Produced by Wong Jing and co-directed by Vincent Kok and Stephen Chow, Forbidden City Cop (1996) is yet another delightful comedy from Hong Kong cinema’s undisputed King of Comedy; the film combines two of my personal faves — Stephen Chow and James Bond — with great results. Think of it as a 007 movie transplanted to the far-flung past of ancient China. As Stephen Chow films go, it’s also a nice companion piece to his equally amusing Bond send-up from two years earlier, From Beijing With Love.

The film gets off to a great start with hilarious Bondian pre-title sequence featuring Stephen Chow’s Ling Ling Fat (aka: 008) interrupting a famous duel between Yip Koo-Sing and Sai Mun Chiu Suet, as Luk Siu-Fung looks on. If you’re unfamiliar with that particular trio of wuxia heroes, watch the subsequently-filmed The Duel (2000) with Andy Lau, Ekin Cheng, and Nick Cheung in the above-listed roles for reference. Even if you don’t get the references, it’s still pretty amusing.

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One of these men may be the greatest actor of his generation.

In Laurence Lau’s 2006 film, My Name is Fame (read Kozo’s review), Lau Ching-Wan stars as journeyman actor Poon Kar-Fei, a committed artist who has found it increasingly difficult to nab all the plum roles, critical accolades, and/or celebrity status that seemed destined for him after bursting onto the scene with an award-winning debut oh-so many years ago. Just as his career is reaching its lowest ebb, our hero crosses paths with Faye Ng (Mandarin-speaker Huo Suyin, who’s dubbed over — sometimes distractingly — in Cantonese), a young ingenue from the Mainland who seeks guidance from her idol. Relegated to work as an extra, Faye dreams of making it big in the Hong Kong film industry, but doesn’t seem to have a clue on how to achieve that goal.

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Year: 1976

Director: John G. Avilson

Writer: Sylvester Stallone

Cast:

Sylvester Stallone, Talia Shire, Burt Young, Burgess Meredith, Carl Weathers, Joe Frazier (cameo)

Plot:

Rocky Balboa (Stallone), a down-on-his-luck semi-pro boxer, gets the chance of a lifetime when world heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Weathers) handpicks him for an exhibition bout. Meanwhile, Rocky tries to win the heart of Adrian (Shire), the extremely shy sister of his good friend, Paulie (Burt Young).

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Gillian Chung leads a group of teen girls in a search for the elusive 19th Level of Hell in Carol Lai Miu-Suet’s Naraka 19. Little does the audience realize that the film itself is actually the 19th level of hell — The Hell of Insufferable Boredom. Produced by Catherine Mun with a script by Lai and Thirteen Chan, the movie mixes equal parts One Missed Call, Re-Cycle, Whispering Corridors, and maybe even a smidgen of The Da Vinci Code to tell its hellacious tale of teenage girls in peril, all of which results in a horror movie that inspires neither terror nor dread. The movie was purportedly inspired by an internet novel; take that for what it’s worth.

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This is the coolest I’ve ever been!

Is Bodyguards and Assassins a great film? The folks who voted for Best Picture at the 29th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards seemed to think so, awarding Teddy Chan’s flick not only the top prize, but a slew of other trophies including Best Director and Best Supporting Actor, among others. Despite receiving some notice from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society and the Golden Horse Awards, the voters for these respective entities had other ideas about who deserved Best Picture, as did the folks at the LoveHKFilm.com Awards, who didn’t even nominate Bodyguards and Assassins in its top choices. Although I haven’t seen every film of 2009, I think I understand the omission.

In terms of pure filmmaking craft, Bodyguards and Assassins ranks as an impressive feat, overcoming a decade-long, intensely troubled production to deliver a top quality product, full of drama, political intrigue, action, and some top-tier actors to boot. But is Bodyguards and Assassins a “great film”? I don’t think so. The film spends a lot of time with its multiple protagonists, attempting to get us involved in their various subplots and sympathize with their individual plights. It works — to a degree — but the sheer number of characters that make up this ragtag group of misfits is so overwhelming that it’s hard to feel anything for them beyond a superficial level — that is, save Nicholas Tse’s excellent turn as a simpleminded rickshaw driver. Plenty of films ask you to care about multiple characters — The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for instance — but I think Bodyguards and Assassins only gives you the bare minimum to become invested in these characters. For some, it will be more than enough. For me, it was only adequate.

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I’ll never forget the time I traveled back in time 350 years and met Miyamoto Musashi. I mean, wouldn’t you?

Okay, I recognize the above-written statement needs some explaining so let me just say that I neither own a DeLorean nor have I ever been committed to a mental health facility for extended psychiatric evaluation. All I did was read a book — imagine that? Now this text may not be a classic of children’s literature, but it was one that I look back on as a real gateway to an interest in reading, science fiction, and Japanese culture, not to mention the book’s status as a text that helped shape my moral compass at such a very early age.

The book I am talking about is Sword of the Samurai, which was the third volume of the Time Machine series. The name may not ring any bells, but I’m betting you probably at least heard of its biggest competitor, Choose Your Own Adventure. Like its more popular predecessor, Time Machine allowed the reader to choose his or her next move. Written in the second-person point of view, the books give you a choice at the end of a chapter. In the case of Sword of the Samurai, the choice might be as simple as this:

*Warn Musashi. Turn to Page 84.

*Say Nothing. Turn to Page 81

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I’ve taken measures to weed out the numerous spam comments that I’ve been inundated with in the last few months and I’m back in a position where I check my comments regularly, so please feel free to post your thoughts in the New Year. And sorry to those who may have had their comments deleted in the last month or. It wasn’t personal; it was accidental!