Sha Po Lang, the new Wilson Yip movie with Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, Simon Yam and Wu Jing, really makes the concerned ones pine for it. Screened in premiere at the last HK Fimart, SPL was also revealed at the last Film Market of the festival de Cannes. Sometimes presented by Donnie Yen, choreographer of the film, as the HK response to Ong-Bak, the first reviews and opinions available on the net and in a few specialized magazines foreshadows a work far more ambitious artisticly than the thaï hit : real scenario, sophisticated photography, quality soundtrack and improved playings (great performance from Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung, some say...). If SPL justify some comparison with Ong-Bak, it's less by the madness of its stunts - it's a kung-fu thrilller with "gunfights" rahter than a martial demo - than by the fury of an atmosphere where main characters don't fit into stereotyped classifications (bad guys vs. good guys). Apparently the fights purely martial are not many, but yet they would be the best you've seen for many years in HK, with a final fight with Sammo vs. Donnie described as "dantesque"...While waiting for news about a release date (end of the year for Hong-Kong) here in Europe, you can still watch the rather attractive trailer again, available since a few timme, and also swallow this few brand new pics.
Astec translated by
Seven Swords will ultimately be present in Cannes but only through a promotional video during the Film Market of the festival. In the meantime, in China, the filmcrew just formalized the end of the production with a press conference where were revealed official posters (go here for highest resolution) of each main characters, along with a "making-of" promotional video (the same that'll be screened in Cannes ?). The documentary footage of the event proposes, in the middle of the interviews, only a few glimpse of the promo video that the most impatient ones will surely preview. The pictures caught doesn't reveal much on the movie itself, alright but the few chords of a soundtrack apparently attributable to Kenji Kawai, are rather convincing. The mentionned video is about 6 minutes long and for more comfort, it is recommanded to download it using a software like NetTransport : Conférence Seven Swords.
Until we get a more consequent trailer (at least 3 minutes for the series) and of better quality, the TV series Seven Swords of Mt Tian also discovers itself a bit more with two one-minute long videos wich don\'t disclose much as a matter of fact, on the whole "show", but only on a few sequences probably situated at the beginning of the series, while the post-production is still in progress (additionals scenes asked by Tsui Hark, dubbing of certain sequences, edting...) and the broadcasting on the chinese TV channel CCTV stay fixed at october of this year : Seven Sword of Mt Tian videos A & B.
Astec translated by
Naoki Urasawa just received the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Grand Prize for his new manga Pluto (wich we're eager to see, here in Europe). To refresh memories, he already had received this award for Monster in 1999 where you could already find doctor Tenma... Despite the wordplay, Pluto has nothing to do with Mickey's dog...however it manages to resurrect with verve the Astroboy character created by Tezuka himself. The Shinsei (new hope) award was granted to Kono Fumiyo for Yunagi no Machi Sakura no Kuni (it's not the first award won by this short story about Hiroshima, by the way). The Short Story Award goes to Mainichi Kaasan (the story of a drinker mangaka with a family to manage, all of this narrated with humor in a diary way) and Jokyo Monogatari by Rieko Saibara. A Special Award was given to the Kawasaki City Museum.
Osamu Tezuka Cultural Grand Prize Official Website
Tanuki translated by
After a poor time in terms of news (because of the new design), HK news are back. What's up since beginning 2005 ? Well, the chinese new year was really so-so concerning box-office as well as films quality, the very dumb Himalaya Singh rises up to 15 millions meanwhile the entertaining but flavourless Seoul Raiders doesn't reach 10. This period was dominated by two US films, The Incredibles and Constantine.
Since then, the releases makes themselves rare and don't really meet success. We can nevertheless notice the Stephen Fung's House Of Fury 10 millions HK$ score, while the new UFO production, It Had To Be You didn't really manage to take off, alike the latest Pang Ho-Cheung's production, AV. However this one was selected by the Udine festival 2005 (more news soon).
Until the release of the two 2005 monsters, the next Tsui Hark and the next Wilson Yip, two major movies come out in Hong-Kong nowadays :
Benny Chan's Divergence, a sophisticated action thriller with an interesting casting (Daniel Wu, Aaron Kwok, Ekin cheng, Angelica Lee). After his action-pop movies (Gen X Cops & Co.), Benny Chan seems to confirm his turning set out on New Police Story and Heroic Duo toward more adult and dramatic movies.
The other release offering interest is Derek Yee's 2 Young, who gives his first real role to Jaycee Chan, Jackie Chan's son, who wasn't quite convincing in The Twins Effect 2. In front of him, another young actress, Fiona Sit and as supporting roles, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang and Teresa Mo. As you'd have understood through the title, it's a teenagers story played by two young actors.
Two films we should observe, let's hope a increasing quality compare to this very quiet start of the year.
Francois translated by
We finally had to wait for the official annoucement of Cannes 2005 selection to be definitely sure of the non-attendance of Seven Swords in the schedule. Initially announced to be screened \"hors competition\", and later removed, a few chinese news websites suggested even lately, a possible viewing of Tsui Hark\'s latest movie on the croisette. For that matter Seven Swords isn\'t the only asian \"blockbuster\" absent since The Myth, the new Jackie Chan and The Promise, Chen Kaige\'s wu xia pan, aren\'t announced neither whereas they\'re were expected. To discover Seven Swords you\'ll have to wait, for the luckiest, until july, official date of chinese sneak preview. As for France, if Pathe, who distributes the film (Asian Star will be in charge of the manufacturing of the DVD), expected a summer release, it\'s been delayed to autumn 2005, the french distributor website announcing september 14th as release date in french theatres. You can notice with the opening of the official website of the film, the presence of the \"synthetic\" Kenji Kawai, Mamoru Oshii\'s regular composer, in charge of Seven Swords soundtrack. An excellent surprise which stirs up curiosity about final result. It was during the last festival de Cannes that the two men met each other and it\'b be because of the work the japanese composer did on GITS Innocence that Tsui Hark approached him.
The first part of the TV series including about 70 episodes, shot beside the movie (maybe the first one if it succeed), is also in the post-production phase. Here too, are mentionned gigantic amounts for the format, rights for forty episodes already shot has been sold at unencountered prices for China. This first part of the series is scheduled to be broadcasted in China for october of this year while the filming of the rest, about thirty episodes, should start beginning 2006. Apparently Cheung Kam-Yim, supervisor of the series along with Tsui Hark, who sparked, for the most part, the project off, is not involved anymore ; the guy, unsatisfied of permanent changes in the script and, his writer friend Liang Yu-Sheng urging upon him, fell back on a new TV adaptation of a Liang\'s wu xia pan novel, but produced by another studio. Let\'s hope an international distributor will be interested by this tv series, wich wouldn\'t be amazing in view of the \"buzz\" surrounding the movie and the means carried out (co-prod China/HK/Korea).
Astec translated by
