takeshi kaneshiro Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Cannes is not all about death, gloom, and independent movies. It's also about selling your motion-capture fantasy months in advance of its opening. Jim Carrey, Robin Wright Penn, and Colin Firth showed up in support of Robert Zemeckis' forthcoming A Christmas Carol. After the stars arrived by horse-drawn carriage, Carrey threw a fake snowball. Eight minutes of footage was shown to an invited audience.

Lars, Lars, Lars! Danish director Lars Von Trier's Antichrist shook up Cannes at a press screening on Sunday night, with word quickly spreading that the film was "intentionally unreleasable, chock full of intense violence, graphic sexuality, unforgivable misogyny ... and also beauty," as Karina Longworth described the buzz at Spout. Thus, Von Trier's press conference today, shortly after noon, just as quickly became required viewing -- Anne Thompson has a good report -- and his declaration, "I am the best film director in the world" shot around the world via Twitter. Photographers, depressed by the bloody movie, cheered up when they discovered Hayden Panettiere sunbathing in a bikini on a yacht in the harbor.

Key Screenings. Competition: Ken Loach's 'soccer fanatic / mailman' drama Looking For Eric. Directors' Fortnight: Alain Guiraudie's ''middle-aged homosexual man falls for a young woman romance' Le Roi de l'évasion, Michel Franco's kidnapped sibling drama Daniel & Ana. Un Certain Regard: Yorgos Lanthimos' 'isolated Greek family drama' Dog Tooth, Raya Martin's early 20th Century historical drama Independence.

After the jump: news on Asian action drama Warlords, lesbian romance Drool, and Cannes titles in play.

When Red Cliff (Part 1) rolled out across most of Asia in July, John Woo's historical action epic generated very good box office returns, and its recent release in Japan continues the trend. Topping the charts for the second week in a row, according to Variety, Red Cliff has earned more than $18 million so far.

Part 2 of the four-hour plus Red Cliff is due for January release in Asia, and an international (i.e. short) version is also being prepped for the beginning of the year. Theatrical distribution deals are set in Europe (France, Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway), with Summit Entertainment (distributor of Twilight and Sex Drive) handling international sales.

Still, no US distribution deal has been announced. What's holding things up? Will Summit take it on? Will North American audiences ever get to set Red Cliff on the big screen, where it clearly belongs? Or are distributors spooked by the prospect of marketing one more foreign-language action epic?

Red Cliff is based on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms; the title refers to the location of a battle involving more than a million soldiers that brought an end to the Han Dynasty in 208 AD, resulting in the division of China into three kingdoms. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (Lust, Caution), Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers), Zhang Fengyi (The Emperor and the Assassin), Chang Chen (Blood Brothers), and Lin Chiling (gorgeous Taiwanese model in her acting debut) star.

Can a director best known for bloody bullet ballets pull off a historical action epic? We'll know later this week when John Woo's Red Cliff rolls out across Asia. The film's full-length running time of more than four hours has been split in two; the first part opens in China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan on Thursday, with a release in Malaysia next week and Japan in November, according to Variety. Part two is set to debut next January.

Red Cliff, based on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which has been adapted for television and film multiple times), is the fulfillment of a dream for Woo, who first tried to make it nearly 20 years ago. The title refers to a battle involving more than a million soldiers that brought an end to the Han Dynasty in 208 AD, resulting in the division of China into three kingdoms. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen and Lin Chiling star.

Woo has been staging elaborate action sequences for many years, but hasn't tackled a project of this scale and historical sweep before. An international version, expected to run about two and a half hours, will be completed by January. No US distributor has yet been set. To get fully caught up on this sometimes-troubled production, reportedly budgeted at $80 million, read our previous reports from February 2006, September 2006, April 2007 (1), April 2007 (2), August 2007, February 2008 (trailer), and June 2008.

As a lovelorn cop in Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express, he ate expired cans of pineapple; as a mute urban guerrilla in Wong's Fallen Angels, he broke into other people's businesses and forced passers-by to be his customers. Those were the first two films in which I saw Takeshi Kaneshiro; his brooding, romantic looks have served him well in a career that has ranged all over Asia -- aided, no doubt, by his broad appeal and multi-lingual talents. Born in Taiwan, he speaks Japanese, Taiwanese, Mandarin, Cantonese and English.

His highest profile titles in the West have probably been the Japanese science fiction action picture The Returner and Zhang Yimou's costumed martial arts epic House of Flying Daggers. He's one of the stars of the just released action epic The Warlords (which has done boffo box office) and will also be featured in John Woo's upcoming Red Cliff. Kaneshiro will also be starring in The Fiend With Twenty Faces (AKA K-20: Kaijin niju menso den), according to a recent story by Mark Schilling at Variety Asia Online.

Kaneshiro will play a master criminal plying his trade in a fictional Japanese city in 1949. The lovely Takako Matsu -- who is coming off a lead performance in the big fall hit Hero -- has been set to portray a victim of "The Fiend" and veteran Toro Nakamura will co-star as a detective. Shimako Sato will direct. Filming is scheduled to begin in January and Toho plans to release it in December 2008. I'm hard pressed at the moment to think of a role in which Kaneshiro has played someone that could be called a "fiend," so I'll be very interested to see what comes of a film that's been described as a mystery crime drama.

