Harry's adventures continue in Beijing. In the second report, he called The Forbidden City, the imperial palace for emperors of Ming and Qin dynasties, "the set of THE LAST EMPEROR". Harry, have you been forgetting your medication or you really don't know? Anyway, he has written down every bit of detail from his staying on the set built inside Beijing Film Studio. He said the set, a "Beijing Backlot", was used for RAISE THE RED LANTERN (not true), THE TAI CHI MASTER and many more. Harry, you forgot CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. He has met truckloads of stars for the first time - Michael Jai White, Dee Dee, Sonny Chiba, and Zhang Ziyi (Don't get excited. She was just dropping by). One more thing - both Quentin Tarantino and Yuen Wo-Ping have denied that they were fighting on the set over the choreography and Harry has found not evidence to prove that they had been fighting.

Click here for day two of Harry's KILL BILL adventures

Thanks to Sebastian Haselbeck, webmaster of The Quentin Tarantino Archives

BTW, New York Times just featured an article on KILL BILL: click here

Thanks to Jean

Steven Seagal is not the only one in Hollywood who is thinking about making a Genghis Khan movie. According to Tyfo.com, producer Bill Badalato is planning his own GENGHIS KHAN with big-name Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, and this one will also be shot in China.

Meanwhile, Steven Seagal has arrived in Beijing yesterday. (click here for a shot of him at Beijing Capital Airport) President of the movie's Chinese investor, Bian Zushan told Beijing's Star Daily, Seagal's schedule in Beijing included casting eight actors to play Genghis Khan's sons and grandsons, locations scout at places like The Forbidden City and The Great Wall (note: Genghis Khan never reached Beijing and the Forbidden City was built nearly two centuries after his death. In addition, much of The Great Wall we seen today was rebuilt at about the same time), and meeting director Chen Kaige and Chinese Mongolian actors. Bian also said the Mongolian counterpart wanted the cast to be largely filled by people from its country, but Steven Seagal still wanted to work with Chinese actors and shoot the movie in China.

Part one of Harry Knowles' visit to Beijing has been posted. He talked about how different it was between the China he was told and the China he had seen, the endless bar street, the cops who never bothered anyone, how he conquered the gazillion steps up to Pai Mei's temple, and finally how he met Quentin Tarantino and the rest... Click here

According to Beijing Youth, Wu Bin, once Jet Li's master, told the paper that Steven Seagal will arrive in Beijing today to cast eight martial artists for the role of Genghis Ghan's sons and grandsons. The only Mongolian martial art is Mongolian wrestling, which is quite different from the Chinese kung-fu we know. Then what Seagal is planning to make, a historical drama, or a movie just happened to be named GENGHIS KHAN?

The GENGHIS KHAN project has run into trouble when its Chinese investor suddenly discovered, to shoot the film in China,  they need approval from the Chinese Film Bureau. According to Tianjin Daily, the application process will take months to complete and getting the script approved, especially for historical dramas, usually requires two to three months. Furthermore, the Chinese investor, Baobei Group, does not have the license of making movies, therefore a Chinese film studio is needed to take charge of the production. Someone from Chinese Film Bureau has said that an American playing Genghis Khan did not sound very appropriate. Because a few scenes have been scheduled for the coming October, they do not have time to wait for approval and may have to give up making the film in China completely. Now Baobei Group is thinking about withdrawing from the project and is waiting for response from Steven Seagal.

Harry from Aintitcool.com reports Liu Chia-Hui (Gordon) has replaced Quentin Tarantino as Pai Mei (White Eyebrows). The role was originally went to Yuen Wo-Ping, and then Quentin Tarantino. But QT has been overwhelmed by the enormous amount of works and finally decided to pass it to Liu Chia-Hui. As one of the legendary Liu brothers, Liu Chia-Hui has stared in around fifty films by Show Bros. He recently co-produced  DRUNKEN MONKEY with his brother Lau Kar-Leung in attempt to bring back the glory days of Show Bros.

Now Harry should already in Beijing starting his own investigation on the truth of KILL BILL and QT.

Click for the original article by Harry

More: The character Sofie Fatale will be played by Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine).

Thanks to Sebastian Haselbeck, webmaster of The Quentin Tarantino Archives for the tip

HERO's Beijing production company (New Image ?)'s distribution manager Yu Yuxi has been interviewed by Chinese Business View. He said releasing HERO overseas and bidding for the Oscar required approvals from Chinese Film Bureau and a few other departments.

