Birth of the Dragon

[Jimbo]

I also hope this opens doors for Philip Ng. IMO, he is truly an 'old-school' talent, and I mean that in a good way. Probably the best up-and-comer in the MA film industry in terms of sheer physical talent, even though he has already been making movies for awhile now. He can be right at home in period or modern settings. I want to see more of his work so I can comment more accurately on it, but what I have seen is impressive.

If he hasn't already, Philip would be a great onscreen match for Donnie Yen. Unless Donnie is moving on from action after Ip Man 3.

[SteveLau]

Has the movie been released in theatre? I would like to view it at least in video.




Regards,

KC
Hong Kong

[GeneChing]

I cherry-picked the significant titles of figures mentioned here. Follow the link if you want the full line up.

Toronto Film Festival 2016: Magnificent Seven, La La Land to screen
Slate also includes new Christopher Guest ensemble 'Mascots,' Justin Timberlake's 'JT + the Tennessee Kids'
BY JOEY NOLFI • @JOEYNOLFI

Posted July 26 2016 — 11:24 AM EDT

The first round of films playing at the 41st Toronto International Film Festival have been announced, with Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven set to kick off the event with a western-infused bang on Sept 8.

Fuqua’s opening night film stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Byung-hun Lee in a tale of seven outlaws recruited by a local woman (Haley Bennett) to do battle with an oppressive industrialist (Peter Sarsgaard) encroaching upon her hometown’s territory.

Other titles screening at this year’s festival include Christopher Guest’s new ensemble comedy, Mascots, in addition to Damien Chazelle’s Ryan Gosling/Emma Stone musical La La Land, Werner Herzog’s Salt and Fire, Ewan McGregor’s American Pastoral, and Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s directorial follow-up to A Single Man.

This year’s star-studded Gala slate features Amy Adams’ Arrival, Mark Wahlberg’s Deepwater Horizon, Ruth Negga’s Cannes drama Loving, the Lyndon B. Johnson biopic LBJ, Nicole Kidman’s Lion, and the Lupita Nyong’o-starring Queen of Katwe, among others.

Closing the annual event’s 2016 edition is The Edge of Seventeen, Kelly Fremon Craig’s directorial debut revolving around the angsty life of a teenage girl (Hailee Steinfeld) grappling with the awkwardness of growing up as her best friend falls in for her popular older brother. The film also stars Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick.

TIFF spearheads a four-pronged dive into awards season on the festival front as it, along with events in Telluride, Venice, and New York, plays an important part in facilitating the rise of emerging Oscar contenders. As a key precursor in the awards race, all eyes will be on TIFF’s full lineup, which often hosts high-profile premieres of Oscar-bound films, and is set to be revealed in installments in the coming weeks.

As a time-tested launching pad for awards hopefuls, the largely non-competitive festival’s only major accolade is bestowed by festivalgoers themselves, as the TIFF People’s Choice Award is voted on by the public, not a curated jury of industry professionals. Since 2008, seven of TIFF’s People’s Choice Award winners have gone on to either win or be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, including Silver Linings Playbook, 12 Years a Slave, and Precious. Last year’s champion, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, scored four Academy Award nominations, with star Brie Larson winning in the Best Actress category.

The 2016 Toronto International Film Festival runs from Sept. 8-18. Additional titles playing at the festival will be announced soon. Check out the just-announced list of Special Presentation and Gala titles playing at TIFF 2016 below.

GALAS:

The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua, USA - World Premiere
Director Antoine Fuqua brings his modern vision to a 1960 western classic. With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue, the desperate townspeople, led by Emma Cullen, employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns. As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than money. Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-Hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett and Peter Sarsgaard.

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

Birth of the Dragon George Nolfi, USA/China/Canada - World Premiere
Set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1964, this cross-cultural biopic chronicles Bruce Lee’s emergence as a martial- arts superstar after his legendary secret showdown with Shaolin master Wong Jack Man. While details of the fight are hotly disputed to this day, one thing is clear — out of that epic fight, Bruce Lee emerged as The Dragon, the man who brought Kung Fu to the world. Starring Billy Magnussen, Xia Yu, and Philip Ng.

The Handmaiden (Agassi) Park Chan-wook, South Korea - North American Premiere
A crook-turned-servant falls for the vulnerable heiress she had originally schemed to swindle, in this audacious, visually sumptuous, and highly erotic period piece from writer-director Park Chan-wook. Starring Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, Cho Jin-woong, Kim Hae-sook, and Moon So-ri.

The Wasted Times (Luo Man Di Ke Xiao Wang Shi) Cheng Er, China - World Premiere
Love, hatred, and betrayal abound in Shanghai during the chaotic, war-torn 1930s. Mr. Lu is ambushed during an important meeting with the Japanese army, but his sister’s husband, Watabe, sacrifices himself to save Mr. Lu. Worse still, the Japanese brutally murder Mr. Lu’s children and sister. To avenge their deaths, Mr. Lu’s mistress attempts to kill the culprit but ends up dead. Years later as the Sino- Japanese war comes to a close, Mr. Lu visits Mrs. Wang, the abandoned wife of his former boss who reveals an astonishing truth about the tragedy. Cast includes Zhang Ziyi, Ge You, and Tadanobu Asano.

[GeneChing]

Is that Wong Jack Man in a monk robe?

Click the link below to see:

TIFF
FESTIVAL 2016/SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS (FESTIVAL 2016)
Birth of the Dragon
George Nolfi
USA / China / Canada 103 minutes World Premiere 2016 STC COLOUR

Set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown, this cross-cultural film chronicles Bruce Lee’s emergence as a martial-arts superstar after his legendary secret showdown with fellow martial artist Wong Jack Man.

[GeneChing]

I only cut&pasted the BotD part. I guess we'll know more after next week.