Even as Will Smith battles for his life in I Am Legend, the film is set to fight it out with Hong Kong action epic The Warlords for box office supremacy in Asia this weekend. Who will win? Will and his dog will have to come from behind because The Warlords is already ahead. Variety reports that the film "rampaged across Asia in its six territory day-and-date" premiere on Thursday.

Compared to the US, the numbers may be small, but everything is relative: $1.77 million on opening day in Mainland China, plus $1.22 million in receipts from sneak previews on Wednesday. Preview and opening day audiences in Hong Kong added $215,000 to the take, while the picture also did well in wide release in Singapore ($119,000) and Malaysia ($54,300). The Warlords also launched in Thailand on Thursday, in Indonesia on Friday, and will expand to Taiwan on December 28. Meanwhile, I Am Legend premieres in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan this weekend, according to Variety, and is expected to do well "given the foreign appeal of Will Smith and the offshore appetite for action."

The Warlords stars Jet Li, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kaneshiro in a film that director Peter Chan says was inspired by his watching Chang Cheh's Blood Brothers as a young boy in 1973. He told Yvonne Teh of BC Magazine that when he revisited it as an adult, he felt that the movie was "too simple for today," so he "started digging into history and into the background of the period of the Taiping Revolution where 70 million people were killed in a matter of 14 years." Early reviews have been positive with some reservations (The Visitor at Twitch) and no reservations (Stefan at Twitch). Sounds like Jet Li's record paycheck has been earned. Too bad we don't have any word on a North American distribution deal.

When you hear about big, multi-million dollar actor paychecks, ones which take up a good portion of a film's budget, it's usually a North American production. Not in this case. Reuters has reported that Jet Li, the it-man behind films from Romeo Must Die to Fearless, is getting one sweet paycheck for one of his most recent films. He is making 100 million yuan ($13 million) for Warlords -- close to half of the budget for the film. This record-breaking pay continues to keep him as the highest-paid actor in a Chinese-language film, a spot he had already held for earning 70 million yuan for his role in Hero.

Director Peter Chan (Perhaps Love) is quoted as saying: "Without Jet Li, we would not dare to invest $40 million in a Chinese-language film." He went on to say that Li was a "guarantee" for global sales. I would hope so, because that's a big chunk of change that they are investing on that belief. They say about half of the budget went to the cast, and since Li has $13 million, that still leaves about $7 million for the rest of the cast -- House of Flying Daggers stars Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, as well as actress/director Xu Jinglei (A Letter from an Unknown Woman). Set amidst the Taiping Rebellion during the Qing Dynasty, Warlords focuses on an unresolved crime, and three brothers who turn on each other because of a beautiful woman. Chan says that it is influenced by the 1973 film, The Blood Brothers, but isn't a remake. We'll find out if the film holds up to expectations soon enough -- it's getting released in Hong Kong next month.

Back in May, Ziyi Zhang was in talks for a Chinese opera biopic called Mei Lanfang. With filming currently underway on that production, Zhang is looking for her next role, and Variety reports that she may have found it in the long-awaited, aptly-titled Waiting. Based on Ha Jin's National Book Award-winning novel, the English-language adaptation was originally conceived in 2001, for Chow Yun-fat to star in. Now that a number of years have passed, they're looking to a younger generation -- namely Ziyi Zhang and Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers) -- to finalize talks. Peter Chan started adapting the novel when it was first tapped for a feature, and the film will still be directed by him once post-production is finished on Warlords.

Waiting details the life of a doctor in China's Revolutionary Army who struggles to do what he thinks is right. When his mother is dying, he agrees to an arranged marriage -- with a country woman he finds to look much older than she is, and one who has bound feet. He doesn't love his arranged life and he lives at an army hospital, so he only visits his wife and family once a year. He falls in love with a nurse, but both are bound by Communist law -- he has to be separated from his wife for 18 years before he can divorce her. The couple then wait (hence the title) so that they might consummate their relationship. 18 years...that's dedication.

It isn't uncommon for an actor to drop completely out of a movie, but how often does it happen that an actor drops out and then is later re-cast in a different role? That seems to be what is going on with Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and the Chinese epic The Battle of Red Cliff. Leung left the project a month ago claiming he didn't have time to prepare for his role (though there were other rumors), but now he's returned to the John Woo film, which has already begun shooting. Because his original part ended up going to another actor, Takeshi Kaneshiro, he is now likely attached to a different character than the one he abandoned.

The most simple speculation is that Leung is taking over for Chow Yun-Fat, who this week suddenly departed from the project, similarly claiming an inability to sufficiently prepare. For some reason Red Cliff producer Terence Chang won't specify which character Leung will play nor will he confirm that the actor is replacing Chow. The only things he will say is that all these casting changes are not affecting the shoot and that Chow's absence is not affecting the financing of the film. Hopefully more will be revealed about Leung's involvement when he arrives on set next week -- unless, of course, he drops back out. Maybe the next thing we hear will be that Ken Watanabe is back on the film, too, as a replacement for the replacement.