late 1960s.

While Tarantino reached out to the families of some of the stars portrayed in the film, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a fading movie star and Brad Pitt portrays his stunt double, that hasn’t always been the case.

One of the most arresting parts of the film’s trailer involves sequences featuring “Enter the Dragon” star Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh (“Marvel’s The Unhumans”), yet the daughter of the late martial arts legend says she never heard from Tarantino about her father being portrayed in the film.

Speaking with Deadline, Shannon Lee – who controls her father’s estate – expresses her “annoyance” that Tarantino never bothered to contact her.

“In these instances, there are a lot of different ways you can go,” Lee explained. “If they contacted me I could be completely unreasonable and a pain in the a** and make all kinds of ridiculous demands, but they don’t know that I’m not going to do that. A lot of times, the best practice is, ‘We’ll just stay away from that so we don’t have to even open that can of worms.’”

However, Lee admitted that since Tarantino has already gone on record to reveal he contacted the sister of slain actress Sharon Tate (who is a character in the movie), she’s not clear why Tarantino didn’t give her a similar call.

“With Tarantino’s film, to not have been included in any kind of way, when I know that he reached out to other people but did not reach out to me, there’s a level of annoyance – and there’s part of me that says this is not worth my time and my energy,” she added. “Let’s just see how the universe deals with this one.”

ET Canada has reached out to a rep for Tarantino for comment.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” comes to theatres on July 26.

[Jimbo]

Agreed. QT gave BL a major nod with Uma's Kill Bill (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18892-Kill-Bill) jumpsuit. We shall see...

Well, kinda. QT has a tendency to appropriate stuff. Recall that QT originally wanted to play the monk Pai Mei himself, before deciding on bringing in Gordon Liu. Which was the wise thing to do, because QT, although he's one of Hollywood's best directors, would have been totally stupid as Pai Mei. That he was even considering playing Pai Mei himself at all says a lot.

If BL is beaten and humiliated by Pitt's character, I'd be curious what Mike Moh thought of it, though I doubt he'd be forthcoming about it.

If QT did have Brad Pitt's character humiliate Bruce Lee, I'll lose a lot of respect for QT.

[GeneChing]

...we'll see about that.

There are some nested vids that I couldn't copy&paste easily so follow the link if you don't know what these exercises are, you can see more demos. The more common ones had little .gif files which were easy to transfer here.


How to Train Like Mike Moh, The Next Bruce Lee (https://www.menshealth.com/uk/workouts/a27909300/bruce-lee-workout/)
Moh plays Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's new movie. Here, he explains how to get ripped like the martial arts legend
BY DANIEL DAVIES
13/06/2019

Mike Moh was a teenager when he started practising martial arts. After a misspent youth spent imitating the Power Rangers, the Ninja Turtles and, of course, Bruce Lee, it seemed like the obvious thing to do, but little did Moh know that one day his childhood obsession would lead him to bagging the role of his hero on the big screen.

No, Moh isn't about to don a turtle suit to play Rafael, he's the actor tasked with playing Bruce Lee in this summer's new Quentin Tarantino flick, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Being a fifth-degree black belt in Taekwondo, he certainly has the credentials to play the part, but if all it took play Bruce Lee was being good at martial arts almost anyone could do it. “I had to get really deep into not only who Bruce was, but how he ate and how he trained,” says Moh. And he had to do all that in just three months.

To become Bruce Lee, Moh didn't call a celebrity trainer or just hit the gym and start benching. Instead, he studied Lee's martial arts training techniques and used his own knowledge of fighting to mimic Lee's workouts.

For starters, Lee was a big fan of boxing, so Moh starts every workout with skipping. "Jumping rope is going to get your nerves and your joints and your muscles warmed up," Moh says. "It’s also going to help with your timing and your footwork.”

Lee was also famous for his one-finger pushups. Moh doesn't touch those, but he does do standard pushups, archer pushups, and Superman pushups to prep to play the master.

But, at the end of the day, you can only really play Bruce Lee if you have a set of abs rippling just below the surface. So Moh has incorporated hanging leg raises and windshield wipers into his workout to achieve the correct look.

Moh finishes his workout by honing his hard-earned martial arts techniques with punches and kicks — and focusing on control. Brad Pitt is also in the movie, and the last thing Moh wanted to do was hurt his co-star. “For filming, we had to make sure that I was not only looking powerful and fast like Bruce himself, but also that my kicks were one-hundred percent controlled," he says. "The last thing I wanted to do was break Mr. Pitt’s ribs.”

Before he's done, Moh wraps up the workout with some old-school conditioning, in the shape of 3 sets of burpees. However, he throws in backflips after several of his burpees. We did say he was inspired by the Power Rangers too, right?

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/actor-and-martial-artist-bruce-lee-poses-for-a-warner-bros-news-photo-74281089-1560259996.jpg
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES GETTY IMAGES


Mike Moh's Bruce-Lee-Inspired Workout
by Men's Health UK

Skipping, 100 reps
Grab the rope at both ends
Use your wrists to flick it round your body, jumping to clear the rope as it hits the ground
Make the move more intense with double unders – letting the rope pass round your twice for every jump

https://hips.hearstapps.com/ame-prod-menshealth-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/main/assets/88-press-up.gif
Standard Pushup, 30 reps
Set up with your weight supported on your toes and hands beneath your shoulders, body straight.
Take care to keep your core locked so a straight line forms between your head, glutes and heels.
Lower your body until your chest is an inch from the ground then explosively drive up by fully extending your arms.
Isometric press-up wipers

Archer Pushup, 20 Reps
Get into a press-up position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
Shift your body weight to one side, flexing the elbow on that side to lower your body until your chest almost brushes the floor.
Push yourself back up to the start position and repeat on the other side.

Superman Pushup, 10 reps
Get down into a press-up position with your hands placed shoulder-width apart.
Lower your body until your chest is an inch from the ground then explosively drive up elevatig your whole body above the floor.
While in mid-air extand your arms and legs out to your sides before returning to the centre to land softly with flexed elbows.
Continue the downwards momentum into your next rep.

Hanging Leg Raise, 20 reps
Grab a pull-up bar and lower yourself into a dead hang.
Let your legs straighten and pull your pelvis back slightly.
Tense your core and raise your legs until your thighs are perpendicular to your torso.
Hold then lower slowly back to the starting position.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/ame-prod-menshealth-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/main/assets/floorwiper4.gif
Windshield Wipers, 10 reps
Holding a barbell or kettlebell or dumbbell above you, or while gripping a pull-up bar, keep your legs together and as straight as possible
Raise your legs until they are parallel with the floor; then, maintaining this angle, bring your torso up to parallel with the floor.
Your legs, still forming a 90-degree angle with your torso, should now be perpendicular to the floor. This is your starting position.
From this position, keep your core braced and lower your legs with control to one side.
Pause for a count, then bring them over to the other side. That’s one rep.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/ame-prod-menshealth-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/main/assets/shadowboxgif.gif
Shadow Boxing, 3 rounds, 3 minutes each
Adopt a fighting stance and bounce on your toes as you shadow box.
Dip and weave to your heart's content.
Cycle between low- and high-intensity punching for a HIIT style cardio workout.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/ame-prod-menshealth-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/main/assets/burpees.gif
Burpees, 3 sets, 1 minute each
From a standing position squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor and place your palms on the floor.
From there kick your feet back as far as you can while keeping your arms extended.
As soon as your feet land jump them back in towards your hands, then jump up into the air.
Land and immediately squat down to go into the next rep.
A solid core is key to avoiding sagging hips when you kick your feet back.


THREADS
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Training for Movies (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71306-Training-for-Movies)

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyi0JiaBiWA

[GeneChing]

Could Brad Pitt take Bruce? READ Tarantino’s Take on Bruce Lee in ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499) by Gene Ching

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/admin/site_images/KungfuMagazine/upload/4932_OuatiH_5.jpg

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino Did Bruce Lee Dirty in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' (https://www.inverse.com/article/58066-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-bruce-lee-scene-explained)
The famed director has a questionable image of Bruce Lee in his newest film. Here's why that matters.
By Eric Francisco on July 28, 2019

Quentin Tarantino’s newest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is almost perfect. It’s a bit long, a bit self-indulgent, even a bit violent. (For Tarantino, that’s really something.) But as a dreamlike odyssey of a Hollywood that never was, the movie a stunner from beginning to sentimental end.

There’s just one major problem: Bruce Lee.

More specifically, how Tarantino uses and clowns the martial arts legend for his story is an unflattering version of Bruce Lee that feels several steps backward in the midst of slow-moving progress. For generations of Asian-Americans who found solace in Lee’s significant brand of folk heroism, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn’t a fairy tale, it’s a nightmare.

Spoilers for Once Upon in Hollywood ahead.

In Tarantino’s film, set in late 1960s Hollywood, Bruce Lee is resurrected to life by Mike Moh, who is flawless in his performance of the famous (and famously arrogant) kung fu star. Lee appears in the film via flashback, in which stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) recalls an incident between himself and Lee on the set of the 1966 TV series, The Green Hornet.

In the film, Bruce Lee (Moh), a master of kung fu who innovated his own discipline, waxes poetic about famed boxer Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) while promoting himself as the better fighter. When a crew member asks Lee if he would fight Ali, he sidesteps the question with a non-answer until an annoyed Booth presses him. Lee responds, “I’d make him a cripple.”

Cue everyone, including us in the audience, going, “Woaaaaah.”

That’s when Cliff, positioned as the one to put Bruce in his place, challenges him in a one-on-one fight, best two out of three. Bruce’s mythic strength and speed, via his iconic skip sidestep kick, gives him an early advantage as he knocks Cliff on his ass in the first round. But Cliff soon overpowers Bruce in the second round, smashing him into the parked car of the director’s wife.

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/ba/22/7c/c2/8e00/4429/9c57/08d71cc87974/in-quentin-tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-mike-moh-plays-a-fictionalized-and-almost-p.png?rect=162%2C0%2C1594%2C797&auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&w=650
In Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,' Mike Moh plays a fictionalized (and almost perfect) Bruce Lee, who is defeated in a one-on-one fight against Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). The idea of Brad Pitt defeating Bruce Lee is not an easy one to accept, even in an alternate history fantasy.
The fight ends before the deciding round (and Cliff gets fired from set), but it is heavily implied Cliff would have pummeled Bruce in the end.

The incident never happened, of course. Brad Pitt’s Cliff nor his best friend, a faded Western star named Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), never existed. Tarantino’s film tells an alternate history in which two lovable *******s interfere with history, precluding the Manson Family murder of actress Sharon Tate.

Tarantino’s point for his Bruce Lee is pure exposition. It establishes for his audience what kind of a grade-A ass kicker Cliff Booth can be, which is crucial for the ending where — spoilers! — Cliff manhandles the Mansons with his bare hands while high off his mind. For plot reasons, it’s a necessary scene.

But the bigger picture is that Tarantino used a real-life figure who still matters to people, and embarrasses him because that’s just Tarantino’s brand of storytelling. That it’s an established A-list white actor like Brad Pitt who beats up Bruce just adds salt in the wound.

It is a monumental effort to describe Lee’s impact and legacy succinctly, so here’s an attempt: Between 1966 and 1973, Bruce Lee was a singular force who challenged racial stereotypes in his movies and changed popular culture. Even Tarantino was influenced by him; the yellow suit worn by Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s 2003 revenge romp Kill Bill: Volume 1 was first worn by Lee in his posthumously released 1978 film, The Game of Death.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H98MLmW5tYw

In Bruce Lee’s time, when Asians elsewhere were vilified, emasculated, mocked, and many times not played by actual Asian actors (see: Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon, the list goes on), Bruce served as an imposing, charismatic entity the likes of which mainstream America hadn’t seen, not since silent film star Sessue Hayakawa.

As Daniel McDermon wrote for The New York Times in 2017:


“Lee’s indelible image was crafted as a rejection of those diminished roles. And the most essential aspect of that image is his body, stripped to the waist, corded and quivering with muscle. It is the centerpiece of dozens of fight scenes, which Lee choreographed himself, and is frequently revealed with slow, deliberate pageantry.

“Those bodily displays made him unique: an Asian-American star whose masculinity and physical prowess were front and center, not only in the films themselves, but also on promotional posters, billboards and merchandise around the world.”

While unsavory portrayals of Asian people nor yellow-face casting would cease after Lee, the actor’s sudden rise to fame and equally sudden death (just before the release of his only Hollywood film, Enter the Dragon) made audiences familiar, and comfortable, with Asians in heroic roles. And it’s because of Bruce Lee that Asian audiences found a figure to aspire to.

It’s because of Bruce that the likes of Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen have enjoyed historic careers. It’s because of Bruce that the revolutionary sound of the Wu-Tang Clan exists. It’s because of Bruce that Marvel Studios has an Asian superhero to adapt in 2021.

Said hip-hop artist Kuya Geo in a 2018 interview, Bruce was “the only Asian person I ever saw in movie and TV who kicked ass.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBIoYh3YUgs

There is fair criticism that Bruce Lee introduced a new racial stereotype — that of the kung fu master — just as he challenged them. As Asian-American playwright Frank Chin lamented in the 2006 documentary The Slanted Screen, “Bruce Lee is a stereotype. And we have to challenge the stereotype.”

But Bruce was, and remains, a complex larger-than-life figure no one can box in. Leave it to Mike Moh, who plays Lee in Tarantino’s film, to have a nuanced grasp of finding his place in Hollywood just as Bruce tried years ago.

“I want to be a martial arts action guy and it’s not because I want to fall into a stereotype,” Moh said in an episode of the Deadline podcast New Hollywood. “I just happen to love martial arts. I happen to be Asian. And yes, I do get upset when people just assume I know martial arts. But if there is something to be associated with Asians, I think it’s cool that it’s something so bad ass.”

Ultimately, Tarantino has a very amusing scene for his movie. Moh is note-perfect as an overconfident Bruce Lee, who hides his hesitation behind oversized sunglasses. Pitt, meanwhile, is just as entertaining as someone who is sick of this nonsense. For many of us in the audience, we find ourselves relating to both of them.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is in theaters now.

As I predicted, a lot of Bruce fans are offended. One was even (slightly) put out by my use of the term 'JKD snowflakes'. In all honestly, I spontaneously spat out that comment in a private email to Matt Polly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65795-Bruce-Lee-A-Life-by-Matt-Polly) (who I quoted in my review) and I just couldn't let go of it. :o

[Jimbo]

Much of the stuff in QT's films is derived from Asian cinema; he even acts like he respects someone like Sonny Chiba. But by the way Asians are presented (or just spoken about) in his films, he's shown that he doesn't really respect Bruce Lee or Asians in general, especially Asian males.

It's funny that QT is implying that BL was full of BS, when QT would get his ass kicked in any real fight. He even admitted as such, that the only MA he knew was the choreography style of Yuen Woo-Ping from filming Kill Bill, when he originally wanted to play Pai Mei himself.

[@PLUGO]

Tarantino uses Al Pacino's dialogue to explain his rational for that Bruce Lee scene. Pacino's character, over drinks with DeCaprio's character Rick Dalton explains Dalton's career arch as a once famous leading man who will be used as a "heavy" in a new show. His defeat and humiliation by the star of that new show will be used to establish that character's Bona Fides. This is exactly what he did for Pitt's character Cliff Booth, retconing him into a fictional Hollywood history as the guy who beat up Bruce Lee. Maybe in the Tarantino-verse Bruce Lee lives to a ripe old age, probably becoming the fight choreographer for Fox Force Five.

[GeneChing]

Bruce Lee’s Daughter Saddened by ‘Mockery’ in ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’ (Exclusive) (https://www.thewrap.com/bruce-lee-daughter-mockery-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-shannon-lee/)
“It was really uncomfortable to sit in the theater and listen to people laugh at my father,” Shannon Lee told TheWrap
Tim Molloy | July 29, 2019 @ 4:13 PM
Last Updated: July 30, 2019 @ 6:40 AM

https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-20-at-2.41.09-PM-1024x683.png

Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, says it was “disheartening” to see Quentin Tarantino depict her father in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” as “an arrogant a–hole who was full of hot air.”

In the film, (spoilers follow), Brad Pitt’s stuntman character, Cliff Booth, trades cocky insults with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), and the two agree to an informal, best two-out-of-three rounds fight on the set of “The Green Hornet” TV show. Lee easily knocks Booth down in the first round, but in the second, Booth slams Lee into a car, stunning him. The fight is interrupted before the third round.

Shannon Lee said it’s disheartening to see her father portrayed as an arrogant blowhard, because in truth, as an Asian-American in 1960s Hollywood, he had to work much harder to succeed than Booth and Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio), the fictional, white protagonists of the film.

“I can understand all the reasoning behind what is portrayed in the movie,” she said. “I understand that the two characters are antiheroes and this is sort of like a rage fantasy of what would happen… and they’re portraying a period of time that clearly had a lot of racism and exclusion.”

She added: “I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super bad-ass who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn’t need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive.”

A representative for Tarantino didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Shannon Lee said Tarantino might be trying to make a point about how Lee was stereotyped, “but it doesn’t come across that way.”

“He comes across as an arrogant ******* who was full of hot air,” she said. “And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others.”

Shannon Lee saw the film Sunday. “It was really uncomfortable to sit in the theater and listen to people laugh at my father,” she said.

She said that her father was often challenged, and tried to avoid fights. “Here, he’s the one with all the puffery and he’s the one challenging Brad Pitt. Which is not how he was,” she said.

She continues her father’s legacy through a website, BruceLee.com, her Bruce Lee Podcast, and the Bruce Lee Foundation, which hosts summer camps that teach children about her father’s martial arts and philosophy.

“What I’m interested in is raising the consciousness of who Bruce Lee was as a human being and how he lived his life,” she added. “All of that was flushed down the toilet in this portrayal, and made my father into this arrogant punching bag.”

She said she understood that many characters in the film are caricatures, but noted that the film didn’t make fun of Steve McQueen, who is played by Damian Lewis.

She also pointed out that while “The Green Hornet’ ran from 1967-68, her father’s hair and sunglasses are reminiscent of his look in the 1970s “Enter the Dragon” era.

She said she didn’t take issue, however, with Moh, the serious Bruce Lee fan who plays him in the film. She said he did a good job with some of her father’s mannerisms, and his voice.

“But I think he was directed to be a caricature,” Shannon Lee said.

Matthew Polly writes in his book “Bruce Lee: A Life” that Lee struggled to break into Hollywood — even while teaching martial arts to some of its biggest names, including McQueen, Sharon Tate, and her husband, Roman Polanski, all of whom are portrayed in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” (We also see a quick clip of Lee training Tate (Margot Robbie) for her role in “The Wrecking Crew,” which he really did do.

But he was often overlooked or cast as a sidekick, as he was in “The Green Hornet.” He was even passed over for roles as Asian characters, in favor of white actors who pretended to be Asian. He finally broke through when Hong Kong-produced martial arts epics crossed over to the United States.

Polly was also unimpressed with the “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” portrayal of the man he researched for years.

“The full scene with Bruce and Brad Pitt is far different than what was in the trailer. Bruce Lee was often a cocky, strutting, braggart, but Tarantino took those traits and exaggerated them to the point of a ‘SNL’ caricature,” Polly said.

He said the argument that leads into the fight with Booth — in which Lee said he could turn Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) into a “cripple,” would never have happened.

“Bruce revered Cassius Clay (Ali); he never trash talked him in real life. Bruce never used jumping kicks in an actual fight. And even if he did, there wasn’t a stuntman in Hollywood fast enough to catch his leg and throw him into a car,” Polly said.

“Given how sympathetic Tarantino’s portrayal of Steve McQueen, Jay Sebring, and Sharon Tate is, I’m surprised he didn’t afford the same courtesy to Lee, the only non-white character in the film. He could have achieved the same effect–using Bruce to make Brad Pitt’s character look tough–without the mockery. I suspect the reason Tarantino felt the need to take Bruce down a notch is because Lee’s introduction of Eastern martial arts to Hollywood fight choreography represented a threat to the livelihood of old Western stuntmen like Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who were often incapable of adapting to a new era, and the film’s nostalgic, revisionist sympathies are entirely with the cowboys.”

You can hear Polly tell many stories about Bruce Lee on the “Shoot This Now” podcast, available on Apple and right here. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bruce-lee-story-bruce-lee-life-author-matthew-polly/id1332846964?i=1000414434756&mt=2)

Ha. The Wrap quoted Matt again. I got him first tho, before he saw the film. (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499) :cool:

On the whole, I concur with Shannon, only it seems she hasn't seen that many Bruceploitation flicks then. :p


Tarantino goes meta on Bruce Lee. The flaw in this point is that the point that Shwarz (Pacino's character) was making was that being defeated by an up-and-coming star was the hallmark of being a has-been. Bruce is far from that. Even now, some 46 years after he died, he's still gracing the covers of major newsstand magazines (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?42950-Bruce-Lee-Memorials&p=1314813#post1314813). Can we say that about Steve Mcqueen, or any other star from that era?

[@PLUGO]

According to birthmoviesdeath.com (https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/07/29/mike-moh-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywoods-bruce-lee-breaks-down-his-fight-wit)'s TODD GILCHRIST He says . . . "It was a draw"


It’s funny how much ownership we claim over our heroes and their stories, especially when they’re fictionalized. Bruce Lee is of course a mythic figure not just within Hollywood lore, but the Asian community, and the world stage, and so much of his life remains a mystery. But in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, he squares off against Quentin Tarantino’s mostly fake, perhaps equally larger-than-life stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) - and contrary to perhaps every expectation, Lee does not conspicuously prevail. But according to Mike Moh, the actor who plays Lee in the film, the martial arts hero hardly gets his ass kicked. “It was a tie,” Moh insisted. “Five more seconds, and Bruce would have won.”

Moh spoke with Birth.Movies.Death. about his small but important role in the film - which was partially and perhaps ironically to bolster the legend of Pitt’s stunt man. Talking about playing the influential and iconic martial artist and entertainer, Moh talked about his own trepidations portraying a big-mouthed Bruce Lee who gets served a heaping dose of humility, and offered some thoughts about how Lee’s presence in the film reinforces many of its themes - including but not limited to the private battles fought to become who we are meant to be, the skillful, sometimes indistinguishable blend of myth and reality that conquers our memories of a specific time or place, and finally, the determination and sometimes desperate pursuit of greatness in a world that’s ready to, well, throw you at a car and reduce you to a punchline.

How did you first get the role of Bruce Lee, and what was your experience like discovering what the character would do in the film?

I don't know how far into the process they were but I got a call from my agent. I live in Wisconsin, so I wasn't able to just go and pick up the material because the script is so secret, so my agent's like, we need you to fly [to Los Angeles] tonight so you can pick them up and audition 12 hours after that. Of course I paid my own way out there, and my first audition was with the casting director, Vicki Thomas. I had auditioned for Bruce a few times for different projects in the past, so I wasn't completely unprepared when it came to the accent - I was okay at it - and I had an idea what I wanted to do. But this was like 12 to 24 hours of prep for this pretty intense monologue; it was a good chunk of dialogue. So I did it, and a week later, my agent said, hey, Quentin responded to your tape.