Toronto Hot List: 16 Market Titles Generating Buzz

6:15 AM 9/6/2016 by Tatiana Siegel
Projects starring the likes of Anne Hathaway ('Colossal'), Natalie Portman ('Jackie') and Christian Bale ('The Promise') will be hoping to get some love from dealmakers and awards-season attention when the fest kicks off Sept. 8.


Courtesy of TIFF

Just two years ago, the Toronto market hit a high-water mark when the Chris Rock comedy Top Five sparked a fierce bidding war, with worldwide rights selling to Paramount for $12.5 million. But no one is expecting the 2016 edition to reach those heights, at least not for a finished film. As film companies have fallen away (Alchemy, Radius) and others hover under a question mark (The Weinstein Co., Broad Green), no new players have emerged to pick up the slack. In fact, most predict this year will be a buyer's market, especially since 2015's top finished film sale, the thriller Hardcore Henry, failed to justify its $10 million worldwide rights price tag (it only earned $9 million domestically). After all, most of the flashier titles, like Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, sold long ago. And though Netflix and Amazon continue their buying sprees, the streaming giants increasingly are buying off-market and coming in at an earlier stage. "Buyers like us will have an advantage because some of our competitors are struggling or seem to be off the grid altogether," says Bill Bromiley, president of Saban Films.

But even in a cautious market, a few titles are generating big buzz. These 16 are likely to get buyers to let down their guard:

...

Birth of the Dragon
Special Presentations, Sept. 13 (WME)


Courtesy of TIFF

DIRECTOR George Nolfi

STARS Xia Yu, Philip Wan-Lung Ng, Billy Magnussen

BUZZ Up-and-coming martial artist Bruce Lee challenges legendary kung fu master Wong Jack Man to a no-holds-barred fight in this finished film.

[GeneChing]

Toronto 2016: Pre-Buys Prized As Festival Gets Underway
by Mike Fleming Jr
September 8, 2016 11:08am


Groundswell Productions

The fact that the first major deal at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival is for a film that isn’t here — Focus Features won the untitled ’50s London fashion industry drama that Paul Thomas Anderson will direct with Daniel Day-Lewis — underscores how profoundly the independent theatrical acquisitions has turned toward pre-buys of film packages. Toronto has always been viewed as a terrific place for distributors to launch Oscar-season films, and to supplement their slates with acquisitions of finished films. Deals were sluggish last Toronto: STX made the splashiest deal for Hardcore Henry, Bleecker Street got the top earner in Eye In The Sky and Michael Moore’s docu Where To Invade Next was done in by his insistence on bypassing Netflix for a theatrical release and then being walloped by pneumonia and unable to promote it.

I am getting the impression that buyers are ready to be wowed, and that there will be several large deals either during the festival or right after. If I had any advice, it would be for buyers to consider extending their return trip if it means missing Birth Of The Dragon, which won’t be screened until 3 PM Tuesday at the Ryerson, and probably won’t last until subsequent screenings are set for L.A. I saw the picture, part fact and part fable about a legendary brawl that Bruce Lee fought against Shaolin master Wong Jack Man. The George Nolfi-directed film from Groundswell is a throwback to the spirit of Lee’s ’70s martial arts hits and has real breakout mainstream potential even if the most recognizable stars are the characters of Lee and Steve McQueen.


Pablo Larrain

There will also likely be a quick deal for the Pablo Larrain-directed Jackie, the drama that stars Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy as she secures her husband’s legacy in the week following his assassination. The picture got exquisite reviews in its debut at the Venice Film Festival and offers are coming in. Buyers have been primed for the picture since Cannes when promo footage was shown, even though they didn’t bite back then.

That pre-buy restraint is changing. There are plenty of finished films here that are high on buyer lists, but don’t be surprised if some of the biggest sales come in unexpected places. All of the major agents — who preface festival conversations by counting all the pictures launching here that they packaged in pre-buy deals — tell me they’ve got a few plum projects in their pockets. Strong sales candidates not on the Toronto slate include The Leisure Seeker, the Paolo Virzi-directed romp that stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland as a couple that takes an adventure in a Winnebago. Another is We Do Not Forget, the Zach Helm-directed drama that stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zachary Quinto in a fictionalized showdown between hacker activists and a ruthless Mexican drug cartel. Other promos buyers will see include the Danny Strong-directed JD Salinger drama Rebel In The Rye with Nicholas Hoult, Kevin Spacey and Laura Dern starring. Others I’m hearing rumors of include the Fernando Trueba-directed The Queen Of Spain with Penelope Cruz.


Rex/Shutterstock/Associated Press

Other possible surprises could include packages like I, Tonya, the drama that will have Margot Robbie playing disgraced Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, with Craig Gillespie directing. That picture is looking like a real thing with financier Len Blavatnik circling, with shooting likely to start early next year. There are plenty more where that one came from.

Some reports have painted a picture of caution caused by the hardships facing the record-setting Sundance film The Birth of A Nation following Deadline’s revelation of a 17-year-old rape charge against filmmaker-star Nate Parker (he was acquitted). Buyers and agents don’t expect it to be a factor as they look for slate-filling films. The glare on Parker because of the circumstances of the incident and the subsequent suicide of the woman 12 years later certainly tarnishes the charmed Oscar track the picture was on, but it is a total anomaly. Distributors need quality product and seem willing to pay for it, as evidenced by the way Focus stepped up on the PTA-Day-Lewis film which constitutes roughly twice the financial outlay of Parker’s Sundance film.

The other area worth watching is Midnight Madness, where some of the most profitable genre titles are hatched. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions president Steven Bersch reminds that finding those frightful gems isn’t easy. Bersch is riding high on the genre thriller Don’t Breathe, but the title of his Toronto experience ought to be Don’t Sleep.

