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Thread: The Guillotines

  1. #1
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    The Guillotines

    Here's a new one just starting.
    'Infernal Affairs' Director Andrew Lau, Peter Chan Team for 'The Guillotines'
    2:47 AM PDT 9/7/2011 by Karen Chu

    The action film about an imperial assassination squad started shooting in Sept.

    HONG KONG –- Infernal Affairs director Andrew Lau and producer Peter Chan Ho-sun (The Warlords, Wu Xia) team up for The Guillotines, a $15 million period actioner co-produced by Chan’s We Pictures and Media Asia Film Production, with Stellar Mega Films, Dingsheng Cultural Industry Investment and Polyface Films joining as production partners.

    Principal photography has begun in Shanxi province of China in early Sept. The film, about the emperor’s covert assassination squad, stars Huang Xiaoming (The Message), Ethan Juan (Monga), Shawn Yue (Reign of Assassins), and Boran Jing (Hot Summer Days). Award-winning action choreographer Lee Tat-chiu and costume designer Dora Ng has also joined the production.

    The film is repped in Asia (excluding China) by Media Asia, while international sales will handle international sales.
    Gene Ching
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    Flying Guillotines REDUX

    'Flying Guillotines' Team Meets the Media
    2011-11-03 15:27:58 CRIENGLISH.com Web Editor: Xie Tingting

    Director Andrew Lau on Wednesday led the entire cast of his star-studded martial-arts thriller "The Flying Guillotines" to brief the media and dispel the mysteries surrounding the casting.

    Besides the previously announced actors Huang Xiaoming and Ethan Ruan, the director also presented Shawn Yue, Jing Boran, Zhou Yiwei, Pu Bajia and Li Yuchun.

    Filming started in early September and is still underway.

    The movie follows a team of covert agents in China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) who use a deadly, mysterious weapon called "the flying guillotine".

    However, when asked to describe details of the weapon, Lau and his actors wanted to keep it a secret until the movie is released next year.

    The US$15-million film is produced by Peter Chan. Andrew Lau, a co-director of the 2002 blockbuster "Infernal Affairs", has replaced Teddy Chen, who was the original candidate for the director's spot.

    Master of the Flying Guillotine!
    thread (looks like we don't have a thread dedicated to the original classic )
    Gene Ching
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  3. #3
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    On a side note, Mythbusters did the flying guillotine last month.

    Verdict: plausible for assassination but not battle

    Here are some aftershow questions
    http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/myth...aftershow.html
    Last edited by TaichiMantis; 11-07-2011 at 11:03 AM.
    "The true meaning of a given movement in a form is not its application, but rather the unlimited potential of the mind to provide muscular and skeletal support for that movement." Gregory Fong

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    Jimmy Wang Yu is in

    Thu, 17 November 2011 09:17 AM (HKT)
    Guillotines cuts fine figure at AFM
    By Patrick Frater
    Fri, 04 November 2011, 14:07 PM (HKT)


    Hong Kong sales firm We Distribution Ltd has licensed its action thriller The Guillotines 血滴子 to Well Go USA Inc for North America.

    The $15 million film, which makes its sales debut at the American Film Market, was also sold to Splendid Film for Germany and Benelux, and to Icon Film Distribution (Australia) for Australia/New Zealand.

    Guillotines, which suffered a few development-stage teething problems, is directed by Andrew LAU 劉偉強 and produced by Peter CHAN 陳可辛. It is a co-production between Chan's We Pictures and Media Asia Films Ltd 寰亞電影有限公司, with other production partners including Stellar Mega Films Co Ltd 星美(北京)影業有限公司, Dingsheng Cultural Industry Investment Co Ltd 鼎盛文化產業投資有限公司 and Polyface Entertainment Media Group 柏合麗娛樂傳媒集團.

    Jimmy WANG 王羽 (Wu Xia 武俠) and Chinese pop singer LI Yuchun 李宇春 (Bodyguards and Assassins 十月圍城 (2009)) recently joined the cast which already includes HUANG Xiaoming 黃曉明 (Sacrifice 趙氏孤兒), Ethan RUAN 阮經天 (Monga 艋舺), Shawn YUE 余文樂 (Reign of Assassins 劍雨) and JING Boran 井柏然 (Love in Space 全球熱戀).

