An advert for Kinlon motorcycles featuring Jackie. Enjoy
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1
Zodiac Heads to Be Returned
Announced in Beijing today was the news that the rabbit and rat zodiac heads will be returned to China by the current owners later this year.
Jackie's reaction on weibo:
SOURCE: SHANGHAIDAILY.COM
Jackie's reaction on weibo:
I was busy with arrangements for disaster relief work, when all of a sudden a lot of friends phoned or sent a text message this morning to tell me that the Pinault family from France said they would return the Rabbit and Rat to China! I cried on the spot three times, this is really a happy thing during these days of sadness! Whether or not CZ12 can take credit for it, I will take it, ha ha! I sincerely hope that each country can have their displaced national treasures returned!
正在忙着安排赈灾的工作，忽然很多朋友打来电话发来短信，告诉我今天上午法国的皮诺家族表示将兔首和鼠首归还中国！我当场大叫三声，这真是最近这段苦闷的日子唯一值得高兴的事了！不管有没有≪十二生肖≫电影的功劳，我就当是有吧，哈哈！真心希望各个国家流落在外的国宝都能回到它们原来的国家！
A rat's head and a rabbit's head which were looted from the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 will be returned to China by its current French owner, the owner's representative announced today in Beijing.
During a meeting with State Culture Relics Bureau officials, French PPR Group CEO Francois-Henri Pinault said on behalf of his family, he will donate the two bronze relics to Chinese government.
Pinault expects to return the relics in August or September, while the Chinese officials hope they can be sent back to their home country in July.
"The rat's head and a rabbit's head will be collected by the National Museum," said Song Xinchao, vice director of the State Culture Relics Bureau. He expressed gratitude to Pinault and his family.
The plundered pieces, part of a clepsydra or water clock, are considered Chinese national treasures and China wants them back. The issue of stolen antiquities is highly charged. The heads are among 12 zodiac animal heads that adorned the elaborate timekeeping device.
They were designed by the Italian Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Castiglione for the Emperor Qianlong in the mid-18th century. The Summer Palace was looted by British and French troops in 1860. The heads belonged to several European collections before they were acquired by French businessman Pierre Bergé and the late Yves Saint Laurent in the 1990s.
The Pinault family purchased the rat's head and a rabbit's head from their previous owner in 2009 after an auction failed.
SOURCE: SHANGHAIDAILY.COM
0
Jackie & Jay Chou BIFF
Jackie and Jay Chou discussing martial arts at the closing ceremony for the Beijing International Film Festival.
2
Beijing Film Festival Photos
More photos from the closing ceremony of the Beijing Film Festival.
Jackie Chan, Ding Sheng, Liu Ye and Jing Tian walking the red carpet. (Police Story 2013 cast and crew)
Jackie, Jing Tian, Liu Ye
Jackie Chan, Jing Tian
Jackie and Luc Besson
Jackie Awards Cate Shortland with the Tiantan Prize for 'Best Director' for "Lore".
Jackie with Jay Chou
Jackie with Keanu Reeves and Luc Besson
SOURCE: SINA.COM, ZIMBIO.COM, CHINANEWS.COM, ENT.IFENG.COM
Jackie Chan, Ding Sheng, Liu Ye and Jing Tian walking the red carpet. (Police Story 2013 cast and crew)
Jackie, Jing Tian, Liu Ye
Jackie Chan, Jing Tian
Jackie and Luc Besson
Jackie Awards Cate Shortland with the Tiantan Prize for 'Best Director' for "Lore".
Jackie with Jay Chou
Jackie with Keanu Reeves and Luc Besson
2
Jackie Chan
This is an extract from 'FIFTY CONTEMPORARY FILMMAKERS' edited by Yvonne Tasker and published by Routledge in 2002.
The book is a series of selected essays on fifty different filmmakers and the essay on Jackie is an interesting perspective. It is also interesting to compare this view with the views on the other filmmakers. If you are interested in film it is an interesting read, even if slightly outdated.
