Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

[Vash]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/268099/mov...ame#s-p1-sr-i1

I hadn't seen anything else posted on this, so here you go.

It looks good enough to get me to the theater, if it plays locally.

[doug maverick]

seems you didnt look well enough http://kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52870


cool that its on hulu thou.

[GeneChing]

Do I want to see this on the big screen? I know I should support it, but I've already seen it several times, and I got plans for this weekend...

Spontaneous Combustion and Martial Arts Fights Against Talking Deer
by Elise Nakhnikian


Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Directed by Tsui Hark
Opens September 2

A kitchen-sink kick in the pants, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame keeps so many plates spinning at once that you don't really mind that a few of them are pretty wobbly. Unlike other recent imaginings of Chinese history, like Red Cliff or Curse of the Golden Flower, Detective Dee has no delusions of grandeur, just a bedrock appreciation of spectacle, a love of martial arts, and an irreverent sense of humor. That humor lightens things up right from the start, as the opening voiceover sets up the situation (China's first female emperor is about to be inaugurated into office and her many enemies, who think no woman is fit for the job, are plotting against her) in the formal diction of historical credit sequences everywhere and then ends with a flippant: “All hell was about to break loose.”

And that may be an understatement.

The action sequences are directed by the great Sammo Hung Kam-bo, who directed the action on the Ip Man movies and Ashes of Time and assisted on Enter the Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle, among many others. The half-parkour, half-martial arts wire fighting that predominates here has been done better—including on some of Sammo's other films—but it's still plenty fun to watch here, especially in a fight over water that starts with a rain of telephone-pole-sized logs. Even when they're not fighting the main actors move with a gymnastic fluidity that's a beautiful sight in itself.

So are the elaborate costumes and monumental sets, which the camera often gazes up at or down on or lingers over, inviting us to stare. A giant Buddha statue anchored by an 82-yard-high metal pole, magical deer that can talk, killer beetles, a noble albino, and that mystery of the title, which the empress hires our man Detective Dee (the always intense Andy Lau, playing straight man to the rest of the cast) to unravel: Why are so many people, most of them key ministers of hers, spontaneously combusting in broad daylight? (Those talking deer may look laughably fake, but director Tsui Hark has an excellent thing with the burning effect, and he knows it: We see several people and a songbird go up in smoke, and it never gets old.)

There's also the excellent cast, starting with Lau but also including Richard Ng, Tony Leung Ka Fai, and Carina Lau. And, as Joe Bob Briggs might point out, there's all that kung fu, including woman warrior fu, blind beggar fu, even magic deer fu. (Though seriously, dude, we're supposed to think you're tough because you can beat up a bunch of deer?)

Like the empress, Dee is a real historical figure, though it's probably safe to assume that the real guy couldn't defeat several enemies at once in hand-to-hand combat, in part by leaping about like a giant (wire-assisted) frog. He's portrayed here as a pragmatist who doesn't believe in magic or divine intervention, but keeps looking for the rational or mechanical explanation for all the apparently supernatural things he keeps encountering – and finds them. There's even the hint of a theme there about this period maybe being the beginning of the modern age in China, what with the first stirrings of real empowerment for women, the amazing advances in technology, and the rise of rationalism.

But Tsui isn't really interested in pursuing that sort of thing. He'd much rather play around with who's doing what to whom in a death-match power struggle that involves constantly shifting identities and allegiances. All those twists and turns get a little confusing at times, but it's easy to just soak in the movie's visual pleasures without paying too much attention to the plot.

[doug maverick]

the tv spots for this look awesome...and ive seen it twice...i might see it again.

[SimonM]

Looking at the trailer I realized I'd seen the logo before...

So I went through my collection of Chinatown DVDS....

I bought it on a random Chinatown trawl months ago and have had it on the back burner ever since.

This leads to a serious question: how the hell did I get a copy of this movie, in Canada, months before it was released?

Will review.

Update: NM - you mean the US release right? Mystery solved.

