Seth Rogen as Britt Reid and Jay Chou as Kato in The Green Hornet (2011)

I’m honestly surprised that The Green Hornet has finally been made. For a while there, it looked like it’d never see the light of day. The film has had a long, tortuous production history. In the 1990s, there were vague rumors of an impending film involving George Clooney, but the most concrete development came when Kevin Smith (Clerks) wrote a screenplay in 2004. However, Smith got cold feet about helming the film himself and backed out of the director’s chair (although he did later adapt the script into a comic for Dynamite Entertainment).

Without Smith’s involvement, the project then languished in development hell until we got the surprising news  that Stephen Chow would both direct and star in the new film, alongside Seth Rogen, who would play against type as Britt Reid, the titular Green Hornet. But soon enough, Chow was off the project as both actor and director due to “creative differences” and announced he would be instead pursuing a different superhero film with Jack Black (!). More delays ensued.

And then, Michel Gondry, director of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, came aboard as director and Taiwanese actor-singer Jay Chou was cast in the role of Kato. Still more delays ensued when Sony decided to post-convert the film to 3-D, which isn’t a good sign if it’s true what people have been saying about post-converted 3-D films like Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender (i.e. the 3-D sucked).

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C’mon, who HASN’T wished they could do this?

I first saw John Woo’s Hard Boiled on Cinemax.The cable company gave us a free trial, and I timed my VCR to record this film, along with A Better Tomorrow, Vampire Hunter D, and The Wicked City. Although I can’t speak for those who lived in major metropolitan centers, in my day, both Hong Kong films and anime were damn hard to come by, especially if you lived in rural Oklahoma. Don’t worry, I’ll avoid the obligatory “You kids today don’t know how easy you’ve got it!” spiel and continue with my stroll down memory lane.

In my childhood, the only Chinese movies that I ever got to see on TV or on VHS were Bruce Lee films, Brucesploitation flicks, and badly dubbed chopsockies that were probably produced by studios other than Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest. As a result, Bruce Lee was probably the only identifiably positive image of an Asian man in American popular culture, and, of course, his appeal was very much tied up in his proficiency in the martial arts. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My point is — for those of us very much stuck in an American pop culture perspective, for an Asian guy to be cool, he had to know kung fu.

All that changed with Hard Boiled and Chow Yun-Fat.  As silly as it may sound to those of you who are either a bit younger than me or who were always culturally plugged into Asian cinema, Chow Yun-Fat was the first Asian actor I’d ever seen who was undeniably cool. Of course, Cinemax showed the dubbed version, so Chow sounded like a pissed off Aussie, but it didn’t matter to me — Chow’s Tequila Yuen was a cool customer very much in line with the heroes I admired in Hollywood films — Dirty Harry, Snake Plissken, John McClane, etc. Role models aren’t that important to me anymore, but as a youngster, Chow Yun-Fat’s Tequila Yuen meant the absolute world to me.

Here are my thoughts, pulled from my recommendations page:

As John Woo’s last and perhaps best Hong Kong movie, Hard Boiled is the kind of film where critical hyperbole like “it’s a pulse-pounding, high-octane thrill ride” isn’t far from the truth. Although his role as Mark in the A Better Tomorrow films may be more iconic, Chow Yun-Fat owns all as Tequila Yuen, a swaggering hardboiled cop who radiates so much charm and charisma that it’s not hard to see why Chow was dubbed “the coolest actor on the planet” a few years back. But of course, with most John Woo films, the action is the main draw, and Hard Boiled doesn’t disappoint. In the words of my esteemed colleague Kozo, this movie boasts the “MOST INSANE BLAZING TWO-GUN ACTION YOU’LL EVER SEE.” And he’s right on the money. In terms of balletic action, this is John Woo at his finest.

All these years later, it’s still a fantastic ride and, as with the other films on my list, could have easily taken the #1 slot. Not to sound elitist, if you don’t know Hard Boiled, you don’t know Hong Kong cinema.