“I remember when we bought Insidious,” he said. “It was my second or third Toronto, so I still had the energy, but this was my fifth midnight movie in a row, on a Tuesday night. The reason we got it is, everybody sent junior executives, but I dragged myself there. While everybody was sleeping, we were making a deal, with FilmDistrict doing domestic, and we closed at 6:10 in the morning. Everybody woke up hearing it was pretty good, but by then it was gone. We just announced Insidious 4, so it was worth it, but it isn’t easy.”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Here are the titles that buyers and sellers are most high on:

BIRTH OF THE DRAGON – Director: George Nolfi. Cast: Billy Magnussen, Xia Yu, Philip Ng. Set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1964, this cross-cultural biopic chronicles Bruce Lee’s emergence as a martial arts superstar after his legendary secret showdown with Shaolin master Wong Jack Man. Details of the fight staged in front of a handful of witnesses are still disputed, but it launched Lee’s star and cemented his legacy as the man who brought kung fu to the world.
1st Screening: Tuesday, September 13, 3 PM – Ryerson Theatre


TIFF

COLOSSAL – Director: Nacho Vigalondo. Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens, Austin Stowell, Tim Blake Nelson. An aimless party girl discovers a mysterious connection between herself and a giant monster wreaking havoc on the other side of the globe.
1st Screening: Friday, September 9, 9 PM – Ryerson Theatre

JACKIE – Director: Pablo Larraín. Cast: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt. After JFK is murdered, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband’s historic legacy.
1st Screening: Sunday, September 11th, 8:30 PM- Winter Garden Theatre

MAUDIE — Director: Aisling Walsh. Cast: Sally Hawkins, Ethan Hawke. Fact-based tale of Maude Lewis, who overcame the physical challenge of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis to become one of Canada’s premier folk artists.
1st Screening: Monday, September 12, 5:30 PM – Visa Screening Room (Elgin)

MESSAGE FROM THE KING – Director: Fabrice Du Welz. Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Teresa Palmer, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina. Mysterious traveler from South Africa combs the Los Angeles underworld for those responsible for the death of his sister.
1st Screening: Thursday, September 8, 6 PM – Visa Screening Room (Elgin)

BRIMSTONE — Director: Martin Koolhoven. Cast: Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce, Kit Harington. A woman running from her past meets a zealot preacher and an outlaw along the way.

PARIS CAN WAIT – Director: Eleanor Coppola. Cast: Diane Lane, Arnaud Viard, Alec Baldwin. An American woman in a tired marriage finds herself on an unforeseen road trip from Cannes to Paris with a dashing Frenchman. A seven-hour drive unexpectedly becomes a whirlwind two-day road trip.
1st Screening: Monday, September 12, 1:45 PM – Winter Garden Theatre
Second Screening: Tuesday, September 13, 9:45 AM – Scotiabank 4


TIFF

THE PROMISE – Director: Terry George. Cast: Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, Christian Bale. Armenian medical student, an artist and an American journalist form a love triangle amid the genocide of Armenia perpetrated by Turkey during WWI.
1st Screening: Sunday, September 11, 9:30 PM – Roy Thomson Hall

THEIR FINEST – Director: Lone Scherfig. Cast: Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin, Bill Nighy, Jack Huston. Period comedy-drama follows a group of filmmakers struggling to make an inspirational film to boost morale — and inspire America to join the war — during the London Blitz in World War II.
1st Screening: Sunday, September 11, 3:30 PM – Roy Thomson Hall

WAKEFIELD – Director: Robin Swicord. Cast: Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Garner. A successful lawyer and family man disappears from his own life and observes his baffled loved ones from a hiding place in the attic.
1st Screening: Friday, September 9, 9 AM – Scotiabank 4

ALL I SEE IS YOU – Director: Marc Forster. Cast: Blake Lively, Jason Clarke. Return to Monster’s Ball form for Forster. After a blind woman regains her sight, she and her husband begin discovering uncomfortable details about their marriage and their lives.
1st Screening: Saturday, September 10, 11 AM – Scotiabank 2

CHASING TRANE: THE JOHN COLTRANE DOCUMENTARY
Director: John Scheinfeld.
1st Screening: Friday, September 9, 12:30pm — Tiff Bell Lightbox, Cinema 2

BARRY – Director: Vikram Ghandi. Cast: Devon Terrell, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ellar Coltrane. Set in the backdrop of a true story in 1981 New York City, young Barack Obama tries to find his way as a college student in a new city as he is faced with questions about race, culture, and identity in this inspiring drama centered on a crucial year in the future President’s life.
1st Screening: Saturday, September 10, 6 PM – Ryerson Theatre

CARRIE PILBY – Director: Susan Johnson. Cast: Bel Powley, Nathan Lane, Gabriel Byrne, Vanessa Bayer, Jason Ritter. A brilliant young woman graduates Harvard at 18 but has no street sense and struggles in areas of morality, relationships, sex and leaving her New York City apartment.
1st Screening: Friday, September 9, 2 PM – Ryerson Theatre

CATFIGHT—Director: Onur Tukel. Cast: Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone, Craig Bierko, Dylan Baker. A reunion between two old school friends sparks a no-holds-barred war of attrition
1st Screening: Friday, September 9, 6:15 PM – Ryerson Theatre

GOON: THE LAST OF THE ENFORCERS – Director: Jay Baruchel. Cast: Seann William Scott, Liev Schreiber. The original hockey brawler pic was a gem. Why not a sequel with Doug “The Thug” Glatt?
1st Screening: Sunday, September 11, 3 PM, Location TBD

THE HEADHUNTER’S CALLING – Director: Mark Williams. Cast: Gerard Butler, Alison Brie, Willem Dafoe, Gretchen Mol, Alfred Molina. Ruthless corporate headhunter in Chicago battles his rival for control of their job-placement firm, until a family tragedy brings his personal and professional lives into conflict.
1st Screening: Tuesday, September 13, 2:15 PM – Scotiabank 3

THE BLEEDER — Director: Philippe Falardeau. Cast: Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Elisabeth Moss, Jim Gaffigan, Ron Perlman. Story of the rise, fall and rise of Chuck Wepner, who decked Muhammad Ali and was an inspiration for Rocky.

