RIP Great Master Lau Kar Leung

[Runlikehell]

He and his films, were one of the single biggest reasons I became interested in kung fu.

R.I.P.

[GeneChing]

It would be worth the pilgrimage to visit his grave and give offerings.

Final farewell for kung fu master and filmmaker Lau Kar-leung
Wednesday, 24 July, 2013 [Updated: 6:17PM]
Ernest Kao ernest.kao@scmp.com


Family members and friends attend the funeral service of late actor and Kung Fu master Lau Kar-leung at Universal Funeral Parlour, Hung Hom. Photo: May Tse

Legendary martial arts master and film director Lau Kar-leung was given a final send-off on Wednesday by family and friends, including Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, before he was laid to rest in a Sha Tin cemetery.

The three-hour funeral service, held at Hung Hom’s Universal Funeral Parlour under sombre skies and heavy rain, was attended by a medley of celebrities, including actors Lanna Wong Ha-wai and Adam Cheng Siu-chow.

Several of Lau’s apprentices and disciples – clad in kung fu attire emblazoned with the Chinese character “Lau” – provided security as a large press pack formed outside the ground-floor main funeral hall as early as 10am.

A large banner hung above Lau’s portrait read “grandmaster of a generation”.


Lau Kar-leung in 2003. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Lau’s wife Mary Jean Reimer gave a short eulogy during the service, which was followed by a white lion dance – a performance typically held for deceased martial arts masters.

Shortly after noon, Lau was carried out in a black casket to be interred in a crematorium at Po Fook Hill cemetery.

“He was sick with [cancer] for a long time... he really toughed it out all these years,” actor Nat Chan Pak-Cheung said after the service. “It is a great loss for the industry.”

Actor and former stuntmen Chin Ka-lok, who started his apprenticeship with Lau at the age of 10, said his sifu, or teacher, had “watched him grow up”.

“He was very willing to teach us new things, and we would always go to him for advice on martial arts choreography. He was a very important figure in Hong Kong’s martial arts circles,” said Chin.

Lau died late last month at age 76 after a two-decade struggle with lymphatic cancer. He is survived by his wife, brother, two sisters, a son and six daughters.

[hskwarrior]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=f5Ddn8B1QNI

[GeneChing]

Seems like there is always estate issues with this generation of stars.

Shaw studio 'owes late kung fu star millions'
Thursday, 25 July, 2013, 5:17am
Ernest Kao
ernest.kao@scmp.com


The service for Lau Kar-leung at the Universal Funeral Parlour in Hung Hom. Lau's wife (left) Mary Jean Reimer walks behind their daughter Jeanne Lau. Photo: Edward Wong

Shaw Brothers Studio owes the late martial arts master and film director Lau Kar-leung millions in bonuses dating back more than 30 years, Lau's widow, Mary Jean Reimer, said at his funeral.

Reimer, also known as Yung Jing-jing, gave a short eulogy and pledged HK$1 million to start a charity in Lau's name, to help struggling martial artists and actors.

He was sick with [cancer] for a long time but he really toughed it out all those years. It is a great loss to the industry ACTOR NAT CHAN PAK-CHEUNG
The three-hour service, held at Hung Hom's Universal Funeral Parlour under sombre skies and heavy rain, was attended by a range of celebrities, including actors Lanna Wong Ha-wai and Adam Cheng Siu-chow. Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah, who learned kung fu from a disciple of Lau's master, also attended.

Several of Lau's apprentices and disciples, clad in kung fu attire emblazoned with the Chinese character "Lau", provided security as a large press pack formed outside the ground-floor main funeral hall as early as 10am.

Reimer claimed that Shaw Brothers Studio had failed to pay Lau guaranteed bonuses from overseas box offices for more than 30 years and wanted to get the message out to the public. She said the studio had insisted on "investing" the funds for Lau. The statements were confirmed by members of the procession, including lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung.

Reimer said the money could have amounted to "something like HK$10 million now, if not, at least HK$5 million" and added that Lau had never once complained. She urged Sir Run Run Shaw to be generous and to support the charity.

The eulogy was followed by a white lion dance, a performance typically held for deceased martial arts masters.

Shortly after noon, Lau was carried out in a black casket to the crematorium at Po Fook Hill cemetery in Sha Tin.

"He was sick with [cancer] for a long time but he really toughed it out all those years," actor Nat Chan Pak-Cheung said after the service. "It is a great loss to the industry."

Actor and former stuntman Chin Ka-lok, who apprenticed with Lau at the age of 10, said his sifu, or teacher, had "watched him grow up".

"He was very willing to teach us new things and we would always go to him for advice on martial arts choreography," said Chin, who last saw his sifu six years ago.

Lau died late last month at age 76, after a two-decade struggle with lymphatic cancer. He is survived by his wife, brother, two sisters, a son and six daughters.

[ngokfei]

? What generation are you talking about?

Nothing wrong in shaming those who owe a dead person money. Too many individuals take advantage of the kind nature of an individual. And it seems from the statement that the Widow is pledging it to a Charity in Lau's name.

here's some video coverage of the event itself.


TV News Coverage

Funeral 1

Funeral 2

[GeneChing]

You project a lot on what I post here, ngokfei. Do you do that with everyone or is it just me? Whazzup with dat?

