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Just as fans of American action movies should be readying themselves for the explosionpalooza that will surely be Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, which brings together every big-name, bad-guy shooter of the last 20 years, so should fans of Hong Kong martial arts flicks begin bracing themselves in anticipation of the unholy ass-kicking that will be on display in Teddy Chan's upcoming film Bodyguards and Assassins. It tells the story of a group of (mostly undercover) bodyguards who must protect the revolutionary political leader Sun Yat-sen from an onslaught of highly trained assassins sent on the behest of the Emperor to quell the tide of reform in Hong Kong in 1905.

Think of it as 16 Blocks, but instead of a tired Bruce Willis protecting a witness as people shoot at him on the streets of New York, it's the amazing Donnie Yen and a pack of other Asian martial arts stars escorting a political leader across a wildly elaborate recreation of downtown HK at the beginning of the 20th century while a horde of assassins strike using darts, arrows, acid, and all manner of bladed weapon. The production design alone looks outstanding, but you'll soon be forgetting all about the set building once the fists, feet, and other limbs start destroying everything in the newest trailer for Bodyguards and Assassins (thanks to Twitch for the find).

I've included the previous B&A trailers below as well, but it's the action heavy one on top that's most likely to pique your interest -- aside from the bizarre choice of trailer music, this is one of the most blood-pumping, face-pounding, throat-grabbing, sword-chopping, pole-swinging montages I've seen in a while.

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!

This weekend's release of The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li, features the first teaming of the two Asian action heroes. (My review is here.) Jackie is older and got established first as a comic martial arts master before making a string of modern-day thrillers and adventures. Jet came along later and became known as an ultra-serious, ultra-deadly lethal weapon. Their relative merits have been debated endlessly, and The Forbidden Kingdom finally gives fans a chance to see them go man to man -- first against each other, and then against the bad guys.

Now it's your turn to weigh in. Who's your favorite Asian action hero? (For the purposes of this poll, we'll stick to the living, so that's why Bruce Lee is not included.) Do you prefer Jackie's humor and larger than life thrill-seeking stunts? Or do you favor Jet's solemn precision and frequently death-dealing fighting?

Or ... have you always been a secret backer of Donnie Yen? (He had his own square-off against Jackie Chan in Shanghai Knights.) Sammo Hung? (The former Martial Law TV star is still active in Hong Kong.) Michelle Yeoh? (Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) Or the younger generation represented by Tony Jaa (Ong Bak, The Protector), Collin Chou (Jade Warlord in The Forgotten Kingdom), and Wu Jing (Invislble Target, Kill Zone)? Sound off in the comments to tell us your faves and let us know about anyone else we haven't mentioned.

Check out these bits for your Monday:

• It's got to be a bit stressful to screen your film at a fest and watch nothing happen with it for months, or even years. But all is not completely over, especially as the latest news from The Hollywood Reporter will attest. Roadside Attractions has picked up two period films that screened at TIFF -- Before the Rains, which screened this year, and The Fall, which screened in 2006. Rains is about a British man in colonial India in 1937, who has an affair with his Indian servant, while Fall is a fantasy set in the 1920s about a young girl in a hospital who is told stories about heroes on a deserted island by an injured stuntman. Both films will be released next year.
• It looks like the San Francisco-based Viz Pictures likes the idea of men and geishas. Variety reports that the company has picked up Maiko Haaaan!!! for distribution stateside. The hit comedy by Kankuro Kudo is about a geeky salaryman who is obsessed with geisha and tries to infiltrate Kyoto's geisha world. Five lucky cities will get to see the film in March, including New York and San Francisco, with further locales added later.
• Finally, you might remember a certain film that Peter Martin blogged about back in June, one that would be the first cinematic collaboration between Singapore and Hong Kong. Donnie Yen had signed on to star in a big-budget thriller called Painted Skin, and now Variety reports that production has started in Hong Kong. It's a pretty sexy scenario -- there's a "vampire-like" lady who likes to go cannibal on her lovers -- eating their skin and heart. (It's a remake of an old 1965 Hong Kong film.) Since the film began cooking, the budget has jumped to $15 million, and Gordon Chan is now the director. The bloody production will continue through to February -- fitting since it's the month of hearts -- and will get to us in Christmas of 2008, just in time for the red of the holiday. I wonder if they planned it to coincide with such red-themed, and heart-themed holidays...

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.

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.

There have been rumors circulating for the last week or so that Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen is close to landing the starring role in a Bruce Lee biopic being put together by Lee's family. According to the most recent reports in the Chinese press, the film's financiers have a series of requirements for the actor who will ultimately play Lee, among them that he be ethnically Chinese, be skilled in martial arts, "a good actor" and, randomly, have Hollywood experience. While Yen is reportedly very interested in the part -- and certainly fits the bill on points one, two and four -- that whole "good actor" thing is open to discussion.

Additionally, some Lee fans are up in arms about the requirement that the film's star have Hollywood experience and, while I don't know enough about Lee to properly weigh in, I have to say I'm inclined to agree. I mean, what the hell is the point? Having appeared in a Hollywood film somehow gives an actor credence? Based on the career of David Spade alone, I beg to differ.

So, Lee fans, assuming this movie actually happens, who do you think should star?