Here I'm thinking, wow, I made a new fan in Quentin - so if this doesn't work out, maybe something else will. It's always good to just make connections and let people know who you are. But I flew out again and this time it was with Quentin, and that was a surreal moment. I didn't realize how tall he was! But he was really loose and gave me a hug and it was all good. And the first part of our meeting was just talking with him about the ‘60s, about Bruce, and I don’t know if it was for him to make me more nervous or more comfortable, but either way I was ready and I went in the room and did my thing a bunch of different ways. He seemed to like it, and then we actually got into some of the ideas for what he wanted for the fight scene. We were up on our feet doing that as well as the dialogue, so that was fun. Before I left, he said, do you have any questions? And usually at the end of an audition I would just say, thank you so much for your time and be on my way, but at the request and encouragement of my wife, she told me to tell him you're the guy - you need to show him how supremely confident you are. So I took a page out of “what would Bruce do?” and Bruce was extremely confident, so I looked him in the eyes and said, “Mr. Tarantino, I just want to tell you that if you choose me to be in your movie, people are going to think Bruce came back to be in your film.” He kind of laughed it off, because at that time, I wasn't sure that I was going to get the role. I was sure that I would do a great job and that I was the right guy, but my hair was short and my accent wasn't fully there. So I wanted to reassure that I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that this is the rendition of Bruce that you want in your film.

Another week or two goes by and they want me to fly in next day again, this time for a chemistry read. I'm prepping in my mind, thinking I'm probably going to read with Brad, so this is exciting. And then I get a call from the second AD and he's like, here are the directions to the table read! So I showed up and there is everybody, and he introduced me to Burt Reynolds. He said, “this is Mike Moh. He's playing Bruce Lee.” And at that time I still didn't have the role - or if I did, nobody told me - but I went in and everybody starts walking in, all the stars. And at that point I only knew of Brad, Leo and Margot being in the film, because this was pretty early on. And then I see Burt Reynolds and all sorts of other people. Al Pacino was the biggest surprise. But I just remember knowing in my mind I was treating this as an audition, so while everybody's mingling and getting to see each other, I'm in business mode, scrambling through the script. And I finally land on page 53 - I'll never forget 53, 53, 53 - so every page that they read through, I was getting more and more primed and amped and nervous and anxious about my final test. And then at page 53, I put on a great performance; Brad and I had great chemistry from the get-go. People were really responding, so that made me feel good. And then he even threw a couple of curve balls. I read for Business Bob Gilbert, who is played by Scoot McNairy, so it was a good chance for me to kind of say, I can do this. I'm not just Bruce. I'm an actor. I can be great in whatever role you put me in, but know you're making the right choice for me as Bruce, obviously.

Did you have any concerns, personally or unfortunately representationally, about portraying a version of Bruce Lee who loses a fight to this other character, which seems impossible at least in our sense memory of who he was?

Of course, when I first read it, I was like, wow. I'm not going to tell you what the original script had exactly, but when I read it, I was so conflicted because he’s my hero - Bruce in my mind was literally a God. He wasn't a person to me, he was a superhero. And I think that's how most people view Bruce. And the thing about it is, Number One, it's a Tarantino film. He's not going to do the thing that everybody expects anybody else to do. You’ve got to expect the unexpected. And Number Two, I knew from the jump, Tarantino loves Bruce Lee; he reveres him. So let me be clear; in the film it was a challenge - “best two out of three.” I got the first point - I knocked him on his ass first. And Bruce at that time was so cocky and maybe got a little excited and he didn't know Cliff Booth has killed dozens of people with his bare hands - and that's what people may not realize up until that moment in the film. It's a hugely important scene - what better way to show how dangerous Cliff is than for him to show up and even match him for a little bit with Bruce? And the only reason why I got thrown into that car is because I was so cocky, like, oh I'm going to do this again. And at that moment when I get slammed, that's when Bruce realizes, oh ****, this guy is not just a stunt guy. Because Bruce didn't always have the most affection for stuntmen; he didn't respect all of them, because he was better than all the stunt guys. So after I got slammed, I get serious. And then we get into this scuffle, which is stopped - so it's a tie. I can see how people might think Bruce got beat because of the impact with the car, but you give me five more seconds and Bruce would have won. So I know people are going to be up in arms about it, but when I went into my deep dive of studying Bruce, he more than anybody wanted people to know he's human. And I think I respect him more knowing that he had these challenges, these obstacles, just like everybody. I don't know any actor out there that doesn't have some sense of wanting to be more - and I think that's the sign of somebody that wants greatness, and will achieve greatness, always wanting more. And if you reference the legend of Wong Jack Man, this was Tarantino, so maybe in this universe, it's not Wong Jack Man, it's Cliff Booth who he runs into and gives him [a fight], like I know I could have taken him at the time if I wasn't so cocky. And now he's going to go back and refine his Jeet June Do and become the legend or a stronger version of himself because of this encounter with Cliff. At least, that's how I see it.

continued . . .

[@PLUGO]

Part two of TODD GILCHRIST's interview -


That take also reinforces some of the themes of the movie in that these are all people who to one extent or another are trying to establish or prove themselves. Were there discussions about deeper thematic ideas that Tarantino wanted to explore either in the overall script or with the character?

Bruce wasn't the global sensation that everybody knows now at that point. At that time in his career, he was on Green Hornet, an ABC TV show, trying to battle against Asian stereotypes. He had to wear a mask. He was a sidekick. He was dealing with the stuff that I and many other Asian American actors have been dealing with, but because of what he went through and because of how he was able to bust through doors and make new waves, he made it easier for us to make our way. So at the time he was finding his way just like Rick was in the movie. Bruce wasn't a central character, but what better way to help people remember that Bruce also was - I don't want to say struggling, because he was a child actor and he was always very successful with that. But he was always searching for that next level. I know his ultimate goal was to be the Number One actor in the world, not martial arts actor. He wanted to be a bigger name than Steve McQueen, which, depending on who you ask, he definitely did that.

Where did you draw the line between doing an impersonation of Bruce and really inhabiting him as a person or a character?

That was the dangerous part, especially because it's a heightened sense of reality that Tarantino is so good at. You don't want to make it cheesy by going way over the top and making Bruce a character, so that's the fine line you want to straddle. But look - he's a big personality and I love his personality; I credit his ability to straddle confidence and cockiness as something that I strived for as a young kid who was kind of unsure of how I fit in growing up in the Midwest. That helped. But it wasn't about, I’ve got to hit this thing, I got to do this, got to make this move. It sounds cheesy, but I feel like I was channeling him because of the two months I had to prepare. I mean, give me a day to do it and yeah, I'm doing an impersonation, but give me two months and I'm doing my best to be him.

Was there a particular scene or movie that you found especially inspirational or influential in terms of your performance or to help you get inside his head?

No, I didn't use a movie. I mean, obviously I've watched them, just because I'm a fan. But during the scene they weren't rolling cameras, he was just holding court on the set of his show. So when you listen to him candidly in interviews, when he's not filming a TV show or a movie but maybe just being caught on video, he was always on, but in a different way - a very genuine, attractive way. There was something magnetic about him. So I used those as references - like his home videos, his Pierre Berton interview, all those things. That was the kind of attitude I wanted to portray.

How would you characterize Tarantino as a director? How did he help you give the best performance that you could?

Nobody can question how committed he is to it. And because he's in a unique position of having full control of everything, no studio is going to come in and tell him what to do, he wrote it, he lived it, he's dreamed it and he shot it in his head a million different ways already. So when he asks you to be prepared and when he asks you to do something, you don't belong in that set unless you've done a hundred percent preparation. I remember the final fight rehearsal that I had with Brad, on a Sunday. He was coming in just to see where we're at and give his input, and at the end of it, he was very happy with the fight but he pulled me aside. He says, the way I have this, it's going to be one continuous take. This was my first time hearing that it would be a one shot. He said, “it’s going to be very intricate. We're going to have to give it a bunch of times and there's going to be a lot of juggling and timing, and things have to work out. But it all rides on you. If you don't get it, I don't get the shot that I want. So I just want to let you know I believe in you and I wouldn't have hired you if you couldn't do this, but it's all on your shoulders.” I think I might've just paused for a second, and then I just confidently looked him in the eyes. I said, “Quentin, you made the right choice. I'm the guy for this and I'll be ready.” And off he went, and then two days later I was on set and we got that one shot. I think they blocked the whole day for just that sequence that they didn't cut, and we got it on like the third or fourth take, before lunch. And throughout the scene, you can sense the whole set just getting excited, like we're going to get this, we're going to get this right. And Quentin said, look, I'm going to cut if you don't do this perfectly. There's no sense in wasting film, and there's no sense in wasting your energy. So don't worry if I cut, we're just waiting for the right ingredients and the right timing. So on the third or fourth time, it's going great, I'm feeling it, and we're flowing. Even the extras, I feel like they helped me so much; they were also invested in it. And then he says, “cut!” Everybody's frozen. And then Quentin jumps up and down and he’s screaming, and as soon as we saw that reaction, everybody explodes into applause. Me and Brad run over to each other first and we’re checking each other, because I had just kicked him and he took a fall straight to the concrete. He's all good. We're hugging. That was definitely a Hollywood moment. And after that he said, “okay, that's the one that's going to be in the movie, but we're going to do it one more time.” And then he says, “why?” And everybody says, “because we love making movies!” I'm the only one that didn't know that thing, so I'm just like, what is happening? So we did it again and we got another great take. I'm not sure which one he used, but I just remember it so vividly and I think I always will.

You talked about auditioning to play Bruce Lee in the past and now you have finally had an opportunity to do it in such a visible way. Do you feel a sense of catharsis, like you’re done playing him, or do you feel inspired to try to do that again in a larger way?

Well, if people were thinking about doing it, I would hope that after they see me that they would think that I'm the guy to do it. Whether or not I would all depend on the story, and the team. I mean, although my appearance in the film is brief, I feel like I put in a good performance as Bruce, so I don't feel like I need to show more. But at the same time, it’s a good question. I don't know. I guess time will tell.

[GeneChing]

Mike Moh, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD’s Bruce Lee, Breaks Down His Fight With Cliff Innerestin. I'm curious how Mike will be received in the Wulin from now on. I've already seen some social media posts from the Wong Jackman (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?36573-Bruce-Lee-vs-Wong-Jack-Man-fight)lineage that are celebrating his portrayal.

Meanwhile, back in the Wulin...there's this:

FEATURES JULY 31, 2019 3:24PM PT
Bruce Lee’s Protégé Recalls His Humility Amid ‘Once Upon a Time’ Criticism (https://variety.com/2019/film/features/bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-dan-inosanto-1203287237/)
By AUDREY CLEO YAP

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/dan-inosanto-bruce-lee.jpg?w=1000&h=562&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF DIANA LEE INOSANTO

When it comes to martial arts and cinema, Bruce Lee is an icon. But his depiction in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” as an arrogant blowhard who brags about being able to “cripple” boxer Muhammad Ali could not be further from the truth, according to those closest to the real Lee.

For one, Lee revered Ali and other boxers, often telling his martial students to mimic the ease and flow of Ali’s movements and footwork, according to Dan Inosanto, Lee’s protégé and training partner, speaking to Variety exclusively.

“Bruce Lee would have never said anything derogatory about Muhammad Ali because he worshiped the ground Muhammad Ali walked on. In fact, he was into boxing more so than martial arts,” says Inosanto, one of only three martial artists who were trained by Lee to teach Jeet Kune Do at Lee’s martial arts institutes. Jeet Kune Do is a philosophy of martial arts drawing from different disciplines invented by Lee that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA).

Inosanto continues to practice and teach it today. The now 83-year-old was featured alongside Lee in his final film, “Game of Death,” and was a frequent companion of Lee’s on TV shows and movie sets throughout the 1960s and up until Lee’s death in 1973 — sets including that of “The Green Hornet,” on which Lee played the sidekick character Kato.

Incidentally, in Tarantino’s film, it’s outside of that set where Lee (played by Mike Moh) is shown bragging about his fighting prowess, only to be bested by ageing white stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/dan-inosanto-bruce-lee2.png
Dan Inosanto and Bruce Lee at Lee’s martial arts academy in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.
(COURTESY OF DIANA LEE INOSANTO)

Inosanto has not yet seen the film but says that from his memories of Lee on a working set, he never saw the San Francisco-born, Hong Kong-raised actor being braggadocious or engaging in scraps for the sake of showing off. He did, however, push back on portraying Asians practicing martial arts in a stereotypical way, what Inosanto calls the “chop-chop Hollywood stuff.”

“He was never, in my opinion, cocky. Maybe he was cocky in as far as martial arts because he was very sure of himself. He was worlds ahead of everyone else. But on a set, he’s not gonna show off,” recalls Inosanto, adding that it’s highly dubious that a stuntman could have gotten the best of the “Enter the Dragon” star.

Lee’s daughter, Shannon, calls the depiction of her late father disheartening and adds that, despite Tarantino drawing on aspects of her father’s films for use in his own (Uma Thurman’s yellow jumpsuit in “Kill Bill” is a nod to Lee’s outfit in “Game of Death”; the yakuza army, the Crazy 88, also don Kato-like masks), she doubts he is an actual fan of Lee’s.

“I have always suspected that [Tarantino] is a fan of the kung-fu genre and a fan of things that kick ass in cool and stylish ways, which my father certainly did,” says Shannon Lee, who was 4 years old when her father died. “But whether he really knows anything about Bruce Lee as a human being, whether he’s interested in who Bruce Lee was as a human being, whether he admires who Bruce Lee was as a human being, I’m not really sure that I have any evidence to support that that would be true.”

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/dan-inosanto-bruce-lee3.jpg
Dan Inosanto and Bruce Lee on the set of “Game of Death.”
(COURTESY OF DIANA LEE INOSANTO)

Tarantino did not consult the Lee family prior to or during the making of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Tarantino’s rep has not yet responded to Variety‘s request for comment.

For both Inosanto and Lee, preserving Bruce Lee’s legacy — through martial arts or by developing the projects Lee himself was unable to pursue — is something they continue today. Inosanto teaches at his Inosanto Academy of Martial Arts while Shannon Lee works as a caretaker of her family’s estate and charity foundation and develops projects inspired by her father’s writings, like Cinemax’s “Warrior,” based on a treatment her father wrote and pitched (unsuccessfully) to Warner Bros. Lee is an executive producer of the show, which was renewed for a second season in April.

She sees Tarantino’s film as another way Hollywood has, historically, tried to diminish her father’s accomplishments as one of its first prominent Asian Americans.

“He was continuously marginalized and treated like kind of a nuisance of a human being by white Hollywood, which is how he’s treated in the film by Quentin Tarantino,” says Lee. “I hope people will take the opportunity to find out more about Bruce Lee because there’s a lot more to find out and a lot more to get excited about. This portrayal in this film is definitely not that.”

Adds Inosanto, who says he received an outpouring of letters from fans all over the world following Lee’s death, “Bruce Lee broke ground for Asian Americans. Breaking in as an Asian was very, very difficult at that time. He paved the way for all the action stars.”

[Jimbo]

I wouldn't be surprised if people in Wong Jack Man's lineage would be happy with seeing BL portrayed as a blowhard who gets humiliated. I can understand it, if that's how they feel.

Still, I have a problem with QT portraying BL as a complete A-hole (from all the descriptions). I'll just have to wait and see. I definitely agree with Shannon Lee that I don't think QT really respected BL like some people have said. QT seems to only like the kung fu genre in so far as he can spoof it, like in Kill Bill, with the wire work, fast '70s-style camera zooms, exaggerated blood spill, sound effects, borrowed soundtracks, etc. All of which is unnecessary, because Hong Kong filmmakers like Sammo and Jackie had already spoofed the genre decades ago, and MUCH better than any American filmmaker could ever dream (Kung Pow is a perfect example of spoofing that, IMO, wasn't all that funny or creative). QT clearly approaches BL and the kung fu genre as a whole from more of a white hipster-type POV. Apparently, he hasn't got a clue what BL meant for the image of Asian-Americans in the media at the time. QT has absolutely no problem portraying African-American characters in a positive manner.

Of course, I wasn't on set, but it seems that Mike Moh may be doing some rationalizing for QT. I distinctly recall some Asian-Americans rationalizing for Sacha Baron Cohen, when he made a particularly offensive Asian joke at the Oscars a few years ago. Sometimes rationalizing can make things seem more comfortable to you, but then again, sometimes if it acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, no matter how you try to rationalize it away.

[GeneChing]

The Kung Fu genre is self-spoofing. QT, Kung Pow (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?9271-Kung-Pow), et.al. are more parodies for those unfamiliar with the Kung Fu genre. It really only gets good for us with something like Chow's Kung Fu Hustle (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?28036-KUNG-FU-HUSTLE-Stephen-Chow-s-latest-Kung-Fu-Flick) or Shaolin Soccer (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?46486-Shaolin-Soccer), but then Shaolin Soccer became real (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57758-Shaolin-Soccer-for-real) - which is exactly what I mean by self-spoofing. (see what I did there? :cool:)



ONCE UPON A TIME...
Bruce Lee’s Daughter Has More Questions About Quentin Tarantino’s “Troubling” Depiction of Her Father (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/08/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-quentin-tarantino-bruce-lee)
Had Tarantino “been truly creative,” Shannon Lee told Vanity Fair, “he could have accomplished the goal of his narrative without taking down my father in the process.”
BY JULIE MILLER
AUGUST 1, 2019

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5d41e8ed202d0300091ce62b/16:9/w_1280%2Cc_limit/00-lead-bruce-lee.jpg
Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES.

On Monday Shannon Lee publicly criticized the way Quentin Tarantino depicts her father, Bruce Lee—the legendary martial arts instructor and actor—in his new film, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. Shannon, custodian of her father’s legacy, saw the Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt–starring film on Sunday, and was disturbed by its “caricature”-like portrayal of Bruce. As played by Mike Moh, the character is depicted as a brash, arrogant action star eager to prove his masculinity by fighting Pitt’s stunt-performer character, Cliff Booth, on set. After Moh’s Bruce picks on Cliff repeatedly, Cliff finally gives in—and throws Bruce into the side of a car before a crowd of bystanders.

“For me, there was a lot wrong” with the scene, Shannon told Vanity Fair Tuesday night, explaining that she feels especially obligated to correct the narrative about her father, given how much of the film blurs fact and fiction. “I think part of what is so troubling to me is that it places a lot of responsibility on the audience to interpret what’s factual and what’s not factual.”

The ending of the film—a Tarantino-esque spin on the Manson family murders—is clearly fiction. But for audiences unacquainted with Bruce Lee’s life off-screen, Shannon wants to make it clear that her father was not the fight-picking antagonist shown in the scene—which some posited could be a flashback or fantasy. Her only theory about the filmmaker’s motivation—aside from wanting to frame Cliff Booth as a Hollywood badass—is that “maybe Tarantino took all the things that he knew or heard about Bruce Lee and smashed them into one encounter.”

Shannon admitted that her father “used to be much more brash” when he was a teenager living in Hong Kong, where “he would get into these sort of rooftop matches where one style [of fighter] would go up against another style—stuff like that.” But by 1969—the year that Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood takes place—Bruce was married with a son, and had thoughtfully developed his own style of hybrid martial arts, with a philosophical base. “As time went on, he would be challenged more and more,” she said. “But he didn’t want to fight those fights, and he would try not to.”

Shannon said that there was a real-life incident in which Bruce fought a stuntman, on the set of 1973’s Enter the Dragon. But the circumstances were vastly different: “This [stunt]man continued to provoke him day after day after day, calling him a paper tiger and saying he wasn’t really a martial artist and wanting to challenge him,” Shannon recalled. “My dad kept brushing him aside. But he started getting the extras riled up, saying, ‘See, he’s nobody. He can’t do it. He’s afraid.’”

By that point in Bruce’s career, according to Shannon, her father believed that “the important thing about a challenge is not that you’re being challenged, but what your reaction is to the challenge.” But because “the film set was becoming a disarray,” Bruce relented. Even in accepting the challenge, however, Shannon said her father “was very gentle of a man. He took him down a few times, but he didn’t hurt him.”

It is important for Shannon to continue speaking out, she explained, because her father was regularly marginalized by the Hollywood power brokers of his era. “People said he was cocky and arrogant, when really he was confident and skilled,” said Shannon. In Tarantino’s hands, she said, her father has again been marginalized—this time onscreen: “I think when someone comes up against someone who’s passionate and confident, if they feel in any way threatened, they go right to, ‘Oh, that guy’s arrogant.’ My father has other quotes he would say, like, ‘It’s easy for me to come in, and be cocky, and put on a show, and do all kinds of fancy movements. But to honestly express myself as a human being without lying to myself, that’s a different thing.’ And that’s what he was all about.”

Shannon was also irked by the Bruce character announcing that he would have kicked Muhammad Ali’s ass if they’d ever fought. “My father revered Muhammad Ali,” Shannon said. “He watched all of his fight films to emulate him. My father loved boxing in general. He would write letters to boxers, and ask them about techniques, and express his admiration.”

Asked what she would say to Tarantino if he called her, Shannon replied, “My question would be: what does he have to say to me? I don’t really have anything to say to him.” Shannon said that she felt waves of dismay and discomfort sitting in the movie theater, “look[ing] at people laugh at my father as some kind of arrogant, obnoxious [joke].... It felt really unnecessary.... In the end, whatever the point of that portrayal of my father was in the mind of Tarantino, I feel like the portrayal he chose was unnecessary and obnoxious. Had he been truly creative, he could have accomplished the goal of his narrative without taking down my father in the process.”

“For me, what was so upsetting is—the only reason that I steward my father’s legacy is that it has touched and inspired me in my life, and it has touched, inspired, and helped many people in their lives,” continued Shannon—who keeps her father’s memory alive through the Bruce Lee Foundation, a podcast about Bruce’s philosophy, educational summer programs for children, and inspiring messages on the foundation’s social media feeds. “My goal is to amplify his philosophy and his message and his energy. And a portrayal like this just paints a picture in the minds of the people who don’t know who Bruce Lee is that is false, [and] that just makes my work harder.”

Vanity Fair has reached out to Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood’s representatives for comment.

I totally get what Shannon is saying and I have a ton of respect for what she's done with the foundation, but it's important to keep in mind that she was only 3 when he died.

[GeneChing]

The Stuntwoman Who Made the Stuntman of ‘Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood’ (https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/8/2/20750988/zoe-bell-quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood)
To capture the old-school, rough-and-tumble aesthetic of 1960s moviemaking, Quentin Tarantino turned to his longtime collaborator, stuntwoman Zoë Bell, to help bring Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth to life
By Eric Ducker Aug 2, 2019, 6:20am EDT

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sti1bKjQhslSmuZC8NbP66VRkyA=/0x0:3300x1856/1820x1024/filters:focal(1386x664:1914x1192):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/64899920/bradpittFINAL_raish.0.jpg
Jason Raish

In Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film, a question gets asked from the bar of the Texas Chili Parlor. With platinum blond hair falling past her shoulders and a margarita in a glass boot in front of her, Pam (as played by Rose McGowan) asks, “How exactly does one become a stuntman, Stuntman Mike?”

