Tis November 27, 2015 and all 4 Shots from 4 Films are dedicated to four actors who share the same birth date. A date which all will have now figured out as being November 27. One comes from the Master of the Martial Arts himself, another a veteran character actor, a third who became a prawn and, lastly, the one who made the Glasgow Smile cooler before Heath Ledger.
4 SHOTS FROM 4 FILMS
Enter the Dragon (dir. by Robert Clouse)
Ichi the Killer (dir. by Takashi Miike)
I think Keanu Reeves has always had it in him to play a bad guy. I think playing a villain suits him better than playing a hero. The latter requires charisma and presence and that’s something that Keanu will never be mistaken for having. Now as a villain he can go all-out and channel his inner-Nicolas Cage.
Man of Tai Chi will be the test to see if he can pull off being a film’s heel. It helps that this film also comes as his directorial debut. Looking like a much more polished, but even more kick-ass take on the Bloodsport-theme, Man of Tai Chi is one film later this year that I’ve been highly-anticipating. It speaks to my inner martial-artist and it’s been awhile since we’ve had a film where it looks like the fighting is not all about wire work.
The film stars Keanu Reeves as the villain Donaka Mark with the hero role going to his stuntman friend and owner of a badass name, Tiger Chen.
Man of Tai Chi has already premiered at both the Beijing and Cannes Film Festivals and should make it’s North American premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Here’s to hoping it gets a wide release before the end of 2013.
I finally got around to checking out Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky over on Netflix Instant and It’s as great as the first time I saw it on VHS almost 15 years ago. It’s during the second fight Ricky finds himself in that I’ve picked the latest entry in the “Scenes I Love” feature.
This scene has Ricky in just his second day in prison (for a crime he did commit) and already gaining the attention of the prison gang leaders who control the different cell blocks. This scene has him fighting it out with Oscar who happens to be the leader of the gang that runs the North Cell. It’s a fight that has Ricky fighting unarmed against Oscar who wields a custom machete/saw-toothed sword. One would think that Ricky would be at a major disadvantage, but one would be oh so mistaken.
Ricky is not just a master of kung fu, but he’s got powers that Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon would kill babies and cook kittens to acquire. The scene best explains it all and having it dubbed in classic martial arts style makes it even better: “Alright! you got a lot of guts Oscar!”
One thing that seemed destined the moment RZA (with his hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan) arrived on the scene in the early 1990’s was him finally making a martial arts film. Not just a martial arts film, but a wuxia kung fu film that he and the other in the Wu-Tang Clan had watched as kids and cotinued to obsess over as adults. RZA’s own brand of hip=hop was infused with many sound bites and track beats from the classic kung fu flicks of the 70’s and 80’s. Even the group’s name was taken from one of those very kung fu classics, Shaolin and the Wu-Tang.
Now RZA has teamed up with genre filmmaker Eli Roth to make his dream to a reality with the upcoming martial arts film The Man with the Iron Fists which RZA has directed from a story written by both him and Roth. It also stars RZA (making him a triple-threat in this production) with Russell Crowe, Lucy Liu, Rick Yune, Jamie Chung, Daniel Bautista and MMA fighter Cung Le. The fight choreography was handled by renowned martial arts fight choreographer Corey Yeun.
The first official trailer has now been released and it’s in awesome Red Band which shows just a hint of how ultra-violent the film will end up being. All I can say is that near the end of the trailer we get eyeballs!
Through the Shattered Lens 