Distribution will come down to this.

[GeneChing]

It's all about T.I.F.F. now for this project.

Toronto: Bruce Lee Pic ‘Birth of the Dragon’ Eyes Global Theaters

James Rainey
Senior Film Reporter
@RaineyTime


COURTESY OF TIFF

SEPTEMBER 8, 2016 | 10:22PM PT
“Birth of the Dragon” — a story about Bruce Lee’s emergence as a martial arts superstar and his epic showdown with another Kung Fu master – has its world premiere Tuesday afternoon in Toronto. Producer Michael London (“Trumbo”) and director George Nolfi (“The Adjustment Bureau”) talked to Variety about the enduring popularity of Lee and the reasons they believe their film, featuring a cast laden with Chinese stars, could become a cross-cultural phenomenon.

Bruce Lee died in 1973 at the age of 32. Why will audiences in 2016 respond to a character from the last century?

London: “Bruce Lee is this iconic figure who represents a sort of meeting of East and West. We are at this really extraordinary moment in history right now, with China opening up to the West and the West becoming fascinated with China. Bruce Lee’s myth endures and it feels like the world will be really open to learning about how he became the mythic figure that he did.”

How did you know that passion for Lee remained high?

Nolfi: “There is not a single place — in China, or the U.S., or Canada or the rest of the world — that people don’t know his name or have an enormous affection for him and for his story…. He did something that was thought impossible in the early 1960s — to be an Asian man who became this major star in the West. And I would say that he remains the most famous martial artist of all time and, at the same time, the most famous Asian person in the West.”

The film centers on a fight between Lee and Wong Jack Man, which occurred in the mid-1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Why is this fight, held before just a handful of witnesses, so legendary to kung fu aficionados?

Nolfi: “It’s a fight that is still disputed, as to how and why it happened and even as to the outcome. It was because of this fight that Bruce Lee reinvented his style and arguably invented the whole concept of mixed martial arts. … So the reaction of anyone who knows martial arts is strong and instantaneous. And even many people who are less familiar know that Bruce Lee brought martial arts and kung fu to the West.”

Images of Bruce Lee still appear on T-shirts and posters around the world. With such an indelible impression, it must have been hard to cast the role.

Nolfi: “Probably my single biggest fear in taking on job of directing this film was, ‘How the hell am I going to find somebody with incredible charisma, great martial arts ability, the pure physicality of Bruce Lee and someone who is also fluent enough in English to be able to be funny and compelling…. After months of searching, it became clear that [Hong Kong born, Chicago-raised] Philip Ng was unquestionably our guy. He stepped up to the plate in a way that went beyond anything I imagined. I think Bruce Lee fans will look at this film and say ‘Oh my gosh, that must be what Bruce Lee was like when he was 24.’ “

Hoping for a bump in monk robe sales.

[GeneChing]

Birth of the Dragon Poster Reveals Legendary Bruce Lee
BYBRIAN GALLAGHER | 2 days ago

The Toronto International Film Festival is currently in full swing, and one of the films making its world premiere next week is director George Nolfi's Birth of the Dragon, which centers on martial arts legend Bruce Lee. The film will have its premiere on September 13, but while we wait for this first ever screening, the first poster has surfaced, featuring Philip Ng as Bruce Lee. While there have been Bruce Lee biopics in the past, this film focuses on a little-known fight that helped him become a world-renowned legend.

Set against the backdrop of San Francisco's Chinatown, this cross-cultural film chronicles {Bruce Lee's emergence as a martial-arts superstar after his legendary secret showdown with fellow martial artist Wong Jack Man, a Shaolin master who had been sent from China to stop Bruce Lee. The film is based on the real-life no holds barred fight took place 1965, a time when San Francisco's Chinatown district was controlled by the Chinese Triad gangs. The script will begin with this martial arts battle, then follow both men as they team up to take on a horde of gangsters. The poster debuted on Deadline ahead of the Toronto world premiere.

Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen J. Rivele wrote the script, continuing their tradition as biopic specialists. They have previously written the scripts for Nixon, Ali, Copying Beethoven, Pawn Sacrifice and this year's Miles Ahead. They are also writing the upcoming remake of A Star Is Born, which Bradley Cooper will direct and star in alongside Lady Gaga, and an upcoming Freddie Mercury Biopic.

Bill Block is producing for QED International, alongside Groundswell's Michael London and writers Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen J. Rivele. George Nolfi directs, marking the follow-up to his 2011 directorial debut, The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. George Nolfi has also written screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum, Ocean's Twelve, Timeline, The Sentinel and the upcoming Spectral.

The supporting cast includes Billy Magnussen, Terry Chen, Ron Yuan, Vanessa Ross, Darren E. Scott, Darryl Quon and Yu Xia as Wong Jack Man. Birth of the Dragon doesn't have a distributor yet, but that could change after Birth of the Dragon has its world premiere in Toronto. Take a look at the first poster for Birth of the Dragon below.

Premieres tomorrow.

[GeneChing]

A poor review. We'll probably see who picks this up soon.

Toronto Film Review: ‘Birth of the Dragon’
Owen Gleiberman
Chief Film Critic
@OwenGleiberman


COURTESY OF TIFF
SEPTEMBER 13, 2016 | 09:41PM PT
A Bruce Lee biopic re-enacts a legendary fight Lee had in 1964, before he was a martial-arts superstar. But why did it matter?

Was Bruce Lee actually a good fighter? The question sounds insane, because no one in the history of martial-arts cinema has ever been half as mesmerizing to watch. Plenty of martial-arts stars have speed, but Lee wasn’t just faster than any of then; he had the demonic charisma of speed, a ferocity that charged every jagged movement with expression. His limbs were jackknives on lightning, and his quivering, coal-eyed glower told you how committed he was to every cut and thrust. At the same time, right in the middle of a scene, a part of him hung back and observed it all. That’s why he was the rock star of kung fu, at once in the moment and soaring above it.