    Media Asia is handling sales in Asia (excluding China).
    This film needs to add Chan Koon Tai to the cast. He was great in the original.
    Gene Ching
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    The way this thing is headed...major buzz kill...no pun intended. One of my absolute favorite old school kung fu flicks...and they don't even use the flying guillotine.
    "if its ok for shaolin wuseng to break his vow then its ok for me to sneak behind your house at 3 in the morning and bang your dog if buddha is in your heart then its ok"-Bawang

    "I get what you have said in the past, but we are not intuitive fighters. As instinctive fighters, we can chuck spears and claw and bite. We are not instinctively god at punching or kicking."-Drake

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  6. #6
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    any trailers yet for this thing?

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    Announced at Cannes

    "The Guillotines" Set to Hit Theaters on December 20
    2012-05-21 11:29:09 Chinese Films

    A still photo of "The Guillotines" [Photo: Mtime.com]
    The team behind the martial arts blockbuster "The Guillotines" announced at the ongoing 65th Cannes International Film Festival that the film is scheduled to hit cinema screens nationwide on December 20 during the New Year holiday slot, Mtime.com reports.

    Produced by Peter Chan and directed by Lau Wai Keung, "The Guillotines" features a host of famous stars including Huang Xiaoming, Ethan Ruan, Li Yuchun, Shawn Yue, Jing Boran, Pu Bajia and Zhou Yiwei.

    Set in the period of the Qing Emperor Qianlong, the film revolves around a secretive organization called The Guillotines which is composed of young martial arts masters who carry out the government's orders to kill those who go against the government's ruling.

    The film reportedly received investment of about 1.5 million US dollars. It will go up against Wong Kar Wai's "The Grandmaster" and Jackie Chan's "CZ12," both of which will also hit cinema screens on December 20.

    By Liu Shuai

    http://www.chinesefilms.cn/mmsource/...cb30581cc3.jpg
    There's one more pic if you follow the link.
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    3D conversion

    3D conversions suck. If you're going to show in the 3D, shoot in 3D.
    Guillotines undergoes 3-D conversion
    By Patrick Frater
    Thu, 23 August 2012, 08:16 AM (HKT)


    We Pictures is spending C$3.5 million (US$3.45 million) on a 3-D conversion of Andrew LAU 劉偉強's forthcoming The Guillotines 血滴子.

    The $15m film is to be released on 20 Dec in China, which will likely make it the only 3-D Chinese language picture in the Christmas market. Jay SUN 孫健君's Switch 富春山居圖 starring Andy LAU 劉德華, which is also being converted, is expected to open in November.

    Lau said that the conversion of his historical action film to 3-D "bring(s) the guillotine alive in its truly vivid manifestation". The film was shot in 2-D with Arri Alexa digital cameras and is being converted by Canada-based effect company Vision Globale.

    The decision to upgrade was primarily made with a view to boosting the film's appeal to its key Chinese audiences. Guillotines has been widely pre-sold internationally, but it is unclear whether the 3-D conversion will have any effect on contract terms or rights deals overseas.

    "In China 3-D is still a premium that gets audiences into cinemas," said a We Pictures Ltd 我們製作有限公司 spokesman. "The value of 3-D [non English] language films in the international market is hard to assess."

    In China the film may also be released in cinemas using the China Film Group Corporation 中國電影集團公司's proprietary China Giant Screen technology. There are no plans to convert it to the IMAX format. Guillotines is the first film to be announced as using the CGS technology, though others are understood to be in the works.

    Two other We films, Peter CHAN 陳可辛's rags-to-riches drama American Dreams in China 中國合伙人 and Aubrey LAM 林愛華s plastic surgery romantic comedy The Truth of Beauty 美麗真相, are expected to release in Feb 2013, close to the Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day slot.
    Gene Ching
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  9. #9
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    trailer

    Gene Ching
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    a minor ttt

    Amusing pic tho...
    Pop singer stars in kung fu flick
    Updated: 2012-11-25 16:48
    (China Daily)


    [Photo/China Daily]

    Chris Lee, a pop singer and champion of the Chinese equivalent of American Idol, sings the theme song of The Guillotines, a star-studded kung fu thriller to be released on Dec 20.