Wearing a silver satin jacket adorned with Icy Hot patches, Stuntman Mike (as played by Kurt Russell) replies, “Well, in Hollywood, anybody fool enough to throw himself down a flight of stairs can usually find somebody to pay him for it.”

Stuntman Mike eventually reveals he actually got into the business through his brother, Stuntman Bob, but that self-deprecating boast about toughness captures what Tarantino adores about old-school stuntmen.

Mike is the villain of Death Proof, but 12 years later, Tarantino’s brought back the archetype for Cliff Booth, Brad Pitt’s character in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Tarantino presents Booth as the rugged hero of the film. Even if he possibly killed his wife.

Booth is the quietly charming, unflappable force who’s willing to take a punch, fall off a roof, or get hit by a car for Leonardo DiCaprio’s insecure, often buffoonish actor Rick Dalton. And if the opportunities for Booth to get paid by putting his body in harm’s way have disappeared, he’ll happily just get drunk with Dalton or fix the TV antenna on his roof. But in order to help inform the audience about what a badass Booth is, Tarantino turned to the film’s stunt coordinator—Zoë Bell, a 40-year-old New Zealand native who’s been collaborating with the writer and director for more than a decade.

Eruptions of violence have always been present in Tarantino’s films, but he didn’t get into heavy stunt work until the Kill Bill movies. Bell, who previously worked with Lucy Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess, doubled for Uma Thurman during the movie’s vicious and acrobatic fight sequences. (Last year when Thurman revealed to The New York Times that she was injured in a car accident during the making of Kill Bill: Vol. 2, the film’s stunt coordinator, Keith Adams, told The Hollywood Reporter that he wasn’t on set that day and hadn’t been notified that Thurman would be driving the car herself.)

At times Tarantino’s follow-up, Death Proof, feels like he made it explicitly to showcase Bell, who plays a version of herself in the film. In one scene where Tarantino references his own opening scene for Reservoir Dogs, rotating the camera around a restaurant’s table in a single shot, the characters aren’t talking about Madonna and dicks, but about how incredible Bell is. “Physically speaking, Zoë is amazing. I mean agility and reflexes, nimbleness, there are few human beings who can **** with Zoë,” says Tracie Thoms’s Kim. Bell proves just what she is capable of later as she hangs from the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger during one of the greatest cinematic car chases of this century.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq0xthZjW-s

Under stunt coordinator Jeffrey Dashnaw, Bell continued to appear in and/or work on Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight. She also started getting more into acting and began to explore producing and directing. Her highest profile stunt work in years came in 2017 as she doubled Cate Blanchett as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. Then Tarantino asked her to be the stunt coordinator on Once Upon a Time ... (She also briefly shows up as Janet, the wife of Kurt Russell’s fictional TV stunt coordinator, Randy, and the character who calls out Cliff’s rumored homicidal past.) While most stunt work now relies on digital effects, Tarantino tasked her with making the stunts as era-appropriate to the 1960s as possible. That meant, for one, a lot more pads and a lot fewer wires. I spoke with Bell about the roll that stunts (and stunt performers) play in Tarantino’s films and why Brad Pitt taking off his shirt on that roof wasn’t just a beefcake shot.

Why did you decide to transition back into stunt work?

I don’t perceive this as a transition back into stunt work. I perceive it as—I guess this sounds a little bit existential—making career choices that double as life choices. So there’s Thor—Taika [Waititi], the director, is a friend of mine; [stunt coordinator] Ben Cooke, he’s my stunt brother from way back. I was going to be working closely with Cate Blanchett; I was going to be close to New Zealand; it was a regular paycheck, which sometimes in the acting game hasn’t been quite as regular. There’s a bunch of things that went into it that I was like, I really want this as the life that I’m living.

Then when Quentin comes along and offers me this epically moving, romantic, full-circle notion of being the stunt coordinator on a movie called Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood about an actor and a stunt guy, it’s a massive responsibility and a huge honor, and one of those life stories.

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Quentin Tarantino on the set of Death Proof (2007) with Rosario Dawson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zoë Bell, and Tracie Thomsin Dimension Films
When you were discussing the stunt work that he wanted in this film, what type of direction did he give you?

The most relaxed, natural part of the process for me was the creative stuff, because I’ve been back-and-forthing with Quentin in that manner for 10 years in various roles. A lot of that was watching period pieces, looking at the reference list that he had running, absorbing as much of that, and then really, at the end of the day, just listening and letting Quentin paint pictures in my head, which is not hard.

In terms of painting pictures in your head, just as an example, there’s the scene where Cliff does this series of quick jumps to get up to Rick’s roof. Does Quentin say, “I see him doing three jumps”? Or is he more general like, “We need to find a cool way to get him up to the roof”?

It depends. Some particular scenes that are drama-based or have either literal dialogue or physical dialogue, he’ll stand up and act it out. He kind of becomes each character and you become immersed in his imagination. For things like the jumping up on the roof, he’s like, “Zoë, I want something that’s easy for a stuntman, but everyone else would go, ‘What?! How?!’ He’s going to climb a chimney, or he jumps up something, or he pole vaults, or he flips up and over.” So he’s got an idea of it, but then he wants me to throw suggestions that would fit to the location, the scene, what happened before, what happens afterward, and then he’ll know it when he sees it.

It’s interesting with Cliff’s character, because at the start of the film he admits he’s not even really a stuntman anymore, but we have to see what he’s capable of physically because of what he does later in the film. There’s got to be character development through the stunts he does in his everyday life.

We as stunt people know that some of the most beat-up looking women and men in their 50s were probably some of the baddest asses, even if they’re maybe moving a little slower. A big part of it for us was just that [Cliff] was a very talented stuntman whose loyalties maybe cost him an amazing career because he was loyal to Rick, whose career didn’t take off the way Rick was hoping. It also tells you a lot about what Cliff’s priorities in life are.

There are these layers that are so fun to peel back that speak to the fact that before getting paid to do the glossy version of action, [Cliff’s] a war vet. He’s actually been through some legitimately horrific stuff. And at the end of the day, rolling around on the movie set, drinking a carton of milk and smoking cigarettes is a dream compared to where he’d been. So I love those little glimmers of when you get to see “Holy ****, this dude is so capable.” He’s not just some stoner dude living in a trailer with his dog. Well, maybe he is, but he’s also, you know, a multidimensional character.
continued next post

[GeneChing]

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Zoë Bell and Monica Staggs, winners of Best Fight award for “Kill Bill: Vol. 2,” with Daryl Hannah (center) at the 2005 Taurus World Stunt Awards Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage for StellarQuest PR and Consulting

You only learn he’s a war vet through a single line of Rick’s dialogue, halfway through the movie, and then it’s never mentioned again. Did you guys have more in-depth discussions exploring that history?

We definitely explored it with Quentin and with Brad. It became an important thing for Cliff’s stunts. There was talks of “Do we show when he takes his top off that he’s scarred up?” The map of his life we see on his body. Then there’s the way that he stands and faces the world. Green Beret was the keystone for Quentin—[Booth] was a badass and he’d killed people and had to witness horrific things.

Obviously Quentin has respect for all sorts of people in the movie industry, but looking at his filmography and his interests, do you feel like he has a special affinity for stunt performers?

I feel like he does. I don’t mean to be putting words in his mouth, and maybe I’m projecting because I feel this way, but there’s something about stunts to this day that still carries a little bit of that old school. You still got to be a little rough and tumble. Stunts have definitely been gentrified, but you can’t be a stunt person and be worried about getting hurt. You need to be savvy about how to stay safe, but you can’t be doing it worried if you’re going to be getting a bruise or a scratch. I think that that lack of preciousness is probably one of the things that appeals to Quentin, the Wild West of it.

Nowadays so much stunt work revolves around things like wires and CGI. How do you make a movie that features old-school stunt work but is still compelling to modern audiences?

Some of the stuff we wanted to look stylistically authentic to the time— because it is [Rick Dalton’s fictional TV show] Bounty Law—or we are reenacting something. Because as audience members we’re far more savvy and educated now—you don’t want it to just look hokey unless you’re playing on the hoke. There was one sequence that ended up not making the film, but it was very much a haymaker-type fight and a bar brawl—flying over the tables and crashing over the bar. We still wanted the connections to look solid and we still wanted it to look painful, but we were playing into the heightened sort of slapstick of that time in that particular sequence.

In one of the opening sequences [for Bounty Law] there is a balcony fall. Rick Dalton shoots him, he falls off the roof, he smashes through the balcony and he hits the bottom floor. That’s straight out of old-school westerns. I had done a bunch of research about it and people got pretty drilled doing free falls like that. When it came time to do that I took it upon myself to believe that the authenticity of a gag like that is an important piece of the movie. Whether you notice it or not, it had to be done as authentically to the old school as possible. It took weeks of prep and finding the right person. These days you’ve got so much technology and there’s so many techniques and tools and devices that we have that keep everyone safer. When you do something like a balcony fall, we have wires and we have CGI at our disposal. To consider not using those things, we have a responsibility to continue in the safest way possible.

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Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage

Are there generational differences between the attitudes of stunt people?

I’ve found this weird thing where I sit between the two. I’m not the new generation, but my experience was more with an older generation than it would have been in America because I was in New Zealand. We were a little bit behind; the technology hadn’t reached. We were still a little bit ... I don’t mean “cowboy” in the irresponsible way, I mean cowboy in the “****, let’s give it a go” kind of way. But there are performers out there now, and most of their performance career has been flipping on wires, maybe on a green screen, lots of motion capture. The experience required is quite different to what it used to be.

Now, people aren’t doing back falls as much, but they are being smashed into buildings two stories up. There’s a different level of required pain in jobs and each generation feels like the next generation has it too easy. Your parents are like, “You kids have got it so easy.” And then you’ll probably say that about your kids. Your kids will probably say that about their kids, until the world explodes and then no one cares.

I think that’s probably why that balcony fall and this project was so exciting, because it was an opportunity to step outside of the polished, flawless action world and just get a little bit more rough and tumble again.

I hadn’t really thought about it this way before, but the second half of Death Proof with the car chase could be seen as a metaphor about different generations of stunt performers, where the older generation is a little wilder and thinks it’s fun to push the limit of responsible danger, while the younger generation thinks the old way of behaving is going to get them killed.

There’s an element of modern-day people that think they are taking it more seriously than—and I’m using air quotes here—the “cowboys” used to. But then the cowboys can turn around and say, “We’re way tougher than you because we didn’t use pads.” My basic feeling is if you’re going to be good, no matter what area you’re in, you need to have an appreciation and a respect for where you’ve come from and have a respect for those that are taking the torch and running with it. I do have a little bit of the old school in me where I’m like, if you’re not willing to eat **** and hit the ground occasionally in the middle of your job, then I personally think you’re spoiled. But that’s just me.

In Death Proof there’s the scene where Stuntman Mike talks about working on shows like The Virginian and High Chaparral, which are the type of shows that Cliff could have worked on. Cliff is a hero in Once Upon a Time ... Hollywood, but was it ever talked about that there might be a sinister side to him? You get it a little bit during the scene of him with his wife on the boat.

There were conversations around him being a war vet and the alleged killing of his wife, but in the same way we were discussing his relationship with work and his relationship with his dog and how long he had his dog and all that stuff that may or may not have any holding on anything. But no, I personally never read sinister into Cliff. I may be projecting, because I kind of fancy that if a woman could be a Cliff back in 1969, I might’ve been a bit of a Cliff. I liked that idea, but instead I was the stunt coordinator’s wife telling Cliff to get ****ed, which was kind of awesome, too.

Eric Ducker is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Beyond the Bruce issue, here's a nice interview with Zoe Bell.

[@PLUGO]

Why Are You Laughing at Bruce Lee? (https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/on-bruce-lees-character-in-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood.html)
By Walter Chaw

10727
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is filled with characters from American mythology. Beyond its primary protagonists — the men who played cowboys in movies past — there’s the murderous Manson Family, a collective bogey for those opposed to sixties counterculture. And there’s the murdered Sharon Tate, a venerated symbol of innocence lost during the decade. These figures are more than human, and in many ways, less than human, too. The side effect of elevating people to archetype, after all, is that they lose their humanity.

Such was the case for another mythological figure of the sixties who appears in Tarantino’s film: Bruce Lee. In the U.S., Lee came to be perceived as an eastern mystic and berserker golem, two ends of an invincible image he himself helped to perpetuate. But in Once Upon a Time, Lee is less the archetype of American popular consciousness and more, well, human. The portrayal has been met with mixed reviews. Shannon Lee, the martial artist’s daughter and chief executive of the Bruce Lee Family Co., called the performance “disheartening” and “unnecessary.” Tarantino, she believes, “seems to have gone out of the way to make fun of my father and to portray him as a kind of buffoon.” Shannon’s mother, Linda Lee Caldwell, dubbed the performance a “caricature” made to be “insultingly ‘Chinesey.’”

When I saw the character of Bruce Lee (played by actor Mike Moh) in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, my immediate reaction was to cry. Lee is my hero and has been since I first saw him, more than three decades ago, on a bootleg VHS my family borrowed from a local Asian grocer. My reverence for him grew as I got older, following him in movies like The Big Boss and Fist of Fury. I took inspiration from the Hong Kong–American’s struggle for acceptance in Hollywood, an industry that tended to ignore nonwhite faces. He was widely known to U.S. audiences as the sidekick Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet, a subordinate role standard for Asian males in Western cinema (something Jackie Chan and Jet Li would later learn the hard way when attempting their own incursions on these shores). But in China, where The Green Hornet was known as The Kato Show, Lee’s leading-man stardom only rose, catapulting his reputation in the States to that of an untouchable fighter from beyond. His career culminated in a starring part in the joint Hong Kong–American movie, Enter the Dragon, which premiered one month after his tragic death at age 32. By that time, Lee’s status in popular consciousness was iconic. There were dozens of imitators, but only one little dragon.

Lee’s scene in Once Upon a Time is brief but noteworthy, in so far as it veers away from this image of Lee as iconic. He appears on the set of The Green Hornet, which in Tarantino’s universe features protagonist-cowboy Rick Dalton, too. Surrounded by a crowd of crew members, Lee bides his time between takes by monologuing on the abilities of “colored” fighters Joe Louis and Cassius Clay. Lee would “cripple” Clay, he cockily tells his onlookers, should the two fighters ever find themselves opponents. In reality, Lee never claimed he could take Clay; rather, he was quoted as saying Clay would handily beat him up. Yet despite the historical inaccuracy, Moh nails Lee — his voice, his look, his mannerisms. Moh portrays Lee as arrogant (he was), didactic (yes), and hot-tempered (famously), embodying the spirit of a man who had to establish himself as smarter and stronger just to earn second-fiddle roles in a racist industry.

Listening from the sidelines during Lee’s speech is Rick Dalton’s stuntman, Cliff Booth, a pastiche of real-life men like Yakima Canutt and Hal Needham. Booth doesn’t think Lee could trounce Clay (or that Lee had to register his hands as “deadly weapons,” as he claimed), and Booth’s audible scoff makes as much clear. Lee responds by challenging Booth to a fight, and the stuntman agrees. At this point, Moh assumes the martial artist’s trademark fighting stance and begins firing off his familiar vocalizations. I don’t know whether he fought with such panache offscreen, but these are the affectations he assumed for his onscreen persona. This is the Bruce Lee we remember. It was at this point that I realized the audience members around me weren’t fighting back sentimental tears at the sight and sound of Lee like I was — they were laughing.

Growing up as a Chinese kid in a predominantly white area, one of the most common ways people mocked me was by mimicking the noises Lee made. The reaction to Moh’s performance — the chuckles that followed his impression of Lee — felt like a similarly racist gesture. In truth, until very recently, the vast majority of appearances by Asian characters in mainstream American films carried with them the same potential for unintended, racially motivated laughter. (Think: cartoonish figures like Pai Mei, played by Gordon Liu, or Long Duk Dong, played by Gedde Watanabe.) I was less concerned with Tarantino’s depiction of Lee or the outcome of the fight onscreen — Tarantino chose to have Cliff, a fictional member of the director’s Hollywood dream pantheon, best the supposedly unstoppable Lee by throwing him into a car — than with the hardwired reaction to his appearance. I have no doubt there was a portion of my audience laughing at Lee in exhilaration or with nostalgia, just as I have no doubt that the larger portion was laughing because they’ve been programmed to do so. Lee’s legacy, far from insulating him from a white audience’s mocking, actually focuses it.

In the days following Once Upon a Time’s release, it became clear that some people — maybe even some of the people I heard laughing in the theater — wished that Moh’s Lee had thrown Cliff into the sun, perhaps after dislocating all of his joints and ripping out his heart in the process. But I would argue Tarantino’s decision to have Booth fight Lee to a draw doesn’t doesn’t take the air out of Lee; it takes the air out of the constructed mystique that Lee was forced to maintain. That by allowing Lee to regain a portion of his humanity, Tarantino is offering a different, more generous kind of Asian-American representation onscreen. Watching Once Upon a Time, we are not operating under the fantasy that Lee never struggled against racism, or that he wasn’t forced into an outsider role in Hollywood. Here, Lee understands that his status depends on a carefully constructed reputation for supernatural indestructibility. At the end of his fight with Tarantino’s imaginary superhero, Moh’s Lee says “nobody beat the **** out of Bruce.” While some critics saw this as another example of Hollywood doing its best to humiliate an Asian legend, I see it as a man doing his best to hold on to the key to the kingdom.

In real life, when Roman Polanski learned his wife and three houseguests had been murdered, perhaps by a single person, he immediately suspected Lee. Who else, after all, could kill four people with his bare hands? Already, and in his lifetime, the sanctification of Lee’s legend was doing Lee no favors. So Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opted not to perpetuate that image, and instead turns Lee into one of Tarantino’s numerous objects of reclamation, otherwise stuck in our collective, sometimes poisonous American dreamworld. If Tarantino’s not entirely successful here, he has at least revealed the desperate lengths many will go to preserve the viability of an illusion. I am entirely empathetic with the Lee family’s concerns about Lee’s portrayal in this film — hearing audiences laugh for the wrong reasons at a loved one can only be a painful experience. But for me, if only me, watching this attempt to reconfigure a god as a man is as emotional a moment as any in the film. Lee could have quit, but he fought. His legend is amplified by his imperfections, not diminished.

[Jimbo]

Walter Chaw's article brings up some very thoughtful points, which I agree with.

However, towards the end of it, he seems to be rationalizing, as I've seen a number of Asian-Americans do when it comes to these things, about QT's motive(s) for portraying BL as a fool. When in fact, it's likely nothing more than QT portraying him as a fool, because (just maybe) that's how QT really viewed him.

Sure, BL was arrogant. TBH, the majority of martial arts people I've met since the '70s have been arrogant. What made BL stand out was his outspokenness and his platform of fame. Let's be honest here; genuine humbleness is rare in the martial arts world. And back in BL's day, it was considered doubly shocking that an Asian man would dare be so openly brash and outspoken, when the image of the Asian man was subservient like Hop Sing. Which in many ways hasn't changed much to this day.

I have heard that, as a director, QT is arrogant and egotistical, as many in the creative arts are, and his own personality, mannerisms and quirks are ripe for a spoof.

[GeneChing]

QT is brilliant in the way he manipulates media. I'm on several media newsfeeds (which is how I feed the forum here regularly) and QT has got more exposure for OUATIH than I've ever seen any film get. Controversy spawns headlines. It's the guiding strategy for politicians now, but QT has been working this angle for years.


Brad Pitt Objected to Extended Bruce Lee Fight Scene in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Script (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/brad-pitt-rejected-extended-bruce-lee-fight-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-1202163376/)
The Bruce Lee fight scene has become one of the most controversial moments in Tarantino's new film, and it was originally intended to be even longer.
Zack Sharf
Aug 5, 2019 1:12 pm
@zsharf

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/5d4361be2400008c179372a6.jpg
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Sony Pictures

When it comes to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” one scene that is proving to be most controversial is the fight between Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Bruce Lee’s daughter and protégé have already spoken out against the film, condemning Quentin Tarantino for his portrayal of the martial arts and acting legend. In an interview with HuffPo, “Hollywood” stunt coordinator Robert Alonzo reveals Tarantino originally wrote a much longer version of the Bruce Lee fight scene.

In the film, Bruce Lee challenges Cliff to a three-round fight on the set of “The Green Hornet” after Cliff insults him by laughing when he says his fists have been registered as lethal weapons. Lee quickly wins the first round by knocking Cliff to the ground, then Cliff wins round two by launching Lee into the side of a car. Just before the two men can engage in the final round, a “Green Hornet” stunt coordinator played by Zoë Bell arrives on set to yell at the two men.

Per HuffPo, Tarantino wrote the Bruce-Cliff fight scene through round three and it ended with Bruce definitely losing to Cliff. Alonzo said the fight originally ended with Cliff making a “cheap-shot move” that puts Bruce on his butt. The scene as written rubbed both Alonzo and Pitt the wrong way, as the fight’s intention was to only show “the level at which Cliff was [operating]” and not to flat out depict Bruce as weaker.

“I know that Brad had expressed his concerns, and we all had concerns about Bruce losing,” Alonzo said. “Especially for me, as someone who has looked up to Bruce Lee as an icon, not only in the martial-arts realm, but in the way he approached philosophy and life, to see your idol be beaten is very disheartening. It really pulled at certain emotional strings that can incite a little anger and frustration as to how he’s portrayed.”

Alonzo admitted he had a “difficult time choreographing a fight where [Bruce Lee] lost.” The stunt coordinator said even Pitt vocalized his objection to the extended fight. “Everyone involved was like, ‘How is this going to go over?’ Brad was very much against it,” Alonzo said. “He was like, ‘It’s Bruce Lee, man!’”

Alonzo and Pitt’s pushback led Tarantino to revise the sequence, which is when the idea came to have stunt coordinators on the “Green Hornet” set interrupt the fight before it could go into a third round. Mike Moh previously told Birth. Movies. Death. that the original fight scene “conflicted” him because Bruce Lee is a personal hero. Moh stressed that Tarantino reveres Bruce Lee and reminded viewers that the scene’s purpose is only to show Cliff’s strength and not to diminish Lee’s skill.

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is now playing in theaters nationwide.

[GeneChing]

Why the Bruce Lee Fight in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Has Become the Movie's Most Controversial Scene (https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a28607548/mike-moh-bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-controversy/)
The martial arts master's biographer weighs in on the divisive fight scene with Brad Pitt.
BY GABRIELLE BRUNEY
AUG 7, 2019

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SONY

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood earned Quentin Tarantino his best opening weekend box office ever—exceeding forecasts despite being a nearly three-hour long R-rated film that opened while the Lion King remake was still holding strong. But despite also being well received by critics, the film has provoked debate. Its treatment of women has been scrutinized; female characters receive brutal beatings but little dialogue. And one single scene has also been the subject of heated controversy. Here’s a guide to the debate over the movie’s fight scene between real-life actor and martial arts legend Bruce Lee, played by Mike Moh, and Brad Pitt’s character, fictional stuntman Cliff Booth.