Actually, I do not think Mr. Yu quite understand how the Oscar works. The Oscar is not a film festival and a movie will be eligible for competition automatically once certain conditions were met. According to the official Academy Awards (www.oscar.org):

All eligible motion pictures, unless otherwise noted (see Paragraph 9 below), must be:

a) feature length (defined as over 40 minutes),

b) publicly exhibited by means of 35mm or 70mm film, or in a 24-frame progressive scan digital format (minimum native resolution 1280 by 1024 pixels), delivered to the screen by an image and sound file format suitable for exhibition in existing commercial digital cinema sites,

c) for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County,

d) for a run of at least seven consecutive days,

e) advertised and exploited during its Los Angeles run in a manner considered normal and customary to the industry, and

f) within the awards year deadlines specified in Rule Three (Note: December 31st, 2002).

And to be qualified for Best Foreign Film category:

1. The film must be first released in the country of origin between November 1, 2001 and October 31, 2002, and first publicly exhibited by means of 35mm or 70mm film for at least seven consecutive days in a commercial motion picture theater for the profit of the producer and exhibitor, advertised and exploited during its eligibility run in a manner considered normal and customary to the industry. The picture need not have been released in the United States.

2. The dialogue track must be predominantly in a language of the country of origin except when the story mandates that an additional non-English language be predominant. Accurate English subtitles are required.

3. The submitting country must certify that creative talent of that country exercised artistic control of the film.

4. The Academy has the right to make the final determination in questions of eligibility.

To be eligible for all categories of the Academy Awards, HERO must be released in China by October 25th, 2002 and in the United States by December 25th, 2002. Yu said, HERO will be sent to Chinese Film Bureau in early September. Therefore hope is still in the air.

Here is a very interesting article about how foreign studios go to China to shoot stories never set in China. Two-month shoot inside Beijing Film Studios is all for scenes set in Japan; a back lot at Shanghai Film Studios will be used to double 1942's Manila in the WWII flick THE GREAT RAID and "they will also use aerial shots of the city's colonial-era Bund to fill in for wartime Manila"; set inside Hengdian Film & TV City will be leased for a movie set in ancient Korea.

Click here

Thanks to Phil Tong

SHANGHAI KNIGHTS has been pushed back to sometime in 2003, reported Entertainment Weekly magazine in its "Fall Preview". The official site indicates it will be released in February 2003.

Click for Entertainment Weekly's SHANGHAI KNIGHTS preview page (with a new photo of Jackie and Owen)

Thanks to Marie M

Andy Lau and Leung Chiu-Wai have posed in front of cameras to promote their in-production film WU WEN DAO (MOU MAN DOU), formerly know as WU WEN XING ZHE (MOU MAN HANG JE). WU WEN DAO is a crime drama, in which Andy Lau plays a cop under-covered as a gangster and Leung Chiu-Wai plays another cop who is a gangster.

Click here

Hong Kong media report the long-awaited the remake-project of THE THIRD MASTER SWORD will be made to a 3-D animation first. The budget is about US$ 1 million, one tenth of the budget for a live-action version. The third master will be animated based on the face of Leslie Cheung, who has been pre-cast for the live-action version. Tsui Hark was attached to the project a while ago and now it is unknown whether he is still on-board.

Tian Jin Daily reports shooting of PURPLE BUTTERFLY has finally been wrapped up two days ago. Wu Yongli, the film's production manager, said making the movie was quite a miserable experience for everyone. They even set a record of working non-stop for over 27 hours. A press conference schedule for this month was scraped because everyone has already burnt out. He said the film is carefully crafted down to every detail. It cost them 60 rolls of film, which is three times for an average production. He said Zhang Ziyi had many love scenes but she never went over-board. Post-production is expected to complete by February next year.

Francois Tissandier from Cinemasie.com has sit down and talked with Stephen Chow when he was promotin SHAOLIN SOCCER in France. Click here for the exclusive interview

Click here

Thanks to Sebastian Haselbeck, webmaster of The Quentin Tarantino Archives

Click here

Thanks to Alex Ward

Miramax is currently editing HERO, according to the film's Beijing based production company, Nanfang Daily reports.

Stephen Chow in fact contributed his own voice to the Miramax's dubbed version of SHAOLIN SOCCER.

Toronto International Film Festival Group has announced a free screening of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON at Toronto' Harbourfront Centre Concert Stage on August 24th at 9 p.m.

Beware, there are several mistakes in the original press release article. The movie was adapted from the same-name fourth volume of the Crane-Iron Pentalogy (with five volumes not four) and this specific volume was written in 1941 not early 20th century. Furthermore, in the original novel, the time is set in the mid 18th century and in the movie, the time is set in 1745, therefore it is not early 19th century.
 

Click here for the original press release article

According to Chengdu Evening News, the post-production of HERO is currently being wrapped up in Australia, and on August 22nd, director Zhang Yimou will return to China brining the final print of the film. To prevent any illegal copy from ever happening, he will personally deliver it to the Film Bureau for final approval. The effect house being chosen by Zhang Yimou is Animal Logic from Australia. It is the same company got involved in the production of THE MATRIX trilogy, LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and MOULIN ROUGE. A two-minute trailer, made for the North American market, has been shown to the top level of China's film circle and Zhang Yimou will edit another one for Chinese audiences.