    Lee stars in the film, too, with Huang Xiaoming, Ethan Ruan and Shawn Yu - considered some of the sexiest young actors from the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The film, directed by Hong Kong veteran Andrew Lau - who helmed the smash-hit series Infernal Affairs - revolves around a mysterious weapon in ancient China.

    Lee, 28, won the Super Girls TV singing contest followed by tens of millions of viewers in 2005. The Guillotines is her third film.
    When I here 'Chris Lee', my mind instantly goes to Christopher.
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    Opening next week

    This goes head to head with Jackie's new one, CZ.
    Kung Fu thriller
    China Daily, December 14, 2012



    Hong Kong director Andrew Lau summons three of the hottest mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan actors in The Guillotines, a kung fu thriller to be released on Dec 20. Lau calls the film an ancient version of Yang and Dangerous, his series of films on young gangs in the 1990s, which have a solid fan base in Chinese-speaking regions. Huang Xiao-ming, Ethan Ruan and Shawn Yu tell a story revolving around a mysterious weapon that kills people in seconds in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). For the first time the three heartthrobs get attached to wires and fight. The film also features Chris Lee, a pop icon and winner of Super Girls, a singing contestant show in 2005, which drew millions of viewers.
    Same article below, four days later with a longer headline and better pic.
    Kung Fu thriller starring China's hottest heartthrobs
    (China Daily)
    08:58, December 18, 2012


    Hong Kong director Andrew Lau summons three of the hottest mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan actors in The Guillotines, a kung fu thriller to be released on Dec 20.

    Lau calls the film an ancient version of Yang and Dangerous, his series of films on young gangs in the 1990s, which have a solid fan base in Chinese-speaking regions.

    Huang Xiao-ming, Ethan Ruan and Shawn Yu tell a story revolving around a mysterious weapon that kills people in seconds in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). For the first time the three heartthrobs get attached to wires and fight.

    The film also features Chris Lee, a pop icon and winner of Super Girls, a singing contestant show in 2005, which drew millions of viewers.
    Gene Ching
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  12. #12
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    none of the main cast of this movie was trained in kung fu

    Still looks amusing, and as always, I hope we get a 3D version here in the states.

    Andrew Lau
    Posted: 19 Dec 2012

    Ahead of the release of The Guillotines, director Andrew Lau tells Edmund Lee about revisiting the spirits of Young and Dangerous in a period setting.

    Question: what happens if you merge Peter Chan’s aptitude in producing period action epics (Bodyguards and Assassins, Wu Xia) with Andrew Lau’s hot-blooded tales of criminal camaraderie (the Young and Dangerous series)? Answer: this film. Produced by Chan and directed by Lau from a story co-scripted by Aubrey Lam – who was the writer of Chan’s last three directorial efforts, Perhaps Love, The Warlords and Wu Xia – The Guillotines is a 3D reimagination of the Flying Guillotine movies in the 1970s. Conveniently described by Lau as his ‘Qing Dynasty-set Young and Dangerous’, the film charts the bloodbath surrounding the Guillotines, an emperor-sanctioned assassination squad of young warriors who are all skilled with the mythical decapitating weapon of its title. Lau talks to Time Out about his hotly-anticipated martial arts fantasy.

    When your film project began, it was rumoured to be a remake of the Flying Guillotine movies. So, in the end, what are the connections between your version of The Guillotines and those earlier films?

    The Guillotine movies from the 1970s were very gory and violent. Since I grew up in that era, of course I’ve been influenced by those movies and their action and visual effects. The wushu movies from that time were impressive enough, although, as several decades have already passed, I hope to create a brand-new version of The Guillotines that feels closer to our time. I want it to be hip and cool and, with the 3D format, feel more realistic as a whole. I want to introduce this story to the contemporary audience.