What happens in the movie?

In the film, Pitt’s character, Booth, has a flashback while repairing a TV antenna for his boss and best friend, Leonardo DiCaprio’s also-fictional western star Rick Dalton. While on Dalton’s roof, Booth remembers an encounter with Bruce Lee on the Green Hornet set. In the memory, Moh’s Lee holds court among stuntmen and crew members, giving a pompous speech and saying that if he fought Cassius Clay, as legendary fighter Muhammad Ali was still often called in the ‘60s, he’d “make him a cripple.” This elicits chuckles from Pitt’s Booth, who calls Lee “a little man with a big mouth and a big chip,” who "should be embarrassed to suggest [he’d] be anything more than a stain on the seat of Cassius Clay’s trunks.”

Lee proposes a three-round fight to see which man can put the other “on his butt.” In the first round, Lee kicks Booth squarely in the chest, flooring him. He then attacks with a second flying kick, but Booth catches him and hurls him into a car. Before the match can be settled in the third and final round, the two men are interrupted, and Booth is fired for the fight. Flashing back to the present, a Booth still on Dalton’s roof declares his dismissal “fair enough.”

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Sony

Was the scene accurate?

Lee did star in The Green Hornet, as the crime fighter’s sidekick and valet, Kato. But according to Lee biographer Matthew Polly, the scene was inaccurate in many ways. Lee “revered” Muhammad Ali, Polly told Esquire. "So the part in the movie where the Lee character says he would ‘cripple’ [the boxer] and Brad Pitt’s character comes to Ali’s defense is not only completely inaccurate, it turns Lee into a disrespectful blowhard and jerk.”

And while Lee was known to have fought stuntmen on some of his sets once he returned to Hong Kong, "he never started the fights, they always came up to him and challenged him,” Polly says. He also always defeated these challengers handily, with their fights ending within 20 seconds.

Lee also had a reputation for being kind to lower-ranking members of the cast and crews of the projects on which he worked. "Bruce was very famous for being very considerate of the people below him on film sets, particularly the stuntmen. He would often like buy them meals, or once he got famous, take them out to eat, or hand them a little extra cash, or look after their careers,” says Polly. "So in this scene, Bruce Lee is essentially calling out a stuntman and getting him fired because he’s the big star. And that’s just not who Bruce Lee was as a person."

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Bruce Lee on the set of Enter the Dragon, directed by Robert Clouse.
Warner Bros. Pictures

Why do some people have a problem with it?

Despite having some basis in reality, Once Upon a Time is a fictional work—its ending proves that much. But Lee, who died in 1973, was a real-life person, and is still beloved worldwide as the most influential martial artist ever, and as one of the most iconic Asian American movie stars. He braved Hollywood’s racism and became a global superstar, decades before the American film industry would begin to improve upon its historically bigoted and emasculating depiction of Asian men.

In short, his legacy is worthy of the respectful good taste with which Tarantino treats the other real-life figures that appear in the film, including Manson victims Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, and Lee’s fellow Hollywood legend Steve McQueen. But Moh’s Lee is written as a bloviating ass whose presence was played for laughs and to give Booth’s character credibility as a skilled fighter. And while the fight is technically a draw, Booth loses his round with a pretty dignified fall on his butt—while Lee is thrown into a car by an anonymous, middle-aged stuntman.

"There’s nothing else to call him but the butt of the joke, because everything that makes him powerful is the very thing that makes him laughable in the film,” film scholar Nancy Wang Yuen told the LA Times. “His kung fu becomes a joke, and his philosophizing becomes a fortune cookie, and the sounds that he makes as he does kung fu are literally made fun of by Cliff. They made his arrogance look like he was a fraud.”

While Sharon Tate’s family signed off on her portrayal in the film, Shannon Lee wasn’t consulted on her late father’s depiction. "It was really uncomfortable to sit in the theater and listen to people laugh at my father,” she told The Wrap. "What I’m interested in is raising the consciousness of who Bruce Lee was as a human being and how he lived his life,” said. “All of that was flushed down the toilet in this portrayal, and made my father into this arrogant punching bag.”

On Monday, it emerged that an early version of the scene would have seen Moh’s Lee even more decisively humiliated. In an interview with HuffPost, Once Upon a Time’s stunt coordinator revealed that the original script saw Booth’s fight with Lee going a full three rounds—with Lee losing in the end. "I know that Brad had expressed his concerns, and we all had concerns about Bruce losing,” said Alonzo.


Being an Asian American myself, I definitely related to how Bruce was a symbol of how Asians should be portrayed in movies, instead of the old Breakfast at Tiffany’s model that was really prevalent back in the day. … I had a difficult time choreographing a fight where he lost. Everyone involved was like, "How is this going to go over?" Brad was very much against it. He was like, "It’s Bruce Lee, man!”
"I love Quentin Tarantino. I absolutely adore his films, and I think every filmmaker has the right to do whatever they want with history,” said Polly. "What bothered me was that he was very reverential and sympathetic with Steve McQueen, Sharon Tate, and Jay Sebring, but Bruce’s portrayal was more mocking. And given that Bruce was the only non white historical figure in the whole film, I thought that was problematic."

continued next post

[GeneChing]

What do the Tarantino’s defenders say?

Defenders of the portrayal point out that Tarantino is an avowed Bruce Lee fan, who even based Uma Tarantino’s Kill Bill jumpsuit on an outfit Lee wore in his last film.

And critic Walter Chaw, who counts Lee as his hero, found that Moh’s Lee felt humanized. "I would argue Tarantino’s decision to have Booth fight Lee to a draw doesn’t doesn’t take the air out of Lee; it takes the air out of the constructed mystique that Lee was forced to maintain,” he wrote for Vulture. "That by allowing Lee to regain a portion of his humanity, Tarantino is offering a different, more generous kind of Asian-American representation onscreen.”

He was concerned, however, by hearing audience members in the theater laughing at Moh’s portrayal of the Chinese-accented Lee. "If you watch the new Tarantino, and there's any kind of audience, take note of how the audience reacts to the Bruce Lee impersonation,” Chaw tweeted. "This is what systemic racism looks like. Not the performance which is perfect, the reaction which is hard-wired into members of this culture."

Sony Pictures' "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivalshttps://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/mike-moh-1565182869.jpg
Mike Moh arrives at the Sony Pictures’ "Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" Los Angeles Premiere on July 22, 2019 in Hollywood, California.
Steve Granitz

Mike Moh also spoke about the scene. In an interview with Birth. Movies. Death, he also expressed feeling torn about the sequence. “When I first read it, I was like, wow,” he told the website. "I’m not going to tell you what the original script had exactly, but when I read it, I was so conflicted because he’s my hero—Bruce in my mind was literally a God.”

But like Chaw, he described the scene as humanizing Lee:


I can see how people might think Bruce got beat because of the impact with the car, but you give me five more seconds and Bruce would have won. So I know people are going to be up in arms about it, but when I went into my deep dive of studying Bruce, he more than anybody wanted people to know he's human. And I think I respect him more knowing that he had these challenges, these obstacles, just like everybody.

Why did Tarantino write the scene like that?

The Bruce Lee fight had a clear purpose. Booth is an underemployed stuntman who spends his day-to-day running errands for his boss, which doesn’t provide a lot of opportunity for the character to showcase his fighting skill before the film’s bloody finale. Depicting him as being at least as good, and potentially even a better fighter than Bruce Lee makes it a bit more credible when—spoiler—he takes on murderous Manson cultists in the film’s finale. But again, that boils down to tearing down an Asian-American icon in order to build up a fictional white guy.

It also fits in with the film’s allegiances, which lie with the fading Western stars of the late 1960s. "I suspect the reason Tarantino felt the need to take Bruce down a notch is because Lee’s introduction of Eastern martial arts to Hollywood fight choreography represented a threat to the livelihood of old Western stuntmen like Cliff Booth, who were often incapable of adapting to a new era,” Polly told The Wrap, " and the film’s nostalgic, revisionist sympathies are entirely with the cowboys.”

But as the end of the film serves as a rather sweet revisionist history, a portrait of a world in which the Manson Family never made it to 10050 Cielo Drive, the movie itself has an altogether more troubling eye for the past. In the world of Once Upon a Time, beautiful women like Sharon Tate dance often and speak little, and the old guard of white men squash all challenges to their dominance.

"In a movie where Tarantino changes history to fit his violent wish fulfillment,” wrote filmmaker Joseph Kahn on Twitter, "it's odd that his revisionist fantasy of Bruce Lee is that he is a fraud who can easily be overpowered and smacked around by his cowboy avatar."

GABRIELLE BRUNEY
Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

THREADS
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Bruce Lee: A Life by Matt Polly (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?65795-Bruce-Lee-A-Life-by-Matt-Polly)

[GeneChing]

Here is exactly my point (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499). Anyone who knows Bruceploitation knows that Bruce Lee defeated Dracula in Dragon Lives Again (1977). :cool:


Quentin Tarantino Defends ‘Hollywood’ Bruce Lee Fight From Claims It Mocks the Late Action Star (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/quentin-tarantino-defends-bruce-lee-fight-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-1202165238/)
Tarantino's depiction of Bruce Lee in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" has become the film's most controversial topic.
Zack Sharf
Aug 12, 2019 2:25 pm
@zsharf

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Screen-Shot-2019-08-12-at-1.54.13-PM.png
Mike Moh and Quentin Tarantino
Michael Buckner/Variety/Shutterstock

Quentin Tarantino broke his silence on the backlash to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” during the film’s recent Moscow press conference. One of the biggest points of controversy surrounding the film is the scene in which Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) fight each other on the set of “The Green Hornet.” Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon, condemned Tarantino for portraying the martial arts legend as an “arrogant ******* who was full of hot air,” while Lee’s protégé Dan Inosanto said the film did not accurately portray the late action star. Inosanto pointed to a line in Tarantino’s script where Bruce Lee makes a dig at Muhammad Ali and said Lee “would have never said anything derogatory about Muhammad Ali because he worshiped the ground Muhammad Ali walked on.”

“Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy,” Tarantino told press about depicting the actor in such a cocky manner. “The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Mohammad Ali,’ well yeah he did. Alright? Not only did he say that but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that.”

Bruce Lee fans have also taken Tarantino to task for the outcome of the fight scene. Bruce challenges Cliff to a three round fight, easily winning the first round by kicking Cliff to the floor within seconds. Cliff takes the second round in more brutal fashion by throwing Bruce into the side of a car. The two are neck and neck in the third round when the fight is broken up. There’s no actual winner of the fight, although many found it distasteful that Tarantino could diminish Bruce Lee’s fighting skills by having him thrown into a car by Cliff.

“Could Cliff beat up Bruce Lee? Brad would not be able to beat up Bruce Lee, but Cliff maybe could,” Tarantino said. “If you ask me the question, ‘Who would win in a fight: Bruce Lee or Dracula?’ It’s the same question. It’s a fictional character. If I say Cliff can beat Bruce Lee up, he’s a fictional character so he could beat Bruce Lee up. The reality of the situation is this: Cliff is a Green Beret. He has killed many men in WWII in hand to hand combat. What Bruce Lee is talking about in the whole thing is that he admires warriors. He admires combat, and boxing is a closer approximation of combat as a sport. Cliff is not part of the sport that is like combat, he is a warrior. He is a combat person.”

Tarantino summed up the fight by adding, “If Cliff were fighting Bruce Lee in a martial arts tournament in Madison Square Garden, Bruce would kill him. But if Cliff and Bruce were fighting in the jungles of the Philippines in a hand-to-hand combat fight Cliff would kill him.”

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is now playing in theaters.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBsMTyC5hzY

[Jimbo]

I also read about Bruce Lee saying he could beat Muhammad Ali...then revealing that he was joking by saying (and I'm paraphrasing), "Of course I couldn't beat Muhammad Ali; look at his hands and look at my little Chinese hands." I read that decades ago.

If the version I read is the true one, then QT is cherry-picking, lying, or simply read a different version. But QT says he HEARD BL say that. No he didn't. If anything, he READ about it. Big difference. QT did not know BL, never met BL, and BL never said that on film or video.

Of course there were people who could have beaten BL. Lots of people in this world. BL was not the best fighter or H2H combat expert in the world. Probably not even close. He was a superbly, naturally-talented MAist with a ton of natural charisma and swagger. IMO more of an artist. He was whatever he was. The point of the criticism QT is getting is the disrespectful depiction of BL as solely a petty A-hole to be made a laughing stock. Sure BL was, by all accounts, an A-hole at times, especially when he was younger. QT himself comes across as a bit arrogant, not much different. QT's "admiration" of BL is probably nothing more than derivative; using the yellow tracksuit in Kill Bill may be more of an appropriation than true admiration. Maybe he should ask Jackie Chan how BL treated his stuntmen and other "underlings".

[GeneChing]

Is Shannon playing into QT's buzzworthy trap or is she coattailing on the buzz?

Coincidentally I'm working on a Bruceploitation-related piece right now.


AUGUST 14, 2019 4:01PM PT
Bruce Lee’s Daughter Says Quentin Tarantino ‘Could Shut Up’ About Her Father’s Portrayal (EXCLUSIVE) (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/bruce-lee-quentin-tarantino-shannon-lee-interview-1203302850/)
By AUDREY CLEO YAP

Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, is responding to director Quentin Tarantino’s latest comments regarding her father’s portrayal in the film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

“He could shut up about it,” she told Variety when asked how Tarantino could rectify the controversy. “That would be really nice. Or he could apologize or he could say, ‘I don’t really know what Bruce Lee was like. I just wrote it for my movie. But that shouldn’t be taken as how he really was.'”

Tarantino recently defended his depiction of the Asian American martial arts legend (portrayed by Mike Moh) as an arrogant blowhard. “Bruce Lee was kind of an arrogant guy,” Tarantino said at a recent press junket in Moscow. “The way he was talking, I didn’t just make a lot of that up. I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali.’ Well, yeah, he did. Not only did he say that, but his wife, Linda Lee, said that in her first biography I ever read. She absolutely said that.”

Not the case, Shannon Lee says.

“One of the things that’s troubling in his response is that, on the one hand, he wants to put this forward as fact and, on the other hand, he wants to stay in fiction,” she added.

Lee said that her father’s confidence could be mistaken for arrogance and does not call him a “perfect man.” However, she noted that the kind of criticism Tarantino draws on is one that she has heard before, primarily from other white men who were in martial arts and in Hollywood.

The passage in his wife Linda Lee Cadwell’s book, “Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew,” that Tarantino appears to refer to is a quote from a critic, who wrote that “Those who watched [Bruce] Lee would bet on Lee to render Cassius Clay senseless,” and not from the author herself (Clay was later known as Muhammad Ali).

“[Tarantino] can portray Bruce Lee however he wanted to, and he did,” Shannon Lee said. “But it’s a little disingenuous for him to say, ‘Well, this is how he was, but this is a fictional movie, so don’t worry too much about it.’”

Bruce Lee’s protégé and training partner Dan Inosanto also rejected the idea that Lee would have bragged about being able to defeat Muhammad Ali in a previous interview with Variety.

A former TV host and current executive producer of Cinemax’s “Warrior” (based on a TV treatment Bruce Lee wrote), Shannon Lee is the caretaker of her father’s estate and charity foundation.

Lee was returning from a trip to Hong Kong where she had been working with the Hong Kong Heritage Museum on refreshing its Bruce Lee exhibit and expanding a martial arts summer camp program when she heard about Tarantino’s response to criticism about the film’s portrayal of her late father.

[GeneChing]

Man, this just keeps on going...not a day goes by when I don't see QT in my newsfeed now. :eek:


Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Bruce Lee Was My Friend, and Tarantino's Movie Disrespects Him (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-bruce-lee-was-my-friend-tarantinos-movie-disrespects-him-1232544)
8:08 AM PDT 8/16/2019 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/08/t23x5t-h_2019.jpg
Alamy Stock Photo
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bruce Lee during the filming of 1978’s 'Game of Death.'

The NBA great and Hollywood Reporter columnist, a friend of the late martial arts star, believes the filmmaker was sloppy, somewhat racist and shirked his responsibility to basic truth in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.'

Remember that time Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. kidney-punched a waiter for serving soggy croutons in his tomato soup? How about the time the Dalai Lama got wasted and spray-painted “Karma Is a Beach” on the Tibetan ambassador’s limo? Probably not, since they never happened. But they could happen if a filmmaker decides to write those scenes into his or her movie. And, even though we know the movie is fiction, those scenes will live on in our shared cultural conscience as impressions of those real people, thereby corrupting our memory of them built on their real-life actions.

That’s why filmmakers have a responsibility when playing with people’s perceptions of admired historic people to maintain a basic truth about the content of their character. Quentin Tarantino’s portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood does not live up to this standard. Of course, Tarantino has the artistic right to portray Bruce any way he wants. But to do so in such a sloppy and somewhat racist way is a failure both as an artist and as a human being.

This controversy has left me torn. Tarantino is one of my favorite filmmakers because he is so bold, uncompromising and unpredictable. There’s a giddy energy in his movies of someone who loves movies and wants you to love them, too. I attend each Tarantino film as if it were an event, knowing that his distillation of the ’60s and ’70s action movies will be much more entertaining than a simple homage. That’s what makes the Bruce Lee scenes so disappointing, not so much on a factual basis, but as a lapse of cultural awareness.

Bruce Lee was my friend and teacher. That doesn’t give him a free pass for how he’s portrayed in movies. But it does give me some insight into the man. I first met Bruce when I was a student at UCLA looking to continue my martial arts studies, which I started in New York City. We quickly developed a friendship as well as a student-teacher relationship. He taught me the discipline and spirituality of martial arts, which was greatly responsible for me being able to play competitively in the NBA for 20 years with very few injuries.

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/2019/08/qt9_21867-embed_2019_0.jpg
SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT
Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

During our years of friendship, he spoke passionately about how frustrated he was with the stereotypical representation of Asians in film and TV. The only roles were for inscrutable villains or bowing servants. In Have Gun - Will Travel, Paladin’s faithful Chinese servant goes by the insulting name of “Hey Boy” (Kam Tong). He was replaced in season four by a female character referred to as “Hey Girl” (Lisa Lu). Asian men were portrayed as sexless accessories to a scene, while the women were subservient. This was how African-American men and women were generally portrayed until the advent of Sidney Poitier and blaxploitation films. Bruce was dedicated to changing the dismissive image of Asians through his acting, writing and promotion of Jeet Kune Do, his interpretation of martial arts.

That’s why it disturbs me that Tarantino chose to portray Bruce in such a one-dimensional way. The John Wayne machismo attitude of Cliff (Brad Pitt), an aging stuntman who defeats the arrogant, uppity Chinese guy harks back to the very stereotypes Bruce was trying to dismantle. Of course the blond, white beefcake American can beat your fancy Asian chopsocky dude because that foreign crap doesn’t fly here.

I might even go along with the skewered version of Bruce if that wasn’t the only significant scene with him, if we’d also seen a glimpse of his other traits, of his struggle to be taken seriously in Hollywood. Alas, he was just another Hey Boy prop to the scene. The scene is complicated by being presented as a flashback, but in a way that could suggest the stuntman’s memory is cartoonishly biased in his favor. Equally disturbing is the unresolved shadow that Cliff may have killed his wife with a spear gun because she nagged him. Classic Cliff. Is Cliff more heroic because he also doesn’t put up with outspoken women?

I was in public with Bruce several times when some random jerk would loudly challenge Bruce to a fight. He always politely declined and moved on. First rule of Bruce’s fight club was don’t fight — unless there is no other option. He felt no need to prove himself. He knew who he was and that the real fight wasn’t on the mat, it was on the screen in creating opportunities for Asians to be seen as more than grinning stereotypes. Unfortunately, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood prefers the good old ways.

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/2019/08/game_of_death_-_embed_-_2019.jpg
Photofest
Lee and Kareem's 1978 Game of Death fight sequence, which can be seen here.

This story appears in the Aug. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

[Jimbo]

IMO, Kareem has put the real truth about it out there better than anybody else.

[GeneChing]

I'd heard this tale before but didn't consider it until reading this story which refreshed my memory.


https://pictures.ozy.com/pictures/2048x1152/6/1/7/147617_qt9_67895_r.jpg
Brad Pitt in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
SONY/ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

TRUE STORY
DEBUNKING QUENTIN TARANTINO'S 'MOCKERY' OF BRUCE LEE (https://www.ozy.com/true-story/debunking-quentin-tarantinos-mockery-of-bruce-lee/95956)
By Eugene S. Robinson

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Because real-life tough guys need to be heeded.

Bob Calhoun
Berkeley, California

The real story of Bruce Lee’s confrontation with a grizzled Hollywood stuntman is far more complex than what’s depicted in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

The scene ****es me off, but there’s a grain of truth to it.

Brad Pitt as broken-down stuntman Cliff Booth kicks Bruce Lee’s (Mike Moh’s) ass on the set of The Green Hornet in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, Tarantino’s epic revisionist history of Tinseltown. Pitt gets to look cool, while Bruce Lee — a breakthrough Asian film star — is turned into kooky Asian comic relief akin to Mickey Rooney sporting yellowface as the Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And with all of Pitt’s punchlines and Moh’s pratfalls, the older White dudes in theater 11 at the Century 16 Bayfair in San Leandro cackled like crazy.


LEBELL LIFTED [BRUCE] LEE ONTO HIS BACK IN WHAT’S CALLED A FIREMAN’S CARRY AND RAN AROUND THE SET WITH HIM. “PUT ME DOWN OR I’LL KILL YOU!” LEE SCREAMED.
Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, called the portrayal of Lee in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood a “mockery.” While she’s not wrong, there actually was a stuntman who locked horns with Lee on the set of The Green Hornet in 1966.

He’s now 87 years old and enjoying semiretirement in Sherman Oaks, California, after a career crashing cars, being set on fire and wrestling bears. “Judo” Gene LeBell was known in the business as the toughest man alive, and I should know since I co-authored his autobiography, The Godfather of Grappling.

According to LeBell, Lee was a working stiff on the set of The Green Hornet but was kicking the **** out of the stuntmen. They couldn’t convince him that he could go easy and it would still look great on film. The show’s stunt coordinator, Bennie Dobbins, needed a ringer to deal with Lee, so he called in Judo Gene.

https://pictures.ozy.com/pictures/768xany/6/1/6/147616_gettyimages104100615.jpg
Gene LeBell on the set of ‘Bionic Woman.’
SOURCE GETTY IMAGES

LeBell says when he got to the set, Dobbins told him to put Lee “in a headlock or something.”

