We’re still amped from last night but we’re going again tonight and will post a review after the second viewing. Even knowing as much as we know about it, as soon as I walked out of the theater I said to my co-blogger that I needed to see it again to soak it in again! But while the movie has opened, the news hasn’t stopped flying across the nets!
In this installment, Michael Angarano in the LA Times, a look behind the scenes at the vis fx, more from Jackie and Jet, and Jackie’s five favorite flicks!! Plus, Kung Fu Cinema weighs in with a review and a Yifei Liu speaks! All after the cut…
Kung Fu Cinema’s take!
Even before we started this blog we’ve been fans of Kung Fu Cinema. The site’s Mark Pollard has now weighed in with his review of the movie!
THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM takes the last 40 years of Chinese martial arts cinema and condenses it into a streamlined fantasy story, light on depth yet overshadowed by many strengths including fierce screen fighting from action director Yuen Wo-ping, a phenomenal action and comedy pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan and gorgeous cinematography from Peter Pau. The film is also a lavish visual showcase for two of Asia’s most beautiful women of the moment, Liu Yifei and Li Bingbing.
We link to Kung Fu Cinema’s review and more on our reviews page!
Yifei Liu gets tough!
The stunning Chinese actress talks getting tough on the set!
“Three guys go on this journey, and Golden Sparrow is the only girl on the team, so I had to be very strong and sometimes even kick ass,” she says. “It was a really interesting experience.”
Liu, who’s also a singer with Chinese- and Japanese-language albums on her resume, came to the gig well prepped. Fluent in English – she spent five years in Teaneck, N.J., as a teenager – she is famous in China for her work in so called “wuxia” dramas such as “Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.” But “Kingdom,” directed by Rob Minkoff (“The Lion King”), raised the bar in terms of intensity.
“This was not the kind of beautiful fantasy action where you fly around,” Liu says. “In ‘Forbidden Kingdom,’ they kick very hard. It really hurts. But I said nothing, because that’s what an action movie should be like.”
Read the whole thing at the SF Chronicle’s Hard Kicks!
More Jackie and Jet interviews!
We found another article out of the Asian junket, which has interviews with Jackie and Jet as well as the producers and director of the movie. In this Hollywood Today story, Jet talks more about his ideas for the movie:
“Stories like the Monkey King, which ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ is based on, are completely unknown to most Western audiences,” says Jet Li. “But the script got so many details right, and it created this great fusion of Eastern and Western sensibilities. It seemed like the perfect way to bring this character to an international audience. Having made so many violent movies in my career to date, I thought it was about time I made a film that families with children will be able to enjoy together. This is the film that I’m making for my two girls.” Li stars next in ‘The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, releasing in May.
Read the whole thing at Hollywood Today!
Jackie’s Five Favorites and a Video Interview!
Rotten Tomatoes has got Jackie’s five favorite movies (he stars in only one of them: Police Story! “Police Story, because I think it’s one of the best action films ever made.” We agree!) and a new video interview! See that at Rotten Tomatoes!
Michael Angarano’s journey!
Susan King of the Los Angeles Times profiled Michael Angarano:
Angarano had never done martial arts but was in good physical shape because he’d just taken up running. Once in China, he spent eight hours a day for two weeks learning martial arts with renowned action choreographer Woo-Ping Yuen (“The Matrix” trilogy, “Crouching Tiger”) and squeezing in horseback riding lessons whenever possible. Over the seven-month shoot, his skills — and confidence — grew.
“It actually worked out really well that the last 35 days of filming was when we shot this huge climactic battle sequence, where I do the majority of my fighting in the movie,” Angarano says. “By that point, we had shot four months already. I remember the first 50 days we were shooting stuff in the Gobi Desert and all of these locations. It was really kind of tough to make sense of it all.”
He also talks about what Jet and Jackie were like on the set:
Angarano, who is now in Utah shooting “Gentlemen Broncos,” the latest comedy from Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”), says he’d have to be Shakespeare to fully describe what it was like working with Li and Chan. “They really took me under their wings in a non-overwhelming sense,” he says. “They didn’t put pressure on me. They made me feel the exact opposite and made me feel good about what I was doing.
Read the whole thing at the L.A. Times: ‘Michael Angarano goes kick for kick with Jet Li and Jackie Chan’
The visual effects highlighted!
Let’s face it: the greatest special effects on display in Forbidden Kingdom are the talents and charisma of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Nonetheless, some visual effects work went into the movie. VFX World has a big story about putting the visual effects together for The Forbidden Kingdom. Here’s an excerpt:
Minkoff says he wanted the visual effects to evoke the feel of classic Hong Kong films. It also needed to balance the story’s sense of storybook fantasy and realism. “The audience is a little more sophisticated, so some of the fog-machine effects with the dry ice obviously weren’t going to cut it with us,” he adds. “We obviously wanted something that was slightly more contemporary.”
Minkoff says the effects work ended up staying largely in Asia, thanks to Exec Producer Rafaella DeLaurentiis, who was impressed by the high quality and low cost of some work done by a Korean house. “She thought that would be an interesting option for us,” continues Minkoff. “It’s a Chinese story, Asian-themed, and would require a sensitivity that might be a natural fit with Korea.”
Read the whole thing at VFX World: ‘The Forbidden Kingdom: VFX and the Chi Energy Effect’
At this point, the film had me firmly hooked and didn’t let go till the end credits rolled. Only once does the film lapse and that’s during a scene or two where the filmmakers seemed to struggle with how to build up a credible romantic link between the dorky Jason and the stunning Sparrow (Liu Yifei). They never got it right. Test audiences apparently felt the same way since a kiss between the two actors was removed from the final release.
this is funny hah
I thought it was pretty sweet, like they were comrades. I’m glad it wasn’t overtly romantic. The line she says to him just before the final battle really speaks to all of the warriors.