More so than even Bruce Lee or John Woo, Jackie Chan has come to represent the global image of `Hong Kong Cinema'; a hyperkinetic, breathless national cinema fashioned by impossibly limber and fearless performers, and by prodigiously inventive choreographers (Chan, significantly, is both). `No Fear. No Stuntman. No Equal', proclaimed the English-language posters for Rumble in the Bronx, underlining both the supposedly 'universal' aspects of his films and those qualities Hollywood could not deliver. Built into this, however, is the implication that Hollywood once did deliver such 'uncomplicated' pleasures, as is evidenced in numerous references to silent cinema (Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd) or classic Hollywood musicals (those of Gene Kelly, in particular). This casts Chan as Hollywood's `lost innocence', an alternative to 'high concepts' and (most importantly) special effects - his admirers often portray him as a filmmaking throwback, a cinematic idiot savant ± `cliff-hanger, kung fu and Keystone cops all in one'. Certainly, the silent cinema/Hollywood musical comparisons, while limited, stand as a reminder that there is more to cinematic pleasure than the classical `well-made film'. In Chan's oeuvre, with some exceptions, the text is the set-piece - no Chan book, his autobiography included, is complete without a list of his ten best fights or ten best stunts. This suggests a kind of `cinema of attractions', or what David Bordwell calls an 'ecstatic cinema', which transports spectators 'into a realm of rapt, electric apprehension of sheerly pictorial and auditory momentum'. The danger is, however, that such accounts can easily conspire with a patronizing `trash aesthetic', celebrating Hong Kong as 'a cinema of mindless pleasures'; never mind the quality, feel the stunts. Chan's ingenuous persona, vulnerability, and mixture of comedy and action have been celebrated as an antidote to the machismo and heartless irony of western action cinema, an anti-Schwarzenegger and Tarantino rolled into one. Although such accounts are well meaning, they are sometimes a little light on considerations of Chinese masculinity and heroism or on the context for Chan's persona. Steve Fore is a bracing exception, seeing Chan's films as a negotiation of `certain contradictions characteristic of Hong Kong culture', mediating between a need for individual action and `respect for the value of nurturing a group orientation based on altruism and humility'. This is a considerable part of Chan-fandom, too - magazines like Screen Power: The Jackie Chan Magazine emphasize his work for charity, his love for and friendliness towards his fans qualities which support rather than contradict his bravery and martial arts skills. There are generic precedents for this - Chan has made two films about the virtuous kung fu legend, Wong Fei-hung (albeit in an early, mischievous, incarnation), the epitome of social responsibility.
References to Keaton, Chaplin and Kelly point to another key aspect of Chan's public persona, namely the star-auteur as performative genius. Chan's filmography encompasses a multiplicity of filmmaking roles - director, producer, choreographer, stuntman, co-head (with Willie Chan) of Golden Way films - and his role is rarely confined to performer alone. Behind-the-scenes projects like Jackie Chan: My Stunts explore his `creative process'(improvisation and brainstorming with his stunt team, a choreographic emphasis on 'rhythm' and tempo) and promote the stuntman as star, choreographer as auteur, self-endangerment as popular art. Chan's reputation hinges on `control', even over those films which he has not nominally directed; several of his directors have walked off his films, willingly or otherwise. The failure of his early US vehicles, The Big Brawl and The Protector, is popularly attributed to the precise lack of this `control', to the blind hubris of B-movie hacks who thought they knew better. Relatively speaking, he is one of Hong Kong's most expensive filmmakers; costly period re-creations, international settings, but more importantly for the legend, fights which take months to film, multiple takes and, of course, lengthy stays in hospital. Mr. Canton and Lady Rose (a re-creation of 1930s' Hong Kong, inspired by Capra's A Pocketful of Miracles, 1961) and Operation Condor (a rambling desert adventure filmed in Morocco and the Sahara), in particular, have taken on the reputation of expensive follies de grandeur, not least because Golden Harvest subsequently reigned in his excesses.
Chan's popularity is one of the paradoxes of global popular culture; for most of the last twenty years, he has managed to be a cult figure and an international superstar at the same time. Prior to Rumble in the Bronx (released in the US in 1996), he was little more than a cult figure in the West, a cult fostered since the early 1980s by Chinatown cinemas and video rental. Meanwhile, no Chinese New Year would be the same without a new Jackie Chan film. Ìn Asia . . . I am Jurassic Park. I am E.T.', Chan claims. But in another sense that is precisely what he is not - `We are very poor . . . The only choice I have is dangerous stunts.' However, this statement is not entirely true - as witnessed in the lavish spectacles Tsui Hark and Wong Kar-wai deliver on smaller budgets - but there is something irresistible about the 'real' body pitted against the tyranny of the digital, the Drunken Master versus the Titanic. But Chan is no cinematic primitive - his control over camera placement and (largely invisible) editing is as meticulous as his control over bodies in motion, and his multiple takes often function as 'action replays' of jaw-droppingly 'real' (read: dangerous) on-set events. Rather, Chan has astutely gauged those elements of Hong Kong cinema that Hollywood cannot absorb or copy. He is fond of chiding American stars for not doing their own stunts and American stuntmen for being too slow. But he also differentiates himself from other, more stylized, Hong Kong filmmakers, especially those who do incorporate technology visibly into action scenes or foreground the artifice of cinema - the invisible wires, MTV-cutting and undercranking of 'new wave' martial arts films such as Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series. For Chan, cinema is in the service of the body.
In Renee Witterstaetter's entertaining hagiography, his filmography constitutes an autobiography of his body - its performative achievements and à chronological account of every broken bone and crushed head, broken finger and twisted knee'.8 Few Hong Kong filmmakers have enjoyed Chan's longevity. His career spans the most significant period in Hong Kong cinema - from the Mandarin-language kung fu films of the 1970s (Hong Kong cinema's first global export) to the 'new' Cantonese cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, which looked to Hong Kong itself for its thematic and narrative content; from the island's 'economic miracle' to the turmoil generated by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration returning sovereignty to China. There is a set-piece in most Chan films where he is attacked from all sides, parrying furiously, receiving as many blows as he successfully blocks or returns - the culture-shock of rapid modernization and urban transformation translated into a flurry of high-impact action. Neither the hand-over of Hong Kong to China nor his belated success in Hollywood has stopped him making successful films in the now depleted Hong Kong cinema; the dust had barely settled on Rush Hour before he was making the more locally oriented New Year film, Gorgeous. Unlike émigré Hong Kong filmmakers, he continues to work in both industries, a truly transnational figure.