So LeBell went up and grabbed Lee. “He started making all those noises that he became famous for,” LeBell said, “but he didn’t try to counter me, so I think he was more surprised than anything else.”

Then LeBell lifted Lee onto his back in what’s called a fireman’s carry and ran around the set with him.

“Put me down or I’ll kill you!” Lee screamed.

“I can’t put you down or you’ll kill me,” LeBell said, holding Lee there as long as he dared before putting him down, saying, “Hey, Bruce, don’t kill me. Just kidding, champ.”

Back on his feet again, Lee didn’t kill LeBell. Instead, Lee recognized that the lack of grappling was a deficiency in the Jeet Kune Do style of martial arts he was developing. So Lee trained with LeBell for a little over a year with LeBell showing Lee armbars, leg locks and takedowns, and Lee schooling LeBell in kung fu kicks.

After training with LeBell, Lee incorporated grappling moves into his film fighting. He finishes off Chuck Norris with a chokehold in Way of the Dragon (1972) and beats a young Sammo Hung with an armbar in Enter the Dragon (1973).

“I didn’t go to Hong Kong with him for Enter the Dragon, but when he came back, he told me, ‘I did this armbar to show you,’” LeBell recalled. Lee died before Enter the Dragon — his ultimate career accomplishment and posthumous breakthrough as a global movie and martial arts star — but he did return to Hollywood after completing the film in a frantic bid to line up his next projects.

While they trained together, LeBell became Lee’s favorite kicking dummy in episodes of The Green Hornet and Longstreet. “He really liked the way I took falls for him,” LeBell says.

https://pictures.ozy.com/pictures/768xany/6/1/8/147618_copyofqt9_r_00328.jpg
Quentin Tarantino behind the scenes of ’Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.’
SOURCE SONY/ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD

When I talked to LeBell last night, he was blissfully unaware that Brad Pitt was playing a cowboy fantasy version of him in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

“It’s a lot of bull****,” LeBell said. “But you can’t eat glory.”

But actually knowing LeBell makes Tarantino’s fiction all the more galling. In his cute little scene, Tarantino sells both Lee and LeBell short.

When LeBell scooped Lee up on the set of The Green Hornet, he was already a world-class martial artist when there weren’t that many in the United States. LeBell was a two-time national judo champion. He had also trained and wrestled at the Kōdōkan in Tokyo, the mecca of judo. He had fought and won what many consider to be the first mixed martial arts fight when he took on ranked light heavyweight boxer Milo Savage in 1963.

LeBell’s mother, Aileen Eaton, was the top boxing and wrestling promoter in Los Angeles, so LeBell was learning chokeholds from guys like Ed “Strangler” Lewis when he was just 7 years old. LeBell parlayed his pain-inducing skills into careers in martial arts, professional wrestling and Hollywood stunt work, making him the ultimate ass-kicking Renaissance man, as well as a true son of the City of Angels.

And this is what it took to just pick up Bruce Lee and clown him during a TV shoot. Somebody like Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth would have just been one of the guys begging the show’s stunt coordinator to call in Judo Gene. So when LeBell asks me to track down Tarantino to set the record straight, the only thing I can do is say yes.

“You’ve gotta put Bruce Lee over,” LeBell said during our phone conversation. “He means so much to martial arts. You’ve gotta put him over, Bob.”

Eugene S. Robinson, Editor-at-Large

[Jimbo]

I've been aware of the Gene LeBell/Bruce Lee story for years, and yes, I believe it. LeBell himself mentioned it, and I highly doubt he would lie about that. I have doubts that QT was aware of it, though, or else he most likely would have brought it up when 'defending' himself from his critics.

It's also a fact that during a single private training session on the mat, LeBell easily defeated three famous MAists one after the other; Chuck Norris, Bob Wall, and legendary Australian MAist/former bodyguard Richard Norton. IIRC, Richard Norton even screamed and passed out from the pain at one point. And lots of people know about Steven Seagal soiling himself after being choked out by LeBell.

As the article mentioned, LeBell was and is far more than only a stuntman. Stuntmen are a very tough breed, but LeBell was in a whole other category in terms of his MA knowledge and actual fighting ability.

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' Nears $200M Globally (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/quentin-tarantinos-once-a-time-hollywood-nears-200m-1232817)
1:14 PM PDT 8/18/2019 by Pamela McClintock

The movie — which has finally begun rolling out overseas — could end up nearly matching or even surpassing the filmmaker's biggest film to date, 'Django Unchained.'

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is headed for a fairy tale ending at the worldwide box office.

The movie — affirming the filmmaker's enduring popularity, as well as the star power of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt — will likely end up being the second-biggest movie of Tarantino's career behind Django Unchained at the worldwide box office, not adjusted for inflation. There's also a chance it could overtake Django.

However, most box office analysts predict that Once Upon a Time will ultimately earn between $375 million and $400 million globally, surpassing Pulp Fiction ($212 million) and Inglourious Basterds ($316.9 million). Through Sunday, its worldwide cume stood at $180.2 million — and it's only just begun its overseas rollout.

"The movie is arguably the most accessible and entertaining of all of Tarantino's films and given its collective star power, great marketing campaign and generally great reviews, it should be no surprise that the film has become a global breakout hit," says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore. "And Once Upon a Time in Hollywood certainly has the potential to become the highest-grossing Tarantino movie ever."

Tarantino's Django Unchained, also starring DiCaprio and released over the Christmas holidays in 2012, grossed $162.8 million domestically and $262.6 million overseas for a career-best global haul of $425.4 million.

Once Upon a Time transformed into an instant success story in North America late last month upon launching to $41.1 million on its way to earning a stellar $114.3 million to date (it is the only original summer tentpole to cross the century mark domestically).

How Once Upon a Time would fare overseas wasn't clear until this weekend, when it finally rolled out in earnest. The pic topped the international chart with $53.7 million from 46 markets for an early foreign total of $66.2 million (it launched in Russia and two small markets a week ago).

According to Sony, Once Upon a Time opened notably ahead of Django — by 30 percent — in those foreign markets where it has landed, a promising sign. It also debuted ahead of The Wolf of Wall Street and on par with The Revenant, both starring DiCaprio.

Once Upon a Time placed No. 1 in 28 markets. The U.K. turned in a five-day total of $8.9 million, while France launched with $6.9 million, followed by Germany ($5.6 million) and Australia ($4.4 million).

Tarantino's film continues to hold well in Russia, where it opened to a career-best $7.7 million last weekend. Total ticket sales there have grown to $13.3 million, while Hong Kong and Taiwan have turned in $1.2 million and $1.1 million, respectively.

Major markets yet to open include Mexico (Friday), Japan (Aug. 30), Italy (Sept. 18) and South Korea (Sept. 26). There's no word yet on a China release date. China's Bona Film Group co-financed Once Upon a Time and is handling distribution duties in such Asian markets as Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a pre-occupied right now (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?23536-Hong-Kong-protests&p=1314448#post1314448), but I'm really curious how they will react to the depiction of their favorite son.

[GeneChing]

...is this due to the influence of QT...or Bruce?


https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wdtViKa-2NKuj2-r5DIxuGOdceE=/49x0:1237x622/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19017588/once_upon_a_time_in_hollywoodmobileheader9.jpg

Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood’s Bruce Lee: When revisionist history goes awry (https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2019/8/21/20809101/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-bruce-lee-mike-moh-mma-in-movies-review-quentin-tarantino)
Quentin Tarantino’s vision of 1960’s Los Angeles includes a less than flattering re-imagining of one of martial arts’ most notable practitioners.
By Carolyn Lee Adams Aug 21, 2019, 12:00pm EDT

Spoiler Alert: Details of a scene in the film ‘Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood’ involving Bruce Lee are revealed below.

Thelonious Monk once said, “A genius is the one most like himself.” By that measure, Quentin Tarantino is most certainly a genius, for he is relentlessly himself—be it for good (Kill Bill Vol.2) or bad (Death Proof). Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, boldly mixes fact and fiction as it takes on Charles Manson and the tail end of the golden age of Hollywood. It is an ambitious work of cinema, but Tarantino’s willingness to play fast and loose with the truth isn’t always successful. Case in point, an unfortunate sequence involving martial arts legend, Bruce Lee.

The scene, involving an extended monologue from Lee and an eventual fistfight, feels gratuitous—and it’s hard not to wonder what prompted Tarantino to include it. It establishes Cliff Booth – played by Brad Pitt – as a bad ass, but there were likely far easier and more efficient ways to do that. Clearly there were things Tarantino wanted to express about Bruce Lee and martial arts, while making use of a true story about Lee getting bested by a stuntman.

Let’s begin with that true story.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WCRTXZaU-lUWVlGAoKTtxaYhcTM=/0x0:537x632/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:537x632):format(webp):no_upscale ()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19077257/Van_Williams_Bruce_Lee_Green_Hornet_1966.jpg
Van Williams (left) and Bruce Lee (right) on the set of the Green Hornet.

There was trouble on the set of The Green Hornet. Bruce Lee kept hurting the stuntmen. Wanting to make the fight scenes look as real as possible, Lee wasn’t exactly pulling his punches. And the stuntmen were complaining. Bennie Dobbins, the stunt coordinator for the show, decided Lee needed a lesson. He called in ‘Judo’ Gene LeBell, the toughest stuntman Dobbins knew, to teach it.

LeBell had come by the reputation honestly. He was the son of Aileen Eaton, a boxing and wrestling promoter in Los Angeles. From a young age, LeBell learned how to fight from the best. He’d gone on to become a two-time national judo champion, and had trained in Tokyo at Kōdōkan. He’d even competed in a true mixed martial arts contest, taking on ranked light heavyweight boxer Milo Savage in 1963.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mER2BmNRA

When LeBell showed up on set, he did exactly what Dobbins hoped he’d do—he got the better of Bruce Lee. LeBell simply picked Lee up, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him around. Lee didn’t take it very well, screaming out death threats all throughout.

In the end, however, the only thing injured was Lee’s pride—and he recognized that LeBell’s grappling skills gave him a fighting advantage. He set about learning from LeBell. In terms of entertainment, this new knowledge culminated in Lee’s use of an armbar in Enter the Dragon.

But, obviously, Bruce Lee wasn’t just an entertainer. He was also a martial artist. His desire to create a truly effective fighting style resulted in the development of Jeet Kune Do. Before his death, he decided style itself hindered fighting, and left behind his newly developed form.
In 2004, and a few times since, Dana White credited Bruce Lee as the “father of MMA.” Although Bruce Lee was certainly a strong influence, it seems strange to call him the father of the sport. The fact LeBell competed in a true mixed martial arts contest prior to meeting Lee belies the point. Even Lee himself, while still just a kid in 1950’s Hong Kong, was inspired by the mixed martial arts exploits of Mas Oyama. Decades earlier, Mitsuyo Maeda traveled the world taking on boxers, wrestlers, and street fighters with his ‘jiu-do’—making it to Brazil in 1914 and taking on a student named Carlos Gracie.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/p9eU8oqYU8L_Bj1VZOw_K9RfVKI=/0x0:480x600/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:480x600):format(webp):no_upscale ()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13122127/480px_Mitsuyo_Maeda_Fighting_Poster.jpg

But sure, let’s go ahead with the idea that Bruce Lee was the father of MMA, as this seems to be an idea Tarantino is also invested in. Mike Moh, who plays Lee in Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, gets an opportunity to chew the scenery for two minutes and nine seconds (I timed it). An unheard of amount of cinema real estate for one soliloquy that really has nothing to do with anything, as far as the plot is concerned.

In this monologue, Lee expresses his distaste of martial arts tournaments and an appreciation for the real world danger of boxing. He then essentially describes MMA, saying, “That’s beyond athletics. Beyond the Wide World of Sports. That’s what I admire. Two warriors, facing each other.” An unseen stagehand asks Lee who would win such a fight, Lee or Muhammed Ali. Lee says he’d “cripple” Ali.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FxCxgjTKpHSExSji-QIohkIkQoo=/0x0:1140x991/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1140x991):format(webp):no_upscal e()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19082112/Bruce_Lee.png
Mike Moh (right) as Bruce Lee, fighting Brad Pitt (left) as Cliff Booth on the set of Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood.

Enter Cliff Booth, a war hero and who apparently got away with murdering his wife. Booth scoffs at the idea of Lee beating Ali, prompting Lee to challenge Booth to combat. Although technically no winner is decided, Booth throws Lee into a car – a car built in the 1960’s, no less – and Lee’s body makes a massive dent in the door. Lee is fine.

Adding to the cartoon-ish veneer of the entire thing, is the cringe-inducing stereotypical way that Lee is portrayed.

Tarantino defended his caricature of Bruce Lee, calling him “arrogant,” and claimed, “I heard him say things like that, to that effect. If people are saying, ‘Well he never said he could beat up Muhammad Ali.’ Uh, yeah, he did.”

If Bruce Lee did say that, the record of it has been well hidden.

Much easier to find is a story told by Robert Clause, director of Enter the Dragon. Lee was in the business of studying Ali and speculating as to what would happen if they ever fought. Lee raised his fist and said, “That’s a little Chinese hand. He’d kill me.”

Was Bruce Lee arrogant at times? No doubt. It takes a big sense of self to take on the creation of a new approach to martial arts, while also becoming an entertainment icon. But it also took humility to seek out wisdom from the stuntman who embarrassed him in public.

Along with his depiction of Lee, Tarantino also addressed the film’s assertion that Cliff Booth could beat up martial arts star. To recap the fictional character, Booth is a WWII veteran and war hero with hand-to-hand combat experience. As far as the audience can tell, he’s spent much of the last twenty years of his life driving Leonardo DiCaprio around, doing some stunts, handyman jobs, and drinking a lot. Meanwhile, Lee, a superior athlete, has been pursuing martial arts excellence with extreme dedication.

While acknowledging Brad Pitt would be unable to beat up Bruce Lee, Tarantino asserts, “If I say Cliff could beat Bruce Lee up, he’s a fictional character, then he could beat Bruce Lee up.”

Well, I say he couldn’t.

So there.

[Jimbo]

Bruce Lee was an interesting person, no doubt. He was critical of karate tournaments, yet he attended a lot of them. He also said that he would NOT have wanted to face karate fighter/judoka Jim Harrison in a real fight. I believe he said the same about Mike Stone. Jim Harrison was a genuine badass, with real-life fighting experience far beyond tournaments. I have no trouble picturing Harrison either beating BL, or at least making BL look really bad.

Which is a moot point for this movie, because QT, by all appearances, only relates to BL and MA in general as they appeared in movies, and almost certainly has never even heard of Jim Harrison (or Mike Stone).

[GeneChing]

As y'all know, I read the newsfeeds pretty much every working day scanning for martial arts news to poach and post here on our forum. It's been inundated with this discussion. For every article about this that I post, there are at least a dozen 'echo' articles - other websites that re-write an original interview piece to glean traffic (sure, that's kind of what I do here too, which is why this forum stays alive).

That being said, there's this - what about Tate & Sebring and their families? I touched on the cluster of Tate projects coming in my review published over a month ago already (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499).



PEOPLE.COM
CRIME
Relatives of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring 'Haunted' by Slayings 50 Years Later: 'There Is No Closure' (https://people.com/crime/relatives-jay-sebring-sharon-tate-haunted-slayings/)
The relatives of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring speak out about the memories of their loved ones and the continued interest in their killers
By Elaine Aradillas August 21, 2019 08:00 AM

It has been half a century since the deaths of seven people during a two-day killing spree in Los Angeles terrorized a nation, but the loved ones left behind have been unable to leave their pain in the past.

Murder victim Jay Sebring’s niece Mishele DiMaria has a vivid memory from the summer of 2009 when she saw her favorite band perform in Las Vegas. But when the band’s lead singer emerged onstage wearing a “Charlie’s Angels” T-shirt emblazoned with the image of infamous cult leader Charles Manson and three of his female followers, her excitement disappeared.

“I felt like I got kicked in the gut,” she says. “The happiness ripped right out of me. To know that I had unknowingly supported someone who supports the killers of my uncle Jay made me physically ill. The scar was ripped open.”

Sebring was among seven people murdered by Manson Family members. On Aug. 9, 1969, police discovered the bodies of Sebring, 8-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski and Steven Parent at Tate’s house in Benedict Canyon.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/manson-murders-3.jpg
WOYTECK FRYKOWSK

The next day, the slain bodies of Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary were found in their Los Feliz home, about nine miles away.

The murders have inspired books, television shows, such as the recent Netflix series Mindhunter, and movies, including the summer hit Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood, which features actors Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate and Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring. And with every mention and new portrayal, the families of the victims are forced to grieve all over again.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/manson-murders-1-e1566329941309.jpg
Debra Tate JORDAN STRAUSS/INVISION/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/9-2-cover-1.jpg
• For more on how the victims of the Manson Family murders cope with their grief, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.

Debra Tate, Sharon’s younger sister, has spent her life keeping Sharon’s memory alive while fighting to keep the killers in prison. Although Debra has tried to stay out of the spotlight, she says strangers fascinated with the case inevitably come knocking on her door.

https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/manson-murders-2.jpg
Anthony DiMaria GARY CORONADO/LOS ANGELES TIMES/GETTY
Shortly before the 50th anniversary, a man walked up to her front door in Southern California and asked if she was related to Sharon. He said he had a message from Manson. She immediately grabbed her shotgun and let the stranger know she was armed. The stranger left — but the incident left her shaken.

“I have death threats on Facebook, I have people breaching my gate, I’ve got weirdos on my own personal site,” she says. “It’s very alarming and I would be a fool if I didn’t pay attention to it and treat it as credible.”

Despite the risks, Debra attends every parole hearing and speaks on behalf of family members who can’t attend (she submits signatures from her website, No Parole for Manson Family). Meanwhile, Sebring’s nephew Anthony DiMaria is preparing to release a documentary about his uncle’s life as a businessman and celebrity hairstylist. They are determined to make sure the lives of the victims are not forgotten.

“Unless every one of the victims get out of their graves and live the 50 years they should have lived with us and all of their friends who loved them, there is no closure,” DiMaria says.


By Elaine Aradillas

[GeneChing]

‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Producer Shannon McIntosh Sets Martial Arts Movie Slate With UK Firm GFM (https://deadline.com/2019/08/once-upon-time-hollywood-tarantino-producer-shannon-mcintosh-martial-arts-movie-deal-gfm-films-1202702480/)
By Andreas Wiseman
Co-International Editor
@AndreasWiseman

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Shutterstock

EXCLUSIVE: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood producer and Quentin Tarantino regular collaborator Shannon McIntosh has set a four-picture venture with Evolution Pictures, the genre label of UK sales outfit GFM Films.

McIntosh Films will team with Evolution on four martial arts action movies, which will be produced by McIntosh and H. Daniel Gross (Halloween: Resurrection), formerly of Blackbelt TV.

Two films are due to be shot in Thailand, with the other two lined up to be made in the US. The team is aiming to shoot the first feature in early 2020. GFM Films will handle world sales and will launch the slate at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival.

According to the team, the movies will feature a mix of “new young martial arts talent and well-established American & Asian stars of the genre.”

McIntosh and Gross, who have also been developing a martial-arts-themed series, said of the venture, “Joining forces with GFM on this slate is thrilling for all of us. Martial arts have a deep history in cinema, and these projects present an exciting opportunity to bring action-packed genre films grounded in strong scripts to the screen. There’s an audience for these films, and a dedicated one at that. There’s a true love for martial arts films, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to enter the arena with Evolution Pictures & GFM by our side.”

Fred Hedman of Evolution said, “We are delighted to be working with Shannon and Dan to bring this unique opportunity to the marketplace. These four English-language kung fu/action movies will showcase new young martial arts talent, whilst at the same time drawing on well-established American & Asian stars of the genre. This venture furthers our ambitions for Evolution Pictures in becoming an established production arm and genre label of GFM Films and we could not be more excited.”

Run by Guy Collins, Fred Hedman and Michael Ryan, GFM’s slate includes in-the-works animation Blazing Samurai, which is now being directed by Rob Minkoff (The Lion King), completed John Cleese rom-com The Naked Wanderer, and animations A Wizard’s Tale, which has Lily Collins among the voice cast, and Duck Duck Goose, whose voice cast includes Jim Gaffigan and Zendaya.

Evolution’s development slate includes thriller The Ledge, about a female climber trapped on the face of a mountain who must fight off four killers on a ledge above her.

I wish this article had dropped some working titles. For now, this will have to live on our Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood) & Blazing Samurai (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69056-Blazing-Samurai) threads.

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Confirmed For China Release (https://deadline.com/2019/09/once-upon-time-hollywood-china-release-quentin-tarantino-1202742406/)
By Andreas Wiseman
International Editor
@AndreasWiseman
September 23, 2019 7:55am

https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/qt9_r_00141.jpg?crop=0px%2C533px%2C5566px%2C3117px&resize=681%2C383
Sony Pictures
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is slated to get a China release on October 25, we have confirmed.

The release will come soon after the country’s National Day holiday in the first week of October, a period when cinemas are often given over to local fare and patriotic content.

Set in 1960s LA against the backdrop of the Manson murders, the film charts the story of a faded television actor and his stunt double who strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry. Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead the all-star cast.

China’s Bona Film Group was a co-investor in the title, which has taken more than $300M global for Sony after debuting at Cannes.

Tarantino’s Django Unchained secured China distribution in 2013 but the movie was pulled shortly after release due to “technical reasons”. It is widely understood that authorities took issue with the film’s content, including nudity and violence. A heavily re-edited version was subsequently released but to little box office success.

It is unclear at this stage how much, if any, of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood has been cut for the China release. Will they keep the Bruce Lee scene? :rolleyes:

[@PLUGO]

by Patrick Brzeski for The Hollywood Reporter… (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-cancels-release-tarantinos-once-a-time-hollywood-1248652?fbclid=IwAR2wMlmFiCkT3r8gPBNg_rY871chJM7vW X4f6dw7s5O2V0zuXedQrq2HCsc)

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Bruce Lee’s daughter made a direct appeal to China’s National Film Administration for changes to her father's controversial portrayal in the film. Now, the movie's China backer Bona Film Group is said to be frantically working with Tarantino on a new cut to salvage the release.
In a shocking twist not unlike the ending of a Quentin Tarantino film or two, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's China box office ambitions appear to be going up in flames.

The critically acclaimed movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, had been approved for release in China on Oct. 25, but regulators have abruptly reversed course.

According to multiple sources close to the situation in Beijing, who asked not to be named because they weren't permitted to speak publicly about the matter, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's local release has been indefinitely put on hold.

The film would have been Tarantino's first proper release in China, and the country's enormous market was expected to help push the title's worldwide box office total past the $400 million mark (it has earned $366 million to date). The abrupt change-up comes as a blow to both Sony Pictures and the film's Chinese financier, Beijing-based Bona Film Group.

As The Hollywood Reporter reported exclusively in January, Bona took a sizable equity stake in Once Upon a Time, which gave the company participation in the film's worldwide box office, as well as distribution rights in Greater China. Bona's CEO Yu Dong and COO Jeffrey Chan are both prominently credited as executive producers of the film.

