Come Drink with Me

[student99]

Just got the release of Dragon Dynasty's "Come Drink With Me". It is a pretty good update. Never seen it before but heard it was the start of Kung Fu movies in using Chinese inns as battlegrounds. It is pretty cool for a movie from the 60's.

http://www.nysun.com/arts/king-hus-h...daggers/78615/

[jethro]

Yeah it's a great movie for being from 1966.

[GeneChing]

Dragon Dynasty is the new leader in Kung Fu DVDs, with all the hot new titles and remastered versions of the classics. And they're doing great work. The archive films are being treated with respect, nicely restored with B&W outlined subtitles, and a well chosen library of classics. And Come Drink with Me is a classic for sure. It's remains a gorgeous film, great to see on a widescreen HDTV as opposed to the late night sketchy broadcast I probably first saw it on, a true masterpiece of King Hu and the Shaw Brothers. It's slow by today's standards - such is the pitfall of the YouTube attention span - but the sets and scenery and the costuming are magnificent. You have to remember, this was the very first film of its kind. Jackie is supposed to have a bit role (in the odd musical interlude no less) as a child actor, but I couldn't really spot him. Ching Siu Ting (a leading choreographer who just did Statham's In the Name of the King) has a child role too - he's much easier to see because he gets rather brutalized. CDwM is cut from the same celluloid cloth of Zatoichi, a brooding lone hero, impossible feats of martial arts, absurd rogue's galleries of villains, hyper-technicolor schemes, blood-soaked choreography. Cheng Pei Pei, with her commanding paranoid eyes and impossibly erect posture, is still captivating on screen. A ballet dancer by trade, she pulls off some fine fight sequences that involve cutting down a few dozen opponents in a single continuous shot, which she handles with the graceful flair of kung fu's most seminal movie heroine. Kill Bill, CTHD, Mulan and most recently, Forbidden Kingdom, they all bow down to the original Golden Swallow. There's a rumor that Tarantino is planning to remake CDwM. I think he already did with KB.

[jethro]

I saw Mars among the kids. That was the only one I could cleary recognize. What an ugly kid.

[Jimbo]

I also recognized Mars (aka, Huo Hsing). I also believe I saw Yuen Wah among the kids, too.

I've liked this film for years, it's great to see such a beautiful transfer of it. Cheng Pei-Pei is the archetypal onscreen heroine. The cinematography was also beautiful.



*** Spoiler! Only read below if you've already seen it! ***



One thing that always seemed off-kilter about it for me, though, is the uneven way it ended. We never see what happened when Pei-Pei took off after Chen Hung-Lieh (as the white-faced, fan-toting killer). How did that turn out? Then the story turns to night-time, and then the ending must be the next day, though it looks like it might be the same day as the big battle.

I also liked the extras on DD's Heroes of the East. This transfer is outstanding as well. Nobody filmed cinematic kung fu with better eye for detail than Lau Kar-Leung and his cinematographer. It's stuff than cannot be equaled in today's movies. And Gordon Liu's interviews are always good. I like his insights and his attitude; he's truly one of the most humble stars (and martial artists, period). It would have been cool if they could've gotten an interview with Yasuaki Kurata as well.

Anyway, back on topic: Come Drink With Me has held up after 42 years and held up well. Yes, it does move slower than people nowadays are used to, as did many great films (Eastwood/Leone's Man With No Name trilogy are good examples of that). Quality movies, like fine wine, simply shouldn't be rushed
through.

[冠木侍]

Just got the release of Dragon Dynasty's "Come Drink With Me". It is a pretty good update. Never seen it before but heard it was the start of Kung Fu movies in using Chinese inns as battlegrounds. It is pretty cool for a movie from the 60's.

http://www.nysun.com/arts/king-hus-h...daggers/78615/

I know someone who is trying to collect the old movies. She'll be happy when she hehears about this.