    Unlike The Guillotines, the period actioners that you previously shot, such as The Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero, were often based on comics.

    It’s indeed my interest to adapt comics into movies. The good thing about it is that a substantial story background is already in place from the start and we only need to make partial amendments to the story structure. It’s also easier to engage the viewers who are already familiar with the comics.

    By contrast, The Guillotines is set around a more traditional wuxia world. Has the martial arts tradition always been of interest to you?

    I love action movies – and wuxia films in particular. The genre represents one of the most prosperous eras of Hong Kong cinema. Even to this day, the most memorable actors to come out of Hong Kong are still its action stars, such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen. That said, although The Guillotines is packaged as a stylish action movie, it’s quite an emotional movie and revolves around such themes as loyalty, brotherhood and betrayal. The action is there, in fact, to attract the audience. I certainly haven’t held back on the action and explosion scenes: it’s taken us several tonnes of explosives to shoot the latter.

    Your recent collaboration with Donnie Yen, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, is an exemplary piece of action cinema. How would you compare The Guillotines with that film?

    The two feel completely different. Donnie Yen was showcasing real kung fu in Legend of the Fist, whereas The Guillotines is not about the realism of the fights. After all, none of the main cast of this movie was trained in kung fu. What I want from them is the looks of kung fu. They don’t need to be actually fighting, as Donnie did with his individual display. The Guillotines is about team spirit and the personal wishes within the collective. In this regard, The Guillotines is a more realistic film [than Legend of the Fist]. It’s not only about the fights.

    Tsui Hark’s Flying Swords of Dragon Gate is perhaps the last notable martial arts film to take advantage of the 3D format. What do you think about its technical accomplishment?

    I prefer to focus on my own films and not compare with others. After all, you can never make the ‘best’ 3D film because it’s a technology that keeps on advancing. The 3D effects of The Guillotines were [converted from 2D] by the Canadian company Vision Globale. It cost us more than HK$26m and is probably the largest production of the sort at the moment. In mainland China, people even claim that our film is the most expensive 3D film in the history of Chinese language cinema.

    Finally, can you tell us a bit about your cameo as the Yongzheng Emperor in The Guillotines?

    The role was supposed to be played by an actor. Originally I wanted to ask Liu Ye to play the role but he’s too busy to listen to me! I ended up playing the role myself: it’s quick and easy, consisting of just a few shots. They all said that I look rather like Yongzheng – especially with my eye bags.

    The Guillotines 血滴子 opens on Thu Dec 27.
    Gene Ching
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    A review from down under

    Emperor's dirty secrets emerge to get their kung fu kicks
    Date December 20, 2012


    Taken hostage … Li Yuchun plays Mu in a story from the Qing Dynasty. Photo: Supplied

    THE GUILLOTINES
    2D and 3D
    Directed by Andrew Lau
    Screenplay by Aubrey Lam and Joyce Chan
    Rated MA, 113 minutes
    Showing at Hoyts Broadway and Chatswood Mandarin

    YOU could call The Guillotines an unusually restrained martial arts movie. Its director, Andrew Lau, could have set severed heads spinning all over the screen. Instead, he concentrates on the victim's wide-eyed shock at the moment of impact.

    I guess that qualifies as an example of elevating character over action.

    Lau's next film is set in New York's Chinatown with Martin Scorsese as its executive producer. His connection with Scorsese goes back to his Hong Kong thriller, Infernal Affairs (2002), which Scorsese remade four years later as The Departed, winning four Oscars with it.

    But this is one for the home side. It is an 18th-century Qing Dynasty story about a gang of imperial law enforcers who take their name from their preferred weapon - a frisbee-shaped decapitation device that is tossed at its target like a lasso. It is a fiendishly efficient instrument but the Qing court is reluctant to boast about it. Bad public relations, it seems. So The Guillotines remain the emperor's dirty secret.

    Conscripted as children and forbidden to learn to read or write, they work at night so they do not frighten the law-abiding.

    But a new emperor enters, deciding to do without them altogether. They and their weapons are to become obsolete. They have been superseded by a more cost-effective and less labour-intensive Western invention, the cannon.