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Introduction: Top Hong Kong Films of the 1990s
Part 1: Tian Mi Mi
Part 2: Once Upon a Time in the Cinema
Part 3: Jackie Chan, Man of Action
Part 5: WKW is A-OK
Part 6: Epilogue

I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m a fan of Bruce Lee. After all, I’ve reviewed all his major films for this website, came up with a short bio for his LoveHKFilm.com People Page, wrote a little article about some film and TV projects of his that never came to pass, and even penned a long-winded blog post about his transnational appeal.

But if my love for man known as “The Little Dragon” has fairly been obvious, I doubt many LoveHKFilm.com readers are aware of another “idol” of mine — Philip Marlowe.  Not only is Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled private eye my favorite character in literature, but Chandler’s penultimate novel in the Marlowe series, The Long Goodbye, is perhaps my favorite novel ever written. First appearing in Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Philip Marlowe has gone on to be played on both the big and small screens by actors like Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Elliott Gould, Dick Powell, Powers Boothe, and James Caan, among others. Most, but not all, of these films and TV shows have made it to DVD, albeit with one glaring exception — a 1969 adaptation of the novel, The Little Sister, entitled Marlowe.

One of my favorite actors, Oklahoma native James Garner — star of TV’s Maverick, The Rockford Files, and (for you young ‘uns) The Notebook — plays Marlowe, so I’ve been dying to see the film. And as it so happens, while scanning an Asian toyshop (of all the places in the world) on Clement St, I was able to pick up a copy and watch the film for the very first time.

Now, you may be asking yourself, “What in the hell does all this have to do with Bruce Lee and/or Hong Kong cinema?” Well, I’ll tell ya.  Marlowe marks Bruce Lee’s American acting debut in a full-length feature film. Scripted by one of Lee’s students, Sterling Silliphant, Marlowe features Lee in a bit part, playing a menacing thug named Winslow Wong (who, by the way, doesn’t appear in the Chandler book at all).

When Marlowe Met Winslow

To be honest, Marlowe is no great shakes — sure, Garner is likable, and Rita Moreno is attractive as hell (her striptease that concludes the film is surprisingly risque in a mainstream flick of its day), so it’s a shame that they didn’t get much screen time together — but the film itself is fairly dull and unnecessarily convoluted. I mean, Marlowe himself doesn’t seem to know what the hell’s going on even when he “solves” the case. That’s a definite no-no. However, I think both Chandler and Bruce Lee fans can agree that the scenes with Lee and Garner crackle with an energy that’s missing throughout much of the film. If you’ve seen Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey, you might be familiar with this sequence:

Pretty amusing, eh? Lee appears again in the film, but I won’t link to a clip of his final appearance, so as not to spoil the experience if you’re so inclined to catch Marlowe on TV, VHS, or “On Demand” someday. Lee fans might feel a little insulted by what happens, but I found the outcome of the fight to be pretty amusing, considering how invincible Lee’s characters tended to be in his own martial arts films. The way things go down, you might be tempted to read this as Lee making fun of his image. Too bad he didn’t have an “image” to poke fun at — The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon hadn’t happened yet!

 In tribute to James Cameron’s new film, Sanjuro employs Lee Byung-Hun as his Official LoveHKFilm.com Avatar.

Well, I’ve finally made it to Singapore, so it’s time for a blog update. During my stay I’ve already seen the Laughing Gor prequel, TURNING POINT, and I hope to see OVERHEARD eventually as well as the Singaporean film WHERE GOT GHOST? perhaps as early as today. I also finally got the opportunity to watch Pixar’s UP, which is hands-down the best movie of the summer.

With my first Singapore-based update, I’d like to start with a topic that is actually HK-related — Ma Wing Shing’s STORM RIDERS comics. For those of you who live in Hong Kong or some other East Asian country, this post might not be as interesting to you as I hope it is for HK cinema fans in non-Asian countries. Still, I hope you all get a kick out of it!