Warning: horrible dubbing with Chinese accent soundalike, the over used "everybody was kung-fu fighting" song inserted with some rap, big ending giveaway, really bad editing, ... You have been warned!

Trailer: SHAOLIN SOCCER (Miramax Version) (QuickTime, 4MB)

Ching Siu-Tung, the action director of HERO, has received an interview by Nanfang Daily. He said, judging from the actors' performances in the action part, Jet Li is the best and Zhang Ziyi's is the hardest. However, they all did their own fight scenes without doubles. There were even a little bit rivalry among them.

"Jet Li was the national wushu champion. He could master his fights with very little direction. He has shown us his body, strengthen of his moves, and his graces. So we were more emphasizing on showing the character of his role and the strength of his moves."

"(Leung Chiu-Wai), I have worked with him in the past. He has never learned wushu, so we tried to make his more aesthetical and let him show more of his acting. He is smart and learned very fast. (We) used composition and camera to remedy the limit of his fighting capability."

"(Zhang Ziyi) took dance lessons before so we made (her part) in a way of dance. She is skilled and she never used double. She has made a big leap forward from CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. This time (we) designed many very difficult moves, but she is smart and she learned very fast. Her part of the action is the hardest."

"(Maggie Cheung)'s character in the movie is very cold. She has never learned wushu either, and we have focused on showing her  beauty, using gaudily colored costumes and landscapes. Really beautiful."

When the reporter mentioned CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, Ching said, "CROUCHING TIGER only represents one part of Chinese wuxia. Compared to it, HERO will be a lot different. It is aesthetic, poetic and very romantic. For fighting style, we emphasized on strength as well as elegance. It's the result of a kind of chemical reaction."

When asked about the difference between Zhang Yimou and Tsui Har, Ching said, "Tsui Hark tends more commercialized (movies) and liked to follow the market. Zhang Yimou is more focusing on showing the Chinese culture."

Click the image above to order a VCD

It is the second time Ching Siu-Tung working with director Zhang Yimou. In 1988, Ching Siu-Tung directed a fantasy film QIN YONG (THE TERRACOTTA WARRIOR), starring Zhang Yimou who just stroke his fame with directing début RED SORGHUM and Gong Li, whose acting début is also RED SORGHUM. The story also involves The First Emperor, the same one in HERO, and only set in a decade later when he had already unified China.

Highlight to read the synopsis:

Zhang Yimou played Meng Tianfang, a low-ranking army officer who one day rescued the emperor from a group of assassins and became the ruler's new favor. In the imperial palace, he and court lady Snow (Gong Li) hopelessly fell in love. Meanwhile, one of the emperor's alchemists accidentally invented the immortal pill. Unwilling to see the ruthless ruler to live forever, he gave the pill to Snow. Affair between Meng and Snow finally discovered by the emperor and punishment they were facing was death. During the last kiss, Snow sent the immortal pill into Meng's mouth and run into a sea of fire. The emperor was willing to forgive Meng but Meng volunteered to be sealed as a terra cotta warrior to guard the emperor's gigantic mausoleum. Two millenniums passed by, in the 1930's, a third-class actress Zhu Lili (Gong Li) arrived to play a small role in a movie. In fact, the crew, headed by the movie leading man (Yu Rongguang), were working on robbing The First Emperor's tomb. When Lili accidentally discovered their secret, the leading man attempted to kill her in a plane crash. The small plane crashed into The First Emperor's tomb and woke up the immortal Meng Tianfang. Tianfang found out Lili was his only love from two thousands years ago but she had no memory of her previous life. Lili brought Tianfang to the modern civilization and from him, the tomb robbers discovered the entrance to The First Emperor's mausoleum. Tianfang and Lili returned to the emperor's tomb to stop the tomb robbers. Just when Lili realized she was Tianfang's love in her previous life, she was killed by the leading man. Meanwhile, thousands of terra cotta warriors came alive to fight the tomb robbers. After a fierce battle, everything was buried by earth except Meng Tianfang, who climbed out alone. In the 1980's, the terra cotta warriors had been rediscovered and a giant museum was built on top of the burial pits. Meng Tianfang, who had become an archeologist, was sitting in the pit and quietly brushing away the dirt from a terra cotta figure. A group of Japanese tourists came to visit the museum and among them, there was a very familiar face...

According to the Time Asian special report and a few production photos being released so far, there is a dual fight scene with Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi. This scene, in which thousands of fallen leaves flying around them, sounds very familiar to one scene in QIN YONG, in which Zhang Yimou is playing his sword in a courtyard while fallen golden leaves are flying around. One is inspired by the other?

