Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury

[StickyHands]

I never watched it before, except today in AMC. Just curious, did he make the movie before or after he came up with JKD? Cuz ahhhh, really curious about what style of kung fu he was using. It didnt seem entirely like Wing Chun.

[chen zhen]

He started the idea of JKD in the mid-60's, and fists of fury was from '71-72 I think. So jkd had been around for a long time.
and the stuff he does on film does not represent his real-life jkd style, it is only movie-fu. u will see mostly boxing and TKD high-kicks in those films.

a pic of BL in his more "traditional" period:

[StickyHands]

so in his movies, he LIED to me when he said he was doing Chinese Boxing ARRRR!

[chen zhen]

Yes, it's not really CMA.

Way of the dragon should be the most realistic one, fighting-wise, In the sense that it shows JKD principles like stop-kicking, adapting to the situation, etc.

[StickyHands]

Stop-kicking? Isnt that also in TKD? In fact all they do is stop kicks.

Wasnt there also a Return of the Dragon or something, like Way of the Dragon 2?

[chen zhen]

No. Return of the dragon was the american title of Way of the dragon.

And for TKD, i think it's more an issue of TKD getting THEIR kicks stopped, not opposite..

Lee worked out with TKD grandmaster Jhoon Rhee, btw.

[StickyHands]

Why did Bruce Lee die? All I heard was one day, he layed on the bed, felt dizzy and intense pain in the head, tried to sleep, and then he never woke up. What caused it? Didnt he know to check with his doctors and get treatments? Was it due to his intense trainings and pushing his body to the limits? As I heard, when he was getting older, he was losing his power, he lost about 50 percent of his stregth and agility as he used to had, so he trained his kicks and punches, but he still dreaded the declination.

[chen zhen]

He overtrained. that's why.
He started getting more and more sick in the last year, and he had headaches all the time. He died at some Hong-kong movie-actress home, he felt sick and took some pills that had a bad side-effect apparently, coz he died in his sleep.

[StickyHands]

Never knew staying in shape was also bad...

[chen zhen]

he was in GOOD shape..
he just overtrained a bit at last..

[GeneChing]

Kung Fu Groove
By Michael Dwyer
September 27, 2019 — 12.00pm

You can see the moment Bruce Lee cracks in Fist of Fury. When the Japanese imperialist bullyboys interrupt his kung fu master’s memorial, he holds it together for his brothers’ sake. But when the evil boss guy sidles up and slaps his cheek, goading him to respond, the inner struggle between discipline and honour is written on his trembling face.


Kamasi Washington: redefining popular perceptions of jazz.

“That movie was always very powerful for me,” says Kamasi Washington. His latest album, Heaven and Earth, opens with a funked-up version of the theme song with his own spoken-word refrain: “Our time as victims is over. We will no longer ask for justice. Instead we will take our retribution.”

“It felt like that was the sentiment of the movie,” says the saxophonist and composer who has, for the last five years or so, been busy redefining popular perceptions of jazz with albums of epic length and scope, taking film cues, soul, Afrobeat and hip-hop in stride.

“I look at [that opening track] as a call to action,” he says. “I think the time of us kind of waiting for someone, whoever that someone is, to come and fix the world for us, I don’t think we can wait any longer for that. We have to become that someone. Now.”

He’s not really talking along the racial lines that underpin Fist of Fury, or recent political rhetoric in the US. For a guy who grew up in Inglewood, South Central Los Angeles, that division is “the only reality I’ve ever known. It may seem new but it’s not. It’s being pushed out more to the public but as long as I’ve been here, it’s always been like this.”

Washington was still in short pants when gangsta rap erupted out of his neighbourhood in the mid to late 1980s. He soaked it up, naturally, but at a very specific point in his mid-teens, he had a moment of clarity that rose above the sound of the streets and called him onto a more disciplined path.

“I was in ninth grade, in this band called the Multi-School Jazz Band and we played the Playboy Jazz Festival … I’d been playing music all my life, but I hadn’t really taken on the discipline, really digging in and practising, studying music the way that you have to to be a jazz musician.”

He knew there were far more virtuosic players in the horn section so when it came time for a solo, he was gobsmacked to see the band leader pointing at him. “It was in front of, I don’t know, 20,000 people and … I didn’t sound the way I wanted to sound. It felt bad. And that was the first time I had that feeling in music.

“That was the moment I was like, ‘I’m gonna practise, every day, all day, from now on’. My mum thought something was wrong with me. I stopped going outside, hanging out. All I did was practise. So that summer really changed my trajectory, as far as music.”

He did retain his passion for martial arts, of course. His latest video, for Street Fighter Mas, is a priceless kung fu movie pastiche with west-coast hip-hop style and cameos. And a What’s In My Bag? video on YouTube reveals that come shopping time, he’s equally passionate about Fela Kuti, Curtis Mayfield, Samurai and Manga.


Washington retains a passion for martial arts.

