Wilson Yip Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Subtitle of the Week: "My kung fu skills aren't too bad, eh?" -- Donnie Yen in Ip Man.

This week's edition of Asian Cinema Scene includes capsule reviews of films that were recently released on DVD in Asia.

Departures Takes Off: Yojiro Takita's drama Departures, the Academy Award winner for Best Foreign-Language Film, was a popular success during its initial run in Japan last fall. It resurged in the wake of the Oscar victory, ascending to the top of the charts. Departures also swept the 32nd Annual Japanese Academy Awards two days before the Oscars. The director's follow-up film, Sanpei the Fisher Boy, is due for release later this month. [Sources: Screen Daily; Japan Times; Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow; Nippon Cinema.]

Ip Man Inspires: Biopics are always better with martial arts, aren't they? Highly respected Wing Chun master Ip Man (Donnie Yen) lives a comfortable life in Fo Shan, China, but after the Japanese invade in 1937, he is reduced to living with his wife and young son in abject poverty. He works humbly alongside his fellow countrymen in a coal factory until he is forced to use his martial arts skills to defend his country's honor against the Japanese.

Teaming again with director Wilson Yip (SPL, Flash Point), Yen is perfectly suited to play the stoic, peaceful man who refused to buckle under to imperial rule. Simon Yam plays a factory owner and Hiroyuki Ikeuchi embodies General Miura. The great Sammo Hung choreographed the action scenes, which are pretty terrific. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Ip Man eventually counted Bruce Lee among his students. (Trailer embedded below.)

After the jump: Brief looks at Beast Stalker and Legendary Assassin -- plus trailer!

The Hong Kong film industry, renowned for producing action pictures with a unique blend of outrageous antics, has been enjoying a small resurgence of late. On the modern action side, Wilson Yip's SPL (retitled Kill Zone for the US market) kicked things into high gear in the fall of 2005, and more recently, Yip's Flash Point and Benny Chan's Invisible Target got fanboys like myself excited when they played at TIFF and Fantastic Fest last fall.

In between those films, Dennis Law's Fatal Contact came out in October 2006, and this week Dragon Dynasty makes it available on Region 1 DVD. Unlike those other films, the hero of Fatal Contact is not a police officer but a kung fu champion from Mainland China named Kong (Wu Jing, AKA Jacky Wu Jing, a villain in both SPL and invisible Target). His spectacular performance with a traveling opera company brings him to the attention of the criminals that run the underground boxing scene in Hong Kong. At the urging of a fetching, gold-digging co-worker (Miki Yeung), Kong is drawn ever deeper into a violent world ruled by bosses who gamble millions of dollars on every match.

Very much a story told in the traditional manner, with generous doses of broad humor, social drama and unrequited yearning, Fatal Contact succeeds by delivering a satisfying quotient of increasingly brutal fight scenes. As usual, Wu Jing is a rocket-fueled, unstoppable field of energy. Also notable is Ronald Cheng, a singer turned actor who looks pretty sharp as a fighter in the "street hustling sidekick" role. For good measure, he also performs a song over the closing credits.

Dragon Dynasty's two-disk edition includes an audio commentary by director Law with Bey Logan, four interviews, and a "behind the scenes" feature.

Also out this week is Ryuichi Hiroki's Vibrator, which won acclaim on the festival circuit a couple of years ago. It's a road drama about an alcoholic freelance writer (Shinobu Terajima); she's a woman "on the edge of madness, despair and finally love," in the words of Mark Schilling, writing in The Japan Times. The DVD is from Kino Video.

Do you want to look forward or backward? Out on DVD this week are two Japanese films separated by more than half a century. Animation director Satoshi Kon first made his mark with Perfect Blue (1997), a trippy journey into a pop singer's psyche that transcended time and space. He reversed course with Millennium Actress (2001), which crossed decades to tell the story of of a reclusive movie star, and slid into the mainstream with the much more straightforward Tokyo Godfathers (2003) before returning to more familiar territory with the made for television multi-episode series Paranoia Agent (2003).

His most recent film, Paprika, is a "visually rich tale," wrote Kim Voynar, "about a group of private scientists at a research facility who have invented a device called the DC Mini that allows 'dream detectives' to enter other people's dreams." The DVD includes a "making of" documentary, several featurettes and a filmmaker commentary.

Is it possible to summarize the career of Akira Kurosawa? Suffice it to say that his 1948 noir Drunken Angel was his first step into personal filmmaking and his first collaboration with the great actor Toshirô Mifune. As is their custom, The Criterion Collection has produced a DVD that features a new, restored high definition transfer, audio commentary by Japanese film expert Donald Richie, a "making of" documentary, a new "video piece" on the challenges that faced Kurosawa, and more.

Quite frankly, Wilson Yip's Dragon Tiger Gate is an unholy mess that tries to pretend 40-something Donnie Yen is about half his age -- and that's just the starting point for the foolishness unleashed. It could be argued that the action and the dramatics are intended to be over the top, since it's based on a popular manga, but I think that's probably insulting to the source material, which I haven't read. If you're a glutton for punishment -- or just a sucker for any kind of martial arts action and/or pretty boys Nicholas Tse and Shawn Yue -- you might like this more than I did. The DVD includes an audio commentary by Ric Meyers, a "making of" featurette and deleted scenes.

The best possible signpost to what kind of movie you're in for comes early in Flash Point, when Donnie Yen's hard-bitten cop Jun Ma is standing before the equivalent of Internal Affairs or some other review board. Apparently, one of Jun's more recent busts resulted in a perp with " ... three fractured ribs, a broken hip ... and anosmia. ..." It only took a second to translate the subtitled medical jargon and have it sink in: Donnie Yen hits melonfarmers so hard he slaps the very sense of smell out of their heads.

