Jackie Chan quitting action films, wants to be 'Asian Robert De Niro'

The 58-year-old Hong Kong actor made his comments at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in France on Friday, May 18. He has been dominating the action film world for some 50 years, starring in a number of films including "Rush Hour" and "Shanghai Knights." He is in Cannes to promote his new adventure flick, "Chinese Zodiac."

"This is my last action film," Chan told reporters at a photo call for the film, according to Us Weekly and the UK newspaper The Telegraph. "I tell you, I'm not young any more. I'm really, really tired."

Fans of Chan don't have to worry, however, because the veteran actor isn't going anywhere - he's merely shifting his focus.

"For the last 10 years I have been making some other different movies," Chan added. "I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro. I don't just want to be an action star; I want to be a true actor. I want to get rid of my image."

He said "Chinese Zodiac" will be his final action film because it is one of the "most important" films in his career.

"For the last 10 years I've been choosing the director to direct me. This one I direct myself." he told the Associated Press. "I hope this movie, 20 years later, people still remember it. For me, for the audience, for my future, for my history - it's very important."

Chan has helmed and written films before, mostly ones in Mandarin and Cantonese. He is also the writer of "Chinese Zodiac." In the film, Chan plays Asian Hawk, a fortune hunter who is searching the world for a set of mystic artifacts. The veteran actor said at the festival that the new film and many other past movies have taken their toll on his body.

"It hurts, it really hurts," he told AP. "The shoulder, the ankle, it really hurts. You don't know because I still look healthy."

Chan attended the 2012 Cannes Film Festival on Friday, May 18. Check out photos of the other celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival, including Eva Longoria, Jessica Chastain and Marion Cotillard (See photos).

Aside from his work in action films, Chan also hosted a fictionalized version of himself in the animated series "Jackie Chan Adventures" which ran for five years in the early 2000s.

Hong Kong Film Piracy on YouTube Amounts to $308 Million Loss

Copyright-infringing videos of over 200 films found on world's largest video-sharing website

HONG KONG – Severe copyright infringement of Hong Kong films is rife on YouTube, with pirated footage of over 200 Hong Kong films found on the world’s largest video-sharing website, amounting to an estimated loss of over HK$2.4 billion ($308 million) to the local film industry, according to the Hong Kong Motion Pictures Industry Association (MPIA). MPIA members urged YouTube and other video-sharing websites to enforce the German court ruling last Friday (April 20) to implement measures to restrict content that infringe copyright.

The recent local box office hit Love in the Buff was found to be uploaded in its entirety, directly affecting the theatrical gross of the film, a situation that the association called “extremely severe” in a statement.
The videos were taken down after a formal complaint made to YouTube by Media Asia, the copyright holder of Love in the Buff.
But YouTube did not act promptly when contacted by Media Asia to remove the illegally obtained uploaded Buff film, taking days for the removal. John Chong, producer of the film, commented in the statement that YouTube showed “an extreme lack of efficiency in the removal of the pirated videos, but was not responsible for any loss incurred due to the delay in the removal.” Previously, the website operator had immediately taken down pirated film material when contacted by the copyright holder.
“YouTube repeatedly requested the copyright holder to prove that they are the holder in order to remove the pirated videos of Love in the Buff, while they allow anyone to claim to be the copyright holder when uploading the videos. It’s very unreasonable,” MPIA CEO Brian Chung told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “The pirated videos on YouTube greatly hurt the theatrical performance of the film.”
Chong believed the German court ruling on Friday for YouTube to restrict videos that might violate copyright should be enforced for YouTube and other video-sharing websites at the earliest possibility.
In view of the pirated video of Buff on YouTube, MPIA members, which are made up of representatives from most of Hong Kong's film studios, have searched and found in three days over 200 films illegally uploaded on to YouTube, including past and recent Hong Kong Film Awards winners: A Simple Life, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Echoes of the Rainbow, and Shaolin Soccer. Blockbuster Ip Man and its sequel were split into 107 videos, while the pirated YouTube videos of clubbing drama Lan Kwai Fong and Jet Li’s Fearless received 1.8 million and 1.4 million hits, respectively. A fight scene from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon was viewed 4.8 million times.
With accumulated views of over 40 million, MPIA estimated a loss of over HK$2.4 billion to the Hong Kong film industry, based on an average cinema ticket price of HK$60.
“For a video-sharing website of this size and scope, YouTube must have censorship mechanisms to prohibit the uploading of illegal material, such as child pornography or content of extreme violence,” Chung added. “It makes no sense for the copyright owner of a current film release to upload the entire film on to YouTube, so how can YouTube allow just anyone to claim to be the copyright owner and show the whole film on their website?”
Chung said the association is not trying to single out YouTube, but the company’s international visibility and accessibility has made the severity of the situation impossible for Hong Kong filmmakers to ignore. “YouTube, or any other video-sharing websites, should have a set of ethics in dealing with copyrighted material. It’s unfair to the copyright owner,” Chung said.  “The U.S. has always set great store by the protection of intellectual property. As a company headquartered in the U.S., owned by Google, the world’s largest internet search company, it turns out that it allows pirated content on its website. How would the U.S. view this situation?”
YouTube and its parent company Google have not yet replied to The Hollywood Reporter’s request for comment.
MPIA members are now in discussion to determine a strategy to combat piracy online, but meanwhile, “due to the urgency and severity of the situation, we’d hope to raise awareness on it as soon as possible,” Chung said.
While online piracy is an extension of the larger film piracy issue present since the 1990s, remarked Ip Man director Wilson Yip in the statement, he hoped for effective law enforcement to combat the issue. Free viewing of pirated films would pose an even more serious problem for the film industry, noted Lan Kwai Fong executive producer Patrick Tong, as it is nearly impossible to find the culprit responsible. “It’s a harsh blow to the producers and investors, giving rise to a vicious circle of fewer and fewer investors, and a further weakening of the Hong Kong film industry.”