But, of course, every time we saw Bruce Lee fighting, he wasn’t really fighting; he was acting. How were his skills in genuine hand-to-hand bloodsport combat? The question is raised — even if it’s not truly answered — in “Birth of the Dragon,” a Bruce Lee biopic set in 1964, two years before “The Green Hornet,” when Lee was an expatriate martial-arts instructor in San Francisco already trying to market himself as a star. (He was born in San Francisco but raised in Hong Kong.) That year, he had a duel — not a fight for show but a real knockdown, no-holds-barred knuckle-bender. His foe was Wong Jack Man, a Chinese master who showed up to challenge Lee. Lee, at that point, was a strict practitioner of the Wing Chun school, but after the bout in question he began to change his method and philosophy of fighting. According to the opening title of “Birth of the Dragon,” this single clash would alter the entire history of martial arts.

That sounds momentous, yet “Birth of the Dragon” is a strange film: It huffs and puffs about what a mythic fight this was, yet it bumbles and stumbles when it comes to showing us what happened, and why it mattered. The director, George Nolfi (a co-screenwriter of “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “Ocean’s Twelve”), treats Lee as a coolly stylized character, a kind of laidback Elvis-in-Chinatown version of the invincible warrior he played on TV and in the movies. But, of course, Bruce Lee wasn’t that character — he was actually a real person! — and “Birth of the Dragon,” which merges a fudged version of the facts with lazy whirling iconography, is neither a compelling biographical drama nor an exciting martial-arts bash. It slips right between the cracks of what a good Bruce Lee biopic should be.

You might assume that the film’s central character would be, you know, Bruce Lee. But you’d be wrong. It’s Steve McKee (Billy Magnussen), a rube from Indiana who travels to San Francisco, tries the Beat scene and the free-love hippie scene (really? In 1964?), and then winds up passing out, drunk, in front of the studio where Lee presides over his martial-arts classes. Lee takes him in and signs him up, and the two become friendly. It’s Steve who makes himself into the liaison between Lee and Wong Jack Man (Xia Yu), a disgraced monk from a Shaolin monastery who shows up in a fedora and fuddy-duddy suit and lands a job in Chinatown washing dishes, which is supposed to be his Buddhist penance for a mysterious sin that he doesn’t reveal until much later.

What Wong is quite open about, on the other hand, is his hostility to the fact that Lee’s students include Caucasians. And that’s a potentially fascinating conflict. When Lee became a superstar, he kicked off an international kung fu craze that had a seismic impact. From that moment on, the Chinese no longer owned this discipline, and the notion that they might have been possessive about it is understandable. But “Birth of the Dragon,” having introduced the issue, barely scratches the surface of it. It’s just a signifier of an idea, a way to set up Lee and Wong as adversaries.

Philip Ng, the Hong Kong-born American actor who plays Lee, has the right face, the right haircut, the right physique — and he’s got a puckish gleam of confidence that’s winning in the way that Lee’s was. Yet unlike “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,” the compelling 1993 Lee biopic, “Birth of the Dragon” keeps hitting you with the Lee “mystique” — which is to say, there’s something benignly patronizing about its refusal to allow Lee to become a three-dimensional character. You wouldn’t even know that he was married, and though we see him shooting a low-budget film, and he references the possibility of starring in “The Green Hornet,” what he did to get his showbiz career off the ground remains vague.

Finally, he and Wong have their fight, which didn’t take place in public. In the film, it happens in a warehouse, and it’s as stylized — though not as good — as any fight in a real Lee film. Wong, in orange robes, does the whole flying twirling dancing-on-air Shaolin thing, while Lee, in his bare chest and black pants, meets him with pure Wing Chun force. Who wins? The historical record is a muddle: Some say that the fight lasted for three minutes, others say for 40, and most say that Lee won, though that isn’t definitive. The trouble with the staging is that Nolfi makes the fight “larger than life,” but the whole hook of the movie is that we want to see what Bruce Lee looked — and fought — like before he was larger than life.

There’s a crime plot (more concoction), a fatal romance between Steve — yes, him again! — and the indentured beauty (Melody Peng) he tries to rescue from the San Francisco Chinese underworld, and Lee and Wong become teammates in this endeavor. But what the enlightened martial-arts fan really wants to know is: Why, and how, did the legendary 1964 fight between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man change Bruce Lee’s fighting style? Other than asserting that it did, “Birth of the Dragon” doesn’t give a clue.

Toronto Film Review: 'Birth of the Dragon'
Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, September 13, 2016. Running time: 103 MIN.
Production
A Groundswell Productions, Kylin Films presentation. Produced by Michael London, Janice Williams, Christopher Wilkinson, Stephen J. Rivele, James Hong Pang, Leo Shi Young. Executive producers: Helen Ye Zhong, Kelly Mullen, David Nicksay.
Crew
Director: George Nolfi. Screenplay: Christopher Wilkinson, Stephen J. Rivele. Camera (color, widescreen): Amir Mokri. Editor: Joel Viertel.
With
Billy Magnussen, Philip Ng, Xia Yu, Qu Jinging, Jin Xing, Simon Yin, Van Ness Wu, Ron Yuan, Terry Chen.

[GeneChing]

Follow the link to Deadline.com to see their exclusive link to the first promo. It's a full trailer.

