The Grandmaster

[doug maverick]

the vice guide to kung fu. so the youtube/hbo docu series VICE. just published this..very interesting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1W5bqfYxU0

[GeneChing]

Sorry I didn't get back to this yesterday. Got a little swamped at work.

The U.S. cut is far superior to the original China version. The pacing is much faster, and it doesn't drone on so much at the end. It still slows down towards the end from it's initial pace, which is often a buzzkill for a Kung Fu flick, but perhaps I was more prepared for this and could indulge in it upon the second viewing. It's also a big screen film. Seeing the original China cut on a widescreen TV without a pumped-up sound system does a great disservice to this film. I throughly enjoyed the screener. I recant my January review - or rather, I fully endorse the U.S. re-edited version. This is unquestionably the most significant martial arts flick to come out in years. It's not a great action flick. It has some artistic fights but more for their cinematography than their skill (neither Tony or Z are great martial artists). But it is an excellent film.

I might even venture to say that this is the most beautiful Kung Fu movie so far.

I highly recommend seeing the U.S. version in the theater.


Follow the link below for the vid (although it's just a minute teaser of a longer fight scene).

'The Grandmaster': Ziyi Zhang on her intense kung fu training schedule -- EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS, VIDEO

By Laura Hertzfeld on Aug 21, 2013 at 1:29PM @laurahertzfeld

Image Credit: The Weinstein Company

Ziyi Zhang is no stranger to serious kung fu moves, after her starring roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2004’s House of Flying Daggers. But training with kung fu master and choreographer Yuen Wo Ping for the upcoming film The Grandmaster? That was a whole other story, she tells EW.
“It was very intensive because [director] Wong Kar-wei didn’t want us to pretend we know a little bit about kung fu — he really wanted us to be the master,” she tells EW about the six-month-long training process. “For this reason, we had to train many hours a day from 4 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon. I had three different kung fu masters to train me. It was like boot camp.”
One scene in particular was very challenging to film. Shot in freezing cold temperatures in northern China, the train-fight scene below took nearly three months to film, Zhang says. Producer Harvey Weinstein is calling the scene “the best fight scene in cinema since the ‘Crazy 88s scene’ in Kill Bill” — which was also choreographed by Ping.


“This fight will be a classic,” Zhang says. “It took three months to shoot because it was extremely intricate; we had to pay great attention to every detail. This all was made more difficult by the harsh cold weather. I couldn’t feel my hands and feet doing the scene.”
But, Zhang says, it was worth it. She first worked with Ping on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and is in talks to team up with him again for the sequel. “On one hand he’s a killer kung fu master, and on the other he’s this really kind, gentle, caring person,” she says of the director/choreographer.
The Grandmaster also carried special meaning for Zhang as a celebration of girl power. Her character, Gong Er, challenges kung fu master Ip Man to regain her family’s honor, and their relationship becomes a central theme of the film. “The reaction from the female audience [so far] is that they praise this film and feel strong, identified.”

An additional exclusive still from the film is below.

Image Credit: The Weinstein Company

The Grandmaster opens Friday in New York and LA and in wide release on August 30.

[Jimbo]

That last photo looks like a Baji pose.

[GeneChing]

That's pic is Razor, a Baji master. His character gets a little lost in the U.S. edit. He only has one major part, and it's a little anticlimactic. His character is developed a little more in the original version.

The Kung Fu styles are pretty authentic looking throughout this movie, more so than most. Bagua, Xingyi, Hung Ga and Baji are depicted well.

[GeneChing]

A full page ad in the NYT front page section, a half page in arts and another review:

Style and Kinetics Triumph in a Turbulent China
‘The Grandmaster,’ Wong Kar-wai’s New Film
NYT Critics' Pick
Weinstein Company

The Grandmaster Ziyi Zhang is a kung fu contender in Wong Kar-wai’s film, opening Friday in New York and Los Angeles.
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 22, 2013

“The Grandmaster,” a hypnotically beautiful dream from the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, opens with curls of smoke, eddies of water and men soaring and flying across the frame as effortlessly as silk ribbons. The men are warriors, street fighters with furious fists and winged feet, who have massed together on a dark, rainy night to take on Ip Man (Tony Leung), a still figure in a long coat and an elegant white hat. Even amid the violent whirlpools of rain and bodies, that hat never leaves his head. It’s as unyielding as its owner.

