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MSN Movies Blog: Asian ProvocateurThe best of Hong Kong action, Japanese anime and Eastern horror.
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July 04 Fatal Contact - Is Jacky Wu Jing the next Jet Li?Boy meets girl. Girl leads boy into Hong Kong's underground street fighting circuit. Boy loses girl. Boy goes on psychotic killing frenzy in gangsters' hideout. It's an age old biblical story with a contemporary twist, or in the case of Fatal Contact, a spinning kick.
The film's title is not a reference to the brutal underground sport that the hero competes in but instead to his fateful meeting with a girl who uses him to her own ends. Eve leads Adam into temptation and you can be pretty damned sure there is going to be some serious punishment meted out.
In his first leading role, national Wushu champion Jacky Wu Jing plays poor Olympic kung fu fighter Kong. Both want to be the next Jet Li. "I want to be the next Jet Li", he tells Tin played by Theresa Fu. Like Jet and Donnie Yen before him, Wu Jing was a member of the Beijing Wushu Team.
Tin wants an easy life (which seems to embody eating out at restaurants a lot) and the gangsters controlling the world of illegal gambling promise easy money. Egged on by her, Kong is drawn into an escalating circle of violence and sepia-toned flashbacks.
Fortunately for Kong he has a furious temper and mad fighting skills. The 3 on 3 fight on the deck of a container ship is particularly memorable. As the combat becomes ever more bloadsoaked and viscious, can Kong escape and restore his humanity before it's too late? Guess again.
I wouldn't go as far to as to say writer and director Dennis Law subverts a well worn genre completely but he does his best to lull you into a false sense of security with an all too predictable and cheap looking first half. As the movie looks oddly ever more expensive, Law goes all out to burst some cliches. If I told you how it would only spoil it for you. I may already have said too much.
FATAL CONTACT is released on DVD on July 21st. June 30 Broomsticks, Bikes and Automobiles
An old staple returns to dvd next week in a re-imagined form. The Manga strip Ah! My Goddess, sometimes called Oh! My Goddess, was first published in 1988 and over the past two decades has been animated as several Japanese TV series (one including mini-versions of the characters) and a movie. In 2005 a new Anime version was produced for TV which followed the source material more closely (as far as its 12 certficate allows). A boxset featuring the entire 24 episodes, plus two that were supposedly never broadcast, is released on July 7th.
Ah! My Goddess is a whimsical rom com about Keiichi, a teenage college student and auto enthusiast who accidentally calls the Goddess Help Line. His call is answered in person by the Goddess Belldandy who materialises in his dorm room through a mirror and grants him one wish. Kind hearted but unlucky Keiichi can't get a girlfriend so he wishes for the Goddess to remain by his side forever. I don't know how old Japanese Goddesses are supposed to be but fortunately for Keiichi, Belldandy seems as youthful and naive as him.
A series adventures begin centred around Belldandy's attempts to adjust to life on the mortal plane and Keiichi's painfully shy attempts to get it on with his immortal 'giirlfriend'. There are run-ins with spirits and demons as well as rivals on campus but the tone is always light hearted and life-affirming. It's all about forming good relationships and self worth folks! It may be set in Japan but the Goddesses are based loosely on Norse mythology, dress in stylised Grecian/European outfits, ride on broomsticks and the theme music is kind of Irish folk/pop, so it's a real mish mash. The absolute antithesis of cartoon violence. June 25 John Woo's Red Cliff poster collectionLess controversial than the Olympic Torch relay but the most anticipated two-part movie since Kill Bill, the first half of John Woo's epic Rec Cliff (formerly known as The Battle of Red Cliff) is reportedly still heading for a release date that will co-incide with this summer's Beijing Olympics. Part 2 is expected at the end of the year.
New movie posters are starting to flood on to the web and I have included a collection of them in my Gallery section (right). The new set first, followed by some older less colourful posters.
The movie(s) tell the story of a historic battle in the warlord controlled China of 208 AD. It is rumoured to be the most expensive Chinese film ever made with a budget estimated to be in the region of 80 million dollars (US). June 23 Cartoons are gay - it's officialOk cards-on-the-table time. I myself am what you might describe as one of the 'Happy People'. But even I had never heard of Yaoi and even though I like to fly well under the gaydar as a matter of principal, I thought I had lived on the wildside more than a little. Then again, Yaoi isn't aimed at people like me.
