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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Could you guys recommend any films with female leads? I certainly can, but you have to be okay with the fact that most of what I can name are older films from the 1980s. Prior to that, in the glory days of Shaw Brothers, the producer was Mona Fong. Mona in her youth was a big movie star, and she decided that she wanted to ensure everyone remembered HER as the greatest female Asian movie star of all time. As such, very few Shaw Brothers era movies featured women in prominent roles and she gave work to guys like Chang Cheh/John Woo whose work was typically more focused on men. The trend largely stuck. But there was a brief period in the 1980s where this was relaxed, as Shaw Brothers was on the decline and they were willing to try anything in an effort to seem more in keeping with the then-modern era. Both My Young Auntie as well as Lady Is the Boss are silly comedies starring Kara Hui that feature some really impressive fight choreography courtesy of my favorite martial arts movie director ever, Lau Kar-Leung. But you probably want to check out Yes, Madam! from the D&B Films studio: a buddy cop picture featuring the debuts of both Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock. The success of Yes Madam! gave rise to a series of similarly-minded fare, such as The Inspector Wears Skirts from Golden Harvest Productions. The first one was pretty silly fun, but as the sequels went on they became less about talented action and more about...well, let's just say "the gaze" to use the trendy Internet lingo. Rothrock would make a career out of this sort of work, but most of her leading roles were in much lesser quality American productions. One pretty decent one that she was the lead in is called The Blonde Fury, which was sort of a spinoff/sequel to the exceptional Righting Wrongs in which she was the costar along with Yuen Biao. Michelle Yeoh is probably the most famous female lead Asian action star by virtue of her roles in English-language movies as well as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but I'll recommend Wing Chun (with Donnie Yen) for a good showcase performance by her. She wasn't really the lead in Supercop (with Jackie Chan), but they did give her character the lead role in a spinoff film, Once a Cop (sometimes called "Project S" or "Supercop 2"), that was decent. Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima made a slew of lower-budget yet interesting movies in which they'd typically face off against one another. The films of Teresa Woo, particularly Iron Angels, may be the most infamous of these since the level of violence they perpetuate upon one another would be normal if guys did it but is pretty shocking to Western audiences since *gasp* these are women! Three of those films got made and zero of them were released legally in the US. Perhaps very recently an anonymous individual saw fit to put them online; you can look into that on your own. That was an interesting time for Asian entertainment, since it coincided nicely with another interest of mine: professional wrestling. That late-70s to mid-90s period was the apex of Japanese women's pro wrestling as well. I have overlapping hypotheses as to why both martial arts cinema and lady's wrestling declined around the same time, but they're mostly just conjecture. Anyway, those are a lot of good movies I just recommended. Pick one or two and check them out. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 21:01 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 17:58
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Daryl Surat posted:That was an interesting time for Asian entertainment, since it coincided nicely with another interest of mine: professional wrestling. That late-70s to mid-90s period was the apex of Japanese women's pro wrestling as well. I have overlapping hypotheses as to why both martial arts cinema and lady's wrestling declined around the same time, but they're mostly just conjecture. Anyway, those are a lot of good movies I just recommended. Pick one or two and check them out. Go on...