[GeneChing]

See also CHENG PEI-PEI: Hong Kong's First Queen of Kung Fu Film by Craig Reid

Forever Young and Restless: an interview with actress Cheng Pei-pei

Movie legend Cheng Pei-pei reminisces about her days at Shaw Brothers, working with director King Hu, and how she’s managed to stay a major figure in Chinese-language media.

by Brian Hu

Date Published: 05/12/2010

Born in Shanghai, made in Hong Kong, and matured in Los Angeles, Cheng Pei-pei has been, like those wandering heroines that brought her international fame, an adaptable drifter with a warrior’s tenacity. From her early years as Shaw Brothers’ up-and-coming star doing genre pictures, to her box-office breakthrough in King Hu’s 1966 Come Drink with Me, to her television work in Los Angeles, to her film comeback in Stephen Chow’s Flirting Scholar and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Cheng Pei-pei has managed to stay one of the most likeable and breathtaking stars in the Chinese-language world. And as she’d put it, her success has been a result of resolve against challenge -- and a good amount of luck. That her glowing smile still betrays that of a teen idol doesn’t hurt either.

Cheng Pei-pei’s life traces many of the turns of Chinese cinema in the past 50 years. She was among the generation reared by the powerhouse studio Shaw Brothers, became a young star during Hong Kong culture’s youth revolution of the late 1960s, left Hong Kong at a time when producers went independent and studios decentralized, and found work in television when the medium rose in regional and diasporic importance. And just as Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinema began to nostalgically look backward in its appropriation of genres and themes, Cheng Pei-pei found some of her most memorable roles as an embodiment of Chinese cinema’s past glamour.

Today, Cheng Pei-pei is ready to pass on the torch to her children, including young stars Eugenia Yuan and Marsha Yuan. Cheng was in Los Angeles for the area premiere of Michael Aki’s Strangers (which stars Eugenia) at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and for a special screening of Come Drink with Me at the University of Southern California. Asia Pacific Arts caught up with Cheng Pei-pei to talk about the world of Shaw Brothers from the perspective of somebody who rose from the studio’s training school to become one of Hong Kong cinema’s top box office draws.

Interview with Cheng Pei-pei
April 30, 2010
Los Angeles, CA

Asia Pacific Arts: You arrived at Shaw Brothers in 1963?

Cheng Pei-pei: I signed a contract with Shaw Brothers in 1963. Before that, in 1962, I trained in Shaw Brothers’ Southern Drama Group for a whole year. So when we graduated, we signed a contract.

APA: What was the training school like?

CPP: It was not like a real school, but it was very serious, unlike some of the training schools now which are not serious at all. We had a lot of classes. All day on Saturday and Sunday. Five days of classes a week.

[GeneChing]

continued from previous post

APA: What kind of classes were there?

CPP: They taught us how to speak lines, how to act, how to move your body.

APA: Who were the teachers?

CPP: King [Hu] was one of the teachers as a guest. I don’t remember what he taught though. But sometimes directors and actors would come and teach when they had time. Ku Wen Chung was our principal. He was a famous actor and a director of Cantonese movies.

APA: I know Shaw Brothers sent a lot of actors and actresses to Japan to study. Did they bring Japanese teachers to the training school?

CPP: That’s a little bit different. First of all, they actually only sent a few to Japan. The first three were Chang Yen, Chin Ping, and Hsing Hui. I was in the second batch. They were really young at the time -- 13 or 14 -- so Shaw Brothers thought they would need some training in dancing and singing. I don’t know how long they were there -- maybe one of two years. I was in the second batch. After Come Drink with Me, King Hu wanted me to go with him to Taiwan for Dragon Inn. The thing is, though, that I couldn’t because I had signed a long contract. So the studio asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to go to Japan to train. At that time, I’d already done Hong Kong Nocturne so I had some contact with Japanese dancers and choreographers, so that’s why I wanted to go there. The company was very nice and asked who I wanted to bring with me, so I brought Ching Lee and my sister-in-law from Taiwan.

After that, I don’t think Shaw Brothers really brought people to Japan anymore. In the years after I married, Shaw Brothers become more like a factory. During my period at Shaw Brothers, the studio was still experimenting [with their actors], so it was much better. Later on, when I returned to Hong Kong to interview old actors for the Celestial Pictures documentaries on Shaw Brothers, I was surprised to find that many of them had to do seven movies at a time -- some as a main characters, some in smaller parts. They would do many costumes pictures at once, and they wouldn’t even have to change their hairstyles, they’d just run to the other sets to do another film. I never did that. The most I did was two at once. That was a lot, to me, already. When I did Come Drink with Me, I did another film at the same time -- Princess Iron Fan maybe. I remember King Hu gave me a special chair, because he knew I was tired from the other film, and so I could relax until it was time for me to shoot. I don’t understand how they could do seven movies at a time.

APA: Did the generation before you -- like the Lin Dai generation -- have to do so many films?