But first, a preface of sorts. I have — for the longest time — collected toys. I’ve always taken good care of the toys I played with as a kid, and when I became older, I became one of those fanboy geeks who bought cool toys and either a) displayed them on my desk in funny poses or b) kept them sealed in the package in the belief that they might actually be worth something someday. As to the latter hope, I was somewhat successful. On a related note, I recently dug through my closet at my parents’ house, and I have to admit that the sheer amount of unopened Star Wars merchandice I possess is astounding. My hope is that I can secretly pawn this stuff on eBay so my wonderful girlfriend never sees the true extent of my collector mania.

But I digress. The point of this post is to highlight one particulair strain of this deranged mentality – my propensity to collect figures based on Chinese comic books like Storm Riders and A Man Called Hero (aka Zhonghua Ying Hung). Let’s just say that I have a lot of these figures, and on any visit to Hong Kong (sorry Kozo, for constantly playing Virgil to my Dante in my personal descent into HK’s collectible underworld) or Singapore, I will actively search for these things. However, I’m getting a little older and really starting to see the folly of collecting all this stuff (aka: useless clutter). So on this trip abroad, I told myself that I would not go out and seek this stuff, but if it somehow appeared before me while browsing stores, well…

Anyway, when I arrived at my family’s flat in Choa Chu Kang, I was surprised to see this box waiting for me:

I’m not sure you can tell the size from these photos, but it’s a pretty big box. I could tell it was some some kind of official Storm Riders merchandise, and from the size of the package, I was guessing it was a big-ass statue. Luckily, my worries about how I’d bring this back to the US evaporated when I learned that the box simply contained two small figures of Wind and Cloud. Here’s what they look like:

Wind

Cloud

Pretty cool, huh? The only downside is that Wind’s sword and Cloud’s base have pegs with no corresponding holes on the figures themselves, which makes wielding a blade (Wind) or simply standing up correctly (in the case of Cloud) simply impossible. Oh well.

While out shopping later that day, I did pick up this volume of Storm Riders, complete with a crazy holo-foil/chromium(?) cover and a snazzy mousepad:

I bought it at a store called Comics Connection, which has branches in just about every shopping complex in Singapore I’ve visited. I guess small business owners who want to have a comic store of their own have to go the franchise route here (I’m not sure). Each time I’ve visited, however, I’ve noticed that I see less and less Chinese product (aside from the comics themselves) and more and more Japanese manga, toys, and games (most of which is available in the US now). Anyway, despite the burgeoning Japanophilia apparent in these stores, I thought this branch was pretty cool thanks to a familiar figure they had busting out of the wall:

Kinda nifty, but take a closer look at Wind’s hand:

Perhaps Wind is well-aware that this is a vulgar hand gesture.

In other Storm Riders-related news, I’m planning on going to see the Wind and Cloud swords on display at Vivo City, so stayed tuned for that. Apparently, Ekin Cheng actually hand-delivered them about a month ago, but unfortunately, I was still in Oklahoma at the time.

So until next time, I’ll leave you with some avatar shenanigans…

I’ll get you for MURDERER and PARA PARA SAKURA!

AAARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

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 Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, add what is uniquely your own.

— Bruce Lee

On November 27th, 2005, a monument in honor of Bruce Lee was erected at the Avenue of Stars, a Hong Kong tourist attraction located at the Tsimshatsui Promenade along the Victoria Harbor waterfront. Modeled after the Hollywood Walk of Fame and created, according to its official website, “to pay tribute to outstanding professionals of [the] Hong Kong’s film industry, to promote [the] tourism industry, and to consolidate Hong Kong’s position as Asia’s World City,” the Avenue of Stars was, quite possibly, the ideal location to unveil a 2.5-meter tall, 600 kg bronze statue honoring the industry’s all-time biggest star. The inscription at the base of the statue says it all: “Bruce Lee: Star of the Century.” The tribute, however, was a long time in coming. When repeated attempts to urge the government to find a way to pay homage to Bruce Lee stalled, members of the locally based Bruce Lee Club took it upon themselves to raise upwards of US $100,000 to commission a sculpture. This long-awaited tribute finally occurred on what would have been the martial arts superstar’s 65th birthday had he not died in 1973. The fact that it took over thirty years to create a public monument in honor of Bruce Lee in Hong Kong is—to say the least—peculiar, considering the actor’s enduring fame. What is perhaps even more peculiar is that another country had already beaten Hong Kong to it—and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, no less.

