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Posts Tagged ‘Byron Mann’

Invincible (2001)

Monday, July 7th, 2014

tn_invincibleI saw this old issue of Asian Trash Cinema that had an interview with Ching Siu-Tung, veteran martial arts choreographer, prolific wire-fu practicioner, Jackie Chan Chinese Opera schoolmate, and director of Steven Seagal’s weirdest movie (BELLY OF THE BEAST). Of course the interview covered alot of his most legendary work: he directed the SWORDSMAN trilogy, EXECUTIONERS and NAKED WEAPON, he was stunt coordinator for A BETTER TOMORROW II and action director for HERO. But I was even more interested in the weird little tidbits I’d never heard about his brief flirtations with Hollywood after THE MATRIX exploded and Yuen Woo Ping was all booked up.

The craziest one was a story about “the director and producer” of SPIDER-MAN coming to Ching, unhappy with how their action scenes were coming out, and wanting him to redo them. Of course it never ended up happening, he seems unclear why and doesn’t go into details. But it’s an intriguing story. Raimi was always up on the Hong Kong guys, he executive produced HARD TARGET after all. It makes sense he would know about the top wire-fighting guy and think of him for a movie about a guy swinging on webs.

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The Man With the Iron Fists

Saturday, November 3rd, 2012

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS is the new kung fu movie directed, co-written and starring RZA, leader of the Wu-Tang Clan. The rap group, not the clan, although he has actually been a guest at the Shaolin Temple and trained under a 34th generation Shaolin monk, no bullshit. If you’re not a Shaolin monk and not into hip hop either you might still be familiar with RZA from his all time classic score to GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI or you might’ve seen him show up as an actor occasionally, like in AMERICAN GANGSTER or FUNNY PEOPLE.

Directing a kung fu movie, though, is something he’s been trying to do since at least the ’90s, when he started filming a super hero martial arts thing called BOBBY DIGITAL. (read the rest of this shit…)

Crying Freeman

Monday, August 27th, 2012

CRYING FREEMAN (1995) is a pretty cool movie that I went back to hoping it would be better than I realized before. I did a brief write-up of it in a column years ago, but I’m not gonna link to it right now because most of the column is angry rants about what was going on in the news at the time and it makes me cringe. Based on a Japanese comic book (or “Japomic Book”) by Kazuo Koike, the same writer as Lone Wolf and Cub, CRYING FREEMAN is a moody, serious assassin movie with Yakuza, mind control, a witch, romance and tragedy. It takes place in 4 different countries (U.S., Canada, China, Japan) with the most convincing, of course, being the part that takes place in Vancouver, B.C.
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Street Fighter

Monday, July 5th, 2010

tn_streetfightermovieI haven’t really kept up with this, but I heard something about Roger Ebert drawing a nerd fatwa by saying that video games aren’t art. From the sounds of it I think people should lay off the guy, because do you really want to convince Ebert to love video games and have him spend his last years playing Halo looking for its themes? I don’t want that, and I wish he’d cut down on the Twitter a little too. (read the rest of this shit…)

STEVEN SEAGAL IS A DANGEROUS MAN

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

tn_adangerousmanThe new Steven Seagal picture comes out in the States today. I couldn’t wait so I already imported the UK version. I like the design of the American cover a little better, but I don’t regret a thing because the UK one has the all important “Steven Seagal is” before the title, something that’s been sorely lacking from Seagal movies lately, not to mention from movies in general.

(STEVEN SEAGAL IS A SERIOUS MAN. STEVEN SEAGAL IS A SINGLE MAN. STEVEN SEAGAL IS AN EDUCATION. STEVEN SEAGAL IS PRECIOUS BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE. etc. ) (read the rest of this shit…)