CPP: They did even fewer that we did. They were already big stars and made a lot of money. Twenty to fifty thousand dollars per film. That was a lot of money. We started from $400. Compared to them, it was very little. They became so big, so the company wanted new people, which is why we had the Southern Drama Group. So at that time, Shaw Brothers was very willing to give us parts or let us play leads. We had a lot of chances. It was very easy for us to get parts.

APA: Did you get to know the older actors and actresses?

CPP: Because I did The Lotus Lamp, I got to know Linda Lin Dai very well. I did some films with Peter Chen Hou, so I knew Peter and his wife [Loh Ti]. Ling Po was also around the same time. But we were too young for them. They thought we were little brats. I remember Yeh Feng’s husband of the time, Ling Yun, never talked to us. Years later, he told us they looked at us as so young. Of course, he was married to the prettiest of them all.

APA: You said that at the beginning, it was very easy for you to get roles because they were trying to build up the younger generation. I’ve been watching your films before Come Drink with Me and noticed that you did a lot of different kinds of films.

CPP: Right, they didn’t know which kinds of roles fit me, so before Come Drink with Me I had a lot of chances to do different kinds of movies like The Lotus Lamp. I did musicals, James Bond movies, and classical stories like Princess Iron Fan. They just wanted to try and see which one could be a hit for me. And it was Come Drink with Me which really hit the market.

APA: On the set of Come Drink with Me, did you feel like you had found your calling?

CPP: I’m not really sure. I was very surprised that I was doing martial arts because I was a dancer, which is quite different. Because I was a dancer, King Hu thought I could do martial arts. I didn’t know if I could do it or not, but I don’t succumb to adversity. I wanted to beat all the boys. If boys could do it, I could too. Maybe that’s a reason I pushed myself to do it. I remember the girls would hurt themselves when they practiced. Hsing Hui hurt her nose when Chin Han hit her. She said she wouldn’t do it anymore to protect her pretty nose. I didn’t care, and that’s another reason I was able to do martial arts movies. It was a success. It was a hit.

Run Run Shaw had wanted to burn the movie, because it was very different from other films in that period of Hong Kong movies. There were no nice costumes in it. At that time, nice costumes were colorful and flashy. The movie also didn’t have girls aside from me. In the end of the film, they put in ten girls because there weren’t enough girls in it. They actually shot two different endings. The other ending has King Hu and Peter Chen Hou as brothers who come to help me. Run Run thought it was a joke to use Chen Hou, who had never been in a serious movie. At that time, comedy and drama were separate and you couldn’t do both kinds of films at the same time. And so they cut that ending. The ending used now is actually the second ending.

APA: It seems like everyone knew there was something different about this movie, be it good or bad.

CPP: It was also different in the way they shot the fighting. We’d had martial arts for years, but it’d always been simply like the recording of martial arts on stage. King Hu used different angles and editing to make it more real. That was something they probably couldn’t accept. It was too new. But maybe because it was different, people loved it.

APA: So as an actor, was it confusing to work given these new techniques? Or did the director explain everything?

CPP: I was very young at that time. I just listened. I’m good at listening. I was very obedient. Whatever he said, I did. Because I did ballet, I could move however he wanted. He told me how to use my energy, because energy works differently in martial arts and in dance. He helped me a lot, though I think that this chance was given to me a little too early. If it had been later on, I would have been a better actor. When I watch Come Drink with Me, I only see King Hu, I don’t see myself. I only see the directions he gave to me. He was very short, and I’m very tall because I have long legs. He was always trying to get me to bend my legs lower. He would tell me to get as low as he could. He hated that I had long legs. He wanted my costumes to cover my legs. He said that long legs don’t show power.

APA: You’ve worked with a lot directors who made wuxia films. How did King Hu differ from Ho Meng-hua or Chang Cheh?

CPP: Actually the biggest difference is that the other directors didn’t direct the action parts; they had action directors. Even for Chang Cheh: Lau Kar-leung did everything. Chang Cheh was asleep. King was different. He created everything. [Action director] Han Ying-chieh just followed what he created. See the difference? He knew what he wanted. Maybe he couldn’t physically do it, so Han Ying-chieh did the physical parts. But King Hu’s the one who created all of the fighting. Ang Lee, even though Yuen Woo-ping was there, wanted to do it himself. That’s why I think Ang Lee and King Hu were similar. Ang Lee could have been like the other directors too, because Yuen Woo-ping was there and he had been working 30-40 years. When I did Come Drink with Me, he was there already! His father was in it, so he probably had a small part. But Ang Lee didn’t really listen to him. He thought, “Maybe you’re right, but why not try it my way?” He wanted to challenge him. I think that what King did was even more difficult, because he was the first one to do it. Nobody knew what it was going to look like when it came out. But he thought it was the right way.