Other movie releases

Romancing in Thin Air (高海拔之戀II)
After last year’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (單身男女), a blockbuster aimed at China, Hong Kong director Johnnie To (杜琪?) returns to the big screen with yet another romance. This time, Louis Koo (古天樂) and Sammi Cheng (鄭秀文), who makes a handsome comeback to the silver screen with this finely executed flick after a three-year hiatus, head the cast. Set in the Himalayas in China’s Yunnan Province, where Shangri-la is supposedly located, the film begins with Hong Kong superstar Michael (Koo) escaping to the mythical place to heal his wounded heart after his bride runs away on their wedding day. There he meets hotel proprietor Sue (Cheng), who has been in mourning since her husband disappeared into the nearby forest seven years previously. Friendship and then love bud between the two heartbroken souls. Though the film has its fair share of overwrought plot devices and contrived characters, director To and writer Wai Ka-fai (韋家輝) show their ingenuity by creating a film within a film that blurs the boundary between art and life.
The Lucky One
Based on a work by best-selling author Nicholas Sparks, the tone and direction of The Lucky One will be familiar to people who have enjoyed other adaptations from his books, such as Nights in Rodanthe, The Notebook, and Message in a Bottle. If those films did it for you, The Lucky One, directed by Scott Hicks, who made Shine, and starring Zac Efron, is likely to prove just as effective. Efron is an appealing screen presence, and if the predictability of the story and the sweetness of the romance don’t make you feel ill, then you are likely to slip into the warm, cozy and bitter-sweet world of romantic love that Sparks is such an expert at conjuring up.
The Raid
Action movie fans are in for a treat with The Raid, a no-holds-barred slugfest featuring extensive use of the Indonesian martial arts technique called pencak silat. The story is simple: a SWAT team is tasked with taking out a ruthless mobster who is ensconced at the top of a tower block. They fight their way up floor by floor, and once the violence begins, it is unremitting. There is some suggestion that relations within the SWAT team are not as simple as they might seem at first, but this is really a relatively insignificant digression from the action. Directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans with a mostly Indonesian cast. Although the film is spoken in Indonesian, the dialogue is limited and mostly self-explanatory.
Goodbye First Love (Un amour de jeunesse)
Romantic drama by Mia Hansen-Love, whose Father of My Children was released here last year. That film dealt with a family trying to come to terms with a suicide. In Goodbye First Love, Hansen-Love turns her lens on the development of young love, telling the story of Camille (Lola Creton), who falls head over heels in lust for Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), a slightly older boy. When Sullivan drops her to travel the world, Camille discovers another kind of relationship with a much older man, which promises intellectual fulfillment and material stability. Of course, when Sullivan returns, the old fire is once again ignited.
The Kick
South Korean/Thai coproduction about a family of taekwondo experts who relocate to Thailand to set up a gym. They only become an accepted part of the martial arts community in their new home after they help foil a bunch of bank robbers. Needless to say, this scenario provides plenty of opportunities for martial arts action. The fact that one member of the family has ambitions to be a pop star provides an opening for a nice soundtrack as well.

