No Mod Required

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I'm working on a list of the ten best Hong Kong films from 1997 to the present (approximately the period following the handover.) I came up with eight (or five if I decide to exclude the co-productions) pretty quickly and am now looking to fill out the rest of the list. Here are some candidates.

Kung Fu Hustle: I liked it. I liked Shaolin Soccer a lot more, but this was a lot of fun. do I think it belongs in the top ten? No. As long as Shaolin Soccer exists, any other Stephen Chow entry will take second place…

2046: No. As good as it is, it's not in the same league as Wong's masterpiece In the Mood for Love, so off the list it goes.

Storm Riders: Am I really considering it? Maybe just a little. I know this movie isn't "great," but I still love it. I just do and I don't care who knows it.

While I'm confessing HK movie related shit, let me just say I think Wong Jing is a genius, I love the Young and Dangerous series and I have a mad crush on Sammi Cheng.

Running Out of Time Hmmm… Johnny To has got to be on this list somewhere, right? Lau Ching Wan needs to be on the list somewhere too. And this movie kicks ass.

Hmm…

It doesn't kick me in the nuts like the other films did, but it's in play.

Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 Speaking of Lau Ching Wan, I loved this film when I saw it. I'd have to revisit it, but I'm feeling pretty good about it right now. Let's call this another one in play.

More later.

I realized that it's nearing ten years since the handover and thought "hey, that's a good excuse for a top ten list if I ever saw one" This is what I've got so far:

• In the Mood For Love
• Fearless
• Infernal Affairs
• Beast Cops
• Shaolin Soccer
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon*
• Hero*
• House of Flying Daggers*

That represents the absolute no-brainer part of the list. I popped that out in about five seconds. The next two/five will take actual thought (although I also suspect I'm just forgetting some great options.) I'll be posting my thoughts on it here as I work through those options.

The payoff, of course, will be an article ranking them and explaining my reasoning for each choice.

*I'm really torn as to whether or not I should include these co-productions. Some thought will have to go into that decision as well.

Touch of Zen (Ws Sub Dol) A real classic. I've got a crazy backlog of half-finished reviews that I really ought to work through, but this film really deserves a write up. I've actually kept it, instead of sending it back for just that reason. Maybe this weekend.

The short review? A true genre classic. Maybe not a perfect film, but its quality and place in history make it a vital film in the history of Hong Kong martial arts cinema.

No Regrets for Our Youth I was surprised by how much I liked this. I mean, I expect to like Kurosawa's work at this point, having seen and enjoyed so many of his films, but this really had some unexpected high points. I won't go into too much depth as it's late and I'm tired, but No Regrets for Our Youth is absolutely littered with brilliant moments and functions almost equally well as a whole. One shorthand metric I like to use when evaluating a film is the number of distinct instances I can remember a few days or a week after watching a film and here I can remember probably a dozen.

The Amphibian Man A bizarre, bizarre film. It's like (and it probably is) a bunch of Russians got some bootleg American sci-fi films from the 50s, watched them all in a weekend and then decided to make their own freaky Russian version that espoused the Soviet ideal.

While drunk.

And on acid.

The scenes chosen for this Maxim Martial Arts Movie Slide Show are surprisingly good. I could do without Crippled Masters (why not opt instead for something by Chang Cheh?) and the Karate Kid scene is an abominable choice, but other than that, they did a decent job.

Check it out.

"Mainstream actor Jackie Chan recently said recently that he’s not ashamed of starring in a porn film when he was a struggling actor."

"Chan… appeared in a Hong Kong made X-rated movie entitled All In The Family when he was an unknown 21-year-old.

"Chan revealed to Britain’s Daily Express newspaper: “I had to do anything I could to make a living but I don’t think it’s a big deal - even Marlon Brando used to be exposed in some of his movies."

Jackie Chan Reveals Porn Past in Report

Link cribbed from Warren Ellis

For those of you who don't know, the name of this site is from a Jackie Chan movie Drunken Master. The Chinese name is 醉拳, which literally translates to, you guessed it, "Drunken Fist." Beyond being the name of that specific film, it's refers to the general style of martial arts where the practitioner pretends to be intoxicated in order to gain an advantage over his or her opponent. It's easily my favorite film fighting style.

Here's a clip from the long-awaited sequel, Drunken Master 2.

He came up at lunch, and I was wondering which of the old WuShu videos I know are out there were on YouTube. I found one good one so far:

I just saw it today so I'm still a little flushed from the experience. That means- take this with a grain of salt.

Fearless is probably one of the best martial arts movies ever made.

Shaolin Invincible Sticks: It's been a while since I watched a 70s HK kung fu movie. I miss them

Ichi the Killer (Unrated Edition) Of the top ten or so craziest films I've ever seen Miike now has about five of them. This thing is so screwed up it's not even funny. It's actually one of his better efforts, but it's so outrageous, that's almost the only impression I can come away from it with…

Batman Begins (Two-Disc Special Edition) Better than I thought it would be. I don't really like the whole Katie Holmes sub-plot (and not just because of her Tom Cruise connection), but other than that it was pretty good.

Kung Fu Hustle (Widescreen Edition): Not funny. I'm an enormous Stephen Chow fan. I normally think he's very, very funny. Shaolin Soccer is one of my favorite comedies ever and God of Cookery isn't far behind. This film, while enjoyable as an absurd Martial Arts epic, simply doesn't have the laughs that his other films do… As an over-the-top MA extravaganza, it's highly recommended. I just didn't piss myself from laughter the way I was expecting to.

La Chevre This, on the other hand, was very funny. A film full of wonderful slapstick moments.