[GeneChing]

continued from previous post

APA: How did King Hu compare with the other directors in non-action scenes -- like drama scenes?

CPP: The drama scenes were not that different. King very much followed history. He loved the Ming Dynasty, so he thought everything should be correct. Even the clothes, the materials, had to be like the Ming Dynasty. Now, nobody cares what dynasty it is; everything is the same. Not for King. He wanted everything. For instance, [in Come Drink with Me,] why were those two small knives in my boots? He knew that the character would have to hide it, because he knew that at the time, people couldn’t bring knives around in the open. So he knew of these kind of details of reality.

APA: Was he also interested in how a woman might act in the Ming Dynasty? Did he care about those kinds of details?

CPP: I think he was more concerned with the details of governance, and how people of different ranks dealt with each other. He never did any love stories. His personal life was like that, in that the love letters he wrote to girlfriends were not very expressive. There were no “I love you’s.” He thought those things were too personal. It’s actually very Chinese, like in Crouching Tiger, where Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh couldn’t even touch each other.

APA: Did you feel the same way about someone like Chang Cheh?

CPP: Chang Cheh was very different. Chang Cheh was actually very literate, but you couldn’t tell in his movies, though it shows in the lyrics he wrote for the “Alishan” song. Of his movies, Golden Swallow has the best writing. I can’t say he’s as literate as King Hu, but he was. It just doesn’t show in his movies.

APA: Why do you think that was?

CPP: He was more commercial. He was also very much a “man.” He wanted fighting that was ugly.

APA: If his films are so manly, how did he direct a female actor like yourself?

CPP: Well that’s why his films had no female actors at all.

APA: Except for you.

CPP: Yeah I had a big part. Although I’m pretty manly too. [laughs]

APA: Did he direct you as if you were a man?

CPP: No. He thought he knew women really well. He thought that if I did these roles, no man would want to marry me. He would tell me to have my hair down. And the way that he shot Wang Yu looking at me was very sweet. But usually girls were just there as girls.

APA: Some of his movies didn’t even have women in them.

CPP: There was no need. It was very different from King, who did a lot for women. I was very lucky. And that’s why I’m able to keep getting parts in movies like Flirting Scholar and Crouching Tiger. It’s as people say: to be a star or an actor means getting lucky. You have a chance, and you catch it. [My daughters] Marsha and Eugenia may be better actresses than me, but it’s too bad that they didn’t have my luck. Maybe one day, you never know.

APA: Can you say something about films like Ho Meng-hua’s The Jade Raksha?

CPP: Ho Meng-hua and Lo Wei were so different. They were storytellers. King Hu was not a storyteller; he was an art film director. But they were storytellers, and were so unique in doing that. With [Ho Meng-hua’s] The Lady Hermit, they tried to create the actress Shih Szu as the next Cheng Pei-pei. I thought that was a very bad idea -- to have somebody be the second somebody. It was the same with The Lotus Lamp. They wanted me to be the next Ling Po. Although in real life, Ling Po was much more feminine than me, in the movie I was still much more feminine than Ling Po [who was famous for playing males].

APA: And The Lotus Lamp was one of Lin Dai’s last movies, and they were trying to create the “new Lin Dai” as well.

CPP: That was even worse. They took her to Japan to change her face. Lin Dai had gotten plastic surgery in Japan, so they went to the same doctor. But even plastic can’t look the same.

APA: When did Inoue Umetsugu’s Hong Kong Nocturne happen?

CPP: It must have been shortly after Come Drink with Me. I remember King Hu wasn’t happy about my being in [Inoue Umetsugu’s] Operation Lipstick. He said, “Why did that Japanese director make you like that? Why did he make you wear so little and then have you sway around like that?” [laughs]

APA: So did a lot of the Shaw Brothers director not like the fact that the Japanese directors were coming to make films at Shaws?

CPP: Yeah. They really didn’t like it. They didn’t understand why if we already had so many directors, they should bring directors from Japan.