Keep your eye on that hat, which retains its iconographic power even when Ip Man takes it off to, say, take down a roomful of opponents. The white hat may be an invention — in many archival photos of the real Ip Man (1893-1972), a revered martial-arts master, he’s bareheaded — but there’s a mythic air to the dashing figure wearing it. However much history informs this movie, “The Grandmaster” is, at its most persuasive, about the triumph of style. When Ip Man slyly asks “What’s your style?” it’s clear that Mr. Wong is asking the same question because here, as in his other films, style isn’t reducible to ravishing surfaces; it’s an expression of meaning.

It’s been five long years since Mr. Wong, one of the greatest filmmakers working today, had a new movie, and it’s a pleasure to have him back. His last, “Ashes of Time Redux,” released in 2008, was new only in that it was a reworking of his 1994 “Ashes of Time,” an elliptical meditation on memory in the cloak of a swordsman movie. Perhaps taking a cue from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now Redux,” Mr. Wong returned to “Ashes of Time,” stirred it a bit and emerged with an even lovelier version of that signature work. If the first film definitively signaled that his interests transcended genre and conventional narrative, “Redux” largely felt like a necessary palate cleanser after “My Blueberry Nights,” his only English-language film and only dud.

“The Grandmaster” is yet another martial arts movie, though to describe it as such is somewhat like calling “L’avventura” a thriller about a missing woman. Arguments can be made, but would miss the mark. So would expectations of historical fidelity. Predictably, “The Grandmaster” is, given this filmmaker, less a straight biographical portrait of Ip Man and more an exploration of opposing forces like loyalty and love, horizontal and vertical, and the geometry of bodies moving through space and time. Ip Man’s experience as a martial arts master and even as a teacher to Bruce Lee are factors, but when Ip Man isn’t fighting, he transforms into one of Mr. Wong’s philosophers of the heart, one whose life is filled with inchoate longing, poetic observations and complicated women.

Ip Man, sometimes called Yip Man, was born as Ip Kai Man or Yip Kai Man. Mr. Wong makes him 40 when the movie opens in China 1936, and while the historical figure would have been somewhat older, it sounds better when, in voice-over, Mr. Leung explains that if life has four seasons, his first 40 years were spring. Ip Man practices a style of kung fu called wing chun, which is often translated as “beautiful spring.” In the film, his metaphoric season begins with him being called on to demonstrate his style for Gong Baosen (Wang Qingxiang), a grandmaster visiting from the Japanese-controlled north. Having decided to retire, Gong has arrived in Foshan, in the south, for a celebration and an exhibition of the local kung fu talent. His truer intention may be to find the worthiest martial arts successor.

During his visit Gong speaks about the historical rift between the south and north through their martial arts practices, a division that, however entertainingly illustrated in a series of fights, carries unmistakable urgency because of the Japanese occupation, the coming war and, more obliquely, the fissures of the 1949 Communist Revolution. “The Grandmaster” remains rooted in one man’s experiences, but it’s also, unmistakably, a portrait of his country. You don’t learn the names of Ip Man’s children, yet you do learn those of his martial arts adversaries, the good, bad and ugly who stand in for a divided China. His personal life, meanwhile, remains an exquisite abstraction — close-ups of his mournful wife, scenes of domestic bliss and of horror — with none of the visceral realism of his fights.

The fight scenes are by turns kinetic and balletic, and thoroughly sublime. Choreographed by the action maestro Yuen Wo Ping, each has a different cadence, inflection and purpose and, like the numbers in a musical, drive the story or bring it to an enchanted standstill. In one fight, Ip Man clashes with a brothel denizen wearing the tiny shoes of a woman with bound feet. Ginger Rogers only had to dance backward in heels. In another, he uses metal chopsticks to ward off a razor. His greatest opponent will be the old grandmaster’s daughter, Gong Er (Ziyi Zhang), a heartbreaking beauty who makes a loud entrance in Western-style shoes. Once she slips into traditional dress, she flutters into the air like a butterfly, her body arcing against Ip Man’s in an erotic pantomime of yin and yang.