Chan's career grew out of an already dying genre, the kung fu film. His earliest star vehicles were lacklustre period films for former Bruce Lee director Lo Wei, and his breakthrough came in two kung fu comedies directed by Yuen Woo-ping, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. In the latter, he reinvented folk hero Wong Fei-hung as a pre-legend juvenile delinquent ± in one scene, he sees off an opponent by farting in his face. Both films were variations on the 'master-pupil' theme, which had been popular since the mid-1970s and which was being given an increasingly comic twist. His early films as director were essentially reworkings of his breakthrough hits, made with the larger budgets Golden Harvest could provide, but the failure of Dragon Lord suggested that even comic martial arts films had run their course for now. Subsequently, he was instrumental in creating a hybridized comedy-action film with hair-raising stunts and meticulous choreography, but Chan never lost sight of the martial arts film's 'difference' from western spectacle, its performative virtuosity and the centrality of the body-in-motion. By the time of Project A, the emphasis was equally on the body-in-danger - falls from clocktowers, hanging from a moving bus by an umbrella handle (Police Story) or dangling from a helicopter (Police Story 3) - all injuries replayed in end credits out-takes. If one looks for evidence of `maturity', then Project A is indisputably Chan's breakthrough film. Not only is it more enjoyable than any film has a right to be, but it displays a penchant for period re-creation and a new interest in Hong Kong rather than the kung fu film's mythical China. The film is set in turn-of-the-century Hong Kong and pits Chan's coastal guard Dragon Ma (aided by Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung) against a conspiracy of pirates and corrupt British officials. This is where the 'silent cinema' comparisons begin ± the film includes a virtuoso comic bicycle chase and a Lloyd-inspired clocktower sequence. There is a new variety to the fight choreography, too, ranging from riotous bar-room brawls to an extended fight with the pirate leader full of hyperbolic sound effects, slow-motion leaps and Peking Opera acrobatics. The sequel was equally good, mixing elements of farce and anti-Qing dynasty revolutionaries.
Chan developed another series with Police Story, usually seen as his riposte to the 'rogue cop 'posturing of The Protector. The stunts are as breathtaking as ever - Part 1 is the final word on the pleasures of breaking glass and demolishing shopping malls. However, in some respects, the film only differs from its counter-model in execution, and, notwithstanding the comedy and Chan's vulnerable persona, it is striking how close parts of the film are to being `Dirty Jackie'. The generosity and `social responsibility' of Chan's period films only patchily appears in the modern-day ones - what are we to make of his character's destruction of a refugee shantytown during a car chase as Part 1's opening `spectacle', or the grotesquely stereotyped deaf-mute heavy in Part 2? The Armour of God, an Indiana Jones-type adventure filmed in Europe, represents another important development in that Chan's films began to transmute into travelogues with intermittent action scenes. This film almost (literally) killed Chan, but it is almost unwatchable (not least for its racism) until the final twenty minutes. Operation Condor was an expensive sequel and one excess too many for Golden Harvest, but Chan was displaying a growing weakness for colourless internationalism with yawning longeurs in between his films' set-pieces. Although not critically well received, Rumble in the Bronx holds an important place in the Chan biography. Fore provides an illuminating account of how it was modified for and promoted to US multiplexes - the new version played down Chan's physical comedy (always a sticking point in his `crossover') and those self-effacing aspects of his star persona that conflicted with him being a straight action performer.9 Rush Hour seems more comfortable with both the 'nice guy' persona and the comedy, even if the latter is toned down (especially in comparison with Chris Tucker's mugging). Interestingly, the action is the casualty; Chan had to work with American stunt co-ordinator Terry Leonard for reasons of both safety and expense. The film captures the dilemma of absorbing Chan into Hollywood - he is not only a conventional star, but also a filmmaking process. Rush Hour displays an 'idea' of Chan - dangerous stunts made safe, choreography slowed down to incorporate western actors - rather than the 'Jackie Chan' exported from Hong Kong. The film's fight scenes largely consist of a series of `moves' rather than the elaborate compositions of his Chinese films.
Chan's career overlaps significantly with that of Sammo Hung Kam-bo. Hung was the oldest member of the 'Seven Little Fortunes', the Peking Opera troupe in which Chan trained as a child. Hung, like Chan, is a prolific star, director, producer and choreographer, and a key influence on the Hong Kong action film. Chan and Hung appeared together in numerous films including the all-star Lucky Stars series, Dragons Forever and Chan's own Project A, usually accompanied by a third 'Little Fortune', the agile Yuen Biao, and sometimes by a fourth, wiry Yuen Wah, as the villain. Collectively, they represent the last generation of Peking Opera performers to make their mark on popular cinema. Hung is as talented as Chan and their styles have some similarities, but he is even less of a conventional leading man (one film title tells all - Enter the Fat Dragon) and has not enjoyed the same level of adulation. Hung, Chan and another important choreographer-director Yuen Woo-ping represent an intermediary stage in martial arts cinema. Bruce Lee had consolidated a demand for 'real' martial artists, both in front of and behind the camera, and this 'authenticity' was guaranteed by extended takes and wide framing of the action. Hung, Chan and Yuen shifted this 'authenticity' away from the kung fu itself to a new kind of hard physical action, away from recognizable styles (Snake, Tiger, Crane, etc.), and towards a mixture of operatic tumbling, gruelling street fighting (with real contact and impossibly painful landings) and self-effacing comedy.