APA: Why do you think they brought the Japanese directors?

CPP: From my understanding, as with the fact that the older stars were getting too big and so they needed new actors, Run Run Shaw thought that the “four big directors” (Yueh Feng, Doe Chin, Lo Chen, Lee Han-hsiang) were getting too big. Especially after Lee Han-hsiang and King Hu left, he felt that he could get other directors who could be on schedule and on budget. Inoue Umetsugu was able to quickly make two movies with me in them.

APA: So you felt that they were more efficient as well?

CPP: Of course, but it’s because the studio always gave them first priority. A musical [like Hong Kong Nocturne] is very difficult, because there needs to be rehearsals. And the studio provided everything like the sets. They didn’t favor the Hong Kong directors. Also, Inoue had already done Hong Kong Nocturne before in Japan. So people always said that of course the shoot would go well because it was his second time making it.

APA: Did you get a lot of opportunities to speak with Inoue? Did he give you a lot direction?

CPP: He couldn’t, because he couldn’t speak Chinese.

APA: Right. So how did that work?

CPP: We had a translator there all the time. Many years later, I met Inoue at the Tokyo Film Festival. I was with Marsha, who looks a lot like I used to. Inoue looked at her and said, “Cheng Pei-pei! How come you look the same!” [laughs]

APA: Wasn’t it hard to work with a director you couldn’t speak with?

CPP: Well, not really. Especially because there was a script. Of course it’s not the same though. Operation Lipstick was more difficult because it had so much action. Actually I’m very happy with the all of the choreography in Hong Kong Nocturne.

APA: Was it shot by Nishimoto Tadashi?

CPP: Nishimoto Tadashi was with Shaw Brothers a long time. My first film, The Lotus Lamp, was shot by him. So he actually learned some Cantonese. He was very nice. He became very Hong Kongese. Come Drink with Me was him too. I did a lot of films with him. At that time, you could tell if a film was big by what director of cinematographer was assigned to it.

APA: Were there any cameramen who were famous for making the actresses more beautiful?

CPP: Yan Jun’s cameraman was very good. But his films looked better for black and white. For color films, Nishimoto was the best.

APA: At that time, did other studios like Cathay try to buy out your contract?

CPP: Not Cathay, but United.

APA: Did Lee Han-hsiang try to recruit you when he went to Taiwan?

CPP: Not at that time, but later, in the 1990s before he passed away, he went to America for a heart operation. I was doing real estate in America. So I showed him houses. And for each house I showed him, he made up a story. Every day I showed him a house, he made up a story. He told me that I could be more than a martial arts actresses and that he wanted to show people that I really could act. So in the last film he did, I had a part.

APA: In the 1970s, a lot of Hong Kong producers went to Taiwan. Were you part of that generation?

CPP: No. In that generation, I produced my children. [laughs]

APA: So you had moved to L.A. before that?

CPP: Yeah. Jimmy Wang Yu [who moved to Taiwan,] would tell me at that time that I could make a lot of money. They all made a lot of money during that kung fu craze.
APA: Did they try to get you to go back?

CPP: They did. [points to her children sitting in the room] But their father wouldn’t let me. [laughs] But maybe it was good.

[GeneChing]

last continued piece

APA: In the 1970s, kung fu films had fewer and fewer roles for women.

CPP: That’s why I say I’m lucky. I was right on the line. Bruce Lee would have affected me. When Bruce Lee arrived, actresses started to have very small parts. It’s a good thing I left when I did, otherwise I might never have left.

APA: I remember that when I grew up in L.A., you had a television show here. Can you talk a little about how you got into television?

CPP: Way back in the end of the 1970s, I did something called Health Dance for TVB in Hong Kong. They wanted to create a Jane Fonda of the East, and they thought I was the best person because I was a dancer, so the moves would be easy for me. They also knew I was married and had children. They thought I could create a Chinese way to choreograph what we called “health dance.” So I went to Hong Kong to do that and Taiwan to promote it. So I was the first one to bring something like aerobics for the east. My main responsibility was to train the teachers. I was working seven hours a day teaching the public and the teachers. I had a lot of energy.

