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Posted

Well, I will have to watch Ninja! Sounds good!

As for Flying Swords of Dragon Gate it takes a bit of a left turn half way through and becomes a little different from the movie I though it would be. It's still fun though, but not a 'great' movie by any standards, to be honest.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Tony Jaa had a lot of other issues that prevented him following a simple career path in the movies. Issues that I don't think a simple change in agent would have solved! Iko Uwais, however seems to be on the right path - Gareth Evans will make sure of that!

Posted

I am sad to find that getting Jackie Chan movies on Blu Ray is a pain in the butt if you want the uncut HK originals..

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Just saw a movie called The Painted Skin 2. It's pretty damn good. I've never heard of it but apparently it's a huge deal in China, beating out the Dark Knight. It can be over the top in some scenes with the 300 type slo-mo and CG effects but some are really well done. But I really enjoyed it because at it's heart, it's more of a traditional Chinese fairy tale about a demon spirit cursed for saving the life of a human she loved. A really good adventure type film. Now I have to find the first one though they say it's not a direct prequel.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

I recently caught the Rurounin Kenshin live action movie, found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable action flick. I know the anime has been around for quite a while and is really popular, but I've never watched the anime before, so I commenting on this purely on the film.

Great fight scenes, minimal use of CG, liked it enough to get it on BluRay if its ever released. Fully recommend to all fans of the genre, found it to be more entertaining than 13 Samurai!

Trailer:

Review by kotaku:

http://kotaku.com/5938365/the-live-action-rurouni-kenshin-movie-is-a-nearly-perfect-film-adaptation

Posted

So i just saw the two Red Cliff movies, and all i can say is the great John Woo is back. After nearly 2 decade of making crap in America John Woo finally goes back east to make great movies.

This movie is awesome for those who are either fans of Woo or fans of historical epics. Great battle scenes, great cinematography, great music, and great acting. Tony Leung once again gives a powerhouse performance. I especially liked the emphasis on strategy and battle tactics that Leung's army used to defeat a much larger force. The only way this movie could've been better is if Donnie Yen was in it.

I'm really hoping John Woo has given up on Hollywood and makes movies exclusively in China and Hong Kong.

I also recently saw a Jet Li historical movie called Warlords. I liked it, it put more emphasis on the politics in the imperial chinese military.

I don't know if it is just me or does it seem that a lot of big budget chinese historical epics are being made recently?

I find it really interesting how foreigners are able to appreciate the two Red Cliffs much more than mainland Chinese. I personally consider the two films quite an achievement from an execution and project management point of view. Given the scale and number of actors involved, I am pretty amazed that John Woo delivered a solid story about friendships and a few epic battles.

Romance of Three Kingdoms is very well known in China, and most people who complained about the movie either tend to be very focused on the discrepancy with history or have extremely high expectations. Some also made fun of the dialogue, joking about the homosexual undertone in the relationships among the male leads. I think these are all minor points. If you look at other Chinese epic battle films, they all suffer from an unbalance of story vs special effects, kind of like the Phantom Menace. Plus, I think the Chinese audience are going thru battle film fatigue, too much of the same stuff being dumped onto them.

  • 1 month later...
Posted (edited)

Been on a Three Kingdoms marathon lately. Watched Donnie Yen's The Lost Bladesman, Andy Lau's Resurrection of the Dragon, and both Red Cliff movies.

TLB was a bit of a dissapointment, and Yen himself was miscast for the role. Not an inch of him looked anything like the traditional description of Guan Yu. I liked how they tried to rationalize his red skin by having him wipe the blood of his enemies on his face, though. The fights are what you'd expect of Donnie Yen--fast, furious and bone-crunching. Not like any of us watch his movies for the story, anyway.

Andy Lau's movie had some serious potential, but the story-telling was insipid and felt a little too short. I'll say this of Lau, though; he makes a very convincing hero.

Red Cliff? Good, but the cast was kinda "off." Tony Leung's a good actor, but sort of miscast as the supposedly "impossibly handsome" Zhou Yu, as he was described in the books. The guy who played Guan Yu severely lacked the imposing massiveness and authority of the God of War. Surprisingly, Takeshi Kaneshiro IMO gave a good performance as a sly Zhuge Liang.

Battles were epic enough, but the part about Sun Shang Xiang infiltrating the enemy camp as a soldier made me groan and roll my eyes. This whole trope with pretty girls successfully masquerading as men...males in ancient times must either be very beautiful and androgynous, or very stupid.

Edited by GU-11
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Got the new Animeigo Lone Wolf and Cub Blu Ray. It was on sale at Amazon for $17 right after Xmas.

There is a bit of DNR but overall the picture looks great and I have been wanting these films for years.

Posted (edited)

here...

edit/add:

finally got the BD-version of Twilight Samurai from hk, so attached it as well. No more windowboxed viewing from the dvd version! :D

just need subbed BD-versions of the rest.

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Edited by treatment
  • 5 months later...
Posted

Jim Kelly, famous martial arts actor and one of the main inspirations for Black Dynamite, died on June 29 at age 67. He was best known as Williams in the 1973 martial arts blockbuster Enter the Dragon before starring in a string of kung-fu and Blaxploitation cult films in the 1970s.

R.I.P. Jim Kelly.

Jim Kelly (1946-2013)

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Posted

Here's another martial arts film review:

Chocolate_zps8364f1d0.jpg

Chocolate (ช็อคโกแลต)

Baa-ram-ewe/Sahamongkol Film International, 2008

Magnet Films, 2009

Directed by Prachya Pinkaew (Ong-Bak, Tom-Yum-Goong)

Running Time: 110 minutes

Rated R for graphic martial arts violence, slight nudity, sexual situations and profanity.

Cast

Yanin Vismitananda as Zen

Taphon Phopwandee as Mangmoom "Moom"

Ammara Siripong as Zin

Pongpat Wachirabunjong as No. 8

Hiroshi Abe (Jiro Ueda in Trick, Katagiri in Godzilla 2000) as Masashi

Synopsis

Zen is the autistic daughter of Yakuza boss Masashi and former Thai mobster girl Zin, who severely upset Thai crime lord "No.8" by having the affair behind his back. Despite her mental condition, Zen has very sensitive hearing and quick reflexes, and is highly skilled in Muay Thai due to watching Tony Jaa movies and kickboxers training in her home. When she discovers that Zin is suffering from cancer, she and her adopted brother Moom find a notebook with a list of people that owe Zin money and go to them to collect their debts in hopes of paying for Zin's chemotherapy sessions. No. 8 takes notice of Zen's activities, he plots a scheme to lure Zin's family and Masashi and get rid of them once and for all.

Lowdown

Chocolate is not your typical martial arts film. While it provides the usual punches and kicks, it's also a gangster film and a movie about mental conditions. It's not very easy to do a film with an autistic main character, especially if it involves martial arts, but Yanin Vismitananda does a good job as Zen, who uses her fists and feet to do majority of the talking. The fight choreography is a little slower-paced than Ong-Bak, but it's probably more painful due to more close-contact fighting and the harsher environments, such as the meat factory in the scene below.

And just to prove how painful the fights are, the end credits show all the bumps and bruises that Yanin and the stuntmen take. Hell, it's even more painful than the truck fall in Born to Fight.

The moral of the story: Don't f*ck with autism.

Rating: B+

References

The Internet Movie Database

Wikipedia

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