Still, kung fu scooby doo set in the time of Cixi... I'm watching this ASAP.

[Vash]

Is it just me, or are the reviews from "critics" sounding a little bit . . . contemptuous? "I don't get the story, but the pictures are soooo pretty."

[SimonM]

Wow, just...

wow.


Not up to starting a review, which takes more than an hour to write, at 11:00 PM. But will be putting up a special Friday edition of the Kung Fu Movie Review just for this one.

A Tang Dynasty fusion of Sherlock Holmes and Elizabeth with heaps of Tsui Hark's signature insanity and Sammo Hung's choreography...

Good movie.

[Minghequan]

Downloaded, will watch this weekend.

[SimonM]

My review is up here for those who are interested.

Overall I gave the film an A rating. Definitely worth watching.

[JamesC]

Yeah I really enjoyed it too. One of my favorite movies i've seen this year.

Gallants takes number 1, though.

[SimonM]

Yeah I really enjoyed it too. One of my favorite movies i've seen this year.

Gallants takes number 1, though.

So far, of the movies I have reviewed, my top-rank has gone to Huo Yuen Jia.

I still haven't actually sat down and reviewed a few others of my favourites (Fist of Legend, Hero, Black Mask, Flashpoint, Kung Fu Hustle) though I will get around to them eventually.

Right now, my line-up is to do

Fist of Legend - Sunday

The Return of Chen Zhen - a week from Sunday

That Jackie Chan movie set on a boat with the cross-over with God of Gamblers - as soon as I remember what the hell it was named and find a copy. Hold on...

Was it City Raider? One sec...

No....

City Hunter!

Yeah, that one, as soon as I can find a DVD of it.

[GeneChing]

Yeah I really enjoyed it too. One of my favorite movies i've seen this year.

Gallants takes number 1, though.

I'm with you 100% on this for 2010.

TIME liked Dee

Detective Dee: A Masterpiece from a Hong Kong Cinema Swami
By Richard Corliss Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011

Andy Lau stars in Detective Dee, an action-adventure mystery about a bizarre murder that brings together the most powerful woman in China and a formerly exiled detective, Dee Renjie.

The cloud wisps that materialize into the written introduction of Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame inform us in stately language that the film is set in the year 689 A.D., when the Chinese regent Wu Zetian was about to become history's first female emperor. Rival warlords aligned to block Wu's ascendancy and, the narration adds in a switch to pulp-magazine idiom, "All hell was about to break loose." Hellfire, to be exact: as they oversee the construction of a giant Buddha to honor the Empress's coronation, several high officials literally burst into flame, their bodies quickly reduced to a sulfurous, satanic char. The Devil was rarely such a showman.

Tsui Hark, though, has been raising cinematic hell for more than three decades. The Hong Kong movie mogul — who was born in Saigon, studied film at the University of Texas and worked at one of Manhattan's first cable TV stations — went on to direct about half of the best pictures from Hong Kong's golden age (Peking Opera Blues, Once Upon a Time in China, Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain) and to produce most of the other half (John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, Ching Siu-tung's A Chinese Ghost Story, Yuen Wo-ping's Iron Monkey). From a tiny colony of 6 million souls came a stream of vital, eviscerating melodramas that taught Hollywood how to infuse action films with a whirling visual poetry. Behind the camera or as a prodding overseer, Tsui Hark was the central creative figure of a truly popular national cinema.

Like other Hong Kong directors, he did a stretch in L.A., helming a couple of Jean Claude Van Damme movies, and returning home when the international taste for the S.A.R.'s low-budget thrillers had atrophied. The worldwide market was interested only in traditional martial-arts fantasies — and, really, only two of those: Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's Hero. Tsui Hark's gorgeous new adventure, which had its world premiere at last year's Venice Film Festival and is now opening in the U.S., meets those two winners on their own level and often soars deliriously above.