Here, as in Mr. Wong’s earlier films, his sumptuous excesses — the lush music, the opulent rooms, the seductive drift, the thundering blows — both help tell the story and offer something more. When, for instance, Ip Man sits motionless while everyone rushes around him in fast motion, as if he and they were living in different time signatures, it’s an expression of radical isolation that’s so vivid it lingers after the scene ends. Through these different, obviously artificial speed settings, Mr. Wong isn’t simply showing you a man alone or a memorable picture of loneliness; he is also suggesting that this is what the experience of isolation feels like. Again and again in “The Grandmaster,” images become feelings which become a bridge to this distant world.

The version of “The Grandmaster” that opens on Friday is shorter and somewhat different from the one that has played abroad, including at festivals. Explanatory text has been added and some chronology ironed out, which may shed light on a few of the more lurching transitions. Although these changes are said to have been approved by Mr. Wong (consent that may have more to do with contractual obligations than happy compromises), it’s too bad that the American distributor didn’t have enough faith in the audience to release the original. Even in its altered form, “The Grandmaster” is one of the truly galvanizing cinematic experiences of the year, and while I’ve seen this version twice, I am eagerly looking forward to the original in all its unfettered delirium.

“The Grandmaster” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Mostly nonbloody martial arts violence.

The Grandmaster
Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Wong Kar-wai; written by Zou Jingzhi, Xu Haofeng and Mr. Wong, based on a story by Mr. Wong; director of photography, Philippe Le Sourd; edited by William Chang Suk Ping, Benjamin Courtines and Poon Hung Yiu; music by Shigeru Umebayashi and Nathaniel Mechaly; production design by William Chang Suk Ping and Alfred Yau Wai Ming; produced by Mr. Wong and Jacky Pang Yee Wah; released by the Weinstein Company. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

WITH: Tony Leung (Ip Man), Ziyi Zhang (Gong Er), Chang Chen (the Razor), Zhao Benshan (Ding Lianshan), Xiao Shenyang (San Jiang Shui) and Song Hye Kyo (Zhang Yongcheng).

Was there a similar push for the LA release today?

[enoajnin]

There was a quarter page ad on page 3 for the movie of the Calendar section of the LA Times and a review of the movie by the LA Times lead reviewer, Kenneth Turan deep in the Calendar Section. The front of the section was given over to a review of "The World's End"

[GeneChing]

This isn't the Turan review you mentioned, enoajnin

Wong Kar Wai woos kung fu crowd with 'The Grandmaster'
Hong Kong's master of moody romance Wong Kar Wai spent more than six years bringing the tale of martial artist legend Ip Man to the screen with 'The Grandmaster.'

By Mark Olsen
August 23, 2013, 8:00 a.m.



Wong Kar Wai is known as an international master of moody romance, making films filled with a yearning melancholy. His "In the Mood for Love" was the only film from this century to make the Top 25 of a recent Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films of all time. So news that he was making a kung fu film tracing the life of Ip Man, who would famously go on to train Bruce Lee, caught many of his fans off-guard.

Playing now in Los Angeles, the long-awaited film has already been the biggest commercial hit of Wong's career in China, even with its unlikely combination of a rousing martial arts story and a moving tale of romantic longing.

Wong began his career as a screenwriter, frequently writing fantasy martial arts films. But he researched "The Grandmaster" story for about three years, traveling across China to learn of forms of martial arts. Shooting the film in an arduous 22 months over another three years, he worked with stunt choreographer Yuen Wo Ping, known for his work on "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," with individual fight scenes taking months to capture on film.

None of his main stars practiced martial arts, and so Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang and Chang Chen trained tirelessly for the film before and during production. Leung broke his arm while training, waited for it to heal and then broke the same arm again in the same spot on the first day of shooting, forcing the production to shuffle its schedule.

