Hard Boiled Tagged Articles at Cinematical

What do celebrities really know about movies? Samuel L. Jackson, for one, demonstrates a good knowledge of recent Asian cinema with his selection of "favorite 10 New Classic Asian Films" from the past 25 years for Entertainment Weekly. The best part? He picks the type of popcorn action flicks that got me interested in Asian films in the first place.

A couple of his selections are easy to understand: John Woo's Hard Boiled and Ringo Lam's City on Fire are definite guns 'n' gangsters classics of late 80s / early 90s Hong Kong cinema. (Quentin Tarantino blatantly stole borrowed from the latter for Reservoir Dogs.) Jackson also includes the great Infernal Affairs trilogy, directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, a high water mark from 2002 / 2003 and later remade into the Academy Award-winning The Departed.

His Korean picks are Park Chan-Wook's diabolical, masterful Oldboy and the visually splendid, yet somewhat shallow Duelist, from 2005. Cut from the same cloth, he also endorsed Japanese swordplay dazzler Azumi by director Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train), and demonstrated his fondness for strong directors by selecting two films by Takashi Miike, the well-known, chilling horror flick Audition and the much less known Yakuza pic Family, which I confess I haven't seen.

Frank Miller's place in comic book history is already secure, but these days, he's aiming to leave a sizable IMDB entry too. Miller revealed exclusively to MTV Movies that
not only is there renewed interest in a film adaptation of his comic miniseries Hard Boiled, but that he's hoping to direct it himself. "We're talking about [it]. I've got a really unusual way I want to do it."

After co-directing Sin City, and helming The Spirit himself, he's officially caught the bug. "I'm in love with directing. I've found a way to expand my career. Comics and directing are really two sides of the same coin. That's what Robert Rodriguez taught me ... good drama is good drama."

Hard Boiled was originally published in 1990 by Dark Horse, and is one of the few Miller comics out there that the man himself didn't illustrate. It is about a humble insurance investigator named Carl Seitz, who unexpectedly discovers that he's a cyborg assassin named Nixon. Though psychotic, he's also heralded as the savior of the robot race. It was remarkably violent for its day -- and still is. At one point, it was in development to be directed by David Fincher, and starring Nicolas Cage.

People are really hating on Miller for this swerve in his career, but frankly, I think it's pretty cool. I always admire anyone who can transition from one field to another -- and it is always exciting when an author gets to helm their own work. Alan Moore should have totally gone this route.

It made perfect sense: John Woo's return to Chinese-language cinema was to star Chow Yun-Fat, who last collaborated with the director on the Hong Kong action classic Hard Boiled. The new film (or films, as it might be too long for just one), titled The Battle of Red Cliff, is an historical war epic set in the year 208, and Chow was to play Zhou Yu, the chief strategist for the Kingdom of Wu. But Chow has just walked off the production, which has already begun shooting, and the actor and the producers have different interpretations of why he has left so abruptly.

According to Chow, his departure was due to his inability to prepare for the role; he claims he only last week received the script. Producer Terence Chang, on the other hand, says that Chow's demands were too high and that he walked because he didn't get what he wanted. The script handed to Chow last week was merely a revision to one the actor had been given last year. Another topic of conflict is Chow's salary. According to the actor, he took a pay cut and was being paid in installments. Chang says the actor was to be paid $5 million plus royalties.

Chow also pointed out that his contract followed the model he uses on Hollywood films and implied that Red Cliff's producers need to get used to the way things are done in Hollywood. As if abandoning the director who made him an international star wasn't enough, he had to go and confirm that he's now too important to go back to his roots. Of course, anyone familiar with Bulletproof Monk and Anna and the King can attest to Chow's true significance to Hollywood's audiences. Chow is now the third big name to be removed from Red Cliff; previously Ken Watanabe and Tony Leung were also involved, but each dropped out for different reasons. Anyway, if you were really dying to see another collaboration between Woo and Chow, there's always the new video game Stranglehold, which hits stores this summer.