As is typical in China, no official explanation for the cancellation has been offered by Beijing regulators. Bona didn't reply to text messages and emails, and Sony's China office could not immediately be reached.

But the story swirling through the executive ranks of China's film industry Friday was that the decision stemmed from Tarantino's somewhat controversial portrayal of martial arts hero Bruce Lee, the only character of Chinese descent in the movie. Friends and family of the late Lee have blasted the director for the depiction, saying the real-life action star didn't behave as he's portrayed in the film.

According to sources close to Bona and China's Film Bureau, Bruce Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, made a direct appeal to China’s National Film Administration, asking that it demand changes to her father's portrayal.

Played by Mike Moh, the Lee in Sony's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is wildly cocky and claims he could have "crippled" Muhammad Ali in a fight (referred to as Cassius Clay). Pitt's character, a stuntman and former war hero named Cliff Booth, laughs in Lee's face over the comment and then the two get into a "friendly" contest of who can knock the other down three times without hitting the face. The scuffle ends before either side wins, but Pitt appears to have an edge near the end, after throwing Lee into the side of a classic car.

Sources described to THR a last-minute scramble at Bona to work with Tarantino to cut the film in time for it to be re-approved ahead of its originally planned Oct. 25 release date.

The only prior Tarantino title to come close to a proper theatrical rollout in China was his 2012 Western Django Unchained. That film also initially received permission to screen, but was bizarrely ordered pulled from cinemas across the country minutes into its opening night.

Again, no official explanation for the sudden change was ever provided, but sources said at the time that a senior Communist Party official had seen the film on opening night and took issue with its graphic violence. Django received heavy cuts and was rereleased a month later; but by then, pirate copies were widely available with Chinese subtitling. The unedited, pirated version went widely seen, but the delayed official release fizzled and promptly faded from cinemas, earning just $2.6 million.

Although Once Upon a Time's ultimate fate remains uncertain, the release drama comes at a time of rising official repression within China's media and entertainment sector.

Beijing has taken a heavy-handed approach to censoring China's own film output throughout 2019, blocking the distribution of hotly anticipated titles from some of the country's most esteemed directors, such as Zhang Yimou and Guan Hu.

On the international front, the NBA was plunged into an international crisis after Beijing took extreme umbrage with a single tweet from the general manager of the Houston Rockets, who expressed his support for Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement. The uproar over the tweet briefly appeared to threaten the NBA's entire multi-billion-dollar business in China (the league and its stars' seeming capitulation to Beijing's pressure has only inspired more international outrage).

A recent episode of South Park, meanwhile, made international headlines by poking fun at Hollywood's willingness to bend over backwards to appease Chinese censors in order to maintain market access there. Beijing responded in its typical fashion, instituting an outright ban of the comedy show. South Park creator's Matt Stone and Trey Parker then responded in their own typical fashion, ridiculing the authorities with a satirical apology.

[GeneChing]

QT just doesn't know how to edit. He'll probably release an extended director's cut on Netflix later too. :rolleyes:


OCTOBER 23, 2019 9:52AM PT
Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ to Be Re-Released With New Footage (https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-rerelease-1203380691/)
By REBECCA RUBIN
News Editor, Online
@https://twitter.com/rebeccaarubin

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/brad-pitt-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1
CREDIT: COURTESY OF SONY

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is heading back to the silver screen.

Sony Pictures, the studio behind Tarantino’s latest feature, announced the movie will be re-released with 10 minutes of additional footage, including four new scenes. The lengthier version of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which already clocked in at two hours and 41 minutes, will hit 1,000 North American locations starting on Oct. 25.

“Audiences have shown tremendous support for this movie, and we look forward to offering them another opportunity to see the film as it’s meant to be seen — in theaters on the big screen — with more sights and sounds of the sixties from Quentin Tarantino as an added treat,” Adrian Smith, Sony’s president of domestic distribution, said in a statement.

The news comes following Tarantino’s announcement that he would not re-cut the movie to appease Chinese censors, putting its Oct. 25 debut in that territory “on hold.” Exhibitors say China was displeased with the movie’s portrayal of Bruce Lee.

Even without a China release, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is already Tarantino’s second-highest grossing movie ever behind “Django Unchained” ($425 million). So far, the R-rated film has earned $139 million in North America and $228 million overseas from a $90 million budget.

Tarantino’s ninth feature is expected to be an Oscar frontrunner and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as an aging actor and his longtime stunt double, respectively, who are struggling to find their place in a changing Hollywood. At the same time, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), the up-and-coming actress married to director Roman Polanski, moves next door. The drama, which pays tribute to the golden age of showbiz, is set in the late 1960s against the backdrop of the Manson family murders.

[GeneChing]

'Parasite' Voted Best Picture by New York Film Critics Online (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/parasite-voted-best-picture-by-new-york-film-critics-online-1259537)
3:08 PM PST 12/7/2019 by Trilby Beresford

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2019/08/parasite._courtesy_of_neon__cj_entertainment.jpg
Telluride Film Festival
'Parasite'

In addition, Bong Joon Ho was tapped as best director for his work on the film.

Parasite has been named best picture of the year by New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO). The vote took place Saturday.

In addition, Bong Joon Ho was tapped as best director for his work on the film, which also garnered best screenplay honors.

Us' Lupita Nyong'o was named best actress and Joker star Joaquin Phoenix was chosen as best actor, while Laura Dern was hailed as best supporting actress for Marriage Story and Joe Pesci was recognized for his supporting role in The Irishman.

The NYFCO, founded by reviewer Harvey Karten in 2000, met in Lincoln Center's Furman Gallery inside the Walter Reade Theatre for its 20th annual convocation. Last year, the group selected Roma as best picture.

A full list of 2019 winners follows.

Picture: Parasite
Director: Bong Joon Ho (Parasite)
Actor: Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Actress: Lupita Nyong'o (Us)
Supporting Actor: Joe Pesci (The Irishman)
Supporting Actress: Laura Dern (Marriage Story)
Screenplay: Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin-Won)
Cinematography: 1917 (Roger Deakins)
Documentary: Apollo 11 (Neon)
Foreign Language: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Neon)
Ensemble Cast: Knives Out (Casting director: Mary Vernieu)
Breakthrough Performer: Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Luce)
Debut as Director: Lila Aviles (The Chambermaid)
Use of Music: Rocketman (Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Giles Martin, Matthew Margeson)
Animated Feature: I Lost My Body (Netflix)

Top 10 Films:

1917 (Universal)
The Farewell (A24)
Hustlers (STXfilms)
The Irishman (Netflix)
Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight)
Joker (Warner Bros.)
Marriage Story (Netflix)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Sony)
Parasite (Neon)
The Two Popes (Netflix)


TRILBY BERESFORD
Trilby.Beresford@THR.COM
trilbyberesford


THREADS
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)

[GeneChing]

I only copied the films we've discussed here.



Winners & Nominees 2020 (https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees)

Best Motion Picture - Drama

NOMINEE
Joker

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Dolemite Is My Name

NOMINEE
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

NOMINEE
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Awkwafina
Farewell, The

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

NOMINEE
Leonardo DiCaprio
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

NOMINEE
Eddie Murphy
Dolemite Is My Name

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Director - Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Bong Joon Ho
Parasite

NOMINEE
Todd Phillips
Joker

NOMINEE
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

NOMINEE
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

NOMINEE
Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won
Parasite

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language

NOMINEE
Farewell, The
USA, Lulu Wang

NOMINEE
Parasite
South Korea, Bong Joon Ho

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Dolemite is My Name (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70866-Dolemite-Is-My-Name)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

Donnie Yen 'very disappointed' with Quentin Tarantino's treatment of Bruce Lee (https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/entertainment/2019/12/11/donnie-yen-039very-disappointed039-with-quentin-tarantino039s-treatment-of-bruce-lee?fbclid=IwAR37KYr0NVghAdzCk8XjSjas9oyBTQo9CYR0k-IzndRGzGIzBQpsULIFcRo)
MOVIES
Wednesday, 11 Dec 2019
6:02 PM MYT
By MICHAEL CHEANG

https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2019/12/11/432826.jpg
Donnie Yen at the media interview promoting Ip Man 4: The Finale in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: The Star/Michael Cheang

Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen said he was “disappointed” with director Quentin Tarantino’s treatment of Bruce Lee in the recent Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Tarantino came under fire earlier this year from Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee for portraying the late star as an arrogant braggart who is beaten up by Brad Pitt’s character, and also for saying Lee was "kind of an arrogant guy".

When the subject came up during a media interview to promote his new film Ip Man 4: The Finale in Kuala Lumpur, Yen said: “I know Tarantino personally, but I’m very disappointed with how he portrayed Bruce Lee in the movie. I watched most of the movie, but after that scene, I couldn’t continue on.”

Yen explained that Lee was not just a great martial artist and action star, he was also a great influence and inspiration to filmmakers all over the world.

“As filmmakers, I feel we should be more respectful towards someone like Lee, who has contributed so much to our industry, ” added the 56-year-old actor.

https://apicms.thestar.com.my/uploads/images/2019/12/11/432843.jpg
Danny Chan portrays Bruce Lee in the upcoming 'Ip Man 4'.Danny Chan portrays Bruce Lee in the upcoming 'Ip Man 4'.

Being a former student of Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man, Lee also features heavily in Ip Man 4, played by Hong Kong actor and Lee-lookalike Danny Chan.

Yen was full of praise for Chan’s portrayal of Lee. “Danny doesn’t just look like Bruce Lee, he has also researched and practiced Lee’s moves and fighting style intensively," he said.

Set for release in Malaysia on Dec 20, Ip Man 4 will be Yen's final portrayal of the Wing Chun grandmaster. In it, Ip Man travels to San Francisco under Lee's invitation, but gets involved in a conflict between the Chinese community and the American authorities.

Directed by Wilson Yip, who also directed the first three Ip Man movies, the movies co-stars Vanness Wu, Wu Yue, and Scott Adkins.

Yen is in town with Chan, producer Raymond Wong and scriptwriter Edmond Wong to promote the film. The four of them will be meeting fans at the Centre Court, Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur, at 8pm today (Dec 11); and two locations on Dec 12: Oval Concourse, LG, 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Petaling Jaya (7pm) and Foyer, MBO The Starling Level 5, Petaling Jaya (8.30pm).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woxRyYRxD-g

THREADS
Ip Man 4 (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69747-Ip-Man-4)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)

[Jimbo]

I got to see this, and IMO the movie itself is good. Overall, QT did a good job capturing the spirit and feel of 1969 L.A. but IMO, you probably had to have been alive at that time to some degree, and also have some familiarity with some of the names of celebrities from that era bandied about in the movie, to appreciate it. After watching it, I read the comments section on Amazon, and from the likes/dislikes and grammar, it seems that most of the dislikes were from millennials who couldn’t stand the slow pace and wanted constant action/violence throughout. Many also said there is too much talking. Anybody who watches a QT film and doesn’t expect long stretches of self-indulgent dialogue throughout the film are clearly unfamiliar with his style of filmmaking.

As for the Bruce Lee scenes, he is portrayed as a c0cky a-hole, and Mike Moh has his mannerisms spot-on. What Moh does NOT have, at least in the context of this movie, is BL’s speed or explosiveness, in terms of his movement (what little we see of it). Tarantino’s vision of BL is strictly cinematic, because there is no way BL would have used a running flying side kick in a sparring match or fight. I said BL scenes, because later in the movie there are brief glimpses of BL training Sharon Tate for her fight scene in The Wrecking Crew, and also training Roman Polanski in the yard of the Cielo Drive house (both of which were factual). QT’s timeline is off when he has BL refer to boxing champ Joe Louis, then says, “The boxer Joe Louis, not that white kickboxer a-hole Joe Lewis.” I doubt that BL would have referred to Joe Lewis in that manner, even after they’d had a falling-out in real life. And in 1969 Joe Lewis was still a karate fighter; kickboxing came along in 1970 or 71. But overall, the BL character was a very minor part of the movie.

This movie is a huge departure for QT. With the exception of Kerry Washington’s character in Django Unchained, virtually every character in QT’s films is a scumbag, a criminal, or corrupted in some way. Sharon Tate is portrayed as almost angelic, and Jay Sebring as a really nice guy. Which nobody in show business was ever that innocent in Hollywood, including back in 1969.

The acting is first-rate; even though I’m usually mixed about Brad Pitt’s acting, this role suited him perfectly. DiCaprio’s acting is good to great as usual, but some of his scenes where he appears CGI’d into actual 1960s movie scenes, or shown alongside images of actual past Hollywood stars, don’t really fit. It LOOKS as if he was retro-added in.

The Manson Family parts were mostly excellent, especially the scene at Spahn Ranch. A person should have some degree of understanding of the Manson Family story (read The Family by Ed Sanders, NOT Vincent Bugliosi’s book) to appreciate their portrayals. I do feel that the guy who played Tex Watson should have been a bit more imposing than the actor who played him. The actress who played Susan Atkins was mostly spot-on. I won’t go any further with any spoilers but to say that this is another big QT alternate dimension/revisionist history.

I’m still not happy with QT about how BL was portrayed in his scene with Pitt’s Cliff Booth character, to be used as fodder to display how bad@ss Booth is, nor with QT’s lame explanation as to why he did it that way. But I must be truthful and say that overall, this is a good movie, and I wasn’t bored at any point. Of course, YMMV. In the reviews I read after watching the movie, it seemed that viewers either really loved it or absolutely hated it. There was very little, if any, in-between. And again, I strongly suspect that’s mostly a generational thing, with the ones hating it mostly being much younger, with far shorter attention spans, as well as a lack of understanding of that era. I draw that conclusion from the type of grammar used in many/most of the negative posts, such as “This movie sucked!” “Boooring!” “I’m only 12 minutes into it and I can’t finish this movie, and this is my third try!”

I was only 6 at the time, but I have clear memories of the music (which is laced throughout the film), the cars, the ads, many of the shows, etc. I suspect that most who were alive at that time and at least old enough to remember SOMEthing about that time period, will find at least something to appreciate about the film. Is it QT’s best? Not IMO, but it is still a good movie.

[GeneChing]

92ND OSCARS SHORTLISTS (https://oscars.org/oscars/92nd-oscars-shortlists?fbclid=IwAR02mKCODlUz_9umBLqpLmg65OZodE pRLCB4zNtcp3b41qp9A6vsOSj4JZY)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced shortlists in consideration for the 92nd Academy Awards in nine categories: Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, International Feature Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film and Visual Effects.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
Ten films will advance to the next round of voting in the International Feature Film category (formerly known as Foreign Language Film) for the 92nd Academy Awards. Ninety-one films were eligible in the category.

Academy members from all branches were invited to participate in the preliminary round. They must have viewed the submitted films theatrically and met a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category. Their seven choices, augmented by three additional selections voted by the Academy’s International Feature Film Award Executive Committee, constitute the shortlist.

In the nominations round, Academy members from all branches are invited to opt-in to participate and must view all 10 shortlisted films in order to cast a ballot.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by country, are:

Czech Republic, “The Painted Bird”
Estonia, “Truth and Justice”
France, “Les Misérables”
Hungary, “Those Who Remained”
North Macedonia, “Honeyland”
Poland, “Corpus Christi”
Russia, “Beanpole”
Senegal, “Atlantics”
South Korea, “Parasite”
Spain, “Pain and Glory”


MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Ten films will advance in the Makeup and Hairstyling category for the 92nd Academy Awards. All members of the Academy’s Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch will be invited to view seven-minute excerpts from each of the 10 shortlisted films on Saturday, January 4, 2020. Members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:

“Bombshell”
“Dolemite Is My Name”
“Downton Abbey”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Little Women”
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”
“1917”
“Once upon a Time…in Hollywood”
“Rocketman”


MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Fifteen scores will advance in the Original Score category for the 92nd Academy Awards. One hundred seventy scores were eligible in the category. Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The scores, listed in alphabetical order by film title, are:

“Avengers: Endgame”
“Bombshell”
“The Farewell”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“Frozen II”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Joker”
“The King”
“Little Women”
“Marriage Story”
“Motherless Brooklyn”
“1917”
“Pain and Glory”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”
“Us”

DOWNLOAD

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Fifteen songs will advance in the Original Song category for the 92nd Academy Awards. Seventy-five songs were eligible in the category. Members of the Music Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

The original songs, along with the motion picture in which each song is featured, are listed below in alphabetical order by film title and song title:

“Speechless” from “Aladdin”
“Letter To My Godfather” from “The Black Godfather”
“I’m Standing With You” from “Breakthrough”
“Da Bronx” from “The Bronx USA”
“Into The Unknown” from “Frozen II”
“Stand Up” from “Harriet”
“Catchy Song” from “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part”
“Never Too Late” from “The Lion King”
“Spirit” from “The Lion King”
“Daily Battles” from “Motherless Brooklyn”
“A Glass of Soju” from “Parasite”
“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from “Rocketman”
“High Above The Water” from “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”
“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away” from “Toy Story 4”
“Glasgow” from “Wild Rose”


VISUAL EFFECTS
Ten films remain in the running in the Visual Effects category for the 92nd Academy Awards. The Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the shortlist. All members of the Visual Effects Branch will be invited to view 10-minute excerpts from each of the shortlisted films online or attend satellite bake-off screenings in January 2020. Following the screenings, members will vote to nominate five films for final Oscar consideration.

The films, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:

“Alita: Battle Angel”
“Avengers: Endgame”
“Captain Marvel”
“Cats”
“Gemini Man”
“The Irishman”
“The Lion King”
“1917”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”
“Terminator: Dark Fate”

Nominations voting begins on Thursday, January 2, 2020 and concludes on Tuesday, January 7, 2020.

Nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards will be announced on Monday, January 13, 2020.

The 92nd Oscars® will be held on Sunday, February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscars also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

THREADS
Academy Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?20798-The-Academy-Awards)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Dolemite is My Name (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70866-Dolemite-Is-My-Name)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)
Alita (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70210-Alita-Battle-Angel)

[GeneChing]

Didn't Shannon say QT could 'shut up' (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood&p=1315061#post1315061) about this? So why beleagure the point? It's about grabbing some of the awards spotlight, right? Or maybe it's the media just miling a feud.


There's an embedded vid of Shannon's interview.


DECEMBER 16, 2019 4:55PM PT
Bruce Lee’s Daughter, Shannon, Says She’s ‘Open for a Conversation’ With Quentin Tarantino (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/bruce-lee-daughter-shannon-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-1203440551/)
By AUDREY CLEO YAP

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” nabbed five Golden Globe nominations and is a box office success, grossing over $370 million worldwide — a feat that the drama, starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, achieved without being released in China. The film was originally scheduled for a theatrical bow in the country on Oct. 25, but was put on hold reportedly after Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee’s daughter, filed a complaint to China’s National Film Administration objecting to the film’s depiction of her late father. In October, director Quentin Tarantino confirmed that he would not re-cut “Once Upon a Time” to appease Chinese censors.

“I had just complained there as I complained here, but obviously through China channels. But really, their decision to do whatever they did with that movie was their decision,” Lee told Variety at the 18th annual Unforgettable Gala, an event honoring Asian Americans in entertainment.

Whether or not the film’s hold in China was due to Lee’s complaint exclusively is unclear, although depictions of violence may have also factored in. Tarantino previously edited his film “Django Unchained” in 2012 after Chinese officials delayed its scheduled release due to graphic content.

Last summer, the director and Lee engaged in a public back-and-forth, with Lee saying the movie portrayed her martial arts legend father as arrogant. Tarantino defended the depiction at a press conference in Moscow in August. The scene in question shows Bruce Lee (played by Mike Moh) bragging about his ability to cripple Muhammad Ali, before ultimately losing a fight to Pitt’s (fictional) character, aging stuntman Cliff Booth.

Lee, who oversees her father’s estate, said she has worked throughout her career to preserve her father’s legacy. Bruce Lee passed away in 1973 at age 32 and is known for introducing martial arts to mainstream Hollywood through films like “Enter the Dragon” and “The Game of Death.”

“I really do think [‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’] did a disservice to him, I think it did a disservice to Asian actors and I think that it was really a shame,” said Lee, an executive producer of Cinemax’s “Warrior,” a show based on a treatment her father wrote.

She added that while she has not spoken with Tarantino, she’s open to it.

“I would imagine he has no love lost for me or wants to speak to me,” said Lee, laughing. “But I’m always open for a conversation.”

A representative for Tarantino did not respond to Variety’s request for comment.

[Jimbo]

The funny thing about the onscreen Bruce Lee vs Cliff Booth fight is that IIRC, Mike Moh or someone else said that the fight was actually a draw. No it wasn’t. The Bruce Lee character was losing and was on the way to a beat down.

From all accounts, BL was arrogant, but I know he didn’t say anything on tape or in print that he would cripple Muhammad Ali. I know what Lee’s quote about Ali was, and that wasn’t it. And I seriously doubt he would have referred to Joe Lewis, the karate fighter, as “the white a-hole kickboxer Joe Lewis.” So yes, IMO QT wildly misrepresented BL while saying that he “heard” BL say he would cripple Ali, which is a lie. Ironically, in real life, during a press conference before Ali’s “match” with Antonio Inoki, Joe Lewis (who also had a wrestling background) easily took Ali to the floor (supposedly more than once) to demonstrate what a wrestler can do, and Ali was pretty helpless.

However, all that said, IMO the movie itself is good, and at least there were no anti-Chinese or anti-Asian slurs in the movie, which is a bit unusual for QT, especially since virtually all of his early films had at least one anti-Asian slur, even if there were no Asian characters in them.

[GeneChing]

Winners & Nominees 2020 (https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
WINNER
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Awkwafina
Farewell, The

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
WINNER
Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
WINNER
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language
WINNER
Parasite
South Korea, Bong Joon Ho

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

Winners & Nominees 2020 (https://www.goldenglobes.com/winners-nominees)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama
WINNER
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
WINNER
Awkwafina
Farewell, The

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture
WINNER
Brad Pitt
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture
WINNER
Quentin Tarantino
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language
WINNER
Parasite
South Korea, Bong Joon Ho

THREADS
The Golden Globes (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71111-The-Golden-Globes)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
The Farewell (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71409-The-Farewell)

[GeneChing]

Selected for films we've discussed here.


