Shanghai Youth Daily reports that the production of a remake of director King Hu's martial-art classic The Valiant Ones began yesterday at Hengdian World Studios. Released in 1975, the original The Valiant Ones won the Outstanding Contribution Award at Chicago Film Festival of that year. The Valiant Ones is about a group of warriors helping a Chinese general to fight Japanese pirates. The cast of the original film consists such familiar names like Sammo Hung, Hsu Feng, Yuen Biao, Corey Yuen and Yuen Wah and the cast of the remake includes Nicky Wu, Huang Yi, Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu. Yuen Wah is also on board as the choreographer.

Eight promotional stills of Sun Rises Again (literal title) have been distributed to the Chinese media.  Jiang Wen wrote and directed the movie based on short story Velvet by woman writer Ye Mi. The original story tells the story of a married couple, who were sent to a remote village for being "re-educated" for their experience of living abroad. In the village, the wife started an affair with a young local farmer. She told her lover that someone said her skin was like velvet. The husband discovered his wife's secret and threatened to kill the young man. However, the young farmer had no idea of what velvet was and the husband decided to show him a piece of velvet, which was impossible to find in this part of the world.

As for the story of the movie, nobody seems to know what it really about. Jaycee Chan said it was an actioner, in which he jumped and climbed more frequently than he would do in a martial-art movie; Anthony Wong said it was an erotic film, in which he got the change to sing a song; Joan Chen said it was just like her own Roman Holiday; and Zhou Yun said it was like a fantasy love story because her role is crazy as well as touching.

Sun Rises Again tells four interlocked stories. The first story, set in present days, is about a mentally ill woman (Zhou Yun); the second story is about a young farmer (Jaycee Chan); the third story is about a school teacher (Anthony Wong) and a nurse (Joan Chan); and the fourth story is about a Chinese man (Jiang Wen), who used to live overseas, and his wife (Kong Yishan).

The movie was somewhat  expensive to make. It involved hundreds of birds and animals, several dozen cases of ammunitions and over a hundred burning tents. A traditional Tibetan style house, about 300 square meters,  several dozen tons of stream cobbles and red dirt, and a boat were shipped to a lake high on the Tibetan Plateau. Production of Sun Rises Again has wrapped up with one shot remaining unmade. The shot is about an antique train rolling through a field of flowers, which might be made in the northern China, Russia or New Zealand.

More promotional stills: Cui Jian  Zhou Yun 1  Zhou Yun 2  Kong Yishan (Thanks to Marie M.)

According to a Chinese newspaper, someone has worked with Ang Lee Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, said Lee's next film would probably tell the story of The Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove during China's Three Kingdoms Period (AD 220 - 265) and the Jin Dynasty (AD 265 - 420). The Seven Sages were scholars and poets who regularly gathered in a bamboo grove to escape the troubles of the outside world and to lose themselves in pure thoughts and conversations. The Seven Sages project, if true, is only one of multiple projects Ang Lee is developing now and the project is still in a very early stage.