And after seeing Yen in action, you believe that; hell, you're amazed anyone he slugs even has a nervous system left. Yen choreographed the action in Flash Point for director Wilson Yip, and the Toronto Midnight Madness premier of Flash Point saw Midnight Madness program head Colin Geddes reading an e-mailed manifesto from Yen about how he's enthusiastically moving towards using 'Mixed Martial Arts" for better, stronger, faster fight scenes. I don't know what, exactly, 'Mixed Martial Arts" means, but having seen it, I know I like it. A lot.

Yen's one of a group of cops trying to take down a bloodthirsty band of Vietnamese 'brothers' led by crazy-mean Tony (Colin Chow) with the brutal-crazy Tiger (Xing Yu) as their enforcer in pre-handover Hong Kong; his partner Wilson (Louis Koo) is undercover with the group already. And the fun of Flash Point isn't in the plot, which is just a return to the classic Hong Kong action Woo-niverse of cops and crooks and conflicted undercover agents. It's in the fighting.

China has been saved by an unlikely hero. Boston-bred Donnie Yen is the star of Flash Point, which opened wide on 500 screens and earned a cool $1.9 million, according to Variety Asia Online. In the US, that total would be a disaster, but it "thrilled" Virginia Leung, a senior distribution manager quoted in the story. The weekend earnings would jump the film to #19 on Box Office Mojo's list for the year so far. From all appearances an insane action picture made with the trademarked hyper-kinetic Hong Kong style, Flash Point will play in the Midnight Madness section at the upcoming Toronto film festival. Yen and director Wilson Yip will team again for Painted Skin, due to start filming later this year.

In South Korea, as Monica Bartyzel informed us earlier this week, monster movie D-War just missed beating the record-setting opening five-day numbers established by another monster flick, The Host. That builds on the success of another more serious local film, May 18, which opened the previous week and is based on the massacre in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980.

Other countries in Asia have been infected by Transformers fever, proving once again that bad taste recognizes no national boundaries. As reported by Variety Asia Online, Transformers opened this past Saturday on 600 screens and took more than $5 million from the hard-working people of Japan. No doubt rubbing his hands together in evil glee, the distributor estimates the film will top out at $59 million. Smaller in populace but no less subservient than anyone else in the world to the lure of a big dumb Hollywood action movie, Malaysians made Transformers the biggest film in local history, racking up more than $5 million over five weeks, while Michael Bay's baby has become the biggest non-sequel in Singapore box office history.

Start injecting caffeine into your veins, boys and girls, because the first eight Midnight Madness titles have been revealed for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. The biggest name title has got to be George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, in which the esteemed documenter of the dead goes back to his roots and tells a zombie origin story. Produced independently, Romero follows a kid named Jason (Joshua Close), who "obsessively films the madness" all around him as the dead return to life. I liked Land of the Dead, but I'd love to see what Romero does without studio interference.

Stuart Gordon is the other name director in the program and he's represented by Stuck. Not a traditional horror film, it's inspired by a true incident in which a nurse in Fort Worth, Texas (not far from where I lived at the time) struck a homeless man, drove home, parked in her garage, went to bed, and patiently waited until morning before calling the cops -- all with the hapless, bleeding man stuck in her windshield. Gordon has fictionalized the story, added some black humor, and cast Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. Again, this sounds like it could be deadly good.

Also screening: Wilson Yip's Hong Kong action pic Flashpoint, starring Donnie Yen; highly-praised Japanese superhero comedy Dainipponjin; Xavier Gens' blood-soaked thriller Frontière(s); French "madwoman attacks trapped pregnant woman" suspense flick À l'intérieur; futuristic Japanese animated action film Vexille; and British gore-fest The Devil's Chair. Complete descriptions are available at the festival's site; you can also follow along with programmer Colin Geddes' blog. Two more titles are yet to be announced for Midnight Madness, which kicks off Friday, September 7.

[ Via Twitch ]

Born in China but raised in Boston, Donnie Yen became a martial arts prodigy at a young age. Returning to China to continue his training, he was soon drafted into the movie business and made his mark during the halcyon age of Hong Kong action flicks (late 80s to early 90s). His Hollywood career hasn't gone beyond supporting roles (Highlander: Endgame, Shanghai Knights) but Western audiences became more familiar with him thanks to Zhang Yimou's Hero, in which Yen dueled Jet Li to the death. Recently Yen completed a string of three films with Hong Kong director Wilson Yip: the sensational Kill Zone, the oft-silly Dragon Tiger Gate and Flashpoint, which is due for release in Asia next month. Yen and Yip will team up again for the just-announced Painted Skin.

Painted Skin is notable on a couple of fronts. It's said to be the "first movie collaboration between filmmakers in Singapore and China," according to Channel NewsAsia; Singapore actor Qi Yu Wu has already been lined up to co-star. And it's one of the first Mainland China productions to feature a supernatural theme: the story revolves around a love/hate relationship between a ghostly vixen and a group of humans. Variety notes that "ghosts feature prominently in Chinese literature, but rarely make it to the big screen. Censors have long frowned on the genre for fear it will upset the masses." 'Upsetting the masses' is another way of saying that "secret societies based on arcane beliefs have posed threats to China's power structure for centuries," in the view of author Stefan Hammond, who wrote a fascinating article on the subject a few years ago. In any event, though the female lead has yet to be cast, filming for Painted Skin is expected to begin later this year or early next, with both Wilson Yip and Andy Chin set to direct. With tons of digital effects planned, Yen's new Skin may not make it onto screens until late 2008.

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.