Only a day before the unveiling of the statue in Hong Kong, the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina unveiled a similar statue of Bruce Lee, making it the first public monument in the world to the international icon. This gold-plated bronze statue captures Lee in a familiar action pose –left arm raised with his palm facing outward, while his right hand grips his signature weapon, a pair of nunchaku.

At first glance, a Bruce Lee statue in Hong Kong makes a bit more sense than it does in Mostar. After all, the ethnically Chinese Bruce Lee was raised in Hong Kong and found international superstardom via the local film industry. Bruce Lee’s rooted and routed connection to Hong Kong is well-documented, but the actor has no evident tie to Bosnia and Herzegovina. What, then, was the rationale behind the Mostar officials’ seemingly incongruous choice of Bruce Lee as a local icon? The city was ravaged by bitter, bloody conflicts amongst rival ethnic factions during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995. According to Alexander Zaitchik, the creators of the monument viewed it as a “sly rebuke to the ongoing use of public spaces to glorify the country’s competing nationalisms.” Bruce Lee, then, was chosen as a symbol of solidarity meant to cross these divisive ethnic borderlands. “We will always be Muslims, Serbs or Croats,” one of the organizers remarked to the BBC, “But one thing we all have in common is Bruce Lee.”

This statement—absurd to some, perhaps inspiring to others—confirms much of what Jachinson Chan has already said about the world famous martial artist in his 2001 book, Chinese American Masculinities: From Fu Manchu to Bruce Lee. He writes, “Bruce Lee’s popularity crosses cultural boundaries in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality. He was an international hero” (74). And he still is, if the statue in Mostar is any indication. Bruce Lee, the man, may have been snuffed out in the prime of his life, but his image, if not his “spirit” endures. In Hong Kong alone, numerous pretenders-to-the-throne with stage names like Bruce Le, Bruce Li, and Dragon Lee sought to fill the void in the wake of Lee’s death, starring in dozens of unofficial sequels, heartfelt homages, and crass attempts to cash-in on Lee’s popularity, each bearing titles like Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (1976), Clones of Bruce Lee (1977), and Bruce Lee Fights back from the Grave (1976). So prolific were these films that many casual viewers who believe they have seen a Bruce Lee film in their lifetime may likely have only seen one of these pale imitations. Lee’s “absent presence” even had a strong affect on his contemporaries and successors. Even future superstar Jackie Chan found himself pressured in his early films to imitate Lee’s persona before finding his niche as a more comedic, Buster Keatonesque kung fu star. Further, Lee’s impact on martial arts cinema internationally was so dramatic that it would be impossible to elaborate upon it here. Despite being known for only a handful of films, Bruce Lee has gained enough recognition to be chosen as one of Time’s “100 Heroes and Icons of the Twentieth Century” alongside such figures as Che Guevara, Harvey Milk, and Mother Teresa. This recent honor speaks directly to the man’s prolific afterlife in the realm of cinema, DVDs, books, video games, t-shirts, posters, and numerous other cultural artifacts. As Stephan Hammond and Mike Wilkins write, “What Elvis Presley was to rock ‘n’ roll, Bruce Lee was to celluloid kung fu” (204). So popular is Bruce Lee that one need not to have ever seen a Bruce Lee film to be familiar with who he is.

In the succeeding paragraphs, I will examine Bruce Lee—the man, the myth, the legend—through the prism of articulation and multi-accentuality. Why would a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina erect a statue of Bruce Lee? And how does it differ from the reasons for having one in Hong Kong? Does it differ at all? In other words, how could a national and ethnic icon for one group be a post-national and post-ethnic icon for others? In the essay, I will propose a way in which we can view these two monuments as direct evidence of Bruce Lee as an articulated and multi-accentual cultural figure.

