With martial arts getting more popular in the Thirties, more people seek to learn them via the professionals at Foshan in Southern China. Some of the experienced masters like to challenge their counterparts and undergoing battles. To have their whole concentration, it is their practice to lock up the venues and no one is allowed to leave during battles. No food and no rest before reaching any results. Ip Man is a young rich man extremely talented in martial arts, but he chooses to keep a low profile. Yet this doesn’t keep him out of these troubles ahead. One day he is trapped in this battleground so he has to use every means in order to get out of there. The masters are amazed by his abilities. Master Kung and his daughter Kung Yi are amongst, and the latter is attracted to this newcomer. A high warlord is assassinated by his own guard Yi Xian Tian. All masters in Foshan vow to take Tian down no matter what…. —American Film Market
Born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. Coming from the Mainland and speaking only Mandarin and Shanghainese, he had a difficult period of adjustment to Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, spending hours in movie theatres with his mother. He made his directing debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By, produced by Alan Tang. It was a crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, and with heavy borrowings from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1974), but already displayed one of his principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette. It is his only box office hit to date. Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s, among these were Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Ashes of Time (1994). His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). The filming of In the Mood for Love (2000) had to be shifted from Beijing… read more
Lovely. A truly beautiful film, and a fantastic return to form from one of my favorite directors. http://foreigndemon.blogspot.com/2013/05/can-i-kick-it-or-being-knowing-doing.html
A legend passes away, a new issue of desistfilm, the debut of Cléo, a “journal of film and feminism”, music from Michael Snow & more.
Our first dispatch from the German capital includes takes on Wong Kar-wai’s latest and the conclusion of Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy.
Film Comment’s best of the year, Raya Martin & Mark Peranson in Mexico, James Gray on American cinema, and an unexpected Guillaume sighting.
We finally get to see a bit more of Wong Kar-wai’s long in the making martial arts film starring Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi and Chen Chang.
Also: Universal @ 100. James Toback’s “totally unusual, inventive” movie and more.
“An utterly up-to-date classic, a comic-epic swordplay film for a postmodern age.”
Dopo una lunga gestazione, rimandi e notizie trapelate qui e là ad alimentare le aspettative, a cui si era aggiunto un trailer che diceva tutto e niente, l’ultima fatica di Wong Kar-Wai è finalmente… read review
Hong Kong auteur Wong Karwai’s new film The Grandmasters started 2013 with a bang. It not only marks Wong’s return to Chinese-language films, but more importantly, celebrates the maturest work of the… read review