Hung and Yuen, however, have shown more willingness than Chan to adapt their styles, including working with wires and special effects on 'new wave' martial arts films (Yuen even worked on the Hollywood science fiction movie, The Matrix, 1999), and Hung has subsequently forged an unexpected Hollywood career in the Rush Hour-inspired television series, Martial Law.
More recently, Chan's most frequent collaborator has been Stanley Tong, the director hired to make cheaper Jackie Chan films. Rumble in the Bronx and First Strike are undistinguished - although no worse than Sammo Hung's Mr. Nice Guy (1997). However, Police Story 3: Supercop stands out for the role it offered to Michelle Yeoh. Women are unreconstructedly 'girlish' in Chan's films and he has under-used such stars as Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin in thankless roles. But in Police Story Yeoh performs a stunt to match any of Chan's - landing a motorbike on a moving bus - and her tough mainland cop is the best thing about the film. Chan's best 1990s' film was a more fractious collaboration with Shaw Brothers veteran, Lau Kar-leung (Mandarin name: Liu Jialiang). Lau is the epitome of 1970's style authenticity, and the glorious Drunken Master II saw Chan performing genuine southern kung fu moves as well as the eponymous `Drunken Boxing'. Thematically, the film bore some similarities to the Once Upon a Time in China films (which also dealt with Wong Fei-hung) - colonialist villains, Wong Fei-hung's coming of age - but the style was very different. Chan has likened Lau's style to 'classical music' - 'very traditional' - and his own to 'jazz',10 and Lau reportedly walked off the set before Chan's trademark masochistic finale, walking across hot coals and drinking industrial alcohol to counter the super-kicking skills of villain Ken Lo. But the film is more seamless than Chan might like to think and offered two incongruously old-fashioned figures giving the 'new wave' a run for its money.
Chan's abilities are still formidable, but he is also the most trapped of Hong Kong filmmakers, his transglobal mobility notwithstanding. At best, what Hollywood seems to be able to offer him is a new status as a brand-name for a type of spectacle it cannot actually produce. Even in Hong Kong, it is uncertain where he can now go, beyond jumping off bigger buildings or fighting in new locations. Who Am I? is the most ambitious of his recent films, but it is too location-conscious and under-scripted to capitalize on its premise of an amnesiac Chinese secret agent. Gorgeous is a more low-key film - a romantic comedy and the first Chan film to acknowledge that he is not getting any younger. None the less, the websites, fan clubs, video and DVD re-releases, and the box-office figures for Rush Hour, tell a very different (and equally important) story: Jackie Chan is clearly nowhere near his sell-by date.
The book is a series of selected essays on fifty different filmmakers and the essay on Jackie is an interesting perspective. It is also interesting to compare this view with the views on the other filmmakers. If you are interested in film it is an interesting read, even if slightly outdated.
JACKIE CHAN
More so than even Bruce Lee or John Woo, Jackie Chan has come to represent the global image of `Hong Kong Cinema'; a hyperkinetic, breathless national cinema fashioned by impossibly limber and fearless performers, and by prodigiously inventive choreographers (Chan, significantly, is both). `No Fear. No Stuntman. No Equal', proclaimed the English-language posters for Rumble in the Bronx, underlining both the supposedly 'universal' aspects of his films and those qualities Hollywood could not deliver. Built into this, however, is the implication that Hollywood once did deliver such 'uncomplicated' pleasures, as is evidenced in numerous references to silent cinema (Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd) or classic Hollywood musicals (those of Gene Kelly, in particular). This casts Chan as Hollywood's `lost innocence', an alternative to 'high concepts' and (most importantly) special effects - his admirers often portray him as a filmmaking throwback, a cinematic idiot savant ± `cliff-hanger, kung fu and Keystone cops all in one'. Certainly, the silent cinema/Hollywood musical comparisons, while limited, stand as a reminder that there is more to cinematic pleasure than the classical `well-made film'. In Chan's oeuvre, with some exceptions, the text is the set-piece - no Chan book, his autobiography included, is complete without a list of his ten best fights or ten best stunts. This suggests a kind of `cinema of attractions', or what David Bordwell calls an 'ecstatic cinema', which transports spectators 'into a realm of rapt, electric apprehension of sheerly pictorial and auditory momentum'. The danger is, however, that such accounts can easily conspire with a patronizing `trash aesthetic', celebrating Hong Kong as 'a cinema of mindless pleasures'; never mind the quality, feel the stunts. Chan's ingenuous persona, vulnerability, and mixture of comedy and action have been celebrated as an antidote to the machismo and heartless irony of western action cinema, an anti-Schwarzenegger and Tarantino rolled into one. Although such accounts are well meaning, they are sometimes a little light on considerations of Chinese masculinity and heroism or on the context for Chan's persona. Steve Fore is a bracing exception, seeing Chan's films as a negotiation of `certain contradictions characteristic of Hong Kong culture', mediating between a need for individual action and `respect for the value of nurturing a group orientation based on altruism and humility'. This is a considerable part of Chan-fandom, too - magazines like Screen Power: The Jackie Chan Magazine emphasize his work for charity, his love for and friendliness towards his fans qualities which support rather than contradict his bravery and martial arts skills. There are generic precedents for this - Chan has made two films about the virtuous kung fu legend, Wong Fei-hung (albeit in an early, mischievous, incarnation), the epitome of social responsibility.
