list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Once Upon a Time in China on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_China/80540/default.aspx Title: Once Upon a Time in China
Year: 1992
Director: Tsui Hark
Plot: Though generally unknown to Western audiences, Tsui Hark is considered a giant among Asian filmmakers and this exceptional epic, combining hard-hitting martial-arts action with romance, comedy, history, genuine poignance, and sharp insight into the effects of the century-long encroachment of Western civilization in Asia more than amply demonstrates why. The story centers on the exploits of Master Wong Fei-hung (a familiar figure in Hong Kong cinema) a 19th-century doctor, Confucian, and exceptional martial artist. As the film begins, he has just opened a new clinic in Canton Province. To help him with patients, he hires a few apprentices including Porky Lang (the comic relief) and Buck Teeth Sol, who was raised outside China and barely can speak the language. Wong is platonically involved with the lovely, worldly Aunt Yee, who has been abroad most of her life. Wong soon gets in trouble when he begins using his skills to protect and assist the poor and helpless in his community. As a result, someone torches his clinic, forcing Wong and his compadres to set off and get spectacularly staged revenge. They also try vainly to stop Western culture from changing traditional Chinese ways, but they soon find that they may as well be shoveling sand against a rising tide. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 6
Number of Lists: 16
Number of blog posts: 2
Number of discussion threads: 1
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 12 May 2009 03:52:24 GMTOnce Upon a Time in China1992Tsui HarkThough generally unknown to Western audiences, <a href="/players/P____93443/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Tsui Hark</a> is considered a giant among Asian filmmakers and this exceptional epic, combining hard-hitting martial-arts action with romance, comedy, history, genuine poignance, and sharp insight into the effects of the century-long encroachment of Western civilization in Asia more than amply demonstrates why. The story centers on the exploits of Master Wong Fei-hung (a familiar figure in Hong Kong cinema) a 19th-century doctor, Confucian, and exceptional martial artist. As the film begins, he has just opened a new clinic in Canton Province. To help him with patients, he hires a few apprentices including Porky Lang (the comic relief) and Buck Teeth Sol, who was raised outside China and barely can speak the language. Wong is platonically involved with the lovely, worldly Aunt Yee, who has been abroad most of her life. Wong soon gets in trouble when he begins using his skills to protect and assist the poor and helpless in his community. As a result, someone torches his clinic, forcing Wong and his compadres to set off and get spectacularly staged revenge. They also try vainly to stop Western culture from changing traditional Chinese ways, but they soon find that they may as well be shoveling sand against a rising tide. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide6Taggedy Taggged (6-10)16213http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t09511dnhfx.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_China/80540/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/8/8/33761.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 8/8/2008 2:00:37 PM
Body: Yesterday’s list dealt with Tom Cruise’s performance in Tropic Thunder. Today, a response to Robert Downey Jr.’s role in the same film as a white actor portraying a black soldier in a war movie (seen in the above clip). Doesn’t it seem such an original and shocking idea? I guess not if you see it as an update on blackface. Fortunately, it’s different when it’s an actor playing a character who makes himself up to look black. It’s funny. But isn’t it typically more acceptable when the make-up isn’t quite as authentic-looking as Downey’s? He actually looks black. Specifically, he looks like Fred Williamson. I’ve seen plenty of lists detailing the worst instances of one race or nationality playing characters of another race/nationality (John Wayne and Susan Hayward in The Conqueror comes to mind as #1), but I can’t recall any lists involving actors playing characters disguised as or playing another race. So here’s one: My Geisha (”Lucy Dell”/”Yoko Mori”) - Shirley Maclaine is an American movie star who fools her filmmaker husband when she disguises herself as Japanese in order to win the lead role in his latest movie. She’s so good that throughout the whole production, he thinks he’s shamefully falling for a woman who isn’t his wife. But really, she’s not so much passing for Japanese as she is passing for the look of a geisha, which itself is not an ethnicity but a costume. Still, the makeup designer (Shu Uemura) pinned Maclaine’s eyes back in a way that wasn’t always done for “yellowface” in Hollywood films. The method (seen here) looks like it must have been excruciatingly painful. Gambit (”Nicole Chang”) - A few years after