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Wu Xia (2011) (aka 武俠, Dragon)

ben

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I wasn't looking forward to this much, but with Wang Yu in it I have to see it ASAP. He looks really evil. Should make for a great bad guy.

Right? Who would have thought he could play evil, he was always so harmless looking when he was younger, like a Taiwanese swimmer or something.

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Tosh

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I had no interest in this till now, bringing the Yu back, he's an icon that deserves the respect, maybe this will resurrect his career.

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Director Peter Chan Takes on Martial Arts With ‘Wu Xia’

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Actress Tang Wei on location in Yunnan province for ‘Wu Xia’

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Director Peter Chan on the set of his latest project.

Since his directorial debut 19 years ago, Peter Chan has become one of Asia’s leading filmmakers, cranking out box-office hits while filling his office shelves with best-director awards.

He began with a string of popular Hong Kong comedies and dramas in the 1990s, then ventured to Hollywood to direct the 1999 romantic comedy “The Love Letter,” which starred Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck. In China in 2005 he directed the musical “Perhaps Love” with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Xun, followed in 2007 by “The Warlords,” a period war epic starring Jet Li, Andy Lau and Mr. Kaneshiro. Now, he’s turning his hand to the martial-arts, or wu xia, genre. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Mr. Chan on the set of his latest film, itself titled “Wu Xia.”

Q: How do you plan to “redefine” the martial-arts genre with “Wu Xia”?

A: All our period films seem to be mixed with martial arts and action. But period films actually have many different genres—love stories, thrillers, crime dramas—and I think we never see these period films in complete authenticity. We never see the details of life, and we never feel like we’re transported in time.

Q: What attracted you to the story?

A: “Wu Xia” is about a man who’s in hiding, but his identity is unraveling and he needs to deal with his past. I always believed that wu xia and the gangster genre are pretty similar. Once you step into that world you can never get out.

Q: What’s driving higher production costs in the Chinese film industry?

A: There’s only one thing that drives up costs—demand versus supply. The camera operator that we’ve worked with three times has doubled his salary in every movie I’ve worked on with him. There are too many movies that need good people.

Q: How is working in China compared with Hollywood?

A: We still have the ability to improvise, which is not very possible in Hollywood because it’s so expensive to make films in America. The studios developed a system to be in complete control of production to make sure everything is scientifically calculated. It’s just like any big corporation.

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2010/11/11/director-peter-chan-takes-on-martial-arts-with-wu-xia/

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On Location With China's Movie Industry

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On the run in 'Wu Xia'

TENGCHONG, China—In a remote and mountainous part of China's southwest Yunnan province on a cool autumn morning, three of Asia's top movie stars are waiting for the action to begin.

Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei have traveled with the rest of the 200-plus crew to this isolated spot near the border with Myanmar, where they have been camped out since late August.

"Wu Xia," from director Peter Chan, is a $20 million martial-arts drama slated for release next summer. The story, which takes place during the end of the Qing Dynasty, is about a repentant killer living a simple life in a secluded village and whose past catches up with him.

Mr. Chan, one of Asia's most-successful filmmakers, is looking to put a new spin on the martial-arts genre with "Wu Xia," which translates roughly as "martial-arts chivalry." He's assembled an A-list cast, two cinematographers, an award-winning costume designer, and a visual-effects team from South Korea to bring what he describes as detailed authenticity to the film. Its ambition underscores the current trend in Chinese cinema toward highly polished blockbusters.

Still, there is little Hollywood glamour out here on location.

Filming today is in a tiny village about an hour's drive from Tengchong, a city of several hundred thousand—relatively small by Chinese standards—in western Yunnan. Tengchong is home for the cast and crew during the shoot. Getting to today's location involves a convoy of trucks, buses, vans and cars—all of us sharing the road with villagers and livestock along a series of smooth two-lane highways and bumpy, unpaved paths through fields and forests. To get to the shoot, the crew and cast—sporting shin-high rubber boots to trek around in the mud—hike across steep terrain marked by rocks and puddles to the river valley below.

"It's hard going down and exhausting going up," Mr. Chan says as he arrives on the set.

Rain earlier in the week interrupted filming for a few days, but today the sun is out. "We've been shooting here for two months and I can't remember a single day other than today that it hasn't rained at least a little bit," he says. "We've been fighting the weather all the way through."

But irony has its revenge: For a scene the next day, the crew has to create rain using two enormous water hoses.

Actors and dozens of extras roam around the set in period costumes, looking more at home in the rural setting than the crew in their jeans and T-shirts.

Curious locals watch the bustle and activity. Their dialect is unfamiliar to most of the crew, who come from places like Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Some villagers from the area have been hired as extras. Li Xingli, a 51-year-old farmer, says she isn't familiar with the movie's star cast. "But it's fun," she says with a smile, "and my husband supports me."

Ms. Li, in fact, is working alongside three very recognizable actors.

Mr. Yen is arguably Asia's leading martial-arts star following a string of recent hits including "Ip Man" and its sequel, "Bodyguards and Assassins" and "Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen." Mr. Kaneshiro—this is his third film with Mr. Chan—has been a top leading man for nearly two decades. Ms. Tang, with just a handful of films to her credit so far, is one of Asia's leading young actresses.

The cast also includes Jimmy Wang Yu, one of Hong Kong's biggest action stars from the 1960s and '70s, in his first film appearance in more than 15 years.

Mr. Chan sits under an orange tent about five meters from the actors. His blue director's chair faces a video monitor that shows what the audience will see.

Messrs. Yen and Kaneshiro arrive on the set in full costume—Mr. Yen dressed as an ordinary villager with a long, single braid of hair that was customary of the era, and Mr. Kaneshiro looking elegant in a gray robe and early 20th-century brimmed hat that reflects his character's city origins—and prepare for a scene on a small cliff over the riverbank. A few takes later, the director and Mr. Yen huddle in front of the monitor to watch a playback. Mr. Yen returns in front of the camera to shoot another take after a couple minutes of quiet discussion, although to the casual observer subsequent takes all look the same.

