The Turtle And The Sea

[GeneChing]

The 'first time in the history of film'? Yanlei needs a better press agent.

Here's more on Yanlei.

Pop Singer Teams with Shaolin Master For Feature Film
For the first time in the history of film making ,a genuine 34th generation Shaolin master is to co-star in a feature film.

(PRWEB) December 04, 2012

With his success in making kung fu training DVDs, Shifu Yan Lei can now add acting to his list of accomplishments. Yan Lei is to co-star in a feature film early next year.

"I met him when he first came to the UK," says Cat Goscovitch, former artist of Sony and the screenwriter of the film, "He only knew a few words of English so he had to be very creative with his use of language. After the class I used to go home and write what he'd said down. It's this language that forms the basis of his screen character."

The Turtle And The Sea is an endearing and slightly comical love story about a talented musician and her martial artist and their fight to save the life of his mother back in China.

"The two characters come from very different backgrounds," says Shifu Yan Lei. "It's made even more extreme because my character has spent his life closeted in a temple training in martial arts."

Opting to use a genuine martial artist and a real singer, the producers believe will enrich the film and make it more authentic.

[bawang]

why do those ex shaolin monks always try to make horrible movies?

[David Jamieson]

why do those ex shaolin monks always try to make horrible movies?

Is this a Chinese problem? I don't know if there are many ex-monk movie stars even on a d-list somewhere.

Maybe he just liked the premise?

[bawang]

Is this a Chinese problem? I don't know if there are many ex-monk movie stars even on a d-list somewhere.

Maybe he just liked the premise?

this is a shaolin problem. they dont even make it to d list. they just make a lot of bad demos.

those guys have the personality of a soybean and keep hoping to be the next jet li. its like theyre stuck in 1982.

[GeneChing]

Jet Li's Shaolin Temple (1982) had such a profound effect upon Shaolin. There's actually a drinking game you can play with my book, Shaolin Trips, where you take a stiff shot of single malt any time that film is referenced. So many came to Shaolin after the film, and that reverberates until today. It's hard to understand because the movie Shaolin Temple didn't have near the impact here that it did in PRC, but imagine if there really was a Jedi Academy or Hogwarts with centuries of history behind it. Students would flock to it in the wake of those film franchises. That's basically what happened at Shaolin.

On top of that, a lot of the monks who emigrated to other countries got culture shocked. I know monks and ex-monks that teach on a very limited level, out of some strip mall school, not at all what they might have dreamed of when first coming to the promised land of America. They look at the neighboring McDojos and wonder how they might excel again - after all, to become a monk they've bested hundreds, if not thousands of applicants. Film work seems a viable option, especially given how easy it is to pitch an indie. It might not be so easy to make and market, but now, the technology is much more available than in times past.

There's also a tradition of performance in CMA, which bleeds into Shaolin significantly.