‘Birth Of The Dragon’s George Nolfi On The Legend Of Bruce Lee: First Promo
by Mike Fleming Jr
September 14, 2016 12:32pm

EXCLUSIVE: The acquisitions titles at Toronto’s first weekend was largely prestige films. The festival film with real breakout mainstream potential didn’t premiere until yesterday, and buyers are now figuring out what to do with a throwback martial arts movie built around the iconic Bruce Lee, with worldwide rights available. Birth Of The Dragon uses a still-disputed private brawl between martial arts masters Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) and Wong Jack Man (Yu Xia) in 1964 as the fuel for a San Francisco-set coming-of-age story involving a rough and tumble young white man [Billy Magnussen doing his best Steve McQueen] who matches the feuding fighting legends in the brawl as he pursues a Romeo and Juliet romance with a young Chinese immigrant [JingJing Qu] under the control of the Chinese mob. This mashup of fact and fable was financed by China-based Kylin Pictures, produced by Groundswell’s Michael London and Janice Williams, and written by Christopher Wilkinson and Steven J. Rivele. It is the sop****re directing effort of George Nolfi, the Adjustment Bureau writer-director whose past scripts include Ocean’s Twelve and The Bourne Ultimatum. Here, Nolfi explains why the outcome of the brawl isn’t as important as how it influenced the legend Bruce Lee became, and how Chinese funding could be a salvation for movie heroes not suited up in spandex.

RelatedBruce Lee Pic 'Birth Of The Dragon' Debuts Poster
DEADLINE: You have made a movie about an Asian icon, financed by a Chinese company, on a martial arts legend still relevant in Asia. Is this Chinese infiltration into Hollywood movies a good thing?

NOLFI: I got involved just as Kylin Pictures said they wanted to buy it outright. From a filmmaker’s standpoint and from a future business standpoint, I got to be a very interested observer in a financing company being willing to make a movie that is both about something in a real sense, and not about a brand. Bruce Lee is well known, but that’s not a brand project and it’s in a genre Hollywood hasn’t made movies in for years. When was the last major Kung-Fu movie?


Groundswell Productions

DEADLINE: 45 years ago?

NOLFI: Exactly. So I’m watching this and thinking that if, in the next 10 years of our business, there are Chinese companies willing to support movies like this, made in the Hollywood format and style, with a Hollywood director given creative controls, that’s very good for our business. You enter with a certain degree of cautious optimism but the result has been everything I’d hoped for. When you do business with a foreign company, with a different language, you have learn their customs. But they let me make exactly the movie I wanted to, with zero interference. If this is the future of movies for the next five, 10 years than you can just say unequivocally that this is a godsend to Hollywood because it’s very hard for studios to make movies that aren’t sequels or branded material now. I was very excited to see that Sully was doing well this weekend. There’s a movie that’s about something real, based on a real figure. By all accounts from the reception at Telluride, it was a crowd-pleaser. It’s clearly going to be successful movie.

DEADLINE: Tom Hanks has managed to carve out a career without going the superhero route.

NOLFI: There aren’t very many people like that. Leo, there’s Matt Damon, there’s Tom Hanks. Superhero movies are good for the business up to a point, but when they’re all branded superheroes up to the exclusion of….you know…Sully is a kind of superhero, Bruce Lee is a kind of superhero. If they’re all Marvel and DC superheroes….

DEADLINE: Desmond Doss in Mel Gibson’s movie Hacksaw Ridge, a WWII hero who never picks up a gun.

NOLFI: I think most readers of Deadline are silently hoping for Hollywood to be able, whether with outside financing and studio distribution, or studio financing, to see a return to where a portion of their movies are taking shots on a quality film and seeing if an audience will find it. I just hope that the breadth of moviemaking is supported by whatever happens in the industry in the next 5-10 years. Because it does seem like it’s become narrower and narrower in the last decade.


Associated Press

DEADLINE: You have been a writer on big studio films. I always hear things are terrible for writers. The strike happened, it felt like a punitive period followed where studios played hardball with writer quotes, and that was institutionalized following the 2008 crash. How are things now for writers?

NOLFI: It’s really hard for me to generalize about the making a living aspect of it because you only have your own experience. My assessment from conversations with my many friends and the time I spent at the guild is that the middle has dropped out. You have studios looking for the next new writer’s guild minimum quote level writer, or they’re looking for somebody with credits on major films to be the last writer in to push things across the finish line. And that’s kind of it, plus the people transitioning from the first category to the second.

DEADLINE: How has that impacted quality? Summer was criticized for so many derivative sequels, and films like Deadpool thrived because they are different.

NOLFI: Let me answer this in a roundabout way. Because I had a real stark experience coming out the other side of The Adjustment Bureau. I wrote a draft before the strike and because I owned it, I rewrote it during the strike. But I had worked pretty consistently as a writer from 2004 to 2007 on The Sentinel, Oceans Twelve, Bourne Ultimatum. I was on set for all three of those movies. When I would say to my agents, tell me what writing jobs are out there, in 2003, there were all kinds of projects like the ones I did. Cool ideas studio executives said they liked and wanted to get a star and a start date. Then I come out the other side of Bourne Ultimatum, and I bring this Adjustment Bureau script to Matt Damon. He says, I’m interested and we end up getting the money and I go make that in 2009, and that’s two years of my life. After, I say to my agents, let’s see what assignments are out there. I just want to write on a script now and pay my bills. The stark difference between 2003 and 2011 was mind-boggling.

DEADLINE: How?

NOLFI: There used to be a hundred open projects that were based on a cool book or partial manuscript, or a lot of things like Sully, or Hunt For Red October or Lethal Weapon, things with great characters but not rooted in a huge international brands. And by 2011, a huge, huge number of the slots where they were hiring writers were sequels, remakes, superhero movies, giant books. So many fewer were movies that just had that cool spec script we bought, or that newspaper article somebody found. Now, it has become amazing to see something like a film on Sully Sullenberger, or telling the story of the Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden. So many fewer of those. From the snapshot in 2003 to the snapshot in 2011, from an individual fresh new movie point of view, the bottom had dropped out of Hollywood.