Click here for the official site

The action director of HEROES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, Leung Siu-Hung, has recently been interviewed by Chinese media. He said, "it is a wuxia film, but director He Ping didn't know how to make action scenes. He often use six cameras to shoot the same fight simultaneously and to catch the right moments from different directions and angles. He basically relies on editing to show each move. He Ping never paid much attention on

Jiang Wen (left) and Kiichi Nakai (right)	Jiang Wen (left) and director He Ping (right)

how to make a fight beautiful. Rather, he emphasized on the whole scene and characters' emotions. He never wanted the  moves to be fancy, but demanded them to be suitable to a person's character and the plot. So we abandoned the traditional fancy moves, and turned our focus on using moves to reflect a character's feeling and also making some new changes among simple fight moves." Unlike many martial-art films like CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, this movie never relied on wire-fu and all moves obey the rules of physics. All the characters can do is just jumping onto horseback from the ground and were never able to "fly". He said, "even though it's "real fight", we cannot let someone got killed by just one punch and still made the moves somewhat beautified and exaggerated.

Leung Siu-Hung said Kiichi Nakai (the cop) had played in samurai movies and learned sword fight before. He could master his own moves very fast and could get it just right. In a fight scene with a group of bandits, his moves are very clean and fast. Wang Xueqi (bandit leader) is also very good. Leung said during another fight scene with a group of bandits, he played beautifully and really showed the character of his role. Jiang Wen (Captain Li) is the worst. It is his first action movie and he just couldn't get it right. Jiang's knees have old wounds and he couldn't knee and couldn't make high jump or low jump. Many of his scenes were done by his double. Zhao Wen (the general's daughter) did not have any action scenes.

Leung Siu-Hung is the vice-president of Hong Kong Guild of Stunt Actors. Being an action directors for over two decades, he has left his name in over one hundred movies, like BO HAO (TO BE NO. 1), HUANG FEI HONG XIAO ZHUAN (ONCE UPON A TIME A HERO IN CHINA), and WU YEN. HEROES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH is one of the four Asian productions financed by Columbia  and will have a world-wide release sometime next year.

Photos: SINA.COM

Many readers of this website have sent in letters concerning the possible one-year delay of the release of HERO in North America. I understand your anger and I share your pain.

Now it is time for some action: send messages to Miramax and its parent company Disney through letters, e-mails, petitions and any other mean. Tell more people about it through e-mails, forums, and so on. Send news articles to influential websites, like Aintitcool.com, Darkhorizons.com, MSNBC, etc. Send letters to other media, like newspapers (Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, etc.) and magazines (Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, etc.). Tell your concerns to influential people, especially film critics like Roger Ebert.

We shall have the following messages:

1. Release HERO as early as possible.

2. One screen at one commercial theater in L.A. by December 31, 2002 is more than enough for the Oscar bid.

3. Efforts by many websites have generated lots of publicities among real fans and words-of-mouth from them will push HERO to a very hot spot.

4. Since Miramax is known for scissoring Asian films, fear of a re-assembled Miramax version of HERO alone will force every fan to acquire HERO DVD and VCD from Asia once they become available either online or at local Chinese video stores.

5. Bottom-line, whenever the release date is, do not do anything except adding decent subtitles.

Let's get started!

Photos: SINA.COM

Information Times reports someone from one of HERO's production companies (New Image?), only known as Mr. Qin, has confirmed that the post-production, mainly on the CG effects, will be completed by the end of August. Then it will be sent to the Chinese Film Bureau for approval. If so, HERO will not be shown at either Toronto International Film Festival (submission deadline: June 7th) or Venice International Film Festival (submission deadline: July 31st). 

Meanwhile, six production stills appeared on the web on July 31st (Click here) were actually sent to the media illegally. It has been suspected that the six photos, very blur, dark and low in resolution, are scanned from a brochure, which has been distributed to several advertising agencies. Mr. Qin said they might seek legal action against the one being responsible for the leakage.

As you know, Miramax just released its fall schedule and HERO is not on it. Many have speculated it is because there is not enough time for stuffs like promotion and Miramax may have decided to push it back to the fall of next year. Why the fall? Because Oscar voters usually have very short memory and many past winners, especially the non-blockbusters, were released in the fall season. Another possible reason of pushing it back to next year is to avoid GANGS OF NEW YORK being cannibalized by HERO at the coming Oscar. However, HERO will be released in China this December no matter what and by fall next year, the entire world will have already been flooded with HERO DVDs and VCDs. By them, people from core of core of the target market of HERO have already seen it. Further more, a full year will give Miramax a perfect excuse of massing up HERO just like what they did to all other Asian films. If Miramax really want HERO to grab something from the Oscar, all they can do is just release it at just one theater in L.A. Is that something really hard to do? I say: who cares about Oscar? Just show me the movie!

Thanks to Kimi C for bringing up the topic