"I just wanted to make a kung fu movie of my kind," Wong said of the film's inspiration. "That's why I needed to spend so much time, I have to understand the world of martial arts. And I feel I have to find my angle to tell the stories."

Unlike martial arts film in the wuxia style, such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," that are typically set in a fantasy pre-modern era, "The Grandmaster" is set against the specific backdrop of the political upheaval in China from the 1930s to the 1950s, including the Japanese invasion and civil war.

As Ip Man (Leung) trains in the martial arts style known as wing chun, marked by a fluid simplicity, he encounters — and fights — practitioners of other martial-arts styles. Among those is the woman known as Gong Er (Zhang), who has become sole inheritor of her father's dynamic bagua fighting style, though circumstances conspire to keep the two from acting on the attraction between them.

During a recent rare trip to Los Angeles from his home in Hong Kong, Wong, 57, sat on the patio of a hotel in Beverly Hills, inhaling a steady stream of cigarettes and wearing his signature sunglasses. (He owns only one pair, he said, custom-made for him by a Japanese artisan who also makes samurai swords.) He is open and engaging, yet like his movies can take an unexpected turn toward something more enigmatic.

"The Grandmaster" is Wong's first new feature film since 2007's English-language excursion, "My Blueberry Nights," in which a young woman drifts across America. "The Grandmaster" was first publicly shown in Los Angeles over the summer at a packed screening at the Motion Picture Academy hosted by Matthew Weiner.

Weiner introduced Wong by noting that his films "have a unique pace, an attention to visual detail, subtle humor and are most notably populated with characters whose behaviors are as rich in human scale as the environments they occupy." If the connection between the men was not immediately apparent, it was as if Weiner could have easily been describing his own "Mad Men."

Weiner added, "I watch his films and I connect to their honesty, their beauty and above all their originality. I, like most people who watch his work, become overwhelmed by an intimacy that I thought only existed in real life."

Pursuing answers

For Wong, the idea of a serious kung fu film — "It's hardcore," he said — is not as unusual within his filmography as it might seem. In the interview, the day after the academy screening, when asked what to him makes a Wong Kar Wai film, he said simply, "Something that answers my questions."

He added, "I have so many fascinations about this. How good is it, where do martial arts come from, what is the value of this? And when I finally finish the film, it's like I have an answer. They have certain wisdoms that I think are lost today and I think should be revisited."

Wong's working style is frequently described as improvisational, leading to his notoriously long shoots and protracted editing process. He seems to prefer thinking that he is finding his film by making it, and despite the presence of stunt teams and large scale sets for the project, he made "The Grandmaster" in his own way.

"Wong Kar Wai is Wong Kar Wai," said Leung, who has been working with the director for more than 20 years.

"It's kind of an adventure for us every time," said Leung of their ongoing collaboration. "Fortunately for me, this time I'm lucky to have a real guy to base the character on, and he gave me a lot of information for my preparation."

The film's cinematographer, Philippe Le Sourd, had previously worked with Wong on shorter projects, but this was the first feature film he shot for the director.

"We started step by step," Le Sourd said of the film's shoot, which found them traveling throughout China. "You don't have a full script. You know when you'll start, and each day you know the location. It's almost building the story shot by shot. For Kar Wai, it is trying to discover it for himself."

The film opening in the U.S. is 20 minutes shorter than what was released in China. (A version in between those two cuts was screened at the Berlin Film Festival.) For a filmmaker known for his exacting, relentless work in the editing room, he welcomed the chance to keep at it.

"I won't say the U.S. version is the short version," Wong said. "It's not just shorter. I tell the story in a different way. In a way, it's more linear, it's a compact version."

And though Wong said he does not know what his next film will be, he feels satisfied the years of work have come to fruition with "The Grandmaster." "I know I'm not going to make many kung fu films," Wong said. "This may be the only kung fu film I make, I don't know. I want to put everything I know about kung fu films into this film."

[enoajnin]

I saw that, too. It seems to be more of a piece about the picture making rather than a review of the picture.