References to Keaton, Chaplin and Kelly point to another key aspect of Chan's public persona, namely the star-auteur as performative genius. Chan's filmography encompasses a multiplicity of filmmaking roles - director, producer, choreographer, stuntman, co-head (with Willie Chan) of Golden Way films - and his role is rarely confined to performer alone. Behind-the-scenes projects like Jackie Chan: My Stunts explore his `creative process'(improvisation and brainstorming with his stunt team, a choreographic emphasis on 'rhythm' and tempo) and promote the stuntman as star, choreographer as auteur, self-endangerment as popular art. Chan's reputation hinges on `control', even over those films which he has not nominally directed; several of his directors have walked off his films, willingly or otherwise. The failure of his early US vehicles, The Big Brawl and The Protector, is popularly attributed to the precise lack of this `control', to the blind hubris of B-movie hacks who thought they knew better. Relatively speaking, he is one of Hong Kong's most expensive filmmakers; costly period re-creations, international settings, but more importantly for the legend, fights which take months to film, multiple takes and, of course, lengthy stays in hospital. Mr. Canton and Lady Rose (a re-creation of 1930s' Hong Kong, inspired by Capra's A Pocketful of Miracles, 1961) and Operation Condor (a rambling desert adventure filmed in Morocco and the Sahara), in particular, have taken on the reputation of expensive follies de grandeur, not least because Golden Harvest subsequently reigned in his excesses.
Chan's popularity is one of the paradoxes of global popular culture; for most of the last twenty years, he has managed to be a cult figure and an international superstar at the same time. Prior to Rumble in the Bronx (released in the US in 1996), he was little more than a cult figure in the West, a cult fostered since the early 1980s by Chinatown cinemas and video rental. Meanwhile, no Chinese New Year would be the same without a new Jackie Chan film. Ìn Asia . . . I am Jurassic Park. I am E.T.', Chan claims. But in another sense that is precisely what he is not - `We are very poor . . . The only choice I have is dangerous stunts.' However, this statement is not entirely true - as witnessed in the lavish spectacles Tsui Hark and Wong Kar-wai deliver on smaller budgets - but there is something irresistible about the 'real' body pitted against the tyranny of the digital, the Drunken Master versus the Titanic. But Chan is no cinematic primitive - his control over camera placement and (largely invisible) editing is as meticulous as his control over bodies in motion, and his multiple takes often function as 'action replays' of jaw-droppingly 'real' (read: dangerous) on-set events. Rather, Chan has astutely gauged those elements of Hong Kong cinema that Hollywood cannot absorb or copy. He is fond of chiding American stars for not doing their own stunts and American stuntmen for being too slow. But he also differentiates himself from other, more stylized, Hong Kong filmmakers, especially those who do incorporate technology visibly into action scenes or foreground the artifice of cinema - the invisible wires, MTV-cutting and undercranking of 'new wave' martial arts films such as Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series. For Chan, cinema is in the service of the body.
In Renee Witterstaetter's entertaining hagiography, his filmography constitutes an autobiography of his body - its performative achievements and à chronological account of every broken bone and crushed head, broken finger and twisted knee'.8 Few Hong Kong filmmakers have enjoyed Chan's longevity. His career spans the most significant period in Hong Kong cinema - from the Mandarin-language kung fu films of the 1970s (Hong Kong cinema's first global export) to the 'new' Cantonese cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, which looked to Hong Kong itself for its thematic and narrative content; from the island's 'economic miracle' to the turmoil generated by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration returning sovereignty to China. There is a set-piece in most Chan films where he is attacked from all sides, parrying furiously, receiving as many blows as he successfully blocks or returns - the culture-shock of rapid modernization and urban transformation translated into a flurry of high-impact action. Neither the hand-over of Hong Kong to China nor his belated success in Hollywood has stopped him making successful films in the now depleted Hong Kong cinema; the dust had barely settled on Rush Hour before he was making the more locally oriented New Year film, Gorgeous. Unlike émigré Hong Kong filmmakers, he continues to work in both industries, a truly transnational figure.