    The Guillotines' leader, Leng (Ethan Juan), is given this dispiriting news at an inopportune time. He and his warriors are out in China's frontier lands pursuing the emperor's most notorious opponent, The Wolf. He is a rebel leader fighting for the rights of the Han Chinese, who are being treated shabbily by the ruling Manchus, and he has taken Mu (Li Yuchun), the lone female Guillotine, as his hostage. He is giving her a rough time and her fellow warriors are desperate to get her back.

    But your sympathy for them may be tempered by the fact that they, too, have taken a female hostage, dumping her at the bottom of a well for safe-keeping. In this film, feminism means that women get the chance to be treated even more harshly than their menfolk.

    The action scenes were choreographed by Hong Kong expert Lee Tat-Chiu, who worked on The Matrix, but Lau is so besotted by slow motion that the fight scenes suffer from a severe case of coitus interruptus. Otherwise, it is very Western-Eastern. The Guillotines go galloping through desert country full of canyons, gorges and upstanding phallic outcrops.

    Built into the storyline are the kind of elegiac sentiments you may find in a Clint Eastwood movie. Instead of lamenting the passing of the cowboy, we are supposed to be getting teary about the end of the Guillotines and their all-for-one, one-for-all brand of comradeship. But it is hard to get excited about this particular bit since the gang get their kung fu kicks out of behaving like football hooligans on holiday.

    Do not expect any lust in the dust. The closest we get to sex is a brief scene in which Leng and Mu, the freed hostage, hint at their unfulfilled love for one another - which seems oddly chaste conduct, given the cast features a selection of Asian cinema's most popular young pin-ups.

    The script does make an attempt to get serious, offering up echoes of the divided loyalties theme that Lau explored in Infernal Affairs. When we eventually reach the denouement, which takes place in a remote and hidden village, we find The Wolf has certain moral and political lessons to impart. Played by the lean, handsome and hungry-looking Chinese star Huang Xiaoming, he has created a Shangri La so idyllic that even Leng is impressed.

    But there is such a po-faced air of didacticism hanging over these sequences that I began to feel nostalgic for the severed heads. At this point, they seemed more like a sincere form of exploitation.
    'nostalgic for the severed heads.'
    Gene Ching
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    I'm losing interst in this flick

    None of the main cast of this movie was trained in kung fu? Nostalgic for the severed heads? Maybe I'll catch it on netflix some day...
    The Guillotines: Film Review
    11:30 AM PST 12/20/2012 by Elizabeth Kerr
    The Guillotines
    The Bottom Line
    An occasionally thematically scattershot wuxia actioner that will appeal to fans of the genre.

    Opens
    Australia December 20; Hong Kong December 27

    Director
    Andrew Lau

    Cast
    Shawn Yue, Huang Xiaoming, Ethan Juan

    Director Andrew Lau's sprawling epic is finally hitting screens.

    The long-gestating The Guillotines, the love child of Hong Kong action maestro Andrew Lau and relatively adventurous producer-director Peter Chan, is finally hitting screens, not so much with a glorious bang but something of a thud. At one time rumored to be a straight-up remake of the Shaw Brothers classic, Flying Guillotine, this film pivots on a crew of assassins whose weapon of choice is the titular blade—something of a cross between buzz saw and Xena’s chakram that attaches to the neck and with the pull of a wire, decapitates the wearer. The Guillotines isn’t explicitly violent but it has a grim, nasty overtone that presses down on the familiar narrative as it builds slowly to the inevitable. It’s been a while since we were treated to a good old-fashioned drawing and quartering.

    Already sold to parts of Europe, the UK, North America and Australia, any territories that are left could be swayed by the considerable talent behind the title, and Asian distributors should come calling if they haven’t already on the strength of the young, rising stars in the cast. The bizarre marriage of criticism and praise should make the film a hit in China, and an extended life on DVD and download for Asiaphiles is a safe bet. The 3D is adequate and could look better on BluRay on a big television.