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May 6, 2014 18:07
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Could you guys recommend any films with female leads? If I could recommend five movies they'd all be Wing Chun (1994), also recommended in that excellent post from Daryl Surat. There's also Come Drink With Me (1966), which doesn't have the same kind of kinetic fight choreography you get with later films but is pretty required viewing if you want to see where kung fu movies got all their poo poo from. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 20:34
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moller posted:In addition to the answers offered by others, I'd also point to the Hong Kong handover that took place in 1997. Whatever the actual political effects were, an entire generation of veteran directors and actors bailed on HK for Hollywood which gave us The Matrix, Hard Target, Double Team, Shanghai Noon, Sammo's TV show, etc. The trouble with using that as a reason is that every single one of those actors/directors who left for Hollywood in the late 1990s ended up going back to China once it became clear by the mid-2000s that things weren't quite going to pan out. Then they all continued making movies. I think they had two problems in the US: they didn't speak the language and thus couldn't play roles that showed off the full range of their charisma, and their approach to assembling an action scene just wasn't compatible with the modern film-making production process. For instance, it's common practice in the classic martial arts cinema days to have an entirely separate "action director" in charge of not just filming but editing the fights. That doesn't fly here, so you often end up with people doing really cool choreography stuff that you can't see due to the choices made in the editing room regarding cutting, photography, effects work etc by people who may not necessarily "get" what works and what doesn't. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Go on... For some other good classic martial arts movie picks with female leads, check out Broken Oath starring Angela Mao (choreography by Sammo Hung) and Royal Warriors starring Michelle Yeoh. Please be aware before watching Royal Warriors that the movie is cinematic proof of the effects of cocaine in the way only a 1980s action movie can be. Some say Yeoh may be a precursor to Ellen Ripley in Aliens or Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, but tone-wise it's probably closer to something like Commando or Tango & Cash. Many of Michelle Yeoh's big movies got renamed "In the Line of Duty" for international release, so you might have to search for that to find it. I also recommend The Heroic Trio, which is an even more insane Asian martial arts superhero movie from before anyone made these movies with real money. It teaches valuable life lessons, such as "if you want to make a dramatic entrance into a bank using a flying spinning motorcycle in order to distract the man with the flying guillotine from executing the hostages, that is a valid option." The story is about Wonder Woman (who is not the DC character, as she wears a mask and uses throwing knives), Thief Catcher (whose superhero ability is that she has a Hong Kong shotgun, which as other Hong Kong movies demonstrate is the kind of shotgun that blows up cars when fired), and Invisible Girl (played by Michelle Yeoh who I should note is NOT INVISIBLE) on their quest to find out who is kidnapping the babies. At least one baby is killed due to being dropped on a nail. It had a sequel called Executioners which is less memorable. That both of these movies were things that used to just randomly be on TBS proves that Ted Turner was a genius. As for my similarity conjecture...I don't have everything properly codified since I'm uh, making these posts from work. For instance, if you wanted to go back further from the 1980s you could certainly see King Hu's films starring Cheng Pei Pei (1966's Come Drink With Me being the most famous example, per MechaFunkGodzilla), but I don't really think of those as "martial arts" films and the dude only made a few movies at Shaw Brothers (see above). Cheng Pei Pei never really did much of note on the US side, but people might know her for playing Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. If you check out that Wing Chun movie, she's the Buddhist nun instructor lady. She's still making movies when she's not teaching ballet in Los Angeles. But like so many things the gist of the similarities boils down to "supply and demand" though interpretation of each term in this case is a little different from the norm. On the wrestling side of things, you had some acts that made it so big that they crossed over into "mainstream pop culture," with the result being that you had hundreds upon hundreds of people auditioning for the opportunity just to train. Of those hundreds, they'd accept single digit numbers for the training. Of those in the training, only single digits would pass. Of those who passed, only single digit numbers would become top stars...and they would be the greatest at their craft history had ever seen. An incredibly cruel system, but it worked provided you had the "supply" of aspiring talent. To use goonier language, it was like becoming a Warhammer 40K Space Marine only using teenage girls. In less specific terms: "demand" for the product is what generates the "supply." If you create entertainment that presents a given demographic in positions of power AND then proceed to present it to said demographic as your primary target audience, then several will conclude "that could be me up there!" The closest equivalent in the modern age is the various talent competition shows: the ones where they have the audition episodes or the dark horse contestant that blows everybody away with their talent, the winners of whom then go on to momentary bouts of fame and fortune. "Momentary" is important, since you have to make room for the next wave of stars in order to keep the dream alive, and the applications coming in. There's