The generation would be those of the first modern media celebrities. Those actors and artists that starred in early movies, they didn't have a sense of where the genre would go. How could they? The notion of royalties were far from ironclad, so many of them don't get nearly what they deserved for some of our most beloved classics. This situation reminds me of some of the financial issues that Gordon Liu is experiencing.

It's not exclusive to martial arts movie stars at all. It's even more prevalent in music. The early music producers had abusive contracts. Again, the media was just getting started a few decades ago...well, more than a few now, but no one new how big music or movies could get back then as those media platforms were uncharted. It's astonishing how little some of the founding stars got paid to produce time-honored classics.

[Rover]

He completed his kungfull life, i hope we would have same.

[GeneChing]

We have an obituary in our September/October 2013 issue. It's short and to the point. We had a lot of obituaries in this issue.

What Hollywood could learn from the classic kung-fu films
Following the untimely death of director and actor Liu Chia Liang, Anne Billson pays tribute to a golden age of martial arts films.

By Anne Billson
7:00AM BST 16 Aug 2013

The death in June of Liu Chia Liang, after a two decade battle against cancer, seems to have gone virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media, which is a shame because he was only one of the best action directors and choreographers who ever lived. His work deserves to be celebrated – especially now, as a corrective to modern Hollywood's unfortunate tendency to create action by chopping it into little pieces in the editing room rather than staging it in longer takes in front of the camera.

Along with Chang Cheh (who died in 2002), Liu Chia Liang was one of the most prominent directors during the heyday of Shaw Brothers studios, and a exponent of the popular Hong Kong synthesis of samurai movie, spaghetti western and wuxia (Chinese stories of chivalry and martial arts). He also appeared in many of the films, and as recently as 2005 worked as stunt director and actor on Tsui Hark's Seven Swords.

He started learning kung-fu at the age of eight from his father, a martial arts master, and in 1965, at the age of 21, joined Shaw Brothers, where he began to collaborate with another director-to-be, Tang Chia, in choreographing action sequences, notably for the films of Chang Cheh. When Liu started to direct, his approach was very different from the solemn heroic bromance of Chang Cheh's work; his films contain more humour (though the combat scenes are usually deadly serious), and even have fighting roles for women.

You don't watch kung-fu films for the stories, which are usually some variation on avenging the death or defeat of a loved one or associate, and often involve elaborate training rituals in which the protagonist must hone his kung-fu skills. You watch them for the scenes of combat, which at their best can have grace and rhythm as glorious as the dance routines of Fred Astaire or the comic set-pieces of Buster Keaton. The great martial arts directors knew how to film a fight scene, with none of the excessive editing and pointless fancy camerawork you see in Hollywood action films today. The combatants and their moves are clearly visible, and despite the use of stylised sound effects and occasional use of wirework in some of the more extravagant leaps and tumbles, it's the actors themselves, often trained in Chinese opera, whose acrobatic skills are on display. It's all in the choreography, and Liu Chia Liang's choreography was the very best.

Liu's favourite leading actor was Gordon Liu, perhaps best known to western audiences these days for his appearances (as different characters) in both volumes of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. His first film for Liu Chia Liang was Dirty Ho (1976), in which he plays a prince who has to keep his kung-fu skills hidden – hence some dazzling choreography when he pretends it's not him but a female lute-player who is doing the fighting.

The character Gordon Liu played in in Kill Bill: Volume 2 was Pai Mei, a white-haired priest who had already appeared as an out-and-out villain in Liu Chia Liang's Executioners from Shaolin (1977), where he was played by perennial bad guy actor Lo Lieh. Pai Mei's party-piece is the ability to retract his testicles into his groin, making him all but invincible in combat.

Gordon Liu's next film with Liu Chia Liang was a kung-fu classic, became the actor's signature role, and incidentally inspired American hip-hoppers the Wu-Tang Clan. In The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), he plays a young student who wants to learn martial arts at the Shaolin temple so he can avenge friends and family. The film is famed for its elaborate training sequences based on seemingly mundane tasks – without which we would never have had the "wax on, wax off" of The Karate Kid. Return to the 36th Chamber, the first of two sequels, followed in 1980, and is memorable for its astonishing use of bamboo scaffolding techniques in the fight scenes.

Atypically for a Liu Chia Liang film, Legendary Weapons of China (1982) incorporated supernatural elements in its story about the search for martial artists invulnerable to bullets. Liu Chia Liang (in the red) fights his real-life brother Liu Chia Yung (in the white), also a martial arts choreographer and director, and the results are spectacular. There's a list of the legendary weapons themselves on Wikipedia.

My favourite Liu Chia Liang film, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) is also atypical in that it's less humorous than that of the director's other films; the story starts with betrayal and a massacre, and it can't have lightened the mood when one of the film's stars, Alexander Fu Sheng, died in a car accident before the end of filming.

Gordon Liu, whose character survives the film's opening carnage, seeks refuge with monks whose vows forbid them to kill - so they have devised a method of defeating marauding wolves by defanging them, a technique gleefully applied to the villains in this final showdown. Warning: this clip is particularly bloody. But the bad guys have behaved so nefariously they deserve everything they get in one of Lia Chia Liang's most thrilling fight scenes.

[mawali]

A great loss! He was one of the most professional of the actors out there and showed skill in many aspects. I find that his better work was against Jackie Chan as protagonist when he did the drunken kuingfu performance.