THE 92ND ACADEMY AWARDS | 2020 (https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2020)
Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Honoring movies released in 2019

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
NOMINEES
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood
JOAQUIN PHOENIX
Joker

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
NOMINEES
BRAD PITT
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood

CINEMATOGRAPHY
NOMINEES
JOKER
Lawrence Sher
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Robert Richardson

COSTUME DESIGN
NOMINEES
JOKER
Mark Bridges
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Arianne Phillips

DIRECTING
NOMINEES
JOKER
Todd Phillips
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Quentin Tarantino
PARASITE
Bong Joon Ho

FILM EDITING
NOMINEES
JOKER
Jeff Groth
PARASITE
Yang Jinmo

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
NOMINEES
PARASITE
South Korea

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
NOMINEES
JOKER
Nicki Ledermann and Kay Georgiou

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
NOMINEES
JOKER
Hildur Guðnadóttir
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
John Williams

BEST PICTURE
NOMINEES
JOKER
Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper and Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Producers
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh and Quentin Tarantino, Producers
PARASITE
Kwak Sin Ae and Bong Joon Ho, Producers

PRODUCTION DESIGN
NOMINEES
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Production Design: Barbara Ling; Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh
PARASITE
Production Design: Lee Ha Jun; Set Decoration: Cho Won Woo

SOUND EDITING
NOMINEES
JOKER
Alan Robert Murray
1917
Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Wylie Stateman
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
Matthew Wood and David Acord

SOUND MIXING
NOMINEES
JOKER
Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic and Tod Maitland
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Michael Minkler, Christian P. Minkler and Mark Ulano

VISUAL EFFECTS
NOMINEES
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Matt Aitken and Dan Sudick
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
Roger Guyett, Neal Scanlan, Patrick Tubach and Dominic Tuohy

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
NOMINEES
JOKER
Written by Todd Phillips & Scott Silver

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
NOMINEES
ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD
Written by Quentin Tarantino
PARASITE
Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho, Han Jin Won; Story by Bong Joon Ho

REVIEWS
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1511)
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499)

THREADS
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Skywalker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70466-Star-Wars-IX-The-Rise-of-Skywalker)
Endgame (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71016-Avengers-Endgame)

[GeneChing]

JANUARY 13, 2020 DOCUMENT: Crime Moviegoer Beat Fellow Patron Over Phone Use
Cops: Yoga instructor claimed victim ruined Tarantino film (http://thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/once-upon-an-assault-287569)

http://thesmokinggun.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/175xUnlimited/photos/onceupona20.jpg

JANUARY 13--An Iowa yoga instructor allegedly pummeled a fellow moviegoer whose use of a phone during a showing of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” was purportedly responsible for “ruining the film” for the accused assailant.

http://thesmokinggun.com/sites/default/files/assets/nicholasglasgow20a.jpg

Police yesterday arrested Nicholas Glasgow, 34, on assault and criminal mischief charges in connection with an incident last year at an Iowa City multiplex. Seen at right, Glasgow was released this morning from the Johnson County jail, where he had been booked on the misdemeanor charges.

According to a criminal complaint, the Oscar-nominated film starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio had not even begun when Glasgow “contacted theater staff and demanded they speak to the victim about his phone usage.” Workers recalled Glasgow “telling them to take care of it or he would,” an investigator noted.

At the conclusion of the Quentin Tarantino-directed film, Glasgow allegedly approached the victim and his friend and “demanded they apologize for ruining the film for him.” While the victim was seated and “before he could react,” Glasgow began punching him in the face, cops allege.

During the ensuing fight, the victim ended up on the ground, and Glasgow began kicking him. The victim, cops say, suffered “a cut to his head, swelling, soreness, and redness to his face, and had his eyeglasses broken from the assault.”

http://thesmokinggun.com/sites/default/files/assets/nicholasglasgowyoga20.jpg

The 6’, 230-pound Glasgow was identified by theater personnel as “a regular who attends most Tuesday nights.” While the attack occurred in September, an arrest warrant for Glasgow was only issued Friday.

In an online Q&A posted to the web site of an Iowa pilates studio, Glasgow described himself as “fiercely loyal, flexible, freedom lover” and said he loved yoga due to “the healin power.” In response to a question about his guilty pleasure, Glasgow answered, “Movie theater gluttony.” (1 page).

THREADS
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Yoga (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?22367-Yoga)

[GeneChing]

Hmm, no thread on the SAG Awards? Well, that's easily remedied.

Winners selected for those we've discusses as always.



CAST IN A MOTION PICTURE
RECIPIENT
PARASITE

Outstanding Performance by a
MALE ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
RECIPIENT
JOAQUIN PHOENIX
Joker

Outstanding Performance by a
MALE ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
RECIPIENT
BRAD PITT
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Outstanding Performance by a
MALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
RECIPIENT
PETER DINKLAGE
Game of Thrones

STUNT ENSEMBLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
RECIPIENT
AVENGERS: ENDGAME



THREADS
Screen Actors Guild Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71681-Screen-Actors-Guild-Awards)
Asian Film Festivals and Awards (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?48392-Asian-Film-Festivals-and-Awards)
GOT (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?60090-Game-of-Thrones)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455)
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Endgame (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71016-Avengers-Endgame)

[GeneChing]

Do these people not know about Brucexploitation? It's a whole genre. :rolleyes:


Will the Kung Fu remake right the wrongs suffered by Bruce Lee? (https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2020/jan/22/kung-fu-film-remake-bruce-lee-universal-studios-tv-series-david-carradine)
After Lee was passed over for David Carradine to star in the 70s TV series, Universal must cast an Asian actor for its forthcoming film
Ben Child
@BenChildGeek
Wed 22 Jan 2020 08.34 EST Last modified on Wed 22 Jan 2020 09.11 EST

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/fc16da3b99f2865a935418d55f67917a80e9fd72/0_142_2500_1499/master/2500.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&
Unfair caricature … Mike Moh as Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Photograph: Andrew Cooper

One of the most startling moments in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the scene in which Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth humiliates Bruce Lee (played by Mike Moh) after he boasts of his martial-arts prowess. It has drawn criticism from Lee’s daughter Shannon Lee for portraying her late father as an “arrogant ******* who was full of hot air”, while Tarantino has defended his film as a work of fiction, albeit one, he insists, that has some grounding in truth. It’s sad that while the Pulp Fiction film-maker chose to lionise David Carradine, the star of 1970s TV show Kung Fu, in his Kill Bill movies, he decided to bring the late Hong Kong star back to life by portraying him as full of youthful truculence and hubris.

After all, Kung Fu would never have been commissioned without the 70s martial-arts craze that was largely fuelled by Lee’s early films. And it’s probably fair to say that without the TV show, Kill Bill would have been a different beast. Tarantino not only borrows the TV show’s star, he half-inched its blend of eastern and western influences to frame the two parts of his own endeavour. Yet, while Carradine was treated with the utmost reverence in Kill Bill, Lee, without whom the American star would most likely never have had a career in martial-arts films, is depicted as a cocky idiot. As a creative decision, this is a bit like preferring the squeaky clean Pat Boone version of Ain’t That a Shame to Fats Domino’s full-blooded, velvety original.

Tarantino is not the only figure in Hollywood who owes something to Lee’s legacy. Given the news that Universal is set to bring Kung Fu back to life as a big-screen remake, surely it’s about time to right the wrongs suffered by Lee more than four decades ago.

Even Lee’s most casual fans should be aware that the star of Enter the Dragon was passed over for Carradine, with the suspicion being that TV executives preferred a white actor over the heavily accented Lee to play the mixed-race Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine. Lee’s widow Linda Lee Cadwell, in her memoir, even fuelled rumours that her late husband had come up with the idea for Kung Fu, and it seems that Lee was working on a similar concept titled The Warrior at the time of his death.

Kung Fu went on to be one of the most celebrated TV shows of the 70s. Watching and enjoying its iconic moments – Caine’s early tutelage by Keye Luke’s Master Po as a “young grasshopper” in those much-imitated flashback sequences; the cavalcade of film and TV stars from William Shatner to Sandra Locke who appeared during the show’s three seasons in supporting roles – one is forced to remind oneself that the series represents one of the worst examples of yellowface in TV history. And yet, there it is.

Perhaps, in reverence to the show’s cultural origins, Universal could make a gesture to the Lee estate. It would be fitting if some of the action star’s ideas from the long lost The Warrior ended up making it into the new Kung Fu, though that prospect has probably been diminished by the existence of Cinemax’s own Warrior show, which Lee’s daughter Shannon oversees.

Still, there are other ways to ensure the film does not experience the ignominy of its TV predecessor. The very least Universal can do is to ensure Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch casts an actor of Asian heritage this time around.

THREADS
Kung Fu TV show REMAKE (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?62248-Kung-Fu-TV-show-REMAKE)
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)

[GeneChing]

Many congratulations to Parasite! What a history-making win.

List below cherry-picked for films discussed here.

OSCAR WINNERS (https://oscar.go.com/winners)

BEST PICTURE
Parasite
Kwak Sin Ae and Bong Joon Ho, Producers

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Joaquin Phoenix
Joker

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING…
Brad Pitt
Once upon a Time... in Hollywood

DIRECTING
Parasite
Bong Joon Ho

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE…
Parasite
South Korea

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
Joker
Hildur Guðnadóttir

PRODUCTION DESIGN
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood
Production Design: Barbara Ling,…

WRITING (ORIGINAL…
Parasite
Screenplay by Bong Joon Ho, Han…

REVIEWS
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1511)
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1499)

THREADS
Joker (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71455-Joker)
Once upon a Time...in Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Parasite (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71321-Parasite)

[GeneChing]

Bona Film Group Executive Dies by Apparent Suicide at 52 (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bona-film-group-executive-dead-by-apparent-suicide-at-52-1297816)
5:13 AM PDT 6/10/2020 by Patrick Brzeski

https://cdn1.thr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/landscape_928x523/2016/11/beijing_skyline.jpg
Getty Images
Beijing

Bona released a statement over social media saying that Huang Wei, a vice president at the company who oversaw its cinema division, had died, but provided no details.
Shock waves of sorrow ripped through the Chinese film industry on Wednesday as news spread that Huang Wei, an influential and widely liked senior executive at Bona Film Group, leapt to his death from an 18th floor window at the company’s headquarters in central Beijing.
Bona released a statement over social media late Wednesday saying that Huang, a vice president at the company who oversaw its cinema division, had died at the age of 52. No other details were included.
Sources close to Bona tell The Hollywood Reporter that it is believed Huang jumped from an office window late Wednesday morning. The incident occurred at Bona’s corporate headquarters in the U-Center Building, a mixed-use commercial building in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
Bona is among China’s top-tier of film and media companies. The company produced or co-produced three of China’s 10 highest-grossing films of 2019, including The Captain ($410 million) and The Bravest ($237 million). The company also co-financed Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Huang joined Bona in 2009 from rival cinema circuit Stellar Cinemas. He was influential in Bona’s growth as a movie theater operator. The company now has approximately 80 cinemas in China.
News of his death — and its suspected cause — circulated rapidly through the Beijing film business over social media.
Leading Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke shared Bona’s statement on Weibo, writing simply, "Film industry grief." Jerry Ye, former president at Chinese studio Huayi Brothers Media, one of Bona’s biggest rivals, also posted just one word: "grief." Many others shared emojis of a single candle burning.
Jimmy Wu, CEO of Chinese cinema chain Lumiere Pavilions, posted at length about Huang’s death, writing: "It's so sudden! ... On April 16th, we talked for more than half an hour! The call was mainly about the future of the cinema. He was a little depressed about the late opening of the cinema, and I talked a lot about the bright future of Chinese movies. ... I didn't expect to say good-bye after this conversation. Alas, I can not say a word. I sincerely hope that the relevant parties can let the movie theaters get back to work, so that staff can maintain a livelihood, in order to comfort Huang Wei's spirit in heaven!"




Threads
Chollywood Rising (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?57225-Chollywood-rising)
OUAT...IH (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)

[GeneChing]

Watching Martial Arts Movies Amid Anti-Asian Violence Is Much-Needed Catharsis (https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bepd/watching-martial-arts-movies-amid-anti-asian-violence-is-much-needed-catharsis)
Movies and TV shows like 'The Paper Tigers' and 'Warrior' show the beauty of Asian American survival.
By Frances Nguyen
June 8, 2021, 4:00am

https://video-images.vice.com/articles/60bd735312903c0093cf911a/lede/1623029363448-mortal-kombat.jpeg
IMAGE VIA YOUTUBE
When I saw the opening seven minutes of Mortal Kombat on Instagram, it was the first time I’d felt anything in the realm of joy in over a month. Given the contents of the clip, I was also a little horrified at myself.

Faithful to its video game source material, the violence in the film begins almost immediately. Within the opening minutes, a woman dies. A child dies. Hanzo Hasashi—the man who will become Scorpion, the character in the game I played most often growing up—liberates what looks like quarts of blood from the bodies of his masked opponents before confronting his nemesis, the man who will become the ice-wielding assassin Sub-Zero. The teaser leaves you at the edge of a fight that promises to be an enthralling one; here, once again, someone will surely die violently.


The theatrically gory film was an odd source of comfort during the weeks-long despondency I felt following a series of shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of whom were women of Asian descent. With a never-ending reel of brutal violence against Asians circulating online, there was something refreshing about escaping into a world populated by people who look like me and who are portrayed as strong.

Coming at the end of a year that gave rise to more than 6,600 reported instances of anti-Asian hate between March 2020 and March 2021, and where assaults continue almost daily across the country, watching a group of Asian characters wield their bodies with physics-defying agility and precision to deliver bouts that look and feel more like physical dialogue than combat made for a stark contrast to the images I was seeing on news broadcasts and social media, which tend to foreground Asian bodies as quiet, passive vessels for someone else’s rage.

Examining some of the most brutal recorded attacks that have taken place this year—on elders Vicha Ratanapakdee, Vilma Kari, and Yao Pan Ma—the abridged stories captured on camera repeat the same refrain: The Asian body appears and is brutalized; that’s all that we see. For Asian Americans, these scenes invite us to participate in a ritual of vicarious trauma: Without sound, our minds train instead on the movements of the bodies that appear on screen. We imagine ourselves and our loved ones in the only body that bears our likeness—the victim’s—and our own bodies are activated by the input of threat.

Up until recently, however, Hollywood has arguably done little to provide counter-narratives to these stories, narratives that acknowledge the real-life experiences and agency of the individuals who are navigating what it means to be Asian in America in real time. A report released last month—co-authored by sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism, and Stacy L. Smith, founder of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative—revealed that in the top 100 films of 2019, just over a quarter of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) characters die by the end of the film—and all but one dies violently. The study also notes that 42 percent of the API characters experienced disparagement, including racist/sexist slurs, with 30 percent being tokenized (meaning they were the only Asian character in the film or scene) and 67 percent channeling tired Asian stereotypes. Notably, only 13 percent were portrayed as “fully human,” (ie, complex characters with agency) which the report measured in terms of them having a wide spectrum of relationships.

I wasn’t alone in gravitating toward media where strong Asian characters took center stage. After the shootings in Atlanta—and after the video of Vilma Kari’s attack went viral—Yuen, the report’s co-author, told me that she and her friends started watching Kung Fu on The CW, a reboot of the 70s show starring David Carradine that premiered in early April.

Though the original was not without its shortcomings (the lead role, of a half-Chinese Shaolin monk who wanders the Wild West, went to the white actor instead of Bruce Lee, despite Carradine having no prior martial arts training), the CW series gives the story a 21st century update. This time around, the lead is an Asian woman—and, importantly, an Asian woman who kicks ass. Olivia Liang’s Nicky Shen stands alone as the only Asian American woman lead on network television right now, and her characterization as a strong and capable defender of her hometown of San Francisco offers some counterweight to the blunt fact that Asian women are twice as likely to report being targets of anti-Asian hate than Asian men are.

“Certainly, our show is not the solution, but I hope that we are a part of the solution,” showrunner Christina M. Kim said in a press conference a day after the Atlanta shootings.

As Yuen sees it, the show’s main draw is its constellation of rich characters with developed backstories. “As an Asian American watching it, I feel empowered, not just because there’s martial arts but also in seeing people who aren’t just the sidekick, or the friend, or the villain,” she said. “They are the leads, and you feel like you can see yourself in different parts of them.” Ultimately, she said, that’s the goal of the report: for Hollywood to represent API characters as complex, multidimensional human beings—just like in real life.

The Kung Fu reboot isn’t the only recent work that draws on martial arts as a vehicle for telling more three-dimensional human stories. The Paper Tigers—a charming comedy about three washed-up, middle-aged former kung fu disciples looking to avenge their sifu’s murder—uses the martial art as a way of telling a story about redemption, brotherhood, and becoming men.

Released to streaming platforms and select theaters on May 7, The Paper Tigers complicates the strong-versus-weak narrative by presenting its heroes as both in different moments. They’re strong when they’re aligned to the teachings of kung fu—which espouse traditional Eastern values like honor, discipline, humility, and bravery—and weak, both physically and morally, when they stray from them. Throughout the film, the men contend with choosing when to fight and when to walk away: When his son gets beat up by the school bully, Danny, the lead character, tells the boy that he should have walked away from the kid who has been terrorizing him and his friend. Later, after one of the Tigers is sorely wounded, Danny heads off to a fight, but not before calling his son to tell him that he’s proud of him for sticking up for his friend. Fearing that he might not make it to see another day, he tells his son how to make a fist, but offers this information with a warning: “If you go looking for a fight, that makes you the bully.”

Beyond the moments of pitch-perfect comedy (see: the many fortune cookie-worthy proverbs doled out by a white sifu, the men’s former schoolmate rival, in Cantonese, which none of them understand), there’s also something deeply gratifying about seeing bodies, out of practice for 25 years, reckon with their limitations and slowly relearn their discipline, building back their strength over time. Tran Quoc Bao, the film’s writer and director, said he wanted to highlight martial arts as a practice of discovering one’s inner strength, and learning the right moment to express it. “With martial arts,” he said, “it’s that constant sharpening of the sword knowing that you can hang it up and not use it.”
continued next post

[GeneChing]

As it turns out, the film’s resonance with the present moment is something of a coincidence: Tran conceived the story a decade ago, drawing on his experiences growing up in a multicultural martial arts community in Seattle. He never imagined it would be released during a pandemic, much less at a time of surging racist violence.

“Obviously, there’s a different subtext now that kind of lingers in the air,” he told me. Still, with its subtle allusions to race and cultural appropriation, the film hits upon facets of the Asian American experience that feel just as relevant now as they did several decades ago. Importantly, it’s also an Asian American film that exists on its own terms. Though it centers non-white experience, it doesn’t announce itself as such—not to the point of color-blindness, but in a way where cultural difference feels normal, and honored.

It’s nice to see martial arts, and kung fu especially, treated with reverence and respect. Although kung fu and martial arts movies have been a part of Hollywood’s diet since the 70s, the form has too often been relegated to an unintentional sub-genre of comedy—one replete with its fair share of racist stereotypes. As the report notes, a large component of the anti-Asian racism perpetuated in pop culture is the representation of Asian men as weak and effeminate compared to their Western counterparts—an emasculation that continues to be expressed by Hollywood through the physical domination of Asian characters by predominantly white leading characters.

One of the most notorious examples is Quentin Tarantino’s characterization of Lee, the most beloved and celebrated martial artist of all time. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the Lee character—caricatured as a toxically masculine showboat—challenges Brad Pitt’s stuntman character Cliff Booth to a three-round fight. It technically results in a draw, but Lee walks away humiliated after Booth handily throws him into a car.

Yuen described the scene as exemplifying American pop culture’s impulse “to take a strong Asian man down a notch.”

“They get these really amazing Asian actors who are at the top of their martial arts game, and then they have the white lead beat them up in order to show his prowess and maintain a kind of racial hierarchy,” she said.

Not surprisingly, over the past year, there have been disturbing reflections of that dynamic in real life. After a man of Chinese descent was assaulted in an unprovoked attack outside New York City’s Penn Station in March, his attacker reportedly assumed a mocking kung fu stance before fleeing the scene.

“It makes them feel better about themselves to beat up an Asian whom they feel is the enemy, because Hollywood has historically represented Asians as enemies,” said Yuen. Trump’s “kung flu” rhetoric from last year, part of his campaign to scapegoat Asians as foreign vectors of disease, certainly hasn’t helped.

Warrior, a Cinemax original series with an Asian-dominant cast that premiered in 2019, is yet another martial arts-related project that attempts to examine and subvert this sort of racist scapegoating. With a premise conceived by the late Bruce Lee himself, the show is set during the Tong Wars of San Francisco in the 1870s—a period in American history that arguably gave birth to some of the most enduring and damaging Asian American stereotypes, from that of the disease-carrying foreigner to the Chinatown gangster and the brothel worker. The series follows Ah Sahm (played by Andrew Koji), a kung fu prodigy who becomes a hatchet man for a powerful tong, or criminal brotherhood, as it vies with rivals in Chinatown for control over resources. Notably, it’s set on the eve of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which effectively banned all immigration from China until 1943, in addition to prohibiting Chinese immigrants from becoming American citizens.

“[In the show], we are dealing with the introduction of the Chinese mythology and propaganda machine,” said Olivia Cheng, who plays Ah Toy, a fictionalized version of the eponymous Chinatown madame known as the first recorded Chinese prostitute in America. In an interview with VICE, Cheng said that she was challenged with not only honoring the real Ah Toy’s life but also playing against the traps of one of Hollywood’s favorite and most harmful tropes about Asian women: the “dragon lady,” an Asian femme fatale who wields power through sex.

I began the show a month after the Atlanta shootings, shortly after it was announced that the series would be renewed for a third season, on HBO Max. Given the heartbreak and impotence I felt, I wasn’t surprised to find myself drawn to Ah Toy, an Asian female character who seems fully possessed of her power as she navigates gender dynamics and a racist criminal justice system—power structures that are not only designed to oppress her but that render women like her entirely disposable. In the first season, when the police raid Ah Toy’s brothel as a means of signalling to its white citizens that it’s “cracking down” on Chinatown crime, she bribes the sergeant with a few calm words and a small red envelope. “A gift for Chinese New Year,” she says, meeting his gaze with an unflinching stare.

Cheng told me that other Asian women have expressed being triggered by her character’s profession, which she understands. She said she had to overcome her own reticence about Ah Toy, but ultimately decided to lead with her character’s humanity. “I definitely feel a responsibility,” she said. “I think you’d have to be incredibly vacuous to be in my position and not.”

Every character in Warrior contends with different articulations of power, said Shannon Lee, executive producer of the show and Bruce Lee’s daughter. “We’re presenting power when it gets out of control and the people who have to participate in that culture, who are the victims of that culture but who don’t think of themselves as victims,” she said. “They think of themselves as humans. They want what every human wants, and are fighting for it.”

As violent as Warrior can be (and disquietingly close to our current reality), I have been enjoying getting to know these kaleidoscopic characters—people who reveal new sides of themselves with every power play. Even as I tense at the scenes of racist confrontation (in the opening two minutes of the series, a white immigration officer singles out a man disembarking from the boat, calls him “Ching Chong,” and knocks him to the ground), I can take cover in characters with the agency to defend themselves. I can see them fight, and I can see them win.

“Catharsis is something that people need right now,” said Hoon Lee, who plays Wang Chao, a quick-witted black market arms dealer. “In the context of a show, you can experience—and, hopefully, exorcise—some of that rage that you might not know what to do with otherwise. That’s a primary function of storytelling.”