The Golden Rock - April 20, 2012 Edition

According to Entgroup figures, TITANIC 3D made RMB 467 million in its first six days in Mainland Chinese cinemas (another chart puts it at 468, but let’s not nitpick, alright?).  If the other box office chart I’ve read is accurate, that means it’ll overtake MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL’s RMB 678.9 million take to become the highest-grossing film of 2012. Considering that it also beat the 438 million record set by TRANSFORMERS 3 (which ended up making RMB 1.11 billion), we’d looking at it breaking AVATAR’s RMB 1.39 billion record if Fox didn’t already announce that they’re pulling the film by May 20th.

And Hollywood’s not done yet. BATTLESHIP and the second GHOST RIDER movie are opening this weekend, and THE AVENGERS will replace those screens on May 5th. With the May Golden Week holiday, it’s guaranteed that these three films (plus TITANIC) will be rolling in the dough.

Considering that last year’s Golden Week brought THE LOST BLADESMAN and CHINESE GHOST STORY - both of which made over RMB 100 million - The Chinese film industry must have something powerful to counter the Hollywood invasion, right?

Not really.

   

This year, China is offering three male-dominated films for the holidays: Ning Hao’s GUNS AND ROSES, the bandit-World War II action film AN INACCURATE MEMOIR, and Guan Hu’s dark comedy DESIGN OF DEATH. Though film buffs will appreciate the eclectic holiday choices this year, all three films are from young, less commercially-proven filmmakers who have never made a film that’s grossed more than RMB110 million (though MEMOIR star Huang Xiaoming is one of China’s best-known actors).  Even if two of the three films have commercial elements (Japanese villains!), none of the three can be considered typical commercial material.

Which means none of them is going to beat THE AVENGERS.

However, they have even tougher problems to deal with, like booking screens and getting enough people to watch them to make profit.  With three Hollywood giants around, there’s no guarantee that any of these films can even secure enough showings, let alone to sway audiences to choose them.

It’s not all hopeless though, as domestic films do have some advantage over Hollywood in terms of marketing. Some are already being used, and some can be utilized better.

Regional Advantage

It’s not likely that James Cameron or Robert Downey Jr. will be able to hit China to promote their films, let alone travel to first and second-tier cities. This is where Chinese stars and actors come in. With an actor like Huang Xiaoming leading AN INACCURATE MEMOIR (he’s also producing), he can be front and center of the publicity tour. The same can also apply to Ning Hao, who is being put front and center of the GUNS AND ROSES campaign. Considering that Huang Bo is in both GUNS and DESIGN OF DEATH, I don’t know what he’ll do.

However, the problem with this approach is that China is a BIG country, and an intense promotional tour through all the major markets can stretch the limits of both actors and the marketing team. Considering that they only make appearance with a limited number of audiences in each city, stars need to be exposed on a national level, and that problem with that is aside from CCTV, there are no national networks in China. Each province has their own network that are carried nationwide, but only several networks truly have a nationwide audience.

And even then, nationwide campaigns cost far too much, due to the skyrocketing cost of advertisements in China. Two weeks ago, Pang Ho-Cheung revealed that his China distributor for LOVE IN THE BUFF wouldn’t make any billboards for the film, and that the entire advertising campaign for his film involved an intense nationwide meet-and-greet tour and internet buzz. In their defense, Mei Ah China revealed that 100 billboards already cost RMB 1 million, and their share of the box office didn’t justify them having to spend the money.

Make sure your audience knows what your movie is about

With only a RMB 9 million budget, LOVE IS NOT BLIND couldn’t afford to take its stars on a nationwide tour. Even if they did (and they might have), it wasn’t the key to its RMB300 million-plus gross.

If you read the blog often, you’d know that I’d already written about the key to the film’s success. Since the film is about how a young woman gets over her traumatic break-up, the director not only intended on releasing the film in time for “singles day” (November 11th), its marketing team also went around the country and interviewed young people to recount their own experiences. The strategy worked so well for the film in China that distributor Edko made their own version of the video for the Hong Kong release (though the video wasn’t as good).

The lesson to learn here is that that team built a marketing campaign entirely around the subject of the film rather than a particular star or director. They knew which demographic to appeal to, and they knew how to appeal to them. With such a crowded market, knowing your target is especially important.

Right now, none of the three films have clearly stated what they’re about - GUNS is selling Ning Hao, MEMOIR is selling dirt and grit, while DESIGN OF DEATH is selling genre mash-ups. No on really knows what they’re in for when they pay up that extravagantly priced tickets, and that’s very dangerous for three not-so-typical blockbusters opening in a competitive period.

Still, it’s not like I know how to market any of these three films, because if I did, I’d be working for them, not writing a blog entry telling them what to do.

