monks, ninjettes, or strippers
Sorry for the stripper reference, got confused which Fearless thread I was on. In my defence, monks, ninjettes, & strippers sell magazines. Ok, that's not totally true either. I have no defence. It's a fair cop, but society is to blame.
To quickly step back OT, I'm glad to see Fearless elicited some nice discussions about the state of MA films today.
Samurai Jack, I totally hear ya about that Ronny Yu interview. With both that piece, and the interview with Jet, the first thing I went after was the whole "Final Martial Arts Epic" sales pitch. Obviously, with Rogue in the can and the Jackie/Jet project looming, that's a crock. Once I let them explain themselves - and IMO both explainations were attempts to spin doctor the tag line - I felt I had to give them an 'out'. But as for the 'stripper pole' move, perhaps that's why it bothered me. The stand up fight choreography was nice - Jet's still got great precision - so whenever the stripper pole appeared, it really clashed. I think they could have done without that.
I'm a huge fan of Chanbara. There's some great cross-over films of kung fu vs. samurai. Probably one of the most amusing pitted Zatoichi vs. the One-Armed Swordsman.
Shaolin vs. Ninja ROCKED!!!
I can't but grin thinking about that film.
I don't mind if choreography bends physics. In fact, I rather enjoyed he cartoon physics of Kung Fu Hustle, but that was in context of that film. With Fearless, which was billing itself as Jet Li's 'final martial arts epic' and then qualifying that (fudging it really) to accomodate Rogue, I was looking forward to something more 'old school'. And there were some fine fights, I just felt they were sullied by the stripper pole moves.
I'm not a big fan of Z's work in the martial arts. She's graceful, but her postures always seem too frail to be beleiveable, kind of like Van Damme - pretty, but not 'old school' - too much focus on the pretty, perhaps. For me, there are plenty of other female actresses that have paid their dues in the martial arts genre, so when everyone was gushing about Z, I was rather non-plussed. In contrast, I love Z's work in non-martial arts films. She was great in Road Home.