Chan's career grew out of an already dying genre, the kung fu film. His earliest star vehicles were lacklustre period films for former Bruce Lee director Lo Wei, and his breakthrough came in two kung fu comedies directed by Yuen Woo-ping, Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master. In the latter, he reinvented folk hero Wong Fei-hung as a pre-legend juvenile delinquent ± in one scene, he sees off an opponent by farting in his face. Both films were variations on the 'master-pupil' theme, which had been popular since the mid-1970s and which was being given an increasingly comic twist. His early films as director were essentially reworkings of his breakthrough hits, made with the larger budgets Golden Harvest could provide, but the failure of Dragon Lord suggested that even comic martial arts films had run their course for now. Subsequently, he was instrumental in creating a hybridized comedy-action film with hair-raising stunts and meticulous choreography, but Chan never lost sight of the martial arts film's 'difference' from western spectacle, its performative virtuosity and the centrality of the body-in-motion. By the time of Project A, the emphasis was equally on the body-in-danger - falls from clocktowers, hanging from a moving bus by an umbrella handle (Police Story) or dangling from a helicopter (Police Story 3) - all injuries replayed in end credits out-takes. If one looks for evidence of `maturity', then Project A is indisputably Chan's breakthrough film. Not only is it more enjoyable than any film has a right to be, but it displays a penchant for period re-creation and a new interest in Hong Kong rather than the kung fu film's mythical China. The film is set in turn-of-the-century Hong Kong and pits Chan's coastal guard Dragon Ma (aided by Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung) against a conspiracy of pirates and corrupt British officials. This is where the 'silent cinema' comparisons begin ± the film includes a virtuoso comic bicycle chase and a Lloyd-inspired clocktower sequence. There is a new variety to the fight choreography, too, ranging from riotous bar-room brawls to an extended fight with the pirate leader full of hyperbolic sound effects, slow-motion leaps and Peking Opera acrobatics. The sequel was equally good, mixing elements of farce and anti-Qing dynasty revolutionaries.
Chan developed another series with Police Story, usually seen as his riposte to the 'rogue cop 'posturing of The Protector. The stunts are as breathtaking as ever - Part 1 is the final word on the pleasures of breaking glass and demolishing shopping malls. However, in some respects, the film only differs from its counter-model in execution, and, notwithstanding the comedy and Chan's vulnerable persona, it is striking how close parts of the film are to being `Dirty Jackie'. The generosity and `social responsibility' of Chan's period films only patchily appears in the modern-day ones - what are we to make of his character's destruction of a refugee shantytown during a car chase as Part 1's opening `spectacle', or the grotesquely stereotyped deaf-mute heavy in Part 2? The Armour of God, an Indiana Jones-type adventure filmed in Europe, represents another important development in that Chan's films began to transmute into travelogues with intermittent action scenes. This film almost (literally) killed Chan, but it is almost unwatchable (not least for its racism) until the final twenty minutes. Operation Condor was an expensive sequel and one excess too many for Golden Harvest, but Chan was displaying a growing weakness for colourless internationalism with yawning longeurs in between his films' set-pieces. Although not critically well received, Rumble in the Bronx holds an important place in the Chan biography. Fore provides an illuminating account of how it was modified for and promoted to US multiplexes - the new version played down Chan's physical comedy (always a sticking point in his `crossover') and those self-effacing aspects of his star persona that conflicted with him being a straight action performer.9 Rush Hour seems more comfortable with both the 'nice guy' persona and the comedy, even if the latter is toned down (especially in comparison with Chris Tucker's mugging). Interestingly, the action is the casualty; Chan had to work with American stunt co-ordinator Terry Leonard for reasons of both safety and expense. The film captures the dilemma of absorbing Chan into Hollywood - he is not only a conventional star, but also a filmmaking process. Rush Hour displays an 'idea' of Chan - dangerous stunts made safe, choreography slowed down to incorporate western actors - rather than the 'Jackie Chan' exported from Hong Kong. The film's fight scenes largely consist of a series of `moves' rather than the elaborate compositions of his Chinese films.
Chan's career overlaps significantly with that of Sammo Hung Kam-bo. Hung was the oldest member of the 'Seven Little Fortunes', the Peking Opera troupe in which Chan trained as a child. Hung, like Chan, is a prolific star, director, producer and choreographer, and a key influence on the Hong Kong action film. Chan and Hung appeared together in numerous films including the all-star Lucky Stars series, Dragons Forever and Chan's own Project A, usually accompanied by a third 'Little Fortune', the agile Yuen Biao, and sometimes by a fourth, wiry Yuen Wah, as the villain. Collectively, they represent the last generation of Peking Opera performers to make their mark on popular cinema. Hung is as talented as Chan and their styles have some similarities, but he is even less of a conventional leading man (one film title tells all - Enter the Fat Dragon) and has not enjoyed the same level of adulation. Hung, Chan and another important choreographer-director Yuen Woo-ping represent an intermediary stage in martial arts cinema. Bruce Lee had consolidated a demand for 'real' martial artists, both in front of and behind the camera, and this 'authenticity' was guaranteed by extended takes and wide framing of the action. Hung, Chan and Yuen shifted this 'authenticity' away from the kung fu itself to a new kind of hard physical action, away from recognizable styles (Snake, Tiger, Crane, etc.), and towards a mixture of operatic tumbling, gruelling street fighting (with real contact and impossibly painful landings) and self-effacing comedy.
