Sorry about the goofy dubbing that mars Ms. Yeoh’s fine acting before the action starts, but if you hold on for a minute, you’ll see why I selected this scene.
This is from “Twin Warriors,” also starring Jet Li and directed by the great fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping. I’ve never seen this one for some reason, but it sure looks great.
For no other reason but that I can, I am devoting today’s blog posts to basking in the awesomeness that is Ms. Michelle Yeoh.
In this scene from the magnificent “Wing Chun,” the amazing one protects some tofu. I like tofu.
And, for a change, it’s barely even night here on west coast as I begin.
* Just a few days back I noted the casting of Japanese star Tadanobu Asano as Hogun in Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming “Mighty Thor” flick. As a part of Norse (i.e., Viking) mythology, Asgard is, by definition, a pretty strictly Nordic place, so I thought this casting was interesting. Visually, the Marvel comics Hogun was based on Charles Bronson, whose face had a definite Asiatic/Mongolian-by-way-of-Lithuania cast, so going with the star of “Mongol” was a stretch worth noting, but maybe not a definite sign of completely race blind nontraditional casting.
However, Branagh has now cast the very fine African-English actor Idris Elba of “The Wire” and several great episodes of “The Office” in the part of Heimdall, guardian of Asgard. As a commentor at the Heat Vision blog that spread the news mentioned, Branagh did something very similar when he cast Denzel Washington as an Italian warrior-prince in his version of “Much Ado About Nothing.” I’ll quote myself from the Bullz-Eye piece I did on less well known Denzel Washington performances:
As a major production featuring truly race-blind “nontraditional” casting in a key role, “Much Ado About Nothing” is something of an onscreen first. In fact, audiences and critics had no more problem accepting Washington as an Italian prince than they did accepting the extremely British, pasty-faced Branagh as a Mediterranean nobleman.
Especially in films set far away from a realistic context and where the actor has as much authority as both Washington and Elba have, I think we’re sophisticated enough about the nature of movies that this will not be a problem, even for viewers who know a little about mythology. And here’s the best part: it will piss off some white supremacists. I’ve personally heard about young Neo-Nazis who dig the comic book “Mighty Thor” and apparently are too stupid and ignorant to realize that the series was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, a.k.a., Stanley Leiber and Jacob Kurtzberg, two rather brilliant New York Jews. As always, the joke is on the hate fetishists.
Like I said before, this is not your father’s Asgard, and I’m fine with that.
* It’s thirty days before the release of “Avatar,” the movie isn’t quite done yet, and some of us insist on going about our business as if life as we have always known it was not about to be forever altered. Quick, send out Sigourney Weaver and Giovanni Ribisi to say nice things about James Cameron!
* He’s brought us everything from “School of Rock” to “Chuck and Buck”, but very talented quirk/comedy writer/actor Mike White’s next film is about Santa war, but I doubt it’ll be very violent. On the other hand, he appeared in the comically mega-violent “Zombieland,” so perhaps his thinking has evolved some. I pretty violently disagreed with his op-ed, but he gets credit for even thinking about stuff like this.
* And, now for something completely different, from OC Weekly restaurant critic Edwin Goei comes his list of the five greatest food movies. I’d steal some of his YouTube clips, but I’m starving and I’m supposed to go to the gym later, dammit. Just go see for yourselves.
Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule celebrates it’s fifth birthday today in high style.
Like many in the film blogosphere, I owe a lot to the cite’s proprietor and sole contributor, Dennis Cozzalio, for his support and encouragement when pretty much no one was paying attention. And the weird part came when we both figured out that we’d actually probably met about ??? years back through some kind of bizarre web of L.A.-based film nerd synchronicity. But, who cares.
Really, this is a day to celebrate that great site where the seemingly inexhaustible Dennis, whose subject matter really does include baseball and the great director of Italian-made westerns but also genre films (with an emphasis on the grungier side of the street, particularly horror but also, because he’s a family man, the cleaner and brighter side of things as well) and thoughtful exploration on this thing we call cinema in pretty much every single one of its facets.If you’ve never been over to his place before, now’s as good a time as any to start. Much good film-geek reading awaits you there.
In the meantime, just a few movie moments with a twist of SLIFR. (Okay, this is mainly just because I’m in a Roger Corman mood at the moment.)
Two more after the flip.
Seems like today, everyone’s talking about the same few news items. I’d hate to be left out.
* Adding to the endless speculation over who will be cast as whom in “Spiderman 4,” Nikki Finke enters the more or less pointless but, I suppose, fun fray by naming Anne Hathaway as having been “approached” for a role which her readers have decreed to be the Black Cat.
* The Academy has come up with a short-list of nominees-to-be-nominees in the Best Documentary category. Everyone is making a big deal about the absence of Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” and then naming any one of a number of highly regarded documentaries that didn’t make the cut, including the rather predictably ignored “Anvil! The Story of Anvil” (looks like too much fun) and James Toback’s look at Mike Tyson (to, er, biting?). I’m personally not thrilled that “We Live in Public,” which I still think might be the most important movie made this year, is out of the running, but then I’m obviously somewhat personally invested. Anne Thompson is right, however, that the doc category is growing ever more interesting and crowded.
* The Oscars have an alliterative director. Will he win an Emmy?
* “New Moon” mania breaks out with news of huge early ticket sales. If you have more time on your hands than me, you can read this very lengthy interview and I’m sure pretty interesting interview with director Paul Weitz. I could barely skim it right now, but here’s a quote that leapt out at me:
I have been kind of hazed into the world of VFX, so I understand how to do that — or at least who to trust — and I get what it is that they’re trying to do. I think that with the right visual effects supervisor, I can direct animators who are animating creatures, who are like actors in that sense. It’s just that their performances are being done over the course of months. Each five-second shot takes months to develop. That stuff I like very much, but I wouldn’t say that I’m either an expert or kind of a savant as far as that goes. That’s Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro and Sam Raimi. That’s not me.
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