[enoajnin]

I found this online as well

By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

August 22, 2013, 3:51 p.m.

"The Grandmaster" is like a meal of all desserts, with maybe the tiniest bit of protein thrown in. You'll feel decadent enjoying it, but everything is so tasty, it would be foolish to object.

An exercise in pure cinematic style filled with the most ravishing images, "The Grandmaster" finds director Wong Kar-wai applying his impeccable visual style to the mass-market martial arts genre with potent results. He's found a way to join the romantic languor of his earlier films like "In the Mood for Love" with the fury of Bruce Lee.

Working with his alter ego, actor Tony Leung, and an impressive Ziyi Zhang — and leaving the action choreography to the masterful Yuen Woo-ping ("The Matrix," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") — Wong indulges in mythmaking on the grandest scale.

PHOTOS: Summer Sneaks 2013

It is Lee's real-life martial arts teacher, the legendary Ip Man, played by Leung, who is the grandmaster of the title. Though nonfans are likely unaware, we are amid an Ip Man revival: Several films and a TV series have come out of China about this master of the Wing Chun style, and a new film, "Ip Man: The Final Fight," will soon be in theaters as well.

Already Wong's biggest hit ever in mainland China, "The Grandmaster" has, with his approval, been slimmed by 22 minutes for American audiences. The director says that with this cut, the film has been "finessed into more of an emotional, human story."

The narrative has been tidied up with the addition of intertitles explaining Chinese history, a new voice-over read by Leung, and on-screen character identifiers, all intended to make the story clearer to those not already in the know.

All this matters less than it might because the narrative turns out to be "The Grandmaster's" least essential element, serving as little more than a way to link the string of action tableaux that are the film's raison d'être. (Indeed, when people are talking, their dialogue leans heavily on aphorisms like "a well-matched opponent is like a long-lost friend" and "mastery has three stages: being, knowing, doing" — musings that would not be out of place on the old David Carradine-starring "Kung Fu" TV series.)

PHOTOS: Hollywood backlot moments

The saga begins in 1936, and though Chinese martial arts schools have traditionally been divided into north and south by the Yangtze River, a northern master named Gong Baosen (Wang Qingxiang) has headed south to the city of Foshan to seek a rapprochement before he retires.

Ip Man, as it turns out, is the most respected name in the southern school of Wing Chun. A family man and gentleman of leisure who's devoted himself to the martial arts, he hangs out in the Gold Pavilion, the local brothel and gambling den where, the saying goes, many a man has "entered a prince and exited a pauper."

Before we really find out much about Ip, we see him in action. "The Grandmaster" opens with the great man, wearing his trademark snap brim white fedora, taking on a crowd of martial artists who, for no apparent reason, attack him in a driving rainstorm. The scene is a pip, as well it might be: It took 30 successive nights of shooting to get it right.

Leung engaged in martial arts training for three years to prepare for this role. It paid off not only in the imperturbable self-confidence he brings to his movements but also in how effective he is in one particular sequence where masters of four martial arts styles — hong ga, bagua, xingyi and baji, if you care to know — try to catch him off guard with moves with names like the Crushing Fist. It's not going to happen.

PHOTOS: Celebrities by The Times

The most emotional fights in "The Grandmaster," however, involve Gong Baosen's firecracker daughter Gong Er (played by Zhang of "Crouching Tiger"). The mistress, we are told, of the deadly 64 Hands fighting technique (not to be confused with her father's Old Monkey Hangs Up His Badge moves), Gong Er's passionate temper gives Zhang the opportunity to make the film's strongest impression.

Gong Er displays her artistry in two very different fights. The first is an elegantly photographed battle with Ip Man himself, where the twirling combatants half fall in love with each other as they trade graceful feints and jabs (Philippe Le Sourd is the cinematographer).

The second, more serious battle is a ferocious struggle with her adopted brother Mo San (Zhang Jin) that takes place on a snowy train platform late at night, a situation that somehow echoes a scene from "Doctor Zhivago."

For a martial arts extravaganza, that is elevated company indeed.