So then I started to work more closely with TV. Around then, I started to do more talk shows, like Your World in Taipei. Because I had my son, I came back [to the U.S.] and did more shows. But I think I was too early. I was too smart. [laughs] At that time, the market was too small, and the Chinese were too much of a minority. It was difficult to make money from advertising. At that time, the biggest program was a cooking show. But I wanted to do better things, so I did some documentaries. This was inspired by King Hu’s Igo Ono project. So I did a travel show in the United States about how Chinese Americans survived for a hundred years here. It was a big series. It was a very early production. I wanted to do it, so I did it. It’s my personality. But I also went bankrupt and lost my marriage. And so I went back to doing movies like Flirting Scholar, because it was easier. I was very lucky to have a chance to do that. I wasn’t sure I could do it, because I wasn’t very familiar with moleitou humor. My agent told me that since Stephen Chow was so famous, I should do it. And so I watched all of his movies and learned what moleitou was, and I figured I could do it.

APA: So that was your first time returning to Hong Kong in a while?

CPP: Yes, though I had down a few other things like Painted Faces, Health Dance, and other telefeatures, including one with Leslie Cheung. I’m lucky to have been able to work with everybody. Flirting Scholar actually made me big in mainland China. They still play it on TV every other month.

APA: At this point in your career, is there any role you’d like to do?

CPP: I would like to play a Buddhist nun. I’m very familiar with nuns because I’m a Buddhist, so I think I could do a good job, and let a nun become very human.

Special thanks to Sangjoon Lee for additional questions.

[GeneChing]

More great coverage from Dean Napolitano.

March 28, 2012, 7:56 PM HKT
‘Come Drink With Me’ Screens in Hong Kong
By Dean Napolitano


Cheng Pei-pei in ‘Come Drink With Me.’

Hong Kong cinephiles seized a rare opportunity this week to see a hometown classic on the big screen, a reminder that martial-arts films dating back a half century continue to influence today’s filmmakers.


Ms. Cheng, who played Jade Fox in ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’ didn’t have any martial-arts experience prior to ‘Come Drink With Me.’

“Come Drink With Me,” about a swordswoman who teams up with a drunken kung-fu master to battle bandits holding her brother hostage, mixes the traditions that are now standard martial-arts-movie fare: stylized fight scenes, assassins scurrying over rooftops under a full moon, gravity-defying leaps and a touch of humor. (The Chinese title, 大醉俠, translates as “The Great Drunken Knight.”)

The 1966 film united director King Hu and the Shaw Brothers studio, which at the time was at the height of its creative output. It also made a star of Cheng Pei-pei, who was 19 years old when she was cast in the lead role. While many Western moviegoers saw her for the first time in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” where she played the man-slaying villainess Jade Fox, she was one of Hong Kong’s first martial-arts heroines and paved the way for other kung-fu actresses, including her “Crouching Tiger” colleagues Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi.

But Ms. Cheng, who had trained as a dancer before landing in movies, didn’t have any martial-arts experience when she made “Come Drink With Me.”

“I didn’t know how to fight,” she told the Journal at Tuesday’s screening, which was organized by the Hong Kong International Film Festival. King Hu helped her step-by-step, she said. “I learned a lot of detail — especially with the eyes. They make the character much stronger.”

The screening attracted gray-haired fans as well as teenagers curious about what their grandparents went to see 50 years ago. To high-school students, the film looked primitive in the age of 3-D, CGI and other special effects.

“I’m here to learn more about Hong Kong movie culture,” said Sunny Wong, a 16-year-old student who had never seen the movie. And did he like it? “It was boring,” he said.

But there’s hope. His classmate, Yeung Sheung-chi, disagreed, calling it “funny, interesting and exciting” and giving it a thumbs up.

[GeneChing]

I'll have to check in with John Fusco about this...and I just launched an Avenging Eagle thread.

The Weinstein Company to Remake '70s Martial Arts Classics
John Fusco, who is writing the sequel to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," will handle the rewrites
Published: July 23, 2013 @ 5:12 pm
By Lucas Shaw

The Weinstein Company and Celestial Pictures will remake “The Avenging Eagle” and “Come Drink With Me,” a pair of 1970s martial arts films, the companies announced on Tuesday.

The movies are part of the Shaw Brothers library, the biggest Chinese-language film library of its kind.

This is the first time anyone will shoot English-language martial arts remakes of any films from the library. “The Avenging Eagle” is a thriller about a man who raises orphans to serve as his personal gang. “Come Drink With Me” is about a band of thugs who kidnap a young official with the hope of trading him for their shackled leader.

