Nic Tse Tagged Articles at Cinematical

On the strength of an 11-minute trailer that earned a standing ovation at Cannes, as well as the chaotic story of its distribution here -- rights were snatched up by The Weinstein Company, only to be dropped after a re-edit and re-naming; Warner Independent Pictures ended up with the film -- Chen Kaige's The Promise had developed considerable buzz in the US. Set to open here early next month, it’s now one of the handful of jarringly commercial, big-budget films showing at the Tribeca Film Festival. Unfortunately, however, the movie fails to live up to either its buzz or the visual potential hinted at in that Cannes trailer.

The Promise is set in a fantastic land, in which gods and men live side-by-side, and giant, color-coded armies battle for dominance. The film is dominated by set-piece combat scenes, none of which adhere to normal rules of physics; each features reams and reams of billowing fabric, movements of impossible grace, and long chases across whatever lovely obstacles present themselves, from trees and rooftops to human-sized birdcages and craggy landscapes. The plot, as you might expect, is of little consequence, serving primarily as an excuse for those battles and other CGI-enhanced scenes of dramatic beauty. Such as it is, however, the plot revolves are Quingcheng (Cecilia Cheung), a woman who, as a young girl, made an unfortunate promise to a goddess, accepting endless devotion and wealth in exchange for the inability to find and keep a true love. Inevitably, she falls in love with a man who kills for her, but because of circumstances and the man’s hidden face, she believes her rescuer to be the fabled Master of the Crimson Armor (Hiroyuki Sanada), when in fact it is his slave (Jang Dong-Kun). Needless to say, great dramatic sacrifices are made, loves are lost, and lives are changed, all in gorgeous ways.

Bits and pieces for a lovely Tuesday:

• Another Sundance success, Patricia Foulkrod's The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends, has scored a theatrical run, this one thanks to Focus Features. Foulkrod's film examines the lives of six soldiers fighting in Iraq, from "recruitment and training" through "their experiences in combat, coming home and struggling to reintegrate into society." It sounds profoundly depressing, and is expected to hit theaters this fall.

• If Jessica Simpson really is in the running for all the roles we've been hearing about lately, she's got an awfully busy couple of years ahead of her. And today, there's another one -- according to an interview Simpson recently gave MTV, she's had meetings with Sony personnel about playing Lucy Ewing in the Dallas movie. If that idea frightens you, consider this: Lindsay Lohan is also interested in the part, so it's really a question choosing the lesser of two evils.

• Thanks to New Line, yet another magician movie -- that's three, if you're counting -- is now in the works: the studio has picked up the rights to a spec script called Burt Dickenson: The Most Powerful Magician on Planet Earth. Taking a page from The Prestige, this one is also about rival magicians, only they're in modern-day Vegas rather than Victorian England, and one of their partners dies early-on, leaving his ex to "find a way to rediscover his love for magic." And it's a hilarious comedy. Actually, apart from the magicians, it's not like The Prestige at all.
  

• The Weinstein Company has acquired the English-speaking-territories distribution rights (whew) for Wilson Yip's Chinese-language martial arts thriller, Dragon Tiger Gate. Based on a comic book, the movie "follows three young Chinese martial arts masters who emerge from the back streets of Hong Kong to help the powerless fight injustice" and stars the outrageously pretty Nicholas Tse, among others. While this chance to see the film on a big screen normally would be great news for American lovers of Asian film, given the TWC Promise debacle, God only knows what's going to happen with this one.