The Promise Tagged Articles at Cinematical

According to Asian film website MonkeyPeaches, a large group of American studio representatives were recently invited to the set of Zhang Yimou's latest epic, The City of Golden Armor (MP's extensive archive of stories on the film is here). In addition to representatives of eight American distributors, Zhang's guests included Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg -- this, my friends, is a hard freaking sell.

Press reports in China suggest that sales of high-profile Chinese action-romance films for American distribution -- sales that had, in the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, been fairly easy to broker -- are suffering because of the debacle surrounding Chen Kaige's The Promise. The experience of The Weinstein Company, which bought the rights the the movie based on its Cannes trailer only to decide the finished product wasn't strong enough for a wide release, has  apparently given American companies cold feet about the Chinese industry in general. In response, Zhang is opening his set up to those companies, in an effort to both sell his film and, one imagines, re-energize the market.

It seems as if Zhang is setting his film up as a sort of litmus test to see if Crouching Tiger and Hero-style films can still succeed here; it'll be fascinating to see if and when The City of Golden Armor sells, and how well it does in a possible American release.

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.

Hey Karina and Chris--

While I agree with both of you that the desperate desire on the part of Tribeca's organizers to have A Really Big Festival! has resulted in the presence of some truly horrible movies, I have to say that doesn't (at least for me) make the good -- and even great -- films at the festival any less worthwhile. Granted, it's risky as hell to just blindly buy tickets to anything (particularly, as Karina pointed out, to features), but if attendees choose carefully, they can create a pretty strong week of film-going.

Like Karina, I've seen some crap, but have also seen some very good films. Even today, more than a week after I first saw it, I'm still over the moon about Once in a Lifetime, the New York Cosmos documentary that made me so damn happy it might have become one of my favorite films ever, not just of the festival. And, as a Soviet and Russian history nerd, I've really enjoyed Freedom's Fury and Hammer and Tickle, which offer very different looks at the Eastern Bloc. Freedom's Fury is built around the 1956 Olympic semi-final water polo game between Hungary and the USSR, but is most valuable as a lesson on the 1956 Hungarian revolution; Hammer and Tickle, meanwhile, explores the history of dissent under Soviet rule through jokes. The latter is not an entirely successful film but the history is fascinating, if you're into that sort of thing. In addition, 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep, which details the difficult past and present of the Pamir Kirghiz people, is a pretty wonderful film, sure enough of its approach and subject matter to have a charming, gangly confidence that is all too rare in film, documentary or otherwise.

When I was in high school, there was this kid named Frank that everyone thought looked exactly like me. Or maybe they thought I looked like him. Regardless, on a daily basis, I would pass people in the hall who would say, "Hey Frank!" or "You coming out tonight Frank?" See, he was much cooler than I was and so, for the brief moments where I was him, I felt as if I had this completely different life. A life that gave me a beautiful girlfriend and a ton of friends. A life that was the exact opposite of mine. Thanks to Frank, I actually had a life.

Whether we want to or not, there comes a time when we all question our own identities. In my case, after being recognized as someone else and enjoying it, I wondered if there was more to life than hiding in the corner of math class and day-dreaming. Sometimes identity will come into question when faced with a life-altering decision. Or, perhaps, when you're placed into a very unfamiliar situation.

By now, you've probably guessed that the following films all share an underlying theme of identity.  Who are we? Why are we here? What is it were supposed to do? Should we choose destiny or does destiny choose us? I guess, sometimes, it's best that we try and become someone else, if only to figure out who we really are. Welcome to this week's Trailer Park...

If ever a film needed a group hug, it's Chen Kaige's The Promise. The film - China's biggest budget film ever - has really been through the wringer over the past several months. Way back at Cannes last year, the Weinsteins acquired the film.  The poor film was hijacked by pirates, who sold it pay-per-view on a remote television station. Since then it's been re-edited, renamed, and released in a longer version (for the Oscars) and a shorter version (for the Golden Globes), and then subsequently freed up by the Weinsteins, who had a disagreement with Kaige and producer  Etchie Stroh over their handling and distribution plan for the film. Now, at long last, acoording to indieWIRE, the film has found a new home at Warner Independent Pictures, so it can relax, take a hot bath and a nap, and warm its feet up by the cozy fire of better (hopefully more expansive) distribution.