[doug maverick]

34min interview with VICE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rXZC...=TLFSEyJt6YANk

[GeneChing]

Here's the WSJ review.

August 19, 2013, 7:30 p.m. ET
Tony Leung, in the Mood for Kung Fu

By
BARBARA CHAI
CONNECT

Like many boys growing up in Hong Kong, Tony Leung was a fan of Bruce Lee from a young age.

But it wasn't until he played the kung fu master's teacher that he understood the man—or kung fu, for that matter.

In "The Grandmaster," opening in New York on Friday, Mr. Leung plays Ip Man, the martial-arts master who taught a core group of disciples, including Lee. Ip Man, who was raised in Southern China but later moved to Hong Kong, isn't as well-known as Lee stateside, but he too has been immortalized in film, most notably by Donnie Yen in 2008's "Ip Man."

Tony Leung takes on the role of Ip Man in 'The Grandmaster.'

To create an original interpretation, Mr. Leung took a tip from "Grandmaster" director and longtime collaborator Wong Kar-wai (this is their seventh film together): Blend the master teacher with the master student.

"When you look at the books of Bruce Lee or his letters and interviews, a lot of his inspiration came from Ip Man," Mr. Wong said. "I think it's a very good approach to show the audience where the inspiration came from. Who made Bruce Lee who he was?"

As a result, Mr. Leung studied not only Ip Man's martial-arts technique—suffering a broken arm twice during training—he also read Lee's extensive writings. "It helped me not to just have the look of a grandmaster, but have the state of mind and the soul of the grandmaster," he said.

Though no stranger to demanding roles (he played a cuckolded man drawn toward a neighbor in "In the Mood for Love," then a political agent entangled with a spy in Ang Lee's NC-17-rated "Lust, Caution"), Mr. Leung had plenty of time to prepare for "Grandmaster." He began kung fu training over a year before production, and shooting stretched out over three years.

He spoke with the Journal about staying in character over that period, nonviolent action scenes and how a sickly-looking Mr. Wong helped him press on. Excerpts from the conversation:

You were familiar with Bruce Lee before filming, but how much did you know about kung fu?


Actor Tony Leung

I thought kung fu was just a fighting technique, but after I finished this movie, I know it's not just a self-defense method but also a lot of philosophy. A mind-cultivation practice. You can apply it to life. During the transformation of kung fu, it was greatly influenced by Taoism and Zen. What attracts me at the end is not the techniques. I was attracted by the mind training. It's very much like meditation.

Were you spiritual before this?

I'm Buddhist, so I meditate sometimes. I find there's a lot of similarity between Taoism and Buddhism. But the spiritual side of kung fu cannot be learned just by reading books. You cannot learn it by fact-finding and instruction.

You were in character as Ip Man for about four years. How was it?

I started almost 1.5 years before shooting. This was the most enjoyable work with Wong Kar-wai, because before, I never had any information about my character. This time, it's based on a real character, and Kar-wai did a lot of research.

You have a few epic battle scenes, but other times it looks like we're watching you execute choreography.

I didn't feel any violence in the movie after I did all the action scenes. This guy is not trying to kill people [laughs]. He just enjoys the art.

So Ip Man is different.

He didn't look like a kung fu man. He looked like a scholar—very refined, very erudite and graceful. I know he lived a very difficult life, but you can still see the dignity in his eyes. I was wondering, how can a guy live life like that? I think kung fu really inspired him.

Was it difficult to leave the character after playing him for four years?

At the end I really wanted to stop, physically and emotionally. Almost a month before the end, I used to say to Kar-wai on the set, "I cannot do it anymore. I have no more energy." But he looked worse than me. He looked so pale and so sick! I had to go on.

After all this, are you still a Bruce Lee fan?

Now I admire him more, not just as a kung fu great but as a thinker. He's still inspiring me.

How so?

I learned all my knowledge from him, to think like a grandmaster. Learning kung fu was always my dream, and I never had a chance because I was not allowed to learn kung fu when I was a kid. My parents thought was there are only two kinds of people who practiced kung fu: policemen and gangsters. Sometimes in life, if you miss that chance, you will never want to learn kung fu again. I never thought I would learn it after 40-something years.

