Meyers, Mitchell, Chow and Yeoh Save the Children
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Casting, Newsstand, Cinematical Indie
The names in the title of this post kinda sound like they're from some sort of funky international law firm or something, don't they? Or maybe, instead of a law firm, a relief agency for orphaned children specializing in Asia? That would actually make more sense considering the true nature of this post. What the heck am I talking about? Glad you asked.According to Production Weekly, Jonathan Rhys Meyers (of Bend It Like Beckham and the underrated Ang Lee film Ride With The Devil), Radha Mitchell (of High Art and Man on Fire), master of swords and two-handed pistol shooting Chow Yun Fat and former Chow co-star Michelle Yeoh are booked to be in the period drama The Children of Huang Shi for director Roger Spottiswoode.
The film, which tells the story of young British Journalist Gregg Hogg (played by Myers) who saves a group of orphaned children during the 1937 Japanese invasion of China by taking them on a 1000 mile journey to safety, is being written by Jane Hawksley. Mitchell will play the brave Australian nurse who helps Hogg save the children.
This new film covers similar ground explored before by Steven Spielberg in his film Empire of the Sun . In that film, a very young and pre-Batman Begins, Christian Bale is forced to flee his home when the Japanese invade China. He ends up separated from his parents and living at an abandoned airfield with other refugees -- including John Malkovich, Joe Pantoliano and a young Ben Stiller in one of his first movie roles . Empire of the Sun is a great movie that if you haven't seen lately, or at all, deserves a look.
If The Children of Huang Shi, which while obviously dealing with similar subject matter tells a different story, turns out to be half as good as Empire of the Sun, I will definitely be interested in seeing it. Even if Chow Yun Fat doesn't fly through the air, pistols blazing away in both hands, taking out bad guys.
Filming on The Children of Huang Shi is expected to begin mid-November in China with production moving later to Australia.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-29-2006 @ 12:16AM
EatingPie said...
Some thoughts on Empire of the Sun, and maybe some spoiler action...
The book was semi-autobiographical, written by JG Ballard. Many of his novels explore the idea of alienation, and often end with the character choosing total separation / isolation from society. I understood where this came from after reading Empire of the Sun.
The Spielberg film is actually a shocking tragedy in my mind because it had the ending that SHOULD have happened in real life. It threw into sharp relief the (more accurate) devestation the prison camp had on Ballard's life, and emphasized the disassociation and pain of the book's ending.
-Pie
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