“Yeah, I’m definitely a huge fan,” he says. “The idea of balance and devotion [in martial arts] always intrigued me; just the way it kind of reflects music.

“Musicians are a similar breed. We have this solitary life and we’re really trying to get in touch with our internal side and it produces this external thing that you can see, in one way, but the people that do it see it a different way. Like, most people see martial arts as violent but martial artists don’t see it as violent. They’re not destroying something, they’re creating something.”

The parallel with hip-hop was made clear by the adopted mythology of east-coast rap ensemble the Wu Tang Clan back in the 1990s. Not unlike Bruce Lee under imperial pressure, “hip-hop was people who felt like they didn’t have a voice [finding] a voice within the music to express their experience,” Washington says. “Sometimes that expression wasn’t necessarily the most peaceful, but neither was their experience.”

As a graduate of the University of California’s Ethnomusicology Department, Washington’s life experience has been more expansive than plenty of his peers. He played with Kenny Burrell, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Lauryn Hill, Chaka Khan, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar en route to his massively acclaimed solo arrival with The Epic in 2015.

Its double-CD format gave notice of grand conceptual intentions that only intensify with Heaven and Earth. "The Earth side of this album represents the world as I see it outwardly, the world that I am a part of,” he said on a visit to the Sydney Opera House last year. “The Heaven side … represents the world as I see it inwardly, the world that is a part of me.

“Who I am and the choices I make lie somewhere in between,” he added. To drive that point home, the CD package includes a third disc, The Choice, which entails a degree of cardboard surgery to unpack. The music itself, as suggested by another round of near-universal acclaim, manages to find a miraculous middle ground of accessibility that neither jazz nor hip-hop can take for granted. “I always look at it as a compliment,” he says of the critical perception that he represents some kind of new benchmark in jazz evolution, “but to me, as a musician, you can only really represent yourself. I hear people say I represent all this, or that … It’s just their way of saying they appreciate what I’m doing.”

Kamasi Washington, Hamer Hall, Melbourne International Arts Festival, October 8 and a Sydney Opera House, October 9.

THREADS
Kung-Fu Music
Fist of Fury

[GeneChing]

Wow, I just read this thread after ttt-ing it with the post above and can't let this stand without a proper answer. What Bruce's character Chen Zhen was supposed to be emulating was Mizongquan which we've discussed here and in other places. That was the 'fist of fury', the weird psychedelic spinning arms in the film (Mizong is often translated as 'lost track') because it is one of the styles attributed to Huo Yunjia, the founder of Chin Woo.

We've done some articles on Mizong, notably my piece "The Confusing Tracks of the Fist of Fury: Huo Yuan Jia's Style of Mizong Quan" in our CHIN WU - HUO YUAN JIA COLLECTOR'S ISSUE (SEP+OCT 2006)

[Jimbo]

Wow, I just read this thread after ttt-ing it with the post above and can't let this stand without a proper answer. What Bruce's character Chen Zhen was supposed to be emulating was Mizongquan which we've discussed here and in other places. That was the 'fist of fury', the weird psychedelic spinning arms in the film (Mizong is often translated as 'lost track') because it is one of the styles attributed to Huo Yunjia, the founder of Chin Woo.

We've done some articles on Mizong, notably my piece "The Confusing Tracks of the Fist of Fury: Huo Yuan Jia's Style of Mizong Quan" in our CHIN WU - HUO YUAN JIA COLLECTOR'S ISSUE (SEP+OCT 2006)

One of the movies with a connection to Fist of Fury is 1982’s Legend of a Fighter, with Leung Kar-Yan playing Huo Yuanjia (referred to by the Cantonese pronunciation of the name, Fok Yuen-Gap). Clean-shaven, Leung Kar-Yan had a facial resemblance to Bruce Lee, a fact not lost on director Yuen Woo-Ping. I suppose the meaning is, like teacher, like student (Bruce Lee’s Chen Zhen). And this fight scene has an arguably better screen representation of Mizong Quan than in FOF, though I’m certain neither has any resemblance to the real thing. Interestingly, not every Japanese character in Legend of a Fighter was evil. Yasuaki Kurata, the antagonist in this end fight, was actually a co-hero, put into an untenable situation and sacrificing himself to help Huo Yuanjia and the Chinese people, a fact sometimes lost on fans of the movie. Twelve years later, Kurata would also play a similar type of character, but one that survives, in Fist of Legend.

[GeneChing]

How Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury is helping a struggling Indigenous language kick on
ABC Radio Perth / By Emma Wynne
Posted 1dday ago

Fist of Fury Noongar Daa is the work of partners Kylie and Clint Bracknell.(ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne)
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A Noongar language dub of the Bruce Lee classic Fist of Fury aims to invigorate interest in the endangered language, telling a story with universal themes of fighting injustice and loyalty to community.

The Noongar language of the First Nations people of Western Australia is spoken by just two per cent of Noongar people, and just a few thousand words remain after decades of forced suppression.