[enoajnin]

The LA Times printed this article in the Calendar section on Sunday.

[GeneChing]

Looks like THR believes TG is still on track for that 600 house release this Friday.

Niche Box Office: Wong Kar-Wai's 'The Grandmaster' Tops Mediocre Weekend
12:07 PM PDT 8/25/2013 by Pamela McClintock

The Stephenie Meyer-produced "Austenland" remains soft, while Audrey Tautou's French drama "Therese" bombs in its debut.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's martial arts biopic The Grandmaster topped a subdued weekend at the specialty box office, grossing $132,259 from seven theaters for a location average of $18,894, the best of the weekend for any film.

The bigger test of the movie's strength, based on the life of Wing Chun grandmaster Ip Man, comes next weekend when it expands into a total of 600 theaters or more. The epics stars Tony Leung opposite Zhang Ziyi, and made its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival this year. The Weinstein Co. acquired distribution rights to the film from Megan Ellison's Annapurna Pictures.

Grandmaster did best at the AMC Empire theater in New York City, a promising sign for the film's expansion, since the theater plays to both a commercial and art house audience. Otherwise, the film played in art house theaters. In recent days, Harvey Weinstein's company recruited Martin Scorsese and Samuel L. Jackson to present Wong's latest offering.

Grandmaster certainly fared the best of the new films opening in limited runs.
Festival favorite Short Term 12, from director Destin Daniel Cretton, opened to $60,137 from four locations for a location average of $15,034. Cinedigm is releasing the film in the U.S.

French drama Therese, starring Audrey Tautou and based on Francois Mauriac's novel, opened to a dismal $21,040 from six theaters for a location average of $3,507. Distributed in the U.S. by MPI Media, Therese was the closing night film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

Among holdovers, Keri Russell starrer Austenland continued to struggle in its second weekend as it expanded into a total of 23 theaters. Produced by author Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame, the female-skewing movie grossed $125,978 from 23 theaters for a location average of $5,477 and cume of $185,471. Sony Pictures Classics acquired rights to the film, about a woman who travels to a Jane Austen theme park in England, during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, where the movie sparked a bidding war.

[GeneChing]

Most of it good. There are a few detractors as always. In this one, a member of the Wu chimes in.

There's a vid if you follow the link.

'The Grandmaster': Romantic Kung Fu Movie Touts 'Love at First Fight'
Aug. 26, 2013
By CASSIUS KIM via Nightline

The latest kung-fu movie import hitting American theaters is a love letter to the man who trained Bruce Lee and is tapping into a new generation of kung fu movie lovers.

Directed by Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar Wai, "The Grandmaster" is loosely based on a true story about Ip Man, the martial artist who taught a young Bruce Lee the fundamentals of Wing Chun kung fu.

Starring Chinese actors Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang, "The Grandmaster," now playing in select theaters nationwide, is a project nearly 10 years in the making and is Wong's homage to the fight films of his youth.

Wong's calling card in films such as "2046" and "Chunking Express" is his visual aesthetic and themes focusing on loss and unrequited love. In "The Grandmaster," Wong adds a healthy dose of intense fight scenes to create a film unlike anything seen before in recent cinema.

"I was always a big fan of Bruce Lee when I was a kid. I always wanted to learn kung fu," said Leung, who plays the title role. At first, Leung said he thought he'd have to train a year before shooting, but in the end, "I spent four years non-stop training."

Zhang plays a female kung fu master torn between her love for Ip Man and her desire to avenge her father's death.

Many of the fight scenes in "The Grandmaster" took place at night, in the rain or in the freezing cold, so the actors had to battle the elements through dozens of shots.

"My fighting scene in the rain is the most difficult scene in my acting career," Leung said, noting they had about 50 overnight shoots in the rain.

"What you see now is very short," he said, but entailed a master shot every night first. "That means you have to fight like 10 people from the end of this street to there, and every take and every angle, may take 27 times."