only one "top." What was the martial arts movie equivalent to this? Peking Opera, the same thing where Jackie Chan saw the kids doing the flips at and decided "that's what I want to do!" Traditional Chinese theater did allow women to train, which is how you got female martial arts stars like Angela Mao. (Per what I noted before, Shaw Brothers wouldn't really permit her to break out as a star, so Mao got famous through Golden Harvest. She famously had a real small part as Bruce Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon. They paid her $100.) So what causes these movies/wrestling/TV shows to catch on is that it strikes a chord among a generation of younger people. Thing is, when that group of people being targeted is predominantly female, there's always that other group of people watching too: older men who are into looking at younger ladies. (Turns out there are quite a few such people!) The thing about those guys is that they are numerically far fewer than all those younger ladies...but individually, they have a LOT more spending money. And what always inevitably happens is that producers try to ask themselves "how do we keep both audiences happy?" The answer, basically always, is sexualization. Mickey Mouse Club alumni, pro wrestlers, or action movie stars it's the same deal: show more skin, make the dialogue more suggestive, and then it's not quite as important if they can actually go because you can cover for it in post-production. What originally starts as "if she can already kick, we can teach her how to fight" (a quote attributed to Sammo Hung regarding how they decided to cast Michelle Yeoh, who prior to Yes, Madam! was a ballerina that had never done any martial arts) becomes "who cares if she can kick as long as she looks hot" (that's not a quote from anyone, but if you want to falsely attribute it you can credit Wong Jing). You started to see more beauty pageant contestants in the roles or girlfriends of the producers. Sammo was guilty of that one a few times. The most important text on the subject of martial arts cinema remains Hong Kong Action Cinema by Bey Logan, who has since moved on to become God of Asian action cinema commentary tracks. He wrote it about 20 years ago though, prior to the Hong Kong handover, but for the purposes of what I'm talking about that doesn't matter: Chapter 9's "Fighting Females: The Far East's Favourite Females of Fury" (alliterative bastard...) focuses specifically on this sub-genre of the 1980s through early 1990s. The book's a decade or so out of date, but there was a chapter or two in the book Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies also dedicated squarely to martial arts cinema which uses Logan's writing as a jumping off point.
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May 6, 2014 20:59
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The Heroic Trio is completely loving bonkers, but in a way that actually made me bored fairly quickly  I call it "the Swordsman II effect".
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May 6, 2014 21:05
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I've been ripping Bey Logan's Dragon Dynasty commentaries from my DVDs so I can listen to them on my MP3 player at work. I wish he had stuck with DD a little longer, I'd love to hear his commentary on Blood Brothers, Executioners from Shaolin, etc.
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May 6, 2014 21:19
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What would you guys recommend for a kung fu fan who loves kung fu flicks set in cop/triad/yakuza and ancient mainland China (i.e. Drunken Master I and II)? I've seen a bunch of Sammo, Donnie Yen, and every one of the Jackie movies considered classic. I love Tony Jaa, and the Raid was a total thrill. I also liked Master of the Flying Guillotine, Fist of Legend, all of Bruce's movies,and then Ip Man series. Any suggestions?
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May 6, 2014 23:07
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El Gallinero Gros posted:What would you guys recommend for a kung fu fan who loves kung fu flicks set in cop/triad/yakuza and ancient mainland China (i.e. Drunken Master I and II)? I've seen a bunch of Sammo, Donnie Yen, and every one of the Jackie movies considered classic. I love Tony Jaa, and the Raid was a total thrill. I also liked Master of the Flying Guillotine, Fist of Legend, all of Bruce's movies,and then Ip Man series. Any suggestions? Kung Fu movies about cops and gangsters or taking place in ancient China? Might I suggest...all of them
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May 6, 2014 23:17
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Lobok posted:I'm not saying Uwais is Jaa in any way, shape, or form, just that Jaa is a cautionary tale against saying "Lookee here, we've got our new martial arts superstar!" after some early success. Yeah, that's fine. I don't disagree. We should be able to agree, though, that Merantau-Raid-Raid 2 is a much more promising start than Ong Bak-Protector, Ong Bak 2.
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May 7, 2014 00:03
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Daryl Surat posted:As for my similarity conjecture...I don't have everything properly codified since I'm uh, making these posts from work. For instance, if you wanted to go back further from the 1980s you could certainly see King Hu's films starring Cheng Pei Pei (1966's Come Drink With Me being the most famous example, per MechaFunkGodzilla), but I don't really think of those as "martial arts" films and the dude only made a few movies at Shaw Brothers (see above). Cheng Pei Pei never really did much of note on the US side, but people might know her for playing Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. If you check out that Wing Chun movie, she's the Buddhist nun instructor lady. She's still making movies when she's not teaching ballet in Los Angeles. Very true. There was a whole generation of girls that wanted to be Jaguar Yokota. I take it you've seen GAEA Girls?