My Geisha, Maclaine played white playing Asian again in this crime caper starring Michael Caine, but this time her primary character is apparently part-Asian already, hence her surname, Chang. So, I guess she’s more like Eurasian playing more exaggerated Asian. Shanghai Noon (”Chon Wang”) - Did you know that Chinese and Native Americans look the same? You don’t even have to do anything cosmetic. Well, maybe some war paint. Otherwise, just put some Native American dress on Jackie Chan, and he’ll pass as an Injun. Or a Jew? (see this gag). Once Upon a Time in China and America (”Wong Fei-Hung”) - In that part of Shanghai Noon, Chan’s racial “transformation” was likely referencing this film, directed by his oft-collaborator Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, in which an amnesia-inflicted Jet Li mistakes himself for Native American. Which is even more ridiculous when considering that all the Native Americans in this sixth installment of the Once Upon a Time in China series were apparently played by white actors. Black Like Me (”John Finley Horton”) - The problem with this adaptation of John Howard Griffin’s memoir is that James Whitmore doesn’t look all that convincing as a black guy. Eddie Murphy was more convincing the other way around in the old SNL skit when he goes undercover as a white man. Soul Man (”Mark Watson”) - Even C. Thomas Howell looked more black in this unofficial remake. The thing I truly don’t buy with this movie, though, is how Rae Dawn Chong’s character forgives him and even falls for him at the end despite the fact that he pretended to be another race to win the scholarship she should have won. That couple belongs on the list I compiled earlier this year of romances that probably didn’t last. True Identity (”Miles Pope”) - Going back to the Eddie Murphy thing, I never realized that this early ’90s comedy was actually a feature-length spin-off of that SNL skit (both were written by Andy Breckman) combined with the ol’ accidental murder witness plot of Some Like It Hot, Pineapple Express, etc. Here, the witness is a black actor (British comedian Lenny Henry) who disguises himself as white. I’ve never seen True Identity, nor can I even find any stills from the movie (the image above comes from the Siskel & Ebert review), but in the Washington Post review, Henry is said to resemble Mr. Potato Head more than an actual white guy. Trading Places (”Louis Winthorpe III”) - Another Eddie Murphy connection. Here it’s Dan Aykroyd, though, whose character changes race. Let me tell you: I know this reggae singer who sounds authentically Jamaican and almost seems to think he’s actually Jamaican. But he’s still just a white guy in dreads. Yet I have to give him credit for being more passable as Jamaican than Louis. Silver Streak (”George Cardwell”) - Maybe it’s just easier to fool people on trains. A few years before Aykroyd’s character did it in Trading Places, Gene Wilder’s character attempted to look black in order to sneak past some cops and get onto a train. I get the tradition to portray policemen as stupid, but nobody is that stupid. The Master of Disguise (”Pistachio Disguisey”) - Among the many disguises Dana Carvey’s character takes on in this lame comedy, a few are offensively ethnic, including Indian and Cuban (really just an impersonation of Al Pacino as Tony Montana from Scarface). The fact that this guy is supposed to be the greatest master of disguises is upsetting. The fact that so many children saw the thing was even more upsetting. Zelig (”Leonard Zelig”) - The titular “Chameleon Man” character of Woody Allen’s mockumentary also “becomes” other ethnicities, such as African American, Chinese and Native American. The fact that he always still just looks like Woody Allen is part of the joke, though. Torch Song (”Jenny Stewart”) - Most of the time I don’t even buy Joan Crawford as a white woman, but in this movie her character performs in blackface for the infamous number “Two Faced Woman,” and she looks even less authentic as an African American woman. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what race and gender I would have actually accepted her as. Sexless alien creature? (YouTube clip, unauthorized for embedding, can be found here). L’eclisse (”Vittoria”) - Maybe I’m just used to seeing women with too much bronzer or too many tanning salon visits, but when Monica Vitti’s character goes blackface for a tribal dance in this Antonioni film, she simply looks like a white girl who has darkened her skin. I guess she’s not really trying to pass (neither is Crawford in Torch Song), but her costume isn’t traditional minstrel-type blackface, either. Krippendorf’s Tribe (”Shelly Krippendorf”) - To produce a fake documentary program on a made up lost tribe, James Krippendorf (Richard Dreyfuss) disguises his children in black skin and junky tribal costume. But as even his daughter (Natasha Lyonne) admits, she looks more like Tammy Faye Baker than a native of New Guinea. White Chicks (”Kevin Copeland” and “Marcus Copeland”) - Quite possibly the least convincing racial disguises of all time, Shawn and Marlon Wayans play two FBI agents (so I guess this list is actually of 16 characters) who go undercover as Paris Hilton types. But they look like a cross between a Michael Jackson Halloween mask and Eric Stoltz in Mask. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:00:37 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com8/8/2008 2:00:37 PM Yesterday’s list dealt with Tom Cruise’s performance in Tropic Thunder. Today, a response to Robert Downey Jr.’s role in the same film as a white actor portraying a black soldier in a war movie (seen in the above clip). Doesn’t it seem such an original and shocking idea? I guess not if you see it as an update on blackface. Fortunately, it’s different when it’s an actor playing a character who makes himself up to look black. It’s funny. But isn’t it typically more acceptable when the make-up isn’t quite as authentic-looking as Downey’s? He actually looks black. Specifically, he looks like Fred Williamson. I’ve seen plenty of lists detailing the worst instances of one race or nationality playing characters of another race/nationality (John Wayne and Susan Hayward in The Conqueror comes to mind as #1), but I can’t recall any lists involving actors playing characters disguised as or playing another race. So here’s one: My Geisha (”Lucy Dell”/”Yoko Mori”) - Shirley Maclaine is an American movie star who fools her filmmaker husband when she disguises herself as Japanese in order to win the lead role in his latest movie. She’s so good that throughout the whole production, he thinks he’s shamefully falling for a woman who isn’t his wife. But really, she’s not so much passing for Japanese as she is passing for the look of a geisha, which itself is not an ethnicity but a costume. Still, the makeup designer (Shu Uemura) pinned Maclaine’s eyes back in a way that wasn’t always done for “yellowface” in Hollywood films. The method (seen here) looks like it must have been excruciatingly painful. Gambit (”Nicole Chang”) - A few years after My Geisha, Maclaine played white playing Asian again in this crime caper starring Michael Caine, but this time her primary character is apparently part-Asian already, hence her surname, Chang. So, I guess she’s more like Eurasian playing more exaggerated Asian. Shanghai Noon (”Chon Wang”) - Did you know that Chinese and Native Americans look the same? You don’t even have to do anything cosmetic. Well, maybe some war paint. Otherwise, just put some Native American dress on Jackie Chan, and he’ll pass as an Injun. Or a Jew? (see this gag). Once Upon a Time in China and America (”Wong Fei-Hung”) - In that part of Shanghai Noon, Chan’s racial “transformation” was likely referencing this film, directed by his oft-collaborator Sammo Hung Kam-Bo, in which an amnesia-inflicted Jet Li mistakes himself for Native American. Which is even more ridiculous when considering that all the Native Americans in this sixth installment of the Once Upon a Time in China series were apparently played by white actors. Black Like Me (”John Finley Horton”) - The problem with this adaptation of John Howard Griffin’s memoir is that James Whitmore doesn’t look all that convincing as a black guy. Eddie Murphy was more convincing the other way around in the old SNL skit when he goes undercover as a white man. Soul Man (”Mark Watson”) - Even C. Thomas Howell looked more black in this unofficial remake. The thing I truly don’t buy with this movie, though, is how Rae Dawn Chong’s character forgives him and even falls for him at the end despite the fact that he pretended to be another race to win the scholarship she should have won. That couple belongs on the list I compiled earlier this year of romances that probably didn’t last. True Identity (”Miles Pope”) - Going back to the Eddie Murphy thing, I never realized that this early ’90s comedy was actually a feature-length spin-off of that SNL skit (both were written by Andy Breckman) combined with the ol’ accidental murder witness plot of Some Like It Hot, Pineapple Express, etc. Here, the witness is a black actor (British comedian Lenny Henry) who disguises himself as white. I’ve never seen True Identity, nor can I even find any stills from the movie (the image above comes from the Siskel & Ebert review), but in the Washington Post review, Henry is said to resemble Mr. Potato Head more than an actual white guy. Trading Places (”Louis Winthorpe III”) - Another Eddie Murphy connection. Here it’s Dan Aykroyd, though, whose character changes race. Let me tell you: I know this reggae singer who sounds authentically Jamaican and almost seems to think he’s actually Jamaican. But he’s still just a white guy in dreads. Yet I have to give him credit for being more passable as Jamaican than Louis. Silver Streak (”George Cardwell”) - Maybe it’s just easier to fool people on trains. A few years before Aykroyd’s character did it in Trading Places, Gene Wilder’s character attempted to look black in order to sneak past some cops and get onto a train. I get the tradition to portray policemen as stupid, but nobody is that stupid. The Master of Disguise (”Pistachio Disguisey”) - Among the many disguises Dana Carvey’s character takes on in this lame comedy, a few are offensively ethnic, including Indian and Cuban (really just an impersonation of Al Pacino as Tony Montana from Scarface). The fact that this guy is supposed to be the greatest master of disguises is upsetting. The fact that so many children saw the thing was even more upsetting. Zelig (”Leonard Zelig”) - The titular “Chameleon Man” character of Woody Allen’s mockumentary also “becomes” other ethnicities, such as African American, Chinese and Native American. The fact that he always still just looks like Woody Allen is part of the joke, though. Torch Song (”Jenny Stewart”) - Most of the time I don’t even buy Joan Crawford as a white woman, but in this movie her character performs in blackface for the infamous number “Two Faced Woman,” and she looks even less authentic as an African American woman. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what race and gender I would have actually accepted her as. Sexless alien creature? (YouTube clip, unauthorized for embedding, can be found here). L’eclisse (”Vittoria”) - Maybe I’m just used to seeing women with too much bronzer or too many tanning salon visits, but when Monica Vitti’s character goes blackface for a tribal dance in this Antonioni film, she simply looks like a white girl who has darkened her skin. I guess she’s not really trying to pass (neither is Crawford in Torch Song), but her costume isn’t traditional minstrel-type blackface, either. Krippendorf’s Tribe (”Shelly Krippendorf”) - To produce a fake documentary program on a made up lost tribe, James Krippendorf (Richard Dreyfuss) disguises his children in black skin and junky tribal costume. But as even his daughter (Natasha Lyonne) admits, she looks more like Tammy Faye Baker than a native of New Guinea. White Chicks (”Kevin Copeland” and “Marcus Copeland”) - Quite possibly the least convincing racial disguises of all time, Shawn and Marlon Wayans play two FBI agents (so I guess this list is actually of 16 characters) who go undercover as Paris Hilton types. But they look like a cross between a Michael Jackson Halloween mask and Eric Stoltz in Mask. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/groups/Martial_Arts_Films/Re_Martial_Arts_starter_kit/456/33353/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: Risselada
Post To: Martial Arts Films
Post Date: 7/31/2008 6:55:03 PM
Body: [quote user="Smooth_J"] This is sort of a selfish thread, but I figured it might be useful to anyone's who trying to get into the genre. As for me, I have seen Crouching Tiger, House of Flying Daggers, and several Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies on late night cable. I feel as though that is a pretty good start, but I know that's just the tip of the iceberg. What are the next steps? What are the best ones? What are the most acclaimed ones? Discuss... [/quote] If you like those you may want to check out A Touch of Zen. It was the first big budget Chinese action movie of this style. It was most definitely an influence on the movies you mentioned. And those movies might not have even existed if this one wasn't made. It was really the biggest and most epic Chinese action movie up to that time and the first one to really make an impact outside of China. Once Upon a Time in China is probably a great one to start out too. Especially if you like Jet Li.
]]>Thu, 31 Jul 2008 22:55:03 GMTRisseladaMartial Arts Films7/31/2008 6:55:03 PM[quote user="Smooth_J"] This is sort of a selfish thread, but I figured it might be useful to anyone's who trying to get into the genre. As for me, I have seen Crouching Tiger, House of Flying Daggers, and several Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies on late night cable. I feel as though that is a pretty good start, but I know that's just the tip of the iceberg. What are the next steps? What are the best ones? What are the most acclaimed ones? Discuss... [/quote] If you like those you may want to check out A Touch of Zen. It was the first big budget Chinese action movie of this style. It was most definitely an influence on the movies you mentioned. And those movies might not have even existed if this one wasn't made. It was really the biggest and most epic Chinese action movie up to that time and the first one to really make an impact outside of China. Once Upon a Time in China is probably a great one to start out too. Especially if you like Jet Li. http://www.spout.com/blogs/bill-kiddo/archive/2008/4/23/27732.aspx Post By: bill-kiddo
Post To: bill-kiddo Blog
Post Date: 4/23/2008 11:28:38 PM
Body: a great classic martial arts film. worth the watch a million times over. best martial arts flick of the 80s and 90s hands down!
]]>Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:28:38 GMTbill-kiddobill-kiddo Blog4/23/2008 11:28:38 PMa great classic martial arts film. worth the watch a million times over. best martial arts flick of the 80s and 90s hands down! http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/revenge/MemberTagFilms.aspxrevenge
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