The film which took nearly three years to shoot, has demolished box office records in China. If you can't wait to see the full version, you can watch the smashing 11 minute trailer.

We've posted a lot here about Chen Kaige's new film, The Promise. First the long trailer sent Cannes into an early frenzy, and then the completed film set box office records in China. Now, however, things have started to go a bit south. Recut, retitled, and dumped by the Weinstein Company, the film is suddenly without North American distribution. And, most disappointingly, it might not actually be very good - at least, that is, if today's Hollywood Reporter is anything to go on.

According to Kirk Honeycutt's review, the effects in the film - which is being viewed by its producers as a Hero/ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon spectacle - are so bad as to be distracting. That's trouble, if it's true. We're so spoiled now by the magicians who can make a giant ape so convincing that people actually think it deserves an acting award that anything less seems "exceptionally fake," which is how Honeycutt describes the CG work in The Promise.

Man. I really, really hope he's wrong - I was really looking forward to this one. Have any of you readers been lucky enough to see the film in LA? Care to share your thoughts?

Just a few days ago, it was announced that the Weinstein Company would release Chen Kaige's massive Chinese hit The Promise with (approved) cuts and a (less approved) name change. Apparently there were a few other disagreements as well, and it's been agreed that, following the one-week academy qualify run in LA, producer Etchie Stroh will begin meeting with other companies to find a new North American distributor.

As previously stated, the cuts made to the film are not a problem - in fact, the shorter version will probably be seen by most of the world, outside of the Asian territories where it has already been released - but the Weinsteins' title (Master of the Crimson Armor) was, as was their general approach to distribution of the film. Firstly, Kaige and others involved in making the film were concerned that the new title "emphasized the movie's male-oriented martial arts aspects at the expense of its other qualities," including lots and lots of romance. Secondly, Kaige and Stroh felt that their film deserved a wide release, much like the one granted Hero, which Miramax opened in over 2000 theaters nationwide in 2004. The Weinsteins, on the other hand, favored a more limited release.

In the end, they were unable to come to an agreement, and the parting seems to have been amicable. As long as the film finds some sort of distribution here, it probably doesn't matter too much who is in charge - realistically, a wide release is probably going to be a reach, no matter who ends up with the rights.

First it broke Chinese box office records; then, it was chopped up and disseminated on television by pirates. Now, Chen Kaige's The Promise has been shortened and retitled by its US distributor, The Weinstein Company. Here's how it breaks down: the 121 minute version, still called The Promise, will serve as China's official entry for the foreign-language Academy Award. Then there's Master of the Crimson Armor, which opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday for a one-week awards qualifying run; this essentially the same film, except it's 24 minutes shorter – and, it's been nominated for a Golden Globe. Harvey Weinstein, who earned himself the nickname Harvey Scissorhands back in the mid-90s for requiring his directors to make harsh, unwanted cuts, decided that in its original incarnation, The Promise was too slow to play in Peoria. "Harvey looked at the movie and conveyed certain concerns about how it would play with Western audiences," said Ernest "Etchie" Stroh, Armor's sales rep. "I had almost identical feelings and took these to Kaige."

Interestingly, Stroh says the cuts were performed by Kaige himself, and under the opposite of duress. "There is an explicit clause that says Chen Kaige has final cut. This is definitely his movie. Weinstein Co. came with problems and offered solutions." And Chen backs up that version of events. "Western audiences may not have the same patience as Asians. What we have now looks more of an action movie, but I think the soul of the movie is still there. Harvey sent people to help with things like the subtitles, and I participated all the way."

The Promise, Chen Kaige's gorgeous fantasy epic (remember the trailer?) and also China's official Oscar entry, easily broke the Chinese opening weekend records when it was released last week. The film's four-day total of £5.2 million outdistanced the previous record (set by Kung-Fu Hustle) by almost a full £1 million, and the first week total is also expected to set a record.

The film, which took nearly three years to shoot is, with its cost of £24 million, the most expensive Chinese film ever made. It is one of the nominees for the best foreign film Golden Globe Award, and must be considered one of the films with a legitimate shot at an Oscar nom as well, if only because of the status of its director. Unfortunately, the US release is currently slated for some vague time next spring (by which point a region 0 DVD will be widely available), so we won't know for month and months if it actually deserves any of this regard.