"There's one scene that was really difficult -- we shot in the train station -- because the weather was so cold," Zhang added. "I always think, 'Wong Kar Wai can choose anywhere he wants,' but he chose the coldest. Every night my hands and my feet were always numb. So if somebody cut off my feet, I wouldn't have felt it."

The dynamic fight scenes of kung fu movies have been a cult following with American audiences since the early 1970s, and none more so than the films starring Bruce Lee. Most would agree that Lee was the catalyst for the collision of Asian and American pop culture, inspiring generations to learn kung fu.

Bruce Lee and kung fu's influence can be seen all over today's pop culture, from Keanu Reeves' mind-bending fight scenes in "The Matrix" trilogy to modern interpretations of kung fu classics, such as the 2000 film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Kung fu influences can also be found in the work of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" series, and even with a group of rappers from Staten Island, N.Y., who built a music empire around a persona culled from a 1983 martial arts film titled, "Shaolin and Wu-Tang."

"Kung fu always had a part of my life," said Raekwon of The Wu-Tang Clan. "The kid in the movie, he could've been a weakling, but he built his training based on his mentals, and the skills that was in front of him."

And for a master to accept that kid as a student, the kid "had to have that discipline, so it's the same for us within rap music," he said.

"In order to be a great MC, you have to be able to rhyme to any beat that's in your face … go to this concept, or go to that concept, or freestyle, or do whatever," Raekwon added. "It's almost still sharpening your skills at all levels."

And for the group, Bruce Lee was an icon, someone to be greatly admired. "He's a legend, you know what I mean?" Raekwon said.

"The Grandmaster" echoes the thematic legacy of old-school martial arts movies.

"It's just one big storyline that I could relate to, because a lot of these stories are about revenge, or brotherhood, or loyalty," Raekwon said. "It has something to do with something that's really going on in the world today."

It's inspiration from that idea that has stuck with The Wu-Tang Clan through a career that has spanned over two decades. Their new single, "All About You," featuring Estelle, is available now on iTunes and their new album, "Fly International Luxurious Art," drops January 2014.

Though Bruce Lee died 40 years ago, the story of his grandmaster, Ip Man, continues to shape the kung fu legend that endures today.

"I think we're trying show to all the audience in the world to revisit this lost heritage and what is the true spirit of kung fu," Leung said.

"I love to call it, 'love at first fight,'" Zhang added.

[GeneChing]

Alas, how soon they forget Z's role in Hollywood's Rush Hour 2....

Zhang Ziyi wants more than action
From Cinema Online Exclusively for Yahoo! NewsroomBy Heidi Hsia | From Cinema Online Exclusively for Yahoo! Newsroom – Tue, Aug 27, 2013 6:20 PM SGT

From Cinema Online Exclusively for Yahoo! Newsroom - Actress Zhang Ziyi recently revealed why she still won't move to Hollywood despite her popularity in the U.S. (Yahoo! Photo)

27 Aug – Actress Zhang Ziyi recently revealed why she still won't move to Hollywood despite her popularity in the U.S.

The actress, who recently sat down for an interview with NPR, revealed that she is still waiting for the right project from Hollywood that does not require her to do martial arts and action scenes all the time. She was often stereotyped into martial arts and action films because of her Asian descent and her previous works such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Hero" and "The House Of Flying Daggers".

Zhang said, "I'm often offered roles, but they all look similar. I think I can do better than just kicking ass, you know. That's why I really appreciate the opportunity that was given to me [to play Sayuri] in "Memoirs Of A Geisha"."

She added that the movie opens the window for her to show the world that she can do more than just action scenes.

Meanwhile, the actress also talked about her role as Gong Er in "The Grandmaster", saying, "In the old days in China, females were not allowed to learn kung fu. But Gong Er's father taught her secretly, and she became a grandmaster who learned how to be her own person and do what she feels is right. She is a strong character."

The actress revealed that she was urged to say yes to the project despite the duration it took to finish the film just because it was a Wong Kar-wai project, and added, "You cannot say 'no' to Wong Kar-wai. It's like when Steven Spielberg offers you a role. You have to say 'yes' right away."