    The film begins with a kinetic, blistering action sequence that shows off what the legendary Qing Dynasty death squad was all about. Tasked by the Emperor to put down any dissenters with the fabled blade, The Guillotines are led by Leng (Ethan Juan, Monga, rather on the bland side), a typically soulful, reticent assassin with a tortured past. Leng and his crew are on the hunt for Wolf (Huang Xiaoming, The Banquet), a Han Chinese rebel with a quasi-militia called The Herders, all of whom have taken issue with the Manchurian rulers’ heavy handed reign of terror. The Guillotines find him but decide to use him as a bargaining chip for their own power play, but of course while they’re discussing some minor detail, Wolf manages to stage an escape and run off with a hostage, Guillotine Musen (Li Yuchun, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate).

    That’s the basic infrastructure that sets up Lau’s sprawling, occasionally disjointed epic. Underneath the plot machinations that at different moments recall The Wild Bunch (a vanishing way of life), The Seven Samurai (a town under siege) and Lau’s own Infernal Affairs (young boys trained by the same organization to work on opposite side of the law) among others there’s some contemplation of social justice and the impact of obsolescence on one’s identifying purpose. And what a mixed bag of images Lau’s thrown up on the screen—choices that are either simply confused or calculated ambiguities to ensure the film works outside of Hong Kong. Wolf in particular is perplexing: with his tangle of wild tresses and chin-centric facial hair he could be a charismatic cult leader, a classic marital arts master or Jesus. Take your pick. Wolf’s message of respect and peace has something of two-sided aspect as well. Given Mainland China’s recent change in government, Lau and Chan have made a fairly bold statement about the power of egalitarian rule. But Wolf’s rural compound populated by (clearly) socially superior Han is hilariously idyllic; everyone just wants to sing, say hi to the neighbors and cook. If ever there was a mixed message this is it.

    As if that weren’t enough to cram into one film, the Guillotines final mission is handed an Imperial envoy, Haidu (Shawn Yue, Love in the Buff), who is also a childhood friend of Leng’s. Little does Leng know, Haidu is there to help the new emperor, Qianlong, make the smooth transition to more Western style military tactics, and that means erasing the black stain on history that is the Guillotines. Screenwriters Joyce Chan (a co-writer on Bodyguards and Assassins) and Aubrey Lam (Wu Xia) tread some well-worn ground in this area and never veer from that path. The requisite arguments over brotherhood and loyalty—among the Guillotines as well as between Haidu and Leng—are all present and accounted for, though when Yue is finally allowed to let Haidu go full-on maniac he seems to be having more fun than at any other point in the film.

    Technically, The Guillotines falls flat in spots. The 3D flirts with gimmickry in the fight scenes and is almost unnoticeable in all the others. On top of that the glasses (at least the ones provided at the Hong Kong screening) made the picture extra dark—darker than expected—and obscured Fung Yuen-man’s wide-open vistas and color saturated battles. With Life of Pi still fresh in viewers’ minds, filmmakers are going to have to seriously up their games if indeed 3D is going to be come a standard of any kind, even for just genre films.

    Producer: Peter Chan, Hui Yuet-chan
    Director: Andrew Lau
    Cast: Shawn Yue, Huang Xiaoming, Ethan Juan, Li Yuchun, Jing Boran,
    Screenwriter: Aubrey Lam, Joyce Chan
    Executive producer: Peter Chan, Peter Lam
    Director of Photography: Fung Yuen-man
    Production Designer: Kenneth Mak
    Music: Kwong Wing-chan
    Costume designerora Ng
    Editor: Chung Wai-chiu
    No rating: 112 minutes
    Gene Ching
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  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    None of the main cast of this movie was trained in kung fu? Nostalgic for the severed heads? Maybe I'll catch it on netflix some day...
    Way past you on this one Gene...they murdered this remake and I haven't even seen it.
    "if its ok for shaolin wuseng to break his vow then its ok for me to sneak behind your house at 3 in the morning and bang your dog if buddha is in your heart then its ok"-Bawang

    "I get what you have said in the past, but we are not intuitive fighters. As instinctive fighters, we can chuck spears and claw and bite. We are not instinctively god at punching or kicking."-Drake

    "Princess? LMAO hammer you are such a pr^t"-Frost

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