Jackie and Jet join forces in the Forbidden Kingdom

The 2 supreme Kungfu masters of the Chinese movie world - Jackie Chan and Jet Lee have finally joined forces in their new movie - Forbidden Kingdom aka Kungfu Masters (功夫之王). Many have speculated on who is the true supreme master, some say its Jackie and some say its Jet... But my humble opinion is that since they have vastly different styles - Jackie's style is acrobatic and humorous and Jet is more consistent and serious in his craft, it will be hard to determine who is the better fighter. But still it will definitely be a box-office draw when these two kungfu masters come together in a film. The movie also stars up and coming Chinese actresses Liu Yifei (the very pretty Little Dragon Lady in Romance of The Condor Heroes) and Li Bingbing.

They recently came together in full costume for some promotional shots and here are the results:

hmmm... although this movie is very loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Journey To The West, from the way they are dressed, they seem to be making another adaptation of Louis Cha's swordfighting novel The Condor Heroes... Jackie's character must be from the Beggar Sect and Jet's character looks like a highly skilled exponent from the Shaolin Temple...

this should be interesting...

[Picture from http://www.asianpopcorn.com/default.asp?Display=737]

Tags: Jackie Chan, Jet Lee, Forbidden Kingdom, Kungfu Master, Liu Yifei, Li Bingbing, Kungfu movie, Asian American movie, Asian American co-production, upcoming movies.

War Of Money - hottest Korean drama serial now

War Of Money is currently the most popular Korean drama serial airing in South Korea now based on its TV ratings. Starring Park Shin-yang, who starred as the romantic bespectacled tycoon in Lovers in Paris, Park Jin-hee of Come Back Soon-Ae! fame, Shin Dong-wook and Kim Jung-hwa, War of Money is about how an ordinary (but still bespectacled) stock analyst played by Park Shin-yang runs into financial hard times and decides to learn to become a ruthless loan shark so that he can make lots and lot of moolah... hmmm... seems to me he should just trade in stocks instead since he is a stock analyst and Warren Buffet definitely makes more than the general loanshark haha ;-P

With society's general fixation with money, it's no wonder this drama serial has been hitting high ratings of over 30% ever since it started airing on 16 May, hitting a high of 35.5% on 21 June for its 12th episode. It also provides a welcome break from the humdrum romantic dramas and comedies that the South Korean TV stations have been producing these last few years.

Check out this entertaining MV of the main theme of the drama serial that I found on Youtube.




Information from:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2876416
http://chinese.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/06/22/20070622000035.html

Tags: War of Money, Korean drama, Korean drama serial, Park Shin-yang, Park Jin-hee, Shin Dong-Wook, SBS.

Direction Of Upcoming Asian Films?

According to this report by NY Times, stylised violent gangsta pics and horror movies are fast losing ground and the next in things in Asian cinema are saccherine sweet sentimental dramas, cute campy comedies and more realistic gangster movies ... The writer of this article based his conclusions on a sampling of the movies being presented at this year's New York Asian Film Festival which serves as a roadmap of sorts on the latest trends in Asian cinema.

Its an interesting article worth checking out :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/movies/17kehr.html


Tags: East Asian Cinema, East Asian movies, trends in Asian movies, East Asian Films, direction of Asian films, East Asian Movie Industry.

South Korean Actress Wins Cannes Best Actress Award

Congratulations to Jeon Do-yeon for winning the Best Actress award at this year's Cannes Film Festival for her role in the film Secret Sunshine by director Lee Chang-dong. In the film, Jeon Do-yeon plays a woman struggling to maintain her sanity after the death of her husband and son. She is only the second Asian actress to win this prestigious award after Maggie Cheung won it in 2004 for her role in director Olivier Assayas's Clean.

Here is the trailer for Secret Sunshine that I found on YouTube. Just from the trailer I can tell that Jeon gave a fantastically heart-rending performance in this film and richly deserved her Best Actress win.




Tags: Jeon Do-yeon, Lee Chang-dong, Secret Sunshine, Cannes, Best Actress, Cannes Film Festival, Korean film, Korean movie.