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May 7, 2014 01:02
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El Gallinero Gros posted:What would you guys recommend for a kung fu fan who loves kung fu flicks set in cop/triad/yakuza and ancient mainland China (i.e. Drunken Master I and II)? I've seen a bunch of Sammo, Donnie Yen, and every one of the Jackie movies considered classic. I love Tony Jaa, and the Raid was a total thrill. I also liked Master of the Flying Guillotine, Fist of Legend, all of Bruce's movies,and then Ip Man series. Any suggestions? No idea how much of his work you've seen, but the works of Ringo Lam are usually good "next steps" after you see what are commonly considered the "classics." Full Contact isn't quite a "martial arts" movie, but it's primo-grade "Chow Yun-Fat with guns doming gangsters and looking like the coolest dude on the block" stuff. City on Fire is often just a thing known to people as the answer to a trivia question: "where'd Quentin Tarantino get the idea for Reservoir Dogs?" But what makes Reservoir Dogs memorable isn't the storyline or the fact that they're wearing those black suits with thin ties. It's the dialogue. And in that regard, City on Fire's a different beast entirely. It's Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee again (so a good next pick after you've already seen The Killer), only this time Danny's the crook and Yun-Fat's the cop. Johnnie To's another guy worth checking out, but his movies are so numerous and vary so much that you'd be hard pressed to narrow down a set style to him. As far as some of his great gangster films, Running Out of Time and The Mission (don't laugh just because it starts with people playing DDR!) are must-see. People are really split on Fulltime Killer since it's very "genre aware" on account that the leading lady has seen all the classic action movies that English-speaking nerds who'd track down such a movie would go see, and so she'll be first in line to say "hey, this reminds me a lot of that Luc Besson movie, Leon" or whatever. PTU (Police Tactical Unit), Election (does not involve running for Student Council), and Drug War are more contemporary yakuza pieces by him which are far more serious. You'd never think this same dude would also be the guy who directed Heroic Trio and helped give Stephen Chow his big break. Not a single one of those is a martial arts movie! Since you mentioned Donnie Yen, I'm going to note that until 2005's SPL (aka Kill Zone), I thought movies in which Donnie was the star SUCKED. Turns out the dude just really shouldn't direct and probably shouldn't choreograph fights. But you pair him with Wilson Yip and Sammo Hung, and he's gold. Between SPL and Flash Point (not the firefighter porno...though I also regard that in high esteem *ahem*) that really helped modernize martial arts film fight choreography by successfully integrating the UFC MMA grappling maneuvers (which audiences now recognize as "real") with the visually engaging, background interaction-heavy martial arts action. Screw it, I'm committed to being off-topic: HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Very true. There was a whole generation of girls that wanted to be Jaguar Yokota. I take it you've seen GAEA Girls? For sure. For the better part of a year, I've been running at least one of those classic-era Japanese women's wrestling matches a week on Punchsport Pagoda's sync-viewing site. I was finally starting to run a bit low from my personal collection, so I bought about 24 DVDs worth of Crush Gals and Jumping Bomb Angels content to keep me going. The thing about GAEA Girls is that it seems incredibly cruel--and it is--but it's also exactly what Chigusa Nagayo went through as part of her training in the late 70s/early 80s. The difference is just that by the late 90s on there have been exponentially fewer potential applicants compared to her heyday, when her mega-popularity inspired thousands to try out. I've been told that what was shown in GAEA Girls pales in comparison to what Japan's national women's volleyball team was subject to in the 1960s and 1970s in order to win against their eternal rivals in the Soviet Union, but that is something I know nothing about at all. I know very little about the traditional Chinese opera troupes, but I think the analogy holds up. The influence of guys like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Chow Yun-Fat, and so on is long gone as far as inspiring today's generation to try following in their footsteps. It's too old fashioned, takes over a decade, and it basically costs you your childhood. Painted Faces is the only movie I can think of that is devoted to the experience of that training, and given that Jackie, Sammo, et al are in there playing instructors as such while child actors play themselves, I'm sure they all took lengths to accurately portray the crap they went through/inflicted upon one another. I get the feeling that people weren't rushing out to sign up after seeing it. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 05:20 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 01:46
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quote:given that Jackie, Sammo, et al are in there playing instructors as such while child actors play themselves, I'm sure they all took lengths to accurately portray the crap they went through/inflicted upon one another Oracle fucked around with this message at 04:56 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 04:53
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Daryl Surat posted:Johnnie To's another guy worth checking out, but his movies are so numerous and vary so much that you'd be hard pressed to narrow down a set style to him. As far as some of his great gangster films, Running Out of Time and The Mission (don't laugh just because it starts with people playing DDR!) are must-see. People are really split on Fulltime Killer since it's very "genre aware" on account that the leading lady has seen all the classic action movies that English-speaking nerds who'd track down such a movie would go see, and so she'll be first in line to say "hey, this reminds me a lot of that Luc Besson movie, Leon" or whatever. PTU (Police Tactical Unit), Election (does not involve running for Student Council), and Drug War are more contemporary yakuza pieces by him which are far more serious. You'd never think this same dude would also be the guy who directed Heroic Trio and helped give Stephen Chow his big break. The Mission is fantastic, it's a shame it's impossible to find on DVD and the DVD that does exist is non-anamorphic. Exiled is also great and seems like the spiritual sequel to The Mission. Also I haven't seen many Donnie Yen films pre-SPL but the one I have seen is Iron Monkey from 1993 and I thought that was wonderful. Flash Point is ok but it's really only the last 20 or so minutes with any action and up till then is fairly boring run-of-the-mill crime stuff. The end fight is really good though.
