Model Citizen

Probably most people with any interest in the martial art genre wil know of Chow. BUT. This is one guy who's worth watching if you have any interest in film, especially action/comedy.

 

I bought Kung Fu Hustle a while ago last year. A superb film that has so much comedy in it that genuinely appeals to a wider audiance than just the original Asian.

 

 From Amazon:

Stephen Chow's follow-up to SHAOLIN SOCCER ups the over-the-top action quotient by about three zillion percent. The story is set in 1930s Hong Kong, with Chow as a shaggy-haired, would-be bad guy named Sing, who gets caught up in the middle of a war between the top-hat-wearing Axe gang and the hard scrabble inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Chow who wrote, produced, and directed doesn't step in as the star here for quite a while, letting the comic duties fly in a myriad of directions: a landlady in curlers (Yuen Qiu) has a yell that can flatten buildings; people get kicked across courtyards and through walls; musician assassins whip ghost sabres from lyre strings, and a mental patient in pink flip-flops named 'the Beast' (Leung Siu Lung) catches bullets in his fingers. Buoyed by SOCCER's box office success, HUSTLE uses bigger production values and a dizzying amount of CGI-enhanced martial arts (imagine Bruce Lee vs. Bugs Bunny in THE MATRIX). It's full of references to other films and filmmakers, revering spaghetti westerns and '70s Shaw brothers movies a la Tarantino's KILL BILL (fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping worked on both films). It also pays sly homage to the works of Wong Kar Wai, D.W. Griffith, Sam Raimi, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and Akira Kurosawa. Raymond Wong's inspired score matches each cinematic reference with the appropriate cue as the camera circles and swoops around the sprawling sets. This is a real treat, more than a great action film or comedy, it's a great film period, and one that set box office records in the East.

 

I recently bought Shaloin Soccer, I'd heard it was a poorer film than Hustle but, instead found it even funnier as Chow takes his particular type of OTT action effects into the world of football.

 

Again, from Amazon:

Computer generated special effects have seldom been so giddy as in Shaolin Soccer, a gleeful fusion of kung fu and a classic Bad News Bears sports story. A former soccer star--whose "golden leg" was broken by a hired mob--assembles a team of former students of Shaolin martial arts, whose assorted skills (indicated by their nicknames, like Mighty Steel Leg and Iron Head) lend themselves to the swift interplay of the world's most popular game. Along the way, the team's leader (Hong Kong comic superstar Stephen Chow) meets a sticky bun baker (Vicki Zhao) whose kung fu is the equal of any of his teammates. Shaolin Soccer is supremely silly--in the final match, their opponents are called Team Evil--but that's part of the fun. American movies rarely achieve this perfect balance of the absurd and the sincere. A delight. --Bret Fetzer 

 

Both films are well worth a look, more so, they need to be watched, these are great comedies full of action and wonderful characters. they easily stand up to repeat watching, SS has been watched in our house 3 times in the 2 days since I bought it!

And if you get the bug for Chow's work, then your in luck, as he has a brand new film coming soon: CJ7

I've put this in the 3D section mainly because that's what I used it for.

 

Anyway, BOB Books: BOB Books

A superb site. What they do is make one off books. What's great about that? Well, take a look at their site and see what you can do. Want to have a glossy hardback book of your years best photo's? What about a custom wedding album?

What I did was have my CGI work compiled into a coffee table size book. It's superb!

What you do is download a free bit of software from the site, and choose your layout and get going. Just add pictures and text where you want it and hey presto order the book.

Mine cost about £50 delivered, and it's worth every penny.

 

Here's a terrible shot I took but hopefully you'll get an idea of the quality.

 

 Original:

 

You dont have to worry about converting images to CMYK or anything other than Jpegs. The software will tell you if it's not good enough size wise. It takes 2 weeks to print and arrive, but it's very, very impressive. 

Somehow this film just passed through. I remember seeing the trailer last year but did'nt really see any reviews or comments on it. This usually means this is a turkey to be well avoided, but I saw it on sale (another bad omen) and decided to buy it for my boy. On the cover it says it's won an award for best CGI movie of 07?

The start is unusual, it makes no mention of origins, of how they came to be where they are or who they are. It starts in fact with the four Turtle brothers split, Leo is in South America, where he has been for just over a year acting as an unseen protector for a small village until he is tracked down by April. She tells Leo what the other brothers are doing, and none of them are doing that great, one doing IT support, one a kids party entertainer and Raphael a masked vigilante (unknown to all).

The main story refreshingly has nothing to do with Shredder, though the Foot Clan are involved. The story is pretty involved and a bit of a 3 way fight. You have an Eternal Champion figure who's family of 4 generals were turned to stone by his seeking immortality, he has lived through the ages ammasing wealth and power hoping to rectify his mistake. At the moment of his mistake he also unleashed 13 monsters into the world. April, along with Casey has been collecting the 4 stone statues, who the Champion reanimates, but still as stone warriors. They are tasked along with the Foot Clan to locate the 13 monsters and capture them, along the way they of course meet the Turtles.

There's enough in the story to keep you interested and guessing just what is happening. It's also voiced by some excellent actors including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart and Lawrence Fishburne.

As for the mentioned CGI?
It is well worthy of the award. I've not been impressed with a CGI film for a while now, but the level of detail and quality in this film really took me back. Maybe it's because I'm learning CGI myself, but the quality of textures and modelling really stood out. There's no corners cut either, when the rain comes and  you see the tiny splatters on the bodies fighting it really is very well done.
As a kids movie this is maybe the best all CGI boys film I've seen, as a film in general, it's still a lot of fun and as said, a visual treat.