Martial arts might be a safe bet for a Hollywood looking for low-hanging fruit when it comes Asian representation, but in this new slate of film and television shows, it’s also the Trojan Horse: a vehicle for Asian characters whose identities are as layered and complex as people are in real life. And while, yes, these bodies encounter brutal violence, they survive to experience what lies beyond it—joy, grief, rage, and humor together. In devastating times like these, we need storytelling that shows us that access to the full spectrum of human experience is possible—not just suffering.


threads
Stop-Asian-Hate (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?72003-Stop-Asian-Hate)
Warrior (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?68676-Bruce-Lee-s-Warrior) Kung Fu (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71750-Kung-Fu-TV-show-CW-REMAKE)
Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood)
Mortal-Kombat-2021-reboot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71437-Mortal-Kombat-2021-reboot)

[Jimbo]

One of the BIGGEST sources of the emasculation of Asian men today actually comes from Asia. Look at the male K-Pop groups, as well as similar trends in other Asian countries (for one example, in China). The trends seem to be young men wearing more makeup and behaving more effeminate than the women. And like it or not, non-Asian Americans associate Asian-Americans with China/Korea/Japan, or wherever they assume Americans of Asian descent “are really from.” The mentality is, “If some present that way, they’re ALL that way.” Those overseas trends are certainly not helping the image of Asian-American males here, whether they follow those overseas trends or not.

[MightyB]

I might be mistaken, but I thought there have been a lot of movies with The Rock and Dave Batista made recently. They don't seem to fit a weak Asian stereotype. Bautista is Filipino descent and Johnson is Samoan descent. [edit] I forgot to add Keanu Reeves (Japanese descent).

Anyway, Paper Tigers is a great movie because it's relatable to anyone who's practiced TCMA; especially anyone who had the pleasure of training during what I'd say is America's golden age of kung fu, the late 80s through the 90s.

This quote is why Paper Tigers works for everyone and is a must-see movie for 2021,
"Though it centers non-white experience, it doesn’t announce itself as such—not to the point of color-blindness, but in a way where cultural difference feels normal, and honored."

[Jimbo]

Yeah, Paper Tigers sounds like a good one to see.

Nobody counts Dwayne Johnson as Asian, and I highly doubt that he himself does. Many Pacific Islanders I’ve seen addressing the issue seem militantly opposed to the idea of them having any Asian connection at all, even though it’s obvious that human life didn’t just sprout up on the Pacific islands. There is even recent DNA evidence that Pacific Islanders originated in East Asia (Taiwan and the Philippines), at least. So while Dwayne Johnson may technically have Asian blood, that is not how anyone perceives him.

I’m probably out of line posting this, but I may as well address the elephant in the room; that many Pacific Islanders hate being categorized together with Asian-Americans, considering themselves, their cultures, and their needs different. Guess what, folks? Asians are all different, too.

[GeneChing]

One of the BIGGEST sources of the emasculation of Asian men today actually comes from Asia. Look at the male K-Pop groups, as well as similar trends in other Asian countries (for one example, in China).

Here - ponder this...

Exclusive Excerpt: The Deadly ‘Pretty Boys’ Who Were Korea’s Warriors and Assassins (https://nextshark.com/hwarang-pretty-boys-david-yi-book/)
David Yi

12 mins ago
https://cdn.statically.io/img/nextshark.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/prettyboys.jpg?quality=80&f=auto
K-pop’s biggest male stars may be beauty gods but they’re hardly a new trend. While Korean pop stars may wear porcelain foundations, colorful eyeshadows, and blood-stained lips, there were men who walked — and worked — the earth centuries before. They were called the hwarang – literally “flower boys” aka “pretty boys” of Korea’s Silla dynasty – who sported crimson eye shadows, powdered faces, and slicked-back hair as a spiritual practice. These warriors were chosen for their beauty, as Silla’s king, Jinheung, believed beauty was power. In the excerpt below, we understand Korea’s rich history of beautiful men and how cosmetics, makeup, skincare isn’t a new phenomenon — beauty is literally embedded in the very culture. Here’s a history of the pretty boy warriors who were precursors for K-pop stars to thrive in our modern era.

South Korea is now known as the beauty capital of the universe, and its men hold the title of world’s biggest cosmetics consumers. Korean men glisten and glow, their complexions plumped and hydrated, as if serums pump through their very veins. But to understand why Korean men today care so much about their aesthetics, we must look to Korea’s sixth-century Silla Dynasty, and to the hwarang. The hwarang—which roughly translates to “flower boys”—weren’t only some of the fiercest weapons-wielding, martial arts–practicing assassins in Asia. They would become legendary for their fight and their faces. Aesthetics, and the spirituality behind beautifying, were paramount to their ability to defend their kingdom for over two centuries . . . and to lead the way for generations of Korean beauty boys to come.

Like all the Silla, the hwarang were devout followers of Maitreya, the future Buddha. Ancient texts say he manifested into human form to live among mortals as a lean, teenage pretty boy before the nation of Silla was formed. It was said that his look was so striking, all were awed by his presence. The kingdom of Silla awaited his return on Earth as Christians await the return of Christ: it is foretold that he’ll return to save humanity. Legend has it that when Maitreya’s physical form died, his spirit reincarnated into Silla’s soil to be reborn in the physical form of young men who resembled him. That meant that any young man in the aristocracy who happened to be pretty could also very well be Maitreya incarnate. Talk about winning the genetic—and spiritual—lottery!

But Silla’s wily king Jinheung had big plans for those fated pretty boys. For years, the king had been testing his allies’ patience, slowly plotting to take over the entire Korean peninsula. The Korean nation had been split into three kingdoms for centuries at that point: Baekje in the west, Goguryeo in the north, and Silla, which occupied land to the east. King Jinheung had helped the Baekje reclaim their land from the Goguryeo, but quickly turned on the Baekje right after, breaking a sacred 120-year alliance. At the end of the war between Baekje and Silla, one that was years-long and tireless, Silla was left as vulnerable as ever. In his final days, King Jinheung was paralyzed by fear and consumed by paranoia. He knew his enemies were thirsty for revenge, and were after his people’s complete downfall.

To keep his enemies at bay and his kingdom alive for centuries to come, King Jinheung needed power that none of his enemies had. He needed something supernatural, that Big Buddha Energy. Silla’s pretty boys were the only ones who could deliver, he thought. After all, the prettier the boy, the closer to god—and these men were packing!

King Jinheung searched for every beautiful boy throughout the kingdom who came from true bone status. The search was methodical and swift (like, a few months swift!), and a year after his hunt began, in 576 CE, the hwarang was implemented as an official arm of Silla’s military. As detailed in the Samguk Yusa, a historic Korean record, these young men would immediately go through rigorous training that not only stripped them from their families, but demanded their excellence in all things physical, emotional, and spiritual.

The hwarang trainees mastered martial arts, swordfighting, and hwarangdo (a specific style of martial arts created for the hwarang by Silla monks), horsemanship, stone throwing, archery, and javelin, as well as perfecting song and dance and memorizing religious texts. These “soft” skills allowed the men to become well-rounded warriors. Instilled with great discipline, each was also indoctrinated with Taoist, shamanist, and Buddhist teachings. Many became so devout that they even believed they’d encounter Maitreya before they died.

And in true Maitreya fashion, it’s believed that the boys perfected their appearances as well—the closer they resembled Maitreya, the closer they would be to divinity. “They selected the handsome boys of the nobility and adorned them, powdering their faces and calling them Hwarang,” wrote an envoy for the Tang dynasty. “The people of the country all respected and supported them.”

Unfortunately, there exists no information on the specific makeup they used, but we can look to the Chinese Tang dynasty, whom the Silla were influenced by, and make an educated guess. In historic texts, the Chinese detail face powder ingredients as being made of (lethal) lead, rice, and clamshell powder mixed together to create a thick, pearly foundation.

In addition to face powder, modern scholars believe the hwarang would have used red eye-shadow to distinguish themselves as elite warriors, as well as appearing more intimidating during battle.

The red dye the hwarang may have used on their eyes would have been created from safflower and red lily, and was also used by Chinese royals as a cheek, eye, and lip stain.

Per the time period, their long hair may have also been hydrated with oil produced from apricot seeds and peach kernels (way fancier than St. Ives). Some hwarang are also depicted with pierced ears and beautiful clothing—when you’re already fancy, what’s a little more?

When the hwarang officially made their debut, they became overnight sensations. Precursors to boy bands like NCT 127, The Boyz, or even BTS, who are now worldwide heartthrobs, they had tongues wagging all the way from Silla to China. As King Jinheung had once pre-dicted, his enemies would one day attack Silla. In the midsummer of 660 CE, the Baekje launched an attack against the Silla, which would become known as the famous Battle of Hwangsanbeol. But the hwarang, fighting together with the Tang army, would prevail against the Baekje, sending the enemy cowering. For over three hundred years, the hwarang would defend their borders from outsiders—without smudging their eyeshadow—until they, too, were overthrown by another power. In 935 CE, they surrendered in defeat to Korea’s last dynasty, the Goryeo, which would go on to unify the entire Korean peninsula. Though the hwarang were dissolved by the new power, their legacy wasn’t completely erased: the Goryeo government took pride in Silla’s past, and made attempts to celebrate hwarang history over the years.

To this day, no one can deny how mystical and magical these “flower boy” warriors were. In contemporary Korea, the hwarang are still extolled for their bravery and celebrated for their beauty, and South Korea’s men’s beauty business leads the way for innovations around the world. Korean pop culture celebrates men’s beauty, from TV shows like OnStyle’s Lipstick Prince, a program that features male K-pop idols learning about makeup and putting cosmetics on each other, to K-dramas like 2016’s popular Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth, which cast K-pop’s biggest names and prettiest faces in the role of warriors, from BTS’s V to SHINee’s Minho. These are only some of South Korea’s contemporary flower boys, who some shamanists would argue possess the hwarang spirit, alive and well (and pretty!).



Excerpt from PRETTY BOYS by David Yi, illustrated by Paul Tuller. Copyright © 2021 by David Yi. Illustrations © 2021 by Paul Tuller. Available June 22, 2021 from HMH Books & Media.

About the Author: David Yi is the founder of Very Good Light, a site that has aimed to redefine masculinity through a beauty lens. Prior to Very Good Light, David launched fashion and beauty verticals at Mashable, reported for WWD, and was the fashion editor at the New York Daily News, in addition to writing for many other publications. He has received a GLAAD Award and two Webby nominations, and was named one of “25 People Changing the Beauty Conversation” in Marie Claire. “PRETTY BOYS” is his first book.




I'm copying this off our Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70864-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Hollywood) thread discussion to our Korean-arts-other-that-TKD (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71981-Korean-arts-other-that-TKD) thread, just for good measure.

[Jimbo]

Very true, Gene, I had heard of the Hwarang Warriors before.

That said, today’s K-Pop groups are not a warrior society, and that feminine image does affect how Asian males are perceived by many people in the world, or it confirms long-held beliefs (i.e., as less manly than men from other races). Even though such men exist in all groups. Whether the K-Pop artists themselves really feel the way they’re presented, or are just doing it because it’s what’s expected of them and what their fans like.

Keep in mind, I’m not bashing anyone for who they are. If that is someone’s thing, that’s great. Unfortunately, the stereotypical IMAGE of Asian men as being weaker, softer, and more passive than men of other racial groups in this day and age is not for no reason. Because it is the dominant image being presented. And many happily go along with it, because “ We’re finally getting representation!”

It does appear that some changes *may* be slowly coming, but only time will tell if the changes continue or lose momentum.

[YinOrYan]

Very true, Gene, I had heard of the Hwarang Warriors before.

That said, today’s K-Pop groups are not a warrior society, and that feminine image does affect how Asian males are perceived by many people in the world, or it confirms long-held beliefs (i.e., as less manly than men from other races). Even though such men exist in all groups. Whether the K-Pop artists themselves really feel the way they’re presented, or are just doing it because it’s what’s expected of them and what their fans like.

Keep in mind, I’m not bashing anyone for who they are. If that is someone’s thing, that’s great. Unfortunately, the stereotypical IMAGE of Asian men as being weaker, softer, and more passive than men of other racial groups in this day and age is not for no reason. Because it is the dominant image being presented. And many happily go along with it, because “ We’re finally getting representation!”

It does appear that some changes *may* be slowly coming, but only time will tell if the changes continue or lose momentum.

I have great respect for the strength and complexity of their K-Pop dance routines. They are some of the few workouts one can find today that are comparable to doing kung fu animal forms. I'm sure the Hwarang Warriors before their martial arts training were very similar, so that's why they could be trained in just a few months to be very effective fighters...

[GeneChing]

Quentin Tarantino tells critics of his Bruce Lee interpretation to 'go suck a d---' (https://ew.com/movies/quentin-tarantino-bruce-lee-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-joe-rogan-video/)
The director explains a controversial scene featuring a dramatization of the iconic action star from his 2019 Best Picture-nominated movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

By Joey Nolfi June 30, 2021 at 09:52 AM EDT

Quentin Tarantino isn't dodging blows when it comes to addressing his characterization of iconic action star Bruce Lee in the 2019 movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

"I can understand his daughter having a problem with it. It's her f—ing father," the Oscar-winning filmmaker said on Tuesday's episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, referencing critics who've called his brief depiction of Lee in a scene from the Best Picture-nominated film as a racist caricature. "Everybody else: go suck a d---."

He continued, explaining that the scene — which sees stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) visiting Lee (Mike Moh) on the set of the Green Hornet TV show, and subsequently throwing him into a car during a physical matchup played for laughs — is "obvious" in its declaration "that Cliff tricked him. That's how he was able to do it; he tricked him."

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F6%2F2021%2F06%2F30%2Ft arantino-lee-1.jpg
Quentin Tarantino defends his Bruce Lee depiction in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.' | CREDIT: RICK ROWELL VIA GETTY IMAGES; SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
Tarantino stressed that the moment is fleshed out more in his new novelization of the film, and that Pitt's character deliberately manipulates Lee in a way that leads to the moment where the latter careens into a stationary car. He also cited Booth's past experience in the military as giving him a killer instinct that allowed him to calculatedly overthrow Lee's martial arts-inspired instincts.

The Pulp Fiction helmer further described Lee's history in entertainment, expressing affection for him and what he calls a "disrespect for [American] stuntmen" working on his projects: "He was always hitting them with his feet, it's called tagging, when you hit a stunt man for real," Tarantino said, likening Lee's approach to the craft to fellow actor Robert Conrad (The Wild Wild West).

However, Lee biographer Matthew Polly previously told Esquire that "Bruce was very famous for being very considerate of the people below him on film sets, particularly the stuntmen," and, with regard to Tarantino's depiction, "that's just not who Bruce Lee was as a person."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmvOEj00LB8

After Once Upon a Time in Hollywood's release, Lee's daughter, Shannon Lee, told The Wrap that she was disappointed in the depiction amid other criticisms from the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,

"I understand they want to make the Brad Pitt character this super badass who could beat up Bruce Lee. But they didn't need to treat him in the way that white Hollywood did when he was alive," she told the publication, remembering the "uncomfortable" feeling of watching the scene in a theater as people laughed at her father.

"He comes across as an arrogant ******* who was full of hot air," she said. "And not someone who had to fight triple as hard as any of those people did to accomplish what was naturally given to so many others."

Watch video of Tarantino's appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience above.
Way to stay relevant?

[GeneChing]

Shannon Lee: Does Quentin Tarantino Hate Bruce Lee? Or Does It Just Help Sell Books? (Guest Column) (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/shannon-lee-quentin-tarantino-hate-bruce-lee-or-sell-books-1234977088/)
As the director promotes the novelization of the 2019 film 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,' which was criticized for a scene depicting Bruce Lee, the daughter of the martial artist responds to comments Tarantino made to Joe Rogan.

BY SHANNON LEE

JULY 2, 2021 11:47AM
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Bruce-Coburn-Norris-Stone.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1
From left: Mike Stone, James Coburn, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. COURTESY OF SHANNON LEE

Amid Quentin Tarantino’s media tour to promote the new release of his novelization of 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the director stopped by Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast. During the June 29 interview, Tarantino was asked about the criticism over the film’s depiction of Bruce Lee — specifically, a fight scene in which Brad Pitt’s character, Cliff, easily knocks down the Lee character, portrayed by Mike Moh. Tarantino told Rogan: “I can understand his daughter having a problem with it — it’s her ****ing father, I get that,” before quickly dismissing others’ criticism.


Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee, was among those who had spoken out about the scene at the time of the film’s release. And, in response to a request for comment from The Hollywood Reporter on Tarantino’s remarks to Rogan, wrote the below column regarding the director’s characterization of the scene and other comments on the actual Bruce Lee.

Why does Quentin Tarantino speak like he knew Bruce Lee and hated him? It seems weird given he never met Bruce Lee, right? Not to mention that Mr. Tarantino happily dressed the Bride in a knock-off of my father’s yellow jumpsuit and the Crazy 88s in Kato-style masks and outfits for Kill Bill, which many saw as a love letter to Bruce Lee. But love letters usually address the recipient by name, and from what I could observe at the time, Mr. Tarantino tried, interestingly, to avoid saying the name Bruce Lee as much as possible back then.

If only he’d take the name Bruce Lee off his lips now.

You can imagine by now that I am used to people only seeing one facet of my father and blowing that up into a caricature. That has been happening since shortly after he passed. But usually, somewhere in that caricature is some sort of nugget of love for the man and his work. Not so with Mr. Tarantino.

As you already know, the portrayal of Bruce Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Mr. Tarantino, in my opinion, was inaccurate and unnecessary to say the least. (Please let’s not blame actor Mike Moh. He did what he could with what he was given.) And while I am grateful that Mr. Tarantino has so generously acknowledged to Joe Rogan that I may have my feelings about his portrayal of my father, I am also grateful for the opportunity to express this: I’m really ****ing tired of white men in Hollywood trying to tell me who Bruce Lee was.

I’m tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he was arrogant and an ******* when they have no idea and cannot fathom what it might have taken to get work in 1960s and ’70s Hollywood as a Chinese man with (God forbid) an accent, or to try to express an opinion on a set as a perceived foreigner and person of color. I’m tired of white men in Hollywood mistaking his confidence, passion and skill for hubris and therefore finding it necessary to marginalize him and his contributions. I’m tired of white men in Hollywood finding it too challenging to believe that Bruce Lee might have really been good at what he did and maybe even knew how to do it better than them.

I’m tired of hearing from white men in Hollywood that he wasn’t really a martial artist and just did it for the movies. My father lived and breathed martial arts. He taught martial arts, wrote about martial arts, created his own martial art, innovated martial arts training, and refused to compete in martial arts tournaments because he believed combat should be “real.” He had no parallel as a martial artist. And I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he had no parallel as a martial artist on film, either.

I’m tired of white men in Hollywood barely footnoting the impact he had on the action film genre and fight choreography, or the proliferation of and interest in martial arts he sparked globally, or the number of people and communities he continues to inspire and touch with his performances, philosophies, teachings and practices while casually downplaying how his accomplishments have lifted spirits and become a source of pride for Asian Americans, communities of color and people around the world, and how he accomplished all of this by the age of 32.

And while we’re at it, I’m tired of being told that he wasn’t American (he was born in San Francisco), that he wasn’t really friends with James Coburn, that he wasn’t good to stuntmen, that he went around challenging people to fights on film sets, that my mom said in her book that my father believed he could beat up Muhammad Ali (not true), that all he wanted was to be famous, and so much more.

And of course, this doesn’t apply to all white men in Hollywood; I’ve worked with some really wonderful collaborators and partners. But I’ve come across enough of them over the years (and not just in Hollywood) who want to mansplain Bruce Lee to me and use Bruce Lee when and how it suits them without acknowledging his humanity, his legacy, or his family in the process that a bit of a pattern has emerged. I’m also not saying that no one is allowed to have a negative opinion of Bruce Lee. I’m saying your opinion might be colored by personal or cultural bias, and that there’s a pattern. Just notice the pattern in all the people Mr. Tarantino cites in the case he builds against my father. Just saying …

And I understand he died when I was 4, but I am still one of the very few people on this planet other than my mother who has met and spoken with most everyone who ever knew him (the promoters and detractors alike), who has read his extensive writings on all manner of subjects, gone through his personal daytimers and library, who has trained in Jeet Kune Do, who has childhood memories of him, and who knows what it was to be loved by him. I think I’m more of an authority on Bruce Lee at this point than most people, not to mention having looked after his legacy for the last 21 years.

Look, I understand what Mr. Tarantino was trying to do. I really do. Cliff Booth is such a badass and a killer that he can beat the crap out of Bruce Lee. Character development. I get it. I just think he could have done it so much better. But instead, the scene he created was just an uninteresting tear-down of Bruce Lee when it didn’t need to be. It was white Hollywood treating Bruce Lee as, well, white Hollywood treated him — as a dispensable stereotype. But that was Mr. Tarantino’s creative device that he chose, so he initially claimed, though now he seems to be arguing that this is actually an accurate portrayal of Bruce Lee and is what would have happened if indeed Cliff Booth (a fictitious person) and the real Bruce Lee (if he were a mediocre, arrogant martial artist) had squared off. Whaaa?

The fact that Mr. Tarantino espouses that my father could have been easily tricked by a fictitious character and would only really be a threat in a competition setting like Madison Square Garden speaks volumes about everything he does not know about Bruce Lee and JKD. But enough tit-for-tat.

In closing, at a time when Asian Americans are being physically attacked, told to “go home” because they are seen as not American, and demonized for something that has nothing to do with them, I feel moved to suggest that Mr. Tarantino’s continued attacks, mischaracterizations and misrepresentations of a trailblazing and innovative member of our Asian American community, right now, are not welcome.

Mr. Tarantino, you don’t have to like Bruce Lee. I really don’t care if you like him or not. You made your movie and now, clearly, you’re promoting a book. But in the interest of respecting other cultures and experiences you may not understand, I would encourage you to take a pass on commenting further about Bruce Lee and reconsider the impact of your words in a world that doesn’t need more conflict and fewer cultural heroes.

Under the sky, under the heavens, we are one family, Mr. Tarantino, and I think it’s time for both of us to walk on.

Well written, Shannon.

[Jimbo]

Well written, Shannon.


Agreed. She said it better than anybody else could have.

As for QT, I still believe he is an excellent director. He makes good movies (well, most of them, anyway). Including Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. But he’s clearly an *******. It’s clear from his words and his inability to take justified criticism. It’s clear that he has a hard on for Bruce Lee (almost as much as he has for women’s feet), and is ultra-sensitive about being called out on it.

So QT believes that Bruce Lee was an *******, but presents Sharon Tate as an angel. In fact, the Sharon Tate character was so cloyingly innocent and childlike, she was cartoonish and completely out of sync with a QT film, since virtually all of QT’s film characters are varying degrees of scumbags. I think Sharon Tate was QT’s only character in any of his movies who was truly innocent and good. I’m sure QT was so ridiculously kind to her character because she was murdered IRL, and she still has surviving relative(s), and he walked on eggshells to avoid any possible backlash. But I suppose he feels that Bruce is always fair game.