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May 7, 2014 06:00
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Wandle Cax posted:The Mission is fantastic, it's a shame it's impossible to find on DVD and the DVD that does exist is non-anamorphic. Exiled is also great and seems like the spiritual sequel to The Mission. Donnie Yen has a fairly large role in Wing Chun, a rad movie you should watch. He also composed the music for the film!
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May 7, 2014 14:15
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Neo Rasa posted:"It is also called 'Groin Skill,' or 'Gold Armour.' This is a mysterious skill of soft techniques. It is to practise the testicles."
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May 7, 2014 14:31
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Wandle Cax posted:Also I haven't seen many Donnie Yen films pre-SPL but the one I have seen is Iron Monkey from 1993 and I thought that was wonderful. Flash Point is ok but it's really only the last 20 or so minutes with any action and up till then is fairly boring run-of-the-mill crime stuff. The end fight is really good though. Oh, make no mistake: I do dig me some Iron Monkey and Wing Chun. But the key here is that Donnie Yen was not the star of those movies. He was just a guy present in them opposite the real star who he could have a swank fight with. I dug him in that capacity, like say in Butterfly and Sword (also opposite Michelle Yeoh, though that's Tony Ching-esque wirework-heavy action, which is polarizing for many) or as an opponent for Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China II and Hero (on the subject of Tony Ching-style action). But the pre-2005 movies where he was THE main guy in it? Those were some mad letdowns. Just compare Iron Monkey 2 to Iron Monkey and you'll see what I mean. At the time (drat, it's been over 15 years), I was really down on the movies he directed and also starred in...and also co-wrote...and also did the fight choreography. After stuff like Ballistic Kiss (trailer), Legend of the Wolf (trailer), and Shanghai Affairs (trailer, can I just note that the full movie always comes up before the trailer in search results and that in the case of this one, the bit with the suspenders bow is RAD?) I spent years thinking "man, gently caress this guy." He was the Steven Seagal of Asian action cinema. If you watch those trailers, you may notice some recurring elements throughout ("in this scene, I beat up everyone without a scratch, okay now in THIS scene I'm gonna rail this babe big time so MAKE SURE the camera focuses on my rear end because that's going in the trailer"). But as I check IMDB's user reviews, everyone seems to really like those movies now. Maybe the things I was hating on him for in the 1990s have since become the de facto way to film action scenes in the 2010s. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 14:56
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Daryl Surat posted:Oh, make no mistake: I do dig me some Iron Monkey and Wing Chun. But the key here is that Donnie Yen was not the star of those movies. He was just a guy present in them opposite the real star who he could have a swank fight with. I dug him in that capacity, like say in Butterfly and Sword (also opposite Michelle Yeoh, though that's Tony Ching-esque wirework-heavy action, which is polarizing for many) or as an opponent for Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China II and Hero (on the subject of Tony Ching-style action). But the pre-2005 movies where he was THE main guy in it? Those were some mad letdowns. Just compare Iron Monkey 2 to Iron Monkey and you'll see what I mean. Donnie Yen is a second rate leading man and a third rate everything else, but he was at least keeping the torch alive in the wake of Jackie Chan and Jet Li's careers slowing down.
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May 7, 2014 15:01
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Anyone here ever see Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain? Is it any good?