I don’t blame any big studio or their corporate bosses for saying, Hey we need to earn 15% or whatever because we’re a public company and we need to make a return. They are reacting to a world marketplace that seems to be demanding this. My hope is, and I think it’s actually incumbent on filmmakers and writers and producers, is to figure out what that new model is, and I hope and think that Dragon fits into that. Which is to say, something that has an individualistic quality, something that is not just driven by marketing and brand concerns. Something that can capture a worldwide audience at a price point that isn’t too risky for major studios to get involved.

DEADLINE: Your movie doesn’t have big stars, but we certainly know the legend of Bruce Lee, and your narrator and the bridge between Lee and Wong Jack Man is a composite of young Steve McQueen. Anyone who tied a white belt across the waist of those white pajamas remembers Lee’s great ’70s karate movies. You have those touchstones audiences seem to want, but this somehow feels fresh, and familiar.

NOLFI: I think about that, a lot. I know a lot of the people that run studios and they’re very intelligent and if you said to them, Hey is your desire here to regurgitate? The answer would be no. But they are in an extraordinarily competitive world with big stakes and other factors. I got my first paycheck as a writer in ’96. There was no vibrant Internet then. People’s eyeballs were not pulled to YouTube and every movie and TV show that is now available to them, along with the latest short video somebody made. The competition for people’s leisure hours has increased a thousand fold. It’s very hard in that environment to make something that can have an all-out reaction of, I’m going to go out this weekend and pay for a babysitter. I’m as desperate as anyone in Hollywood to find that new model that gets past this. I suspect Sully is a perfect example of it, any Coen Brothers or Soderbergh or Paul Greengrass movie would be. They’re trying to be about something, trying desperately not to be a regurgitation.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

DEADLINE: Ever took karate?

NOLFI: In third grade, but not in a serious way. I don’t want to dwell on my age, but let’s just say that Jean Claude Van Damme and those other guys came later. It’s cliché but, Bruce Lee movies stuck in my head as a kid, like Star Wars and others, in giving you a sense of what was possible in cinema.



DEADLINE: How did you become the director of this when your first film, Adjustment Bureau, was one you crafted for yourself on the page?

NOLFI: Michael London and I were working on another project, and he mentioned this script coming in by Rivele and Wilkinson, and asked could I look at it and tell him what I thought. Somewhere between page 12 and 15, I dashed off an email saying this is incredible. Thanks for letting me read it. I want to direct it.

DEADLINE: What specifically in those pages would prompt a reaction that strong?

NOLFI: Three things. There was some text up front that said this fight had taken place in 1964, that it was one of the most storied fights in all of martial arts history, that it took place in front of a dozen witnesses, no two of whom had the same account of the fight. I thought that was awesome; something that disputed with strong opinions on all sides, means there’s inherent drama. The second thing is the clear sketching of two masters who had very different understandings of what Kung-Fu was.

DEADLINE: And differing philosophies about whether it should be shared with Caucasians?

NOLFI: Right. You had a scene that introduced Wong Jack Man as a Buddhist monk at the Shaolin Temple, which is a fictionalization of who he is. He was a northern Shaolin trained master but he wasn’t a Buddhist monk. Bruce Lee was introduced, making a 16mm film, and it was such a fun and unexpected portrayal of him, not the flow-like-water Buddhist-influenced philosopher martial artist. He was only 24. I liked the notion of Bruce Lee, different than I had seen him before. Still in a very favorable light but not the fully matured Bruce Lee with a clear desire to break the glass ceiling, become a star, and bring Kung Fu to the wider Western world with a belief that it should be shared with white people and not just be kept in China. Here, he had a self-confidence bordering on ****iness that I found really endearing and hysterical. It was obvious this guy was going to go through the transformation from what he was in that first 16mm scene to the end of this movie and something closer to the Bruce Lee that I knew. It was obvious that Wong Jack Man was a total traditionalist, and what I read in those first 15 pages made it clear that it would be antithetical to him to have Kung-Fu taught to white people. He was going to go through a transformation, also. So there were two men, both total masters of this deep important core aspect of Chinese culture, Kung-Fu, with totally different views on it. Who are going to clash in this epic fight that happened in real life that I didn’t know anything about and that everybody disputed. Both men were going to grow from that. It just had all the elements of a great movie.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Warner Bros

DEADLINE: To say yes at page 15 without even knowing who won that fight? And what if the writers had introduced a serial killer with a hockey mask on page 20?

NOLFI: I knew the work of the writers. They had done Nixon, Ali, and they are the gold standard for writing about historical figures, even though this is a much more mythologized version of a historical figure than Ali or Nixon. I had confidence in Michael London. But if these writers can get me this invested in two characters, about to take off into a fictionalized journey from this historical underpinning, yeah, I was in.

DEADLINE: What about the narrator played by Billy Magnusson, who is clearly a composite of a young Steve McQueen, the actor who trained with Lee later on in life?

NOLFI: That was an invention of the writers. Because I come from writing, it seemed to me to be a very smart decision. The depiction of one fight is hard to make into a satisfying feature film in 2016. The audience needs more plot and more character development. The reality is, Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man did not know each other for a long period before the fight and they weren’t heavily involved with each other after the fight. From a narrative standpoint, you needed eyes on the story that would allow you to have a run up to the fight and…I don’t want to spoil what happens after the fight..but you needed that to get to our third act.

DEADLINE: A third act that invokes the spirit of the fights in those Bruce Lee movies?

NOLFI: Yes, and when I got to that part of the script, I was joyous. But to get there you needed Steve McKee’s eyes on the story. He’s like the narrator in The Great Gatsby. Which is to say, while he has his own story, the largest part of the audience is coming to see what Gatsby’s doing. Here, the audience is coming to see how Bruce Lee evolves, and who is this guy fighting him? But you have to have a narrator who captures your interest on some level. It becomes this triangle of men. They created a character who was naïve, an American Midwestern guy whose own family life had not put him in a position to become a fully formed man. To be able to watch this white guy become a fully formed man, with Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man becoming these surrogate father figures to him, even though they were about the same age…I thought that was very unusual in Hollywood filmmaking. And given the conflict in the U.S. now over immigration, I think it’s important to remind ourselves that people who are not born in America — Bruce Lee was but he was raised in Chinese culture and his family was Chinese — they really enrich our country.

