Re: Martial Arts -- Back Talk

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Subject: Re: Martial Arts

Author:
Pam

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Date Posted: 23:28:28 10/07/02 Mon
In reply to: Lynn7 's message, "Martial Arts" on 18:04:59 10/07/02 Mon

Same here, almost identical circumstances. I saw all the old Bruce Lee movies, and the Chuck Norris ones, including the one that had both Lee AND Norris in it. Then they just kind of stopped making them, until the VanDamme/Seagal era. I personally don't care for Seagal, because he's a jerk, but I did enjoy The Glimmerman, mainly because he didn't take himself quite so damn seriously. I like the very early VanDamme movies that concentrate solely on the martial arts, like Bloodsport and Kickboxer, because VanDamme is beautiful to watch in those. BTW, I forgot to mention earlier that Bloodsport is the true story of Frank Dux, a kickboxing champion. Then Seagal got all environmental correct and his movies were all about saving the trees (nothing wrong with saving trees, but it doesn't really go with ass kicking), and VanDamme decided he needed something called "plot" in his movies, which served to point out that if you have "plot" you should be able to "act".

Then I discovered imported Hong Kong action flicks. I knew about Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat (who's actually more action than martial arts) a couple of years before they ever became known here. John Woo (famous here for Face Off, Mission Impossible 2, and Windtalkers) has been a major director in Hong Kong for decades. His action films kick some serious butt! Jet Li did mainly martial arts films, including the fantastic Once Upon A Time in China series, set in the 1800s. The main difference between Hong Kong flicks and US flicks is that the martial arts movies generally use a lot of wirework, for those fantastically improbably leaps and jumps. To give them credit, 90 percent of the stories are based on legends, or legendary figures that are larger than life, much like Paul Bunyan or Hercules in our culture.

The American films that Li has done are a lot less martial arts oriented than his Hong Kong movies (to appeal to the US action crowd), with more or less "normal" moves. The Hong Kong movies are more along the lines of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or The Matrix. A number of Li's HK films are being imported and released in the US with dubbing instead of subtitles, so I imagine that he'll become even more well known as more people stumble across them.

Another interesting thing about Hong Kong films is that despite making a huge number of films per year, there's a fairly small pool of actors, so you see the same faces in movie after movie. Cross-overs are a lot more common there, than here, with a good percentage of the new young actors and actresses having huge success as singers as well as actors.

And so ends today's lesson on Hong Kong cinema. LOL

Pam

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[> [> Subject: Bloodsport

Author:
Lynn7
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Date Posted: 10:30:16 10/08/02 Tue

I'm definitely going to have to rent that movie. Do you remember the name of the movie that Lee and Norris were in together? I'd love to see that too.

You're right about Seagal going environmental. On Deadly Ground was exactly that. Justice For All was okay but somewhat predictable.

That's really interesting stuff about the Hong Kong movie business. I agree that the wire work does throw some unbelievability into the movies but I loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon nonetheless. It also makes sense what you've said about the small pool of actors there. That certainly explains why the pretty heroine seems like the same actress in all of the movies and the young kid that accompanies Li in many movies is also the same.

I told John that all I want for Christmas is the Jet Li series. I hope I'm a good enough girl that it will be under the tree. Then I can spend the next week watching those shows.

I've got to dash to my pretend job but I'll catch up you guys later.

[> [> [> Subject: Uh, WHICH Jet Li series?
Author: Pam [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 13:17:29 10/08/02 Tue If you're wanting all his movies, John better whip out the Platinum card, because Li has 40 movies out (including a couple of documentary types), and I doubt you can fit all of them into one week. I've seen about 20 of them so far.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Uh, WHICH Jet Li series?
Author: Lynn7 [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 20:23:21 10/08/02 Tue Heh, we don't do platinum here. One visa with a $1,000 limit is enough..lol. But I will have to rethink what series I want if there are 40 of the flipping movies out there. There was this China Connection series or something like that? It seemed like there were about four or five movies the series.