John Fusco, who is writing a sequel to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for The Weinstein Company, will script both remakes. TWC co-chairman Harvey Weinstein and David Thwaites will produce.

“Shaw Brothers and Sir Run Run Shaw were responsible for ushering some of the first great, legendary Asian filmmakers and acting talent onto the world stage,” Weinstein said in a statement. “It’s an exciting opportunity to be bringing new life to these two classic films and taking them into the global market with Celestial Pictures.”

[GeneChing]

Some Cheng Pei-pei news

Hong Kong Martial Arts Star Cheng Pei-pei Joins Ivan Sen's 'Goldstone'


Cheng Pei-pei

by Clifford Coonan
6/5/2015 12:55am PDT

Hong Kong veteran Cheng Pei-pei, often called "The Queen of Martial Arts," has joined the cast of Ivan Sen's outback noir thriller Goldstone, which is currently shooting in Queensland.

The contemporary western thriller is written and directed by Indigenous filmmaker Sen, whose previous credits include Mystery Road and Toomelah, and is produced by David Jowsey, who produced both those projects, and Greer Simpkin, who exec produced The Code and The Secret River.

Cheng has been in over 50 feature films, many of them for Shaw Bros and including some of the biggest wuxia films of the 1960s, such as King Hu's 1966 classic Come Drink With Me. She played Jade Fox in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the first time she played a villain.

Also featuring in the movie are Aaron Pedersen (The Fear of Darkness, Mystery Road), Alex Russell (Chronicle, Cut Snake), as well as Jacki Weaver, David Gulpilil, David Wenham, Aaron Fa’Aoso and Tom E. Lewis.

Read More Beijing Film Fest: China’s Fosun Signs Veteran Exec Shan Dongbing to Run Expansion of Film and TV

Cheng's family emigrated to Australia when she was young, while she stayed in Hong Kong to be an actor.

"My career has taken me all around the world, to many countries but this is the first time I have come to work in Australia, to my family's home. It means a lot to me," she said.

Goldstone is being made by Bunya Productions, in association with Screen Queensland and Screen Australia, and it will be distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Transmission Films, with international sales by Arclight Films.

"It was a truly great moment when the iconic star of Chinese and Hong Kong cinema arrived in Goldstone, a most iconically outback Australian location, to work with acclaimed director Ivan Sen," said Jowsey.

Screen Australia's Head of Indigenous, Penny Smallacombe, said: "Cheng Pei-pei's screen presence will not only be a fantastic addition to a significant Australian story by an award winning Indigenous filmmaker, but it also promises to deliver a story that reflects multicultural Australia."

[Jimbo]

When Cheng Pei-Pei moved to L.A. in the early '70s, she studied Tang Soo Do with Chuck Norris for a time. Then she went back to HK to get into the then-current fad of KF fighting movies, but with less success than in her first run as a swordswoman.

She had a brief but fierce empty-hand fight against well-known Taiwanese KF movie villain/stuntman Peng Kang in Lady Piranha (a.k.a., Lunatic Frog Women) in the early '80s. As brief as that fight was, there was a marked improvement in Pei-Pei as an onscreen fighter compared to her heyday at Shaw Brothers, even if the movie itself was nowhere near the quality of her older ones.

[GeneChing]

Cheng Pei Pei deserves her own indie thread from Come Drink with Me.

The trailer is embedded on THR so you'll have to follow the link.

'Meditation Park' Trailer: Sandra Oh Helps Cheng Pei Pei Discover the World (Exclusive Video)
6:52 PM PDT 9/6/2017 by Ashley Lee

Mina Shum's drama centers on a devoted immigrant wife and mother who takes charge of her own life after learning of her husband's infidelity.
Sandra Oh helps Cheng Pei Pei try a few new things in the trailer for Meditation Park, which The Hollywood Reporter debuts exclusively.

The drama stars Cheng as a devoted wife and mother who is forced to reassess her reverence for her husband after she finds another woman’s underwear in his laundry. She embarks on a journey of self-discovery by engaging with the world around her — something her husband has always discouraged. Oh plays her daughter, alongside Tzi Ma and Don McKellar.

Mina Shum wrote and directed the film, which features insight into the experiences of first-generation immigrant women. For example, the trailer previews the world in which the wives are expected to be confined: "First, we obey our fathers; then, our husbands. When they're gone, we obey ourselves."

Meditation Park will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Mongrel Media is handling the film's sales and will be releasing it domestically in Canada.