When all else fails….get the hell outta dodge

As I’d written above, none of the three films really have the pedigree of a holiday tentpole (possibly with the exception of GUNS AND ROSES). As my favorite anonymous Weibo film industry informant suggested, these films should really get out of the way or set a more suitable release date to begin with. Instead of a long holiday period, MEMOIR and GUNS might’ve stood a better chance during the summer or mid-May, where the fight is in long term rather than one specific period.

Then again, summer might even be tougher, as big guns like PAINTED SKIN 2, LAST SUPPER, many Hollywood blockbusters, and possible TAI CHI star invading the multiplexes.

The official box office battle stars when GUNS opens on the night of the 23rd. Stick with my Twitter to find out which films win, and which films will be crying their way out of the cinemas.


Let’s all go to the movies!



This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 1:37 pm and is filed under editorial, China, box office. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

HK kung fu star Dennie Yen embroiled in porn film scandal

An online post has caused a stir alleging that Donnie Yen had acted in porn movies.

 

The article, titled "Donnie Yen acted in porn film, surrounded by 10 naked women", became the hottest topic of discussion in Chinese forums.

 

It was posted after Shu Qi's withdrawal from weibo, following humiliating posts on her past mistakes.

 

The writer alleged that the Ip Man star had appeared in several porn films including 1991's The Holy Virgin Versus The Evil Dead.

 

 

"You think only Shu Qi acted in porn? Donnie didn't? You are wrong!

"See you all complained that Shu Qi acted in this and that everyday, you think Donnie only innocently shot kungfu movies?" the writer alleged.

 

"I have seen three porn films of Donnie. He has four all together, three of which were horror movies," the writer alleged in his post.

The writer also posted clips allegedly from the film to support his article.

 

In response, Donnie posted two lines of lyrics from Sam Hui and the late Leslie Cheung's Silence is Golden.

 

"Let people laugh and scold as they like, be a carefree person," he wrote.

'A Simple Life': A True Domestic Partnership

The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News

Special to The Washington Post.

A tender tale of role reversal, "A Simple Life" is based on Hong Kong movie producer Roger Lee's final months with the woman who had been a family servant for 60 years. As co-scripted by Lee, the movie is often poignant but leavened with humor.

At first, Roger (Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau) seems to have little interest in Ah Tao (Deanie Ip, who won the Venice Film Festival's best actress award for this performance). Roger travels often for his work, usually to other parts of China. He returns to a small apartment that he expects to be tidy and meals he expects to be tasty. Ah Tao meets both requirements.

Roger inherited Ah Tao, who began working for his family before he was born, after the rest of the clan relocated to San Francisco. But there's more to their connection than that. When Roger asks for food that's too fatty or salty, Ah Tao reminds him about his heart attack. She nursed Roger through his recovery from angioplasty.

Then Ah Tao has a stroke and insists on moving to an assisted-care facility. The humble woman doesn't want to be a bother, so Roger agrees. But the busy producer becomes an attentive visitor, bringing gifts and frequently taking Ah Tao out for meals. The other residents assume that Roger is not Ah Tao's former employer but her godson; he faithfully assumes the part.

"A Simple Life" was directed by Ann Hui, Hong Kong's best-known woman director and one of its few filmmakers who doesn't do a lot of kung fu and gangster flicks. She takes a low-key approach, letting scenes develop at a natural pace. Her principal visual flourish is to frame Ah Tao often through narrow openings, suggesting not only the limited confines of nursing-home life but also the tightening grip of death.

Fans of Hong Kong action movies might be surprised by this gentle drama, but they're also most likely to get some of the humor. Hui counters the tale's solemnity with movie-biz in-jokes and cameos; director Tsui Hark, tough-guy actor Anthony Wong and Jackie Chan fight choreographer Sammo Hung all appear.

There are other gags that don't require insider knowledge, including the way the casually dressed Roger is regularly mistaken for a man with a less glamorous profession. Such moments draw smiles rather than guffaws, but that's appropriate for a film that aspires to evoke simple-hearted feelings of love, loss and duty.

Jenkins is a freelance reviewer.

Unrated. Contains mild sexual references and one feigned threat. In Cantonese, Mandarin and English with English subtitles. 118 minutes.

Taiwanese singer wins Best New Performer award in Hong Kong

Taipei, April 15 (CNA) Taiwanese singer Jam Hsiao won Sunday the Best New Performer award for his outstanding performance in the Taiwanese film "The Killer Who Never Kills" at the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards for Chinese-language films held in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Hsiao said it was unbelievable as he was not expecting to win such an honor.

Hsiao plays Ouyang Penzai, which translates into "potted plