In other Bruce Lee related news - here’s a trailer for the upcoming Sammo Hung biopic about Bruce Lee’s mentor, Yip Man, starring Donnie Yen.

Good Lord, this sounds awesome. A 50-part Bruce Lee television series called The Legend of Bruce Lee featuring Chan Kwok Kuen (aka Danny Chan, the Bruce Lee lookalike from Shaolin Soccer), starts Sunday on Chinese network CCTV.

Can’t wait til it hits the BitTorrent trackers!

“We’ve only seen the glorious side of Bruce Lee - he comes out all guns blazing, his films are entertaining. But very few people know what injuries he suffered and what grievances he suffered,” Danny Chan said, noting the series even reveals that Lee was afraid of cockroaches.

The 33-year-old actor, whose best known work is Stephen Chow’s “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Shaolin Soccer,” makes up for his lack of star power with his uncanny resemblance to Lee with his thick eyebrows and slender body.

Lee’s message of Chinese strength in movies like “The Chinese Connection” and “Return of the Dragon” also matches that of the Chinese government.

“Lee had strength, agility, pride, intelligence, not to mention charisma to burn, which coupled with the pro-Chinese rhetoric in his films have made him a potent symbol for the powerful new China that is now rising,” said Michael Berry, a professor in contemporary Chinese cultural studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

A supremely skilled fighter wanders the Earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, looking for the ultimate battle in Death Trance, a rip-snorting action film directed by Yuji Shimomura, action director for Versus, and featuring Versus lead Tak Sakaguchi as action director and leading man. The 2005 film is available on DVD in the United States courtesy Media Blasters.

Sakaguchi plays Grave, a mysterious man of few words who raids a hidden temple for a coffin the local monks had been guarding for a century. Rumor has it that the coffin will grant a person a wish. But when a Ryuen, young apprentice monk (Takamasa Suga), returns shortly after the raid, the head monk warns him that opening the coffin will release the Goddess of Destruction. He hands Ryuen a sword with an amazingly phallic handle and urges him to track down the thief with the sword. Unfortunately, many others are also after the coffin for the power it contains.

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Fans of exploitative martial arts films will surely remember the Barry Gordy-produced shlock-fest The Last Dragon. Sadly, actor Julius Carry - who memorably portrayed the baddie Sho’nuff opposite leading man Taimak - died of pancreatic cancer two days ago at the age of 56. Carry never really moved up to the a-list, but genre fans will also remember his stint as Lord Bowler on the short-lived (though much beloved) Bruce Campbell vehicle The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

One of the nice bonuses of 2007’s Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez tribute to low-rent cinema, Grindhouse, was a flurry of DVD releases of exploitation movies.  One notable set was a batch of “Welcome to the Grindhouse” double feature DVDs by BCI / Eclipse, which offered similarly themed genre pictures along with a “grindhouse experience” of titles and trailers.  

Along with horror and women-in-prison flicks, “Welcome to the Grindhouse” offers up some old chop socky films, and what better than the public-domain exploits of badass extraordinaire Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba and his Japan Action Club, featuring the lovely, talented and deadly Etsuko “Sue” Shiomi.  One such title features the 1976 films Dragon Princess (Hissatsu onna kenshi) and Karate Warriors (Kozure satsujin ken) (Another release features Chiba and Shiomi in The Bodyguard and Sister Street Fighter.)

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Here it is – the film that launched the kung fu movie craze in the United States.  Before even the rise of Bruce Lee, King Boxer (Tian xia di yi quan, 1972), also known as Five Fingers of Death, was a surprise hit on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit. 

In June 2007, Dragon Dynasty released a superbly presented DVD as part of its growing Shaw Brothers collection.  The result is a classic example of chop socky history and an excellent kung fu flick in its own right.  Its relatively complex plot combines popular themes of honor, betrayal, revenge and the handing out of righteous beat-downs.

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Afroninja: Destiny ? I’m so there. The fellow behind the infamous YouTube clip (seen below) was recently interviewed by WIRED…seems he’s spun his 15-minutes of internet fame into a full-length film. Craptacular, perhaps - but he did convince legendary blaxploitation film legend Jim Kelly to appear. So it can’t be all bad.

Right?

Here’s a trailer for the Shaw Brothers flick Human Lanterns, just released on DVD. Review to follow as soon as its’ available.

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From the press release:

Swordplay, savagery and blood-chilling thrills reign supreme in this outrageous mixture of martial arts and the macabre from Shaw Brothers! Two rivals, one rich and the other poor, enter an unholy pact to win an annual lantern-creating contest in their village; however, the terrifying secret behind their remarkable creations lies within the supple flesh of local maidens, who are disappearing at the hands of a demonic assailant! Now featuring shocking scenes too extreme for its Asian DVD release, this unflinching action-horror masterpiece is now finally available to American audiences to enjoy full strength and full throttle!

“This beautifully shot classic is immensely entertaining thanks to a combination of outrageous swordplay and richly gruesome and bizarre imagery!”

-KUNGFUCINEMA.COM

“Brilliantly shot and undeniably creepy…deliriously sick, sleazy and gory with some kickass action!”

-10,000 BULLETS

SPECIAL FEATURES:
§ Shaw’s Baby Doll: An Interview with Shawn Yin Yin
§ Extended Scene
§ Shaw Brothers Trailers
§ Production Stills Gallery

Rating:  

Jet Li’s Fearless is a historical epic without the epic, based on a true story of which little is actually used, and is, supposedly, Jet Li’s last martial arts film (so just what does he call The Forbidden Kingdom?).

The movie tells the life story of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese cultural hero. At the turn of the century Yuanjia is a little boy, the son of a wushu (martial arts) master. He desperately wants to learn wushu, but his father insists he do boring things instead, like learning to read and write. Luckily Yuanjia’s best friend, Jinsun, is a brainy kid who can forge Yuanjia’s lessons. But Yuanjia is disturbed when he sees his father hold back a killing blow in a match, resulting in his losing the fight. When Yuanjia’s father dies, he is finally free to practice wushu. He swears he will never lose a match to anyone.

The film jumps ahead several years; Yuanjia is now an adult, a widower with a spoiled daughter. He lives with his mother and, true to his childhood vow, is a famous local marital artist who has never lost a match. But his success has made him arrogant and unlikeable. He is heavily in debt due to his frequent lavish victory celebrations and is generally disliked for his rude manners. At a perceived slight from rival wushu master Chin, Yuanjia crashes Chin’s birthday party and, in the ensuing battle, kills him. In retaliation Chin’s nephew murders Yuanjia’s mother and daughter. Distraught, Yuanjia flees his home town. He travels aimlessly, eventually ending up in a remote valley where he is nursed back to the health by kindly villagers. Under their care Yuanjia slowly lets go of his anger and learns to live in peace.

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The excellent martial arts site ‘Kung Fu Cinema‘ recently posted a rundown of the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer followup, Ninja Assassin, which lays out in excruciating detail the slew of problems plaguing the production. Check it out:

Leaks include production pics (originally posted and then removed from Slash Film), a German newsprint photo of a Volkswagen’s hood decimated by shuriken and a complete spoilerific breakdown of the film’s first scene. There is also word from Comic Book Resources in an interview with screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski that the film’s entire shooting script was rewritten from scratch in three days and only six weeks before production began.

KFC also questions the casting of 80’s Ninja-flick superstar Sho Kosugi, but I have to side with the fans on that one - the mere prospect of seeing Mr. Kosugi on the big-screen again has me totally salivating, even if his role is a five-second cameo.