Fist of Fury is the latest work of the director of Hecate, Kylie Bracknell.(ABC News: Hugh Sando)
After presenting Shakespeare's Macbeth in the Noongar language in Hecate at the last Perth Festival, director Kylie Bracknell — also known as Kaarljilba Kaardn — will this year reveal another language revitalisation project in the form of a redub of the 1972 kung fu film.

Both projects aimed to show Noongar people that although their language might be endangered, it was not lost.

"For me, it's presenting this to the world, like we did with Hecate, to go to bring to everyone's attention that this is how fluently and beautifully our language would be shared and spoken day in, day out, if it were uninterrupted by colonisation," Ms Bracknell said.

"And to show that this is so possible now, today. Here, this is being done, you can learn it at any point you like."

Story with universal appeal
Fist of Fury, made in Hong Kong in 1972, is a Bruce Lee kung fu movie set in Shanghai with the Chinese population living under Japanese imperial occupation.

When Lee's character, Chen Zhen, returns to his kung fu school to find his revered teacher dead, he — and the school — are drawn into conflict with a rival, Japanese martial arts school.


Fist of Fury was made in 1972 and a huge success for its star, Bruce Lee.(Supplied: Fortune Star)
The film's enduring themes of honour, resisting colonisation, revering one's teachers, and fighting injustice, as well its significance to Noongar people, made it the obvious choice for the dub project, Ms Bracknell said.

"I knew it needed to be art-house and not dialogue heavy, and something that represented physical body language as well, because that's something that we respect and look to," she said.

"It just made sense to do a kung fu film, specifically a Bruce Lee film.

"Fist of Fury is from a time and an era when that generation of the Noongar community missed out on Noongar language because their parents were too busy trying to keep them in the family and not taken away.

"For me this is very much a healing offer and pays homage to that generation that still suffers today from feeling language loss."

Translating an endangered language
Having chosen the film, it then had to be translated in Noongar, a project she undertook with her partner, Dr Clint Bracknell.

"It's quite daunting knowing that you're translating from arguably the most sophisticated language in the entire world to a language where only two per cent of its community speak it, and it's endangered," she said.


Clint Bracknell in the recording studio dubbing the role of Fan.(ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne)
They decided that rather than work from an English translation of the film, they would go back to the Cantonese and Mandarin of the original film with the help of a colleague, Felix Ching Ching Ho.

"We really wanted to get to the heart of what the characters were originally saying in the original film, before the English dub, and pay as much respect to the original filmmakers as possible," Dr Bracknell said.

"I think when you see the kung fu films dubbed into English it can seem like comedy because often the lips don't match what the character is saying, and sometimes the voice actors are a bit over the top.

"We wanted to make sure this is not taken as a comedy.

"It has subtle comedy, but we didn't want the comedy to be as a result of the dub."

They also had to decide how to translate a story about Chinese resistance to Japanese imperialism into Noongar language while avoiding English words.

"Because 'Noongar' is such a complex word that can mean man or person or even ally, we've used 'Noongar' as the word to describe the people of the film and the people of the country, and in this case the people of the country are the Chinese people," he said.


Kylie Bracknell was also a co-translator of Fist of Fury Noongar Daa.(ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne)
Not only did the language have to be accurate, it also had to fit the time the actors take on screen to speak, so the script was painstakingly refined over weeks in the studio as each actor came to perform their role.

"Clint actually did a lot of the translation, if not the bulk of it, and he went through with the first sweep," Ms Bracknell said.

"I came through later and didn't have to change much because he's quite brilliant with language.

"I've been editing in the studio, as needed, to suit the dub and the mouth movements of the actors themselves."

Acting out every punch
In a small recording studio, each actor had to perform their part, directed by Ms Bracknell, dubbing each line — and breath — of their character.

They also recreated the numerous, intense fight scenes throughout the film, voicing every shout, punch, and kick seen on screen.

For Dr Bracknell, who as well as translating also took on the role of Fan in the film, it was quite a challenge.

"If you are going to vocalise fight scenes in a recording booth you can't actually make physical movements that make noise," he said.

"It's almost you have to get a bit existential and imagine, and vocalise, that you're fighting — but stay perfectly still so you don't make noise that interferes with the mix."


Each role has to be revoiced individually in the Noongar dub of Fist of Fury.(ABC Radio Perth: Emma Wynne)
The final product, Fist of Fury Noongar Daa (dub) is close to completion and will screen at the Perth Festival in February.

The couple hopes it will inspire further Noongar language revitalisation.

"To know that this new language vision will be recorded in time and hopefully accessible to generations beyond our expectations," Ms Bracknell said.

"Perhaps even the script, the translated script, will accompany that, and it's something that can be shared in schools and with the Noongar community.

"Around the world, when communities are trying to revitalise endangered languages, most of the success comes from doing something with your endangered language — whether that be singing, putting on a festival, making films, or making theatre," Dr Bracknell added.

"Without speaking that language every day as part of your work and your existence, you have to make an effort to find ways to use it or you just keep losing it."

This is awesome.

[GeneChing]

Fist of Dead

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