So what the hell is Yaoi, I hear you cry? Well just when you thought they couldn't invent another genre... Yaoi is a sub-set of Manga, Anime and Japanese novels that deal with same sex romances but what specifically sets them apart isn't that they are gay. It is that they are primarily written by women for women. I guess that's why in the one I watched (Gravitation), the big cliffhanger was whether his boyfriend would be angry because he had decided to work late without calling home first.
If this was written by gay guys for gay guys, there would have been a lot more man-on-man action let me tell you. But these are ROMANCES (Yaoi is also sometimes referred to as Boy's Love) and are apart from the occasional snog after a hot stare in the elevator, it's pretty harmless stuff. Best not ask awkward questions like how come these guys both happened to be in the park late at night?
Between 80 and 85 percent of Yaoi fans are thought to be young women or teenage girls and it is a huge market. Since it started in the 1970s, Yaoi has become massive on Japanese language websites. In June 2008 an estimated 18 million people searched for the term Yaoi. And it's not even July yet!
So where can I get this hot stuff, I hear the girls cry? The first disc of the Anime series Gravitation is out on DVD on July 7th (only about 4 years late). It tells the story of Shuichi, the singer in (what only the Japanese would call a rock band) Back Luck and his ambition to follow in the footsteps of his idol Ryuichi Sakum, singer in Nittel Grasper. No, no, not Nettle Grasper. I said Nittle Grasper. C'mon girls, sort your metaphors out!
Inbetween bitchy run-ins with their rivals ASK that would make Spinal Tap jealous, and sporting costumes onstage that even Erasure's Andy Bell or Daffyd - the only Gay in the Village would turn their noses up at, Ryuichi falls for mysterious brooding pretty-boy novelist Eiri Yuki. Will the path of true love run smooth... yada, yada, yada? Oh I can't go on. You get the picture.
June 17 You just can't get the staff (when you heart the eighties)
In their first ever big screen pairing, Jackie Chan reprises his role as the Drunken Master, actually he's called the Drunken Immortal in The Forbidden Kingdom but they're not fooling anyone, and Jet Li plays Monkey (minus pink flying cloud sadly). They both play other parts too. For big kids (especially those who have refused to grow up since the 80s when they were fans of the Monkey TV series) this is a dream come true. Which is perhaps why that is the central premise of The Forbidden Kingdom. A teenage kung fu movie geek (Michael Angarano from 24) falls from a rooftop and wakes up in a mystical realm where he goes on a quest to return King Monkey's magic staff to it's rightful owner. In an old Chinese curiosity shop (Gremlins?), Jason Tripitikas witnesses a kind old man (Chan again) get shot (Back To The Future ?) and is transported into the past to Ancient China (erm, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III?).
Aided by the Drunken Immortal, the Silent Monk (Li again) and the beautiful Golden Sparrow who is out to avenge the murder of her parents (played by Yifei Liu), Tripititaka (sorry, Tripitakas) must return the staff to King Monkey who has been turned to stone by the evil Jade Emperor (played by Colin Chou from The Matrix Reloaded). Mums and dads will probably be reassured that it is directed by Rob Minkoff (Lion King, Stuart Little) but I wouldn't want that to put older fans off the movie. It's Written by John Fusco who has done the screen play for a new version of the Seven Samurai due out next year.
TFK was filmed on location in two Chinese provinces of outstanding beauty with additional studio sets that are at times wonderfully kitsch. Deliberately suggestive of old TV shows, I'm guessing, but without looking low-budget. The cast is spot on, especially Li Bing Bing who plays whip cracking villainess The White Haired Assassin. The inevitable Jackie/Jet fight is both great fun and lives up to expectations. Comparisons with Bulletproof Monk (which I like incidentally) are inevitable. However this is more traditional, unapologetic feel-good fodder that will take kids on a wild ride and make adults feel 10 years younger (or in my case more like 25). It is no Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers (the Forbidden Kingdom doesn't take itself too seriously) but it's ninety minutes of your life you won't be wishing you could get back. The Forbidden Kingdom has already been No 1. in the movie charts in the USA (guess where I saw it) and is set for UK release on July 11 according to some sites but I have seen no official announcement here yet and no glimmer of the hype I would have expecting. Look at my Gallery section for more pics.
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