DEADLINE: So your second thought after committing on page 15 had to be, how the heck do I find Bruce Lee?

NOLFI: That was exactly the thing that scared the hell out of me. Some of my closer friends and advisors in the business looked at me going, who’s going to play Bruce Lee? They said, are you sure you want to go down this path? What if you can’t find somebody? By now, I’m like a dog with a bone, though. So it became this six-month-plus long search. I made a decision early that it was important to me to make a movie that felt authentic to serious martial arts fans and to martial artists themselves. I wanted even the highest level of Kung-Fu experts to be able to look at the fights and be impressed. And say, that’s Bruce Lee, using Wing Chun, which is by most accounts what he used during this fight, while Wong Jack Man used northern Shaolin. And then there’s some evolution that happens in the fight. I wanted to get that level of specificity in the martial arts, so we needed someone who was an actual martial artist. We asked for martial arts tapes from anybody who was interested in playing the part. I did look at some pure actors. Some were quite well known, certainly in Asia, but were not actual martial artists. Given the amount of screen time in this movie where Bruce Lee is fighting and the complexity of that fighting, and the epic-ness of the two big fight scenes, I just felt like I couldn’t do it with doubles. I wanted to be able to shoot Bruce Lee in wide shots if I needed them, where you could see his legs. Faking punches is one thing but faking kicks is a whole other thing.

DEADLINE: How did you find Philip Ng?

NOLFI: I narrowed it down first on martial arts ability, and then had actors read scenes. I made Phil do 10 minutes of scenes and then looked for months longer because he’s not a known Asian star. He’s definitely known in Hong Kong, but he’s not a giant name. He was a stuntman. His father has a martial arts studio in Chicago, so he’s been doing this since he was 3 years old and then he moved to Hong Kong. He was born there, and he returned to become a martial arts stuntman and worked his way up to where he was starting to act. He’s known in Hong Kong, somewhat in China, but less so in the wider world. But Phil captured a sort of confidence and exuberance and humor and ****iness that I thought you needed from Bruce Lee. I have eternal thanks to Kylin for backing my decision. I could imagine other financiers saying, no, we have to have somebody who has this box office level in Chinese film. The producer side of my brain understands the need for a so-called movie star. But I’m not the producer of this film and the director side of me believes the movie is what sells and what the audience is going to talk about. And Phil was going to allow us to make the best movie. You’ve seen it and so you see how he embodies Bruce Lee in a way that no one else I’ve seen has.

DEADLINE: When Lee died, all these movies got made with lookalikes with variations on the spelling of his name. But nobody since has replicated what he brought to the screen.

NOLFI: If you think of who became a true international martial arts superstar after Bruce Lee, it’s Jackie Chan and Jet Li. They’re both amazing martial artists, but quite different. Jackie Chan has the humor that overtakes almost everything else and Jet Li is this serious, incredible, beautiful martial artist to watch but he doesn’t have that twinkle in his eye which allows you to really play on that humor that Bruce Lee had. Phil has that. I think Phil is going to be a superstar. He was in every single frame, every time Bruce Lee is on screen fighting, that’s all him. I’d say, let your double do this wide shot and he’d say, no, I’m doing it. I said, Phil, you’re doing martial arts in a wide shot, going up a bunch of stairs, and if you fall and smash your chin, I’m going to go down for it. He said, I’ll be fine. He was just insistent, he was going to do every frame.

DEADLINE: That is a Jackie Chan trademark. Did you send him off to study film of Lee to get his mannerisms down?

NOLFI: I didn’t have to. Bruce Lee is his idol. I would venture to say that Phil did zero studying of Bruce Lee because he had already done it for the first 30 years of his life. I think Phil would say that he found our collaboration to be very much towards broadening his acting skills. I was definitely hard on him, if I wasn’t getting what I wanted. I told him upfront, just like you’re going to make me do the martial arts over when you say some blow isn’t right, if the dialogue could be better, we’re going again and again until we get it. Unlike the martial arts, you’re not going to get hurt from it, but you might do it 25 times. And there were a few scenes that took many. He was the most game actor you could imagine.

DEADLINE: Yu Xia plays Wong Jack Man. Is he also a martial artist?

NOLFI: He’s not, but he’s quite an athletic guy, and I could tell he was a truly great actor even when working in another language in the tape I watched. He has this placid confidence, a wisdom in his face and his mannerisms, that was perfect for Wong Jack Man. So he exuded the part and I thought I had a fighting chance with a Bruce Lee who could do every single frame of fighting. Then it became about the magic of cinema techniques to make Xia Yu look the way we needed. I think we’ve succeeded. In test screenings, we asked which guy was the real artist and which wasn’t. It was about 50/50. My editor has a friend who’s a big martial artist who has seen every martial arts film in existence. We asked him and he said, “Ummm, I think Wong Jack Man is the real one.” I said, OK, we’ve succeeded.

I don't think the WJM followers will be happy with this.

[BSL-Chris]

Just saw the trailer on youtube and have to say I'm not impressed in the slightest.

While I know for the audiences the choreography needs to be modern and flashy to look good I personally thought it has made it a bit of a joke, not only that BUT lets face it this fight was a long time ago and I'm pretty sure we are all old enough to move on from it - the only people who can elaborate properly are the two guys who fought, one is dead and the other has no wish to speak about the encounter.

Think I'll be re-watching a good Donnie Yen flick instead Kung Fu Killer anyone :-)

[GeneChing]