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Hello, my name is Calvin McMillin, a.k.a. Sanjuro. You might remember me from such film reviews as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Swordsman 2, or perhaps the strangely infamous Flowers of Shanghai. I’m here today to give you the skinny on my new blog, Ronin on Empty. Now, you might be aware that I once had an irregularly updated column on the site called A Man Called Sanjuro or that I most recently maintained a blogger account also called Ronin on Empty. Those previous writing venues have been folded into this brand-spankin’ new LoveHKFilm.com blog. I wasn’t sure how or where to begin, so I did a few test posts to start out, which you can read underneath this one. With that initial tomfoolery out of the way, I thought I might use this first substantive posting as an opportunity to reflect on the past, consider the present, and speculate on the future.

 ”Be like water, fool! Be like water!”

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I really got into Hong Kong cinema sometime in the summer of 1992. Before then, aside from the small handful of films Bruce Lee made in his lifetime, the only Chinese films I had seen were those poorly-dubbed chopsocky flicks that the local channels would show on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But in 1992, something truly glorious happened to me. While I visited Singapore on summer vacation, my family was all abuzz about a new Chinese movie that had just come out, and since they were all itching to see it, I tagged along for the ride. And boy, what a ride. As it turned out, the movie in question was Once Upon a Time in China 2. To put it simply, it was a magical time at the cinema. I honestly hadn’t been so fully immersed in a film since watching the Star Wars trilogy as a kid. Now I could go on for pages talking about Once Upon a Time in China 2, but I’ll spare you the frothing, fanboy excitement. Let’s just say I was hooked — BIG TIME.

 Best. HK Movie. Ever.

I just had to know — were there more films out there like this? And if so, how could I see them? The next day, one of my aunties  took me to the local video store, and I was able to watch a few Hong Kong films I’d never seen before. As a result, I had a great time devouring this “new” cinema that was so utterly amazing to me and yet had totally been under the radar for me for so many years. But when I returned to my home in Oklahoma, the my down-home rural locale made access to these films a major obstacle. For those of you too young to remember, the convenience of the internet was years away, and the DVD revolution had yet to occur. Getting to see Hong Kong films — in any form — was a pretty big deal.

“What’d you say about DragonBall Evolution?”

Not to sound like an old-timer, but I remember setting the VCR before I went to bed to record late night showings of dubbed versions of A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow 2, and Hard Boiled (complete with an Aussie-dubbed Chow Yun-Fat!) on Cinemax. Things got a lot better when I got my hands on various mail-order catalogs, which allowed me to order two-tape sets of Hong Kong movies for a whopping $40. Exactly why these movies were cut into two parts over two separate video cassettes remains unclear to me even today.

“Whaddya mean by ‘overcompensating’?”

But the situation improved as time passed. Video stores like Hastings started carrying VHS tapes of HK movies with subtitles, and I’d watch every single one that would show up on the shelves, even ones I probably should’ve avoided. After Rumble in the Bronx and Rush Hour performed well at the US box office, more and more Jackie Chan films were released in the US. Sure, the English dubbing and recuts might not have been the most desirable format for hardcore fans, but you have to remember that these were different times. It was a minor miracle seeing a Jackie Chan movie in an American theatre. And then something even cooler happened — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit American shores. I distinctly remember the unbelievably surreal quality of watching CTHD in Mandarin and then later Iron Monkey in Cantonese in a rinky-dink six-cinema theatre in Duncan, Oklahoma. To me, this was unthinkable only a year before. When I saw the first Once Upon a Time in China on DVD at Wal-Mart for $19.99, clearly it was a good time for Hong Kong cinema fans in the United States.

My first three post-1997 HK flicks all featured Ekin Cheng. And I liked them. Sue me.