In the teeming, scheming cast of characters summoned by screenwriter Zhang Jialu, five stand out. Pride of place goes to the Empress, a believer in the maxim that "When one aims to achieve greatness, everyone is expendable." Played with a sultry intelligence by Carina Lau, who sports a soul queen's exotic headdresses and charcoal eyebrows like Ash Wednesday soot, Wu radiates the haughtiness of one who was not born to power but achieved it through ruthless majesty; she can seduce or threaten with equal authority and ease. Her one trusted aide is Shangguan Jing'er (Li Bingbing), a porcelain beauty who looks delicate and maidenly with her long hair pinned back, an earth goddess when she lets it down; Jing'er is also pretty handy with a whip. Far down the chain of command from Wu's right-hand woman is a man who lost his right hand when Wu condemned him to prison in an earlier revolt. Shatuo Zhong (longtime Hong Kong slickie Tony Leung Ka-fei) was a construction foreman at the time of the first flame-outs. Could he bear the Empress the slightest grudge?

The central quintet is completed by two men assigned to investigate the officials' fiery deaths. Deng Chao (Pei Donglai), an officer of the Supreme Court, is righteous, imaginative, quirky and literally colorless — sort of an Asian albino Christopher Walken. He is joined by the gifted sleuth Di Renjie — Detective Dee (Andy Lau) — who was captured in the same insurrection that brought down Shatuo and has been imprisoned for eight years, wearing the shaggy hair and beard of a hermit saint. When Wu frees Dee and makes him Imperial Commissioner in charge of the Phantom Flame mystery, he applies all his skills of deduction and flying footwork. This kick-ass CSI needs to be as wary as he is resourceful, because the other four, plus various warlords, monks and mythological creatures, have their own mortal agendas. And nobody wants Dee to survive his greatest case.

Tsui Hark has always been a swami of cinematic geometry: he can pack reams of exposition and sensation into a dozen pristinely composed shots that take only a few seconds of screen time. If you see the movie on DVD you'll often want to scan backward to study certain scenes for the subtle pulses of their elegance and fury. The director's trickster genius is shared by the main characters; each is supremely adept and understandably suspicious of the others, any one of whom could be the evil mastermind. Most of them are surely capable of stunts in the great Hong Kong tradition: tree-hopping, a fierce battle on two galloping horses and plenty of dexterous swordplay, all choreographed by veteran Hong Kong star Sammo Hung.

The mix of actors from the mainland (Li and Deng Chao) and Hong Kong in its glory days (Leung and the Laus) also proves a tasty concoction. The three Hong Kongers were all cuties in the '80s; Andy Lau in particular enjoyed a prolonged movie adolescence as a Canto-pop pretty boy. But in the last decade, often working with crime-drama maven Johnnie To — and playing the Matt Damon role in the local hit Infernal Affairs, which Martin Scorsese remade as The Departed — Lau has matured into a steely gravity. His Dee, who trades in his hermit guise for the equally startling mustache and goatee worthy of a mincing courtier, is the one person here who may earn the designation of hero.

Packed with a magic talking deer, a red-robed river king and characters transformable by acupoints (including the worm-devourer Dr Donkey Wang, who before our eyes morphs from one Hong Kong comedy stalwart, Richard Ng, to another, Teddy Robin), Detective Dee fulfills Pei's description of China's Phantom Bazaar as "a spooky pandemonium." But the movie is not just spectacle; it's got a tender, ultimately tragic love story and enough deadly political scheming to fill a Gaddafi playbook. Indeed, in its narrative cunning, luscious production design and martial-arts balletics, Detective Dee is up there with the first great kung-fu art film, King Hu's 1969 A Touch of Zen. We'd call it Crouching Tiger, Freakin' Masterpiece.

[SimonM]

I'm with you 100% on this for 2010.

TIME liked Dee

Wow, TIME was even more generous with this film than I was... and I thought it was a top-rate kung fu movie!

Nice review.

[GeneChing]

Last weekend, Shaolin had a limited U.S. release. This weekend, Dee expands its release.

Find out where Detective Dee will be playing below!