Hung and Yuen, however, have shown more willingness than Chan to adapt their styles, including working with wires and special effects on 'new wave' martial arts films (Yuen even worked on the Hollywood science fiction movie, The Matrix, 1999), and Hung has subsequently forged an unexpected Hollywood career in the Rush Hour-inspired television series, Martial Law.
More recently, Chan's most frequent collaborator has been Stanley Tong, the director hired to make cheaper Jackie Chan films. Rumble in the Bronx and First Strike are undistinguished - although no worse than Sammo Hung's Mr. Nice Guy (1997). However, Police Story 3: Supercop stands out for the role it offered to Michelle Yeoh. Women are unreconstructedly 'girlish' in Chan's films and he has under-used such stars as Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin in thankless roles. But in Police Story Yeoh performs a stunt to match any of Chan's - landing a motorbike on a moving bus - and her tough mainland cop is the best thing about the film. Chan's best 1990s' film was a more fractious collaboration with Shaw Brothers veteran, Lau Kar-leung (Mandarin name: Liu Jialiang). Lau is the epitome of 1970's style authenticity, and the glorious Drunken Master II saw Chan performing genuine southern kung fu moves as well as the eponymous `Drunken Boxing'. Thematically, the film bore some similarities to the Once Upon a Time in China films (which also dealt with Wong Fei-hung) - colonialist villains, Wong Fei-hung's coming of age - but the style was very different. Chan has likened Lau's style to 'classical music' - 'very traditional' - and his own to 'jazz',10 and Lau reportedly walked off the set before Chan's trademark masochistic finale, walking across hot coals and drinking industrial alcohol to counter the super-kicking skills of villain Ken Lo. But the film is more seamless than Chan might like to think and offered two incongruously old-fashioned figures giving the 'new wave' a run for its money.
Chan's abilities are still formidable, but he is also the most trapped of Hong Kong filmmakers, his transglobal mobility notwithstanding. At best, what Hollywood seems to be able to offer him is a new status as a brand-name for a type of spectacle it cannot actually produce. Even in Hong Kong, it is uncertain where he can now go, beyond jumping off bigger buildings or fighting in new locations. Who Am I? is the most ambitious of his recent films, but it is too location-conscious and under-scripted to capitalize on its premise of an amnesiac Chinese secret agent. Gorgeous is a more low-key film - a romantic comedy and the first Chan film to acknowledge that he is not getting any younger. None the less, the websites, fan clubs, video and DVD re-releases, and the box-office figures for Rush Hour, tell a very different (and equally important) story: Jackie Chan is clearly nowhere near his sell-by date.
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Beijing Film Festival
First photos from the red carpet at the Beijing Film Festival. Stars are wearing a green ribbon in support of victims of the Lushan Earthquake.
Jackie is with the cast and crew from Police Story 2013. Ding Sheng (director), Jackie Chan, Liu Ye and Jing Tian are amongst those present.
SOURCE: WEIBO
Jackie is with the cast and crew from Police Story 2013. Ding Sheng (director), Jackie Chan, Liu Ye and Jing Tian are amongst those present.
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Important Earthquake Donation Information
| Due to repeated hacking attempts on the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation website (China) this important information for donations to the earthquake was released by Jackie on Weibo this morning. To make a donation to JCCF for earthquake victims SMS your EMAIL ADDRESS to 13121618469 (China) and JCCF will send you donation information. |
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SOURCE: Jackie Chan Weibo
Earthquake Update From Jackie
| Updated reports on the earthquake in Lushan and Ya'an, China, put the number of deaths at 203 and the number of injured at 11 500. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and all the people struggling to cope with the disaster. Jackie posted the following comments on Weibo this morning: |
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Since yesterday morning, I have received many phone calls from friends in the entertainment industry wanting to donate money. You are all so amazing. What moved me the most was seeing the quick rescue response from the Government and aid relief workers. Every time we are faced with a disaster, we are confronted with a big challenge – the challenge to provide disaster relief. Even more of a challenge is how to rebuild the area after such a disaster. Many volunteer workers from my Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation have already started planning. We will continue to monitor the situation in the disaster zone and efficiently allocate funds, aid relief, and materials to the areas in need most. I hope you continue to pass positive energy! Pray for the disaster area!
I have been following the latest news about Lushan, and I have been worrying about the people there. I saw so many emotional scenes on TV. I saw injured children who put on a brave face with a smile; I saw a news reporter dressed in a wedding gown broadcasting the latest updates; I saw mothers using their body to shield their children; I saw a young man embracing his father waiting to be saved by rescue workers. All these images made my heart ache again. To everyone in Lushan, do not give up! We are by your side.
昨天到今天很多明星朋友打电话来要捐款到我的基金，你们真的很棒，我也特别感动看到政府及各界人士这么快速的行动。每次灾害来临我们都面临很大的挑战，救灾是挑战，灾后重建更是挑战，成龙慈善基金会在各地的志愿者已经行动起来，我们会一直关注灾区情况，把捐款和物资送到最需要的时候和地方。希望大家继续传递正能量！为灾区祈福！一直在关注芦山的灾情，一直牵挂那里的人们。看到很多感人的画面，那个受伤后依然微笑的小女孩，那个穿着婚纱的新娘记者，那个用身体保护孩子的妈妈，那个抱着父亲等待救助的儿子……大灾面前，我的心灵再次震撼，了不起的芦山人，加油！我们在你们身边。
SOURCE: Jackie Chan Weibo
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SOURCE: WANG PING JIU WEIBO
In addition, use this green ribbon below, to show your support and compassion for earthquake victims in China.