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May 7, 2014 15:03
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Anyone here ever see Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain? Is it any good? I recall rather liking it. It's a Tsui Hark helmed wuxia of the same vintage as A Chinese Ghost Story. One thing that stood out to me were lots of special effects via painting on the frame, which I tend to find charming - so lots of laser beams and cartoon energy bats. It also has a man using his eyebrows as handcuffs and a wise giant chained to a rock by a hellmouth. That being said, I think I might prefer Wong Jing's early 90s rip-off Kung Fu Cult Master. They have similarly inscrutable backstories but the latter has color coded ninjas and a giant decapitation machine. Green Snake is another weird Tsui Hark wuxia worth seeking out, and (arguably) fulfills the earlier request for HK films with female leads. vvv SALT CURES HAM posted:Pretty much anything with Tsui Hark involved is gonna be good times, honestly. Double Team and Knock Off are both pretty astounding in their oddness and watchability. moller fucked around with this message at 17:19 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 17:11
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Pretty much anything with Tsui Hark involved is gonna be good times, honestly.
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May 7, 2014 17:13
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SALT CURES HAM posted:Pretty much anything with Tsui Hark involved is gonna be good times, honestly. I thought The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate was a giant boring mess, especially baffling considering it was a remake of his own far superior movie that he made 20 years before (which was itself a remake of a 1967 King Hu movie).
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May 7, 2014 17:29
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Yeah, the key phrase there is "pretty much." He's made some kinda terrible movies, but most of the time he's on his game, and when he's on his game he kicks rear end. e: He's also pretty much responsible for the entire heroic bloodshed genre by way of producing A Better Tomorrow and The Killer, so I give him a lot of credit that I possibly shouldn't because I'm a huge huge whore for that genre. 
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May 7, 2014 17:54
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moller posted:I recall rather liking it. It's a Tsui Hark helmed wuxia of the same vintage as A Chinese Ghost Story. One thing that stood out to me were lots of special effects via painting on the frame, which I tend to find charming - so lots of laser beams and cartoon energy bats. It also has a man using his eyebrows as handcuffs and a wise giant chained to a rock by a hellmouth. Honestly it does get a bad rap but I agree, I think Knock Off is brilliant. I haven't seen anything like the creativity and inventiveness of the action sequences in any other western movie. The weird wheelbarrow race, the battle at a fruit storage warehouse, and especially the fight on top of a moving truck with some kind of bamboo scaffold caught on the front, are delightful to watch. The plot on paper sounds absolutely horrendous but it does seem to work in a silly kind of way. All (six) of Van Damme's movies with HK directors are pretty good actually. Hard Target is the best of course but Knock Off is very entertaining.
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May 8, 2014 07:32
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I think I'm the only person in the world who likes or even remembers Tsui Harks Seven Swords from 2005. While it's got it's flaws there's some gorgeous moments. Double Team also gave us the line "Men are strong, Jack, but Tigers...are stronger"
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May 9, 2014 05:18
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The best/worst thing about Master of the Flying Guillotine is... I can't do it justice with words.  It's so drat goofy and clueless that I'm honestly not sure if it's racist anymore.
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May 11, 2014 14:24
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SALT CURES HAM posted:The best/worst thing about Master of the Flying Guillotine is... I can't do it justice with words.
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May 11, 2014 21:11
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I don't think you realized what I was pointing out there. Don't get me wrong, the movie's dope as hell and probably my favorite classic martial-arts movie I've seen so far, but god drat they just did not give a single gently caress at all about any kind of cultural sensitivity, did they? (For bonus points, the Japanese fighter also cheats in the actual tournament.) SALT CURES HAM fucked around with this message at 21:17 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 21:14
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I don't think they had a choice with the limited budget to get an actual Indian guy to play that part. And without blackface Chinese guy we would never have Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2. My favorite part of MotFG is the fact that the Japanese samurai is played by the guy who played Black Betty in Kung Pow: Enter The Fist.
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May 12, 2014 00:44
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SALT CURES HAM posted:I don't think you realized what I was pointing out there. Don't get me wrong, the movie's dope as hell and probably my favorite classic martial-arts movie I've seen so far, but god drat they just did not give a single gently caress at all about any kind of cultural sensitivity, did they? At the risk of derailing, the way the film handles race makes for an interesting discussion all on its own anyway, since while it's pretty easy for us Americans to find it revolting, that sort of minstrelsy doesn't offend nearly as much outside of America. For instance, Wendy van Dijk is a famous Dutch comedian who actually still performs in yellowface and blackface; she released a movie featuring her famous yellowface character as recently as last year! Boinks posted:I don't think they had a choice with the limited budget to get an actual Indian guy to play that part. And without blackface Chinese guy we would never have Dhalsim from Street Fighter 2.