September 2
New York - Regal E-Walk
New York - Angelika Film Center
Los Angeles - The Landmark

September 16
Los Angeles - Laemmle Pasedena Playhouse 7
Los Angeles (Irvine) - Regal University Town Center 6
Los Angeles (Santa Monica) - AMC Loews Broadway 4
Los Angeles (Orange) - AMC Block 30
San Francisco - Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema
San Francisco (East Bay) - Landmark Shattuck
San Francisco (Peninsula) - Landmark Aquarius
San Francisco - San Rafael Cinemark San Rafael Regency 6
San Francisco - San Jose Cinemark San Jose Santana Row 6
San Francisco - Pleasant Hill Cinemark Century 21
San Francisco - Oakland Landmark Piedmont
Montreal - Cinema de Parc

September 23
Chicago - Landmark Century Centre Cinema
Chicago - AMC Northbrook Court 14
Washington DC - Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema
Seattle - Landmark Varsity Theatre
Boston - Landmark Kendall Square Cinema
Honolulu - Consolidated Pearlridge
Dallas - Landmark Inwood Theatre
Philadelphia - Landmark Ritz 5
Minneapolis - Landmark Uptown Theatre
Denver - Landmark Mayan Theatre
Detroit - Landmark Maple Art Theatre
Toronto - Scotiabank Theatre
Toronto - Eglinton Town Centre
Vancouver - International Village Cinemas

September 30
Phoenix - Harkins Camelview
Austin - Alamo South Lamar

[GeneChing]

Interview with 'Detective Dee' director Tsui Hark
G. Allen Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 15, 2011

There's a University of Texas film legend on the other end of the phone. Nope, not Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater or Robert Rodriguez.

Try Tsui Hark (pronounced Choy Hock), one of the key figures of the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s and '90s; a Hollywood action director, briefly; and now, at 61, reinventing himself as an epic storyteller for Chinese audiences. "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame" is in the midst of an international release, opening Friday in the Bay Area. It stars Andy Lau as a character based on the real-life seventh century official Di Renjie, popularized in the West by Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mystery series published in the mid-20th century.

The plot: Loyal subjects to Empress Wu (Carina Lau) are spontaneously combusting, so she summons Dee back from prison - she put him there years before - to solve the case. Much of the action concerns the construction of a 60-story Buddha statue; there is no shortage of computer effects in Tsui's film.

"These are real people in history, presented in an over-the-top way," Tsui said from Tokyo, where he was on a press tour. (Although most Hong Kong film production has moved to China, where "Dee" was shot, he still lives in Hong Kong, where he grew up.) "That always interests me - the combination of the realism and the surrealism in fantastic stories. I also wanted to create a detective onscreen."

Over the top is a good way to describe Tsui's outlandish style. He revolutionized Hong Kong movie special effects in the post-"Star Wars" world with his 1983 fantasy, "Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain," which had a generous amount of optical effects and led to the opening of Hong Kong's first special effects studio.

The kinetic "Peking Opera Blues" and "Once Upon a Time in China" featured fast-paced high-wire work, but Hollywood and Jean-Claude Van Damme slowed him down, even though "Double Team" (with Dennis Rodman) and "Knock Off" are two of Van Damme's most stylish films.

"In Hollywood, the hardest thing for me was to find a good script," Tsui said. "If there was a good script, I would be very happy to move back to Los Angeles. ... I think each director has his own strengths, his own style. I couldn't find a script that would show my strengths."

The reunification of Hong Kong with China and China's growing economic might has opened a new market - and extended the careers of Hark and his peers, including Andy and Carina Lau.

"Back in the day, people weren't used to such grand-scale visuals on the screen, and nowadays everyone is used to over-the-top, bigger-than-life things," Tsui said. "Hong Kong audiences like things very direct - simple, in a way. But Chinese audiences have a tendency to go for (more complexity), particularly something rooted in their history."

Starts Fri. at Bay Area theaters.

I forgot about those Hollywood efforts. Maybe I forgot intentionally.