Mr. Chan later joins Mr. Yen, who also is the movie's action choreographer, for one of the film's action sequences. A character in the scene is pushed over a bridge. Above the heads of the crew, a highway of carefully placed cables and wires are wrapped around the forest trees. The stunt isn't simple. On one end are the men maneuvering the wire, and on the other end a stuntman dangles above the whitewater rapids far below. After several takes, they wrap for the day.

"With Peter Chan, everyone knows it's going to be a powerful, dramatic movie," Mr. Yen says. "That's one of the main reasons why I want to be in this film in the first place."

For Mr. Kaneshiro, he says working with Mr. Chan is more important than the script.

"The character changed as we talked about the script," he says. "I didn't know how to do this guy," but one day they decided to give the character a Sichuan accent and everything fell into place.

Ms. Tang also describes developing her character with Mr. Chan—a new experience compared with how she has worked on previous films. "He just told me … follow my instinct," she says. "I really love it, because it's really flexible and very similar to film as a student in college."

During the week, minor mishaps abound on the set: A stunt coordinator slips on a rocky ledge, leaving large scratches along the side of his body; the continuity girl is bitten by a wild dog in a bamboo forest; and an assistant production manager is shoved around by a group of tourists eager to get to a scenic waterfall blocked by the film crew.

"I think working in China is somewhere between Hong Kong and Hollywood," Mr. Chan says.

As movie budgets in China grow, the film industry has adopted a system that's more similar to Hollywood. "Production costs are getting higher and we have crews that are more professional," he says. "In a way we have developed, learned, adapted and adopted a certain management system of Hollywood big movies, but at the same time we still have retained a lot of flexibility."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703523604575605632824688038.html

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blue_skies

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I can't say this is one that I am highly anticipating but I do hope Donnie Yen returns to form and that there's enough martial-arts action. For now I remain sceptical.

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Wu Xia adds French sale

Sales News

French distributor TF1 has picked up France rights to Wu Xia (武俠), the upcoming period martial arts action film directed by Peter Chan (陳可辛).

The deal is the first European sale for the title which was widely sold in Asia at pre-sales stage.

Now in post-production, the $20 million Wu Xia stars Donnie Yen (甄子丹), Kaneshiro Takeshi (金城武) and Tang Wei (湯唯) in a story about a detective on the trail of a killer who has assumed a new identity and gone to ground in a quiet village. Veteran action star Jimmy Wang (王羽), who has been away from the big screen for 17 years, also stars.

The film is currently in postproduction with Korea's largest VFX company Digital Idea (디지털아이디어, The Forbidden Kingdom 功夫之王) handling the visual effect on the film.

Wu Xia is set for delivery by late spring and is slated for wide release in summer 2011.

Asian buyers already on board include Luxuries Resources which paid over $1 million for Singapore and Malaysia, and to Indonesian distributor PT Teguh Bakti.

http://www.filmbiz.asia/news/wu-xia-adds-french-sale

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Yeah as of late the MA in Donnie's films seems to be pushed to the backburner. I hope they emphasize on the MA again and bring it back into top form like the IRON MONKEY movie did.

...without the severe undercranking and wires, I hope.

Still haven't seen Chen Zhen but it sounds like that was mostly talking. I was disappointed as all hell by Bodyguards and Assassins. This looks better than either of those, hopefully its along the lines of Ip Man (and the first half of Ip Man 2) or better.

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loempiavreter

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Im not a fan of the newer productions most of the time, but this is one of the exceptions Im really looking forward for!

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New update on HKMDB Daily News/RPSFARC Blog:

Peter Chan is rushing to complete post-production in time for the Cannes Film Festival. Presenting it at Cannes leaves him two months less to work on the final cut. The rough cut has been finished but special effects, sound, etc is still incomplete.

http://yellowcranestower.blogspot.com/

http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2011-04-14/21223281676.shtml (original source)

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"Wu Xia" to Premiere in Cannes Film Festival

Peter Chan Ho-sun's martial art flick, "Wu Xia," originally known as Swordsman, will have a global premiere on May 13 at the 64th annual Cannes Film Festival this year.

The film is adapted from the classic Hong Kong martial art film "One-Armed Swordsman" in 1967. It marks the only Chinese-language film to be screened during the film festival.

Cast members Donnie Yen, an influential kung fu star from "Ip Man", "The Warlords" actor Takeshi Kaneshiro, or Jin Chengwu in Chinese and actress Tang Wei from Ang Lee's "Lust,Caution" will be in Cannes to promote the film, Beijing Morning Post reports Thursday morning, May 5.

In the film, Yen plays a retired killer seeking redemption who has taken refuge in a remote village. Kaneshiro stars as a dedicated detective who wants to hunt him down.

Another kung fu star Jimmy Wang Yu with international fame from the 1967 original plays a cameo role in Chan's adaptation. He will show up on the red carpet walk with actresses Li Xiaoran and Kara Hui in the cast.

This is Peter Chan's first take on the martial arts genre, following his historical epic, "The Warlords," in 2007 and romance comedy, "Perhaps Love," in 2005.

Reportedly, the director has employed a very different approach to demonstrate the physicality of martial arts by magnifying some medical and scientific elements in the action choreography.

Chan hopes the new project will reboot martial arts in the world's arena.

The film is under post-production and is set for a summer release.

http://english.cri.cn/6666/2011/05/05/1321s635767.htm

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lillippa328

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"Chan hopes the new project will reboot martial arts in the world's arena."

powerful words....hope it lives up to them!

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