When I returned to Singapore in 2002, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Hong Kongfilms on VCD that I encountered there. Unsure of what to buy beyond the films I knew from 1980-1994, I consulted the internet. I typed in “Hong Kong film,” and I was instantly taken to a little website bearing the name — you guessed it — LoveHKFilm.com. I thought the reviews were well-written and funny; whoever this Kozo guy was he sure did share my sense of humor and love for HK cinema. I couldn’t believe a site like this existed. I contacted Kozo, who was looking for reviewers, and for reasons I can’t quite recall, I asked if I could join. I think my first review was Swordsman, based off a crappy VCD, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, a lot has changed since I started writing for this site all those years ago. Back then, I was a single, fresh-faced, clean-cut junior high teacher who spent his weekends reconnecting with Hong Kong cinema through a copious amount of DVD and VCD purchases from Yesasia and local video stores. Now, I’m grizzled, long-haired PhD student with a beautiful girlfriend and a workload that just gets piled higher and deeper with each passing day.  I have a tough time finding the time to even watch a HK movie, let alone review one, and unlike Kozo and Kevin Ma, I’m far, far away from the Hong Kong action to be anywhere near the cutting edge in terms of my review output. It also doesn’t help that the heyday of HK cinema is long since gone. Earlier, I likened my experience watching Once Upon a Time in China 2 with my childhood viewing of Star Wars, and I’m wondering what to do with that comparison. I mean, just 8-10 years ago, I used to collect Star Wars VHS tapes, DVDs, tie-in books, graphic novels, toys galore, you name it. Today? I’m totally indifferent to the franchise. But is that how I feel about HK cinema? Not at all. I’m not ready to give up on it. Really, it’s just a question of re-energizing myself.

Pictorial Representation of Sanjuro Re-energized

So how do I do it? Well, I came up with two ideas. I recently calculated the number of DVDs that I own that I haven’t watched, and the number was somewhere in the 100s, depending on how you count TV shows. Of those, probably 80 are relevant to this website and 50-60 of those have never been reviewed by anyone at LoveHKFilm.com. Thus, my goal for the year is to slog through the remaining titles in my collection, and review every relevant movie. My collection runs the gamut of pan-Asia stuff from Japan, Korea, and Malaysia, as well as a number of Hong Cinema films, especially from the Shaw Brothers most prolific era. There are even a few gems that Kozo, Kevin, and I haven’t touched yet (Centre Stage, anyone?), and I’d love the chance to remedy those omissions real soon.

I promise to review this movie someday.

The second effort to rejuvenate things is this blog. And at the risk of looking like the site’s resident curmudgeon, I’m doing to dip back into the archive from time to time to spotlight movies from “the good ol’ days.” This blog, however, won’t be about my personal life, so don’t worry about weepy blog posts entitled “Sad” or “Desperate Cry for Help.” Instead what I want to do is simply talk about Hong Kong and Asian entertainment in a format that can’t be given adequately treatment in a review. I might want to focus on an unsung film, an underrated performance, or a really great action scene. This blog is very much a work-in-progress. What I suspect you might find most consistently is a blog that’ll provide some US Blu-Ray and DVD news on HK and Pan-Asian movies, as well as some short essays on Hong Kong cinema from time to time. I’ll try to surprise ya.

Unlike Chow Mo-Wan, I never write in a suit. Hell, I don’t even smoke.

The other thing that I may want to do is serialize some of my fictional work. This is a tricky issue due to a) rights issues, b) relevancy to the site itself, and c) your interest as readers. I’m a writer – or at least trying to be – and I was lucky enough to get two stories published; one was a little ghost story called “Raffles Place Déjà vu” that got picked up (and re-edited quite embarrassingly) in a Singaporean horror anthology, and the other was a short story called “The Sushi Bar at the Edge of Forever,” which finally got published a couple years ago in The Hawaii Review. Anyway, if I do decide to serialize some of my stuff, I want your comments, your criticisms, your suggestions. Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, and even Stephen King have been successful with the serial format, and while I know I’ll never be as popular as any of those fine fellows, I’m intrigued to experiment with the form and challenge myself to make it interesting for all of you. I’m not doing this for the fame (although that would be great); I’m more interested in telling stories, and I’m sincerely hoping people like them. If you’re interested in me posting stuff like that, let me know.

* * *

In the words of Shakespeare (or was it Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa?): It has begun.