What has to be the highest-profile news for internationally recognised Asian cinema this week was Chow Yun-Fat's departure from his old friend John Woo's next directorial project, The Battle of the Red Cliff. With a pretty solid cast outright - Variety lists Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chiling Lin, Chang Chen, Vicky Zhao and Hu Jun - it seems that losing both Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Chow Yun Fat would leave leading man duties wide open with production under way. It seems now, however, that Kaneshiro's role is the one Tony Leung left, explaining how the latter can now return to the production in the lead role vacated by Chow. This allows the period action drama, one of the largest and most expensive independent films in current production, to stay on track. Sighs of relief from investors, but cries of "For shame!" from those rabid Woo fans like myself anticipating a period-set reunion of the Hard-Boiled trio of Woo, Chow and Leung.
Variety: http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/1211/1/
If any one film has done more than Hard-Boiled to bring HK-style film-making to the wider world, it has to be Stephen Chow's excellent Shaolin Soccer, a film so enjoyable I forgot how much I hated soccer for the duration of the film. Now a sequel of sorts is reported over at Twitch, although it will be a Japanese production starring singer/actress Kou Shibasaki (best known in the west for Battle Royale) applying Shaolin skills to lacrosse. For hardcore HK fans, this may seem like some sort of sacrilegious, watered-down cash-in, but one key fact keeps me interested: the director is Motohiro Katsuyuki, now known for recent high-profile successes Udon, Bayside Shakedown 1 and 2, and BS spin-off Negotiator: Mashita Masayoshi. To me, however, he'll always be the director of the ridiculously entertaining Space Travelers, about three anime fans who rob a bank. It is effectively the Galaxy Quest of anime fandom, and I love it to bits. If he's at the helm, then this could turn out to be massive amounts of fun.
Twitch: http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/009734.html
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