Ya'an / Lushan Earthquake
| Today at 8am local time there was an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the richter scale centered in Lushan and Ya'an, Sichuan, China. This is a video of support recorded today by Jackie for the Lushan Earthquake Relief. | |
Every disaster will give us a lot of heartache, but every disaster will bring us closer together. We Chinese people have never fallen in the face of disaster, this time we will stand up. Since we have love, and there are 1.3 billion people with love. Hold hands and transform each obstacle, connect heart to heart with love. Great love like a mountain, Lushan will not be brought down!! We are with you, Lushan Come on!
每一次灾难都会让我们非常心痛，可是每一次灾难都会让我们靠得更紧。我们中国人从来没有在灾难面前倒下去过，这次我们同样的会站起来。因为我们有爱，有13亿人的爱。手和手相撑是山，心和心相连是爱。大爱如山，芦山不倒！我们和你在一起，芦山加油！
SOURCE: WANG PING JIU WEIBO
In addition, use this green ribbon below, to show your support and compassion for earthquake victims in China.
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GLAAD 'Coming Out for Equality' PSA
"It's not enough to talk about those fighting for freedom, for equality, until you are one of those fighting." - Jackie Chan
SOURCE: INSTINCT MAGAZINE
GLAAD's new marriage equality PSAs have debuted today featuring a dozen celebrities who are fighting for LGBT rights.
From GLAAD's press release:
GLAAD today officially launched a new public service announcement campaign helmed by director Brett Ratner. The GLAAD 'Coming Out for Equality' PSA series features a diverse group of straight celebrities and athletes "coming out of the closet" as supporters of equality and calling for other Americans to speak out. Visit glaad.org/ally to join the #AllyNetwork and take action for LGBT equality and watch featured PSAs and resources to help make your community a safe and supportive space.
Ratner directed and produced the PSA series, donating his time to raise support for LGBT people. Participants include Jackie Chan, Tamala Jones (Castle), Giada De Laurentiis (Food Network), DeRay Davis (21 Jump Street), Hudson Taylor, Jaime King (Hart of Dixie), Jason Alexander (Seinfeld), Kristen Johnston (The Exes), Sarah Shahi (The L Word), and Pauley Perrette (NCIS). Additional participants and videos will be released later this month. The PSAs were produced by Kali Londono.
SOURCE: INSTINCT MAGAZINE
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Jackie's Thoughts on Winning Best Action Choreography
Posted on Weibo Sunday 14 April 2013 by Jackie:
Many years ago, my father told me that I must not just be an action actor, I have to be a good actor. An action actor could not hit the 60-year-old mark, but a good actor can play a long, long time. These words I have kept in mind up to now, and I have been working hard towards this goal. Following the Huading Awards "CZ12" got the Award for the Best Action Choreography Award last night. My partner, He Jun, said on stage "Thanks to stunt brothers, past and present, who are now living in different parts of the world." I was very emotional - so many years following the JC Stunt Team, I have traveled to several continents, to show the world the spirit of martial arts and the professional conduct of the Chinese film. No matter what the future holds this spirit will last forever. Now I still want to follow what my father said, until now I do not just want to fight, but I did not want to disappoint fans around the world! I share this award with all the action actors!
很多年前，爸爸跟我说，你不要只是做个动作演员，你要做一个好的演员，因为动作演员不可能打到六十岁，但好的演员可以演很久很久。这段话我一直记到现在，也一直朝着这个目标在努力。昨晚继华鼎之后《十二生肖》拿到金像奖的最佳动作设计奖，我的搭档何钧在台上说，感谢那些现在身在世界各地的，曾经的和现在的成家班弟兄们。我心里很感慨，这么多年，成家班追随我走遍几大洲，把华语电影人的武术精神和职业操守展现给世界，未来不管我还会再打多久，这种精神会永远流传下去。现在我也想跟爸爸说，一不小心，我不仅打到现在，也演到现在了，没有让你和全世界的影迷失望！这个奖跟所有的动作演员们分享！
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HONG KONG FILM AWARDS PHOTOS
Photos of Jackie from the 32nd Hong Kong Film Awards held 13 April 2013.
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CZ12 wins again at Hong Kong Film Awards
Jackie was not only the Guest of Honour for the Awards with the "Best Cross-Straits Film", sharing his thoughts about 'movie jargon' in four languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, English and sign language) but Jackie and He Jun also won "Best Action Choreography" for CZ12.
If you would like to watch Jackie's speech you will find it HERE
SOURCE: FUNSHION.COM, WEIBO and CHUNBAO2019.BLOG
If you would like to watch Jackie's speech you will find it HERE
SOURCE: FUNSHION.COM, WEIBO and CHUNBAO2019.BLOG
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