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May 14, 2014 09:01
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I would say "hilarious" more than "revolting," honestly. It's so obviously not coming from a place of hate with the Indian guy, to the point where it's honestly just really goofy. And frankly I'm pretty okay with them making GBS threads on the Japanese given the history between Japan and China. If anyone's allowed to do it, it's them.
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May 14, 2014 09:15
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CloseFriend posted:No, I'm cognizant of it; I was mostly just agreeing with you. I find the film hard to fault for such an obvious invocation of brownface. Almost every notable fighting game franchise had a Bruce knockoff at some point. Fei Long, Marshall Law, Liu Kang, Kim Dragon, Maxi, etc.... poo poo, they even made Johnny Cage a JKD practitioner when they experimented with having unique specific styles in Mortal Kombat:Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Deception.
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May 14, 2014 12:26
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Is it bad that I kinda like Shogun Assassin better than the actual Lone Wolf and Cub movies? Between the awesome synth score, the faster pace, and the campy English dubbing, it just appeals to me more. Like, I know that the LWaC movies are better but for some reason I just have a lot more fun watching Shogun Assassin.
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May 17, 2014 22:31
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Picked up some DVDs at the dirt mall this weekend: Ashes of Time Redux $2 - A Wong Kar Wai film Treasure Hunt $2 - Early Chow Yun Fat film co-staring Gordon Liu Mr. Nice Guy $3 sealed - Jackie Chan Dragon Heat $7 sealed - Dragon Dynasty release/ Sammo Hung, Maggie Q I haven't seen any of these yet so I'm looking forward to checking them out. On that note I now have 43/58 Dragon Dynasty releases 
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May 18, 2014 01:39
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Okay. Seriously: how many 'flying guillotine' movies are there? Because the one I've seen doesn't seem to be the same one most people talk about.
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May 18, 2014 05:48
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There's a shitload of flying guillotine movies. All but maybe one are ripoffs of the one we're talking about, since if there's one thing HK cinema loves, it's bandwagons. e: Here's a scene from the one we're talking about : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGkn8TFaySg
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May 18, 2014 07:14
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Can anyone recommend some martial arts movies that are about Japanese martial arts without including samurai? I kind of like the "hard" Okinawa style on film better than flowing/soft/internal Chinese styles. That's not to say these movies don't kick rear end! I think one of the Ip Man he went against Japan and hosed up some Karate dudes. Firstborn fucked around with this message at 08:04 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 07:56
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Speleothing posted:Okay. Seriously: how many 'flying guillotine' movies are there? Because the one I've seen doesn't seem to be the same one most people talk about. A good one. The sequel to the good one. Watch Master of the Flying Guillotine as soon as possible. It's my favorite film in this thread's entire purview.
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May 18, 2014 08:09
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Firstborn posted:Can anyone recommend some martial arts movies that are about Japanese martial arts without including samurai? I kind of like the "hard" Okinawa style on film better than flowing/soft/internal Chinese styles. That's not to say these movies don't kick rear end! The Street Fighter is the most well-known by far. However, there's also the Masutatsu Oyama trilogy (Karate Bullfighter, Karate Bearfighter, Karate for Life), and the Sanshiro Sugata movies by Kurosawa, off the top of my head.
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May 18, 2014 21:46
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I can also recommend the Japanese TV series Fight! Dragon, starring Yasuaki Kurata, who has had some memorable roles playing "noble" antagonists in HK films like Heroes of the East and Fist of Legend. It is basically a tokusatsu show with over-the-top street fights instead of giant monsters. Here's the opening.
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May 19, 2014 00:09
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 02:02 |
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SALT CURES HAM posted:The Street Fighter is the most well-known by far. However, there's also the Masutatsu Oyama trilogy (Karate Bullfighter, Karate Bearfighter, Karate for Life), and the Sanshiro Sugata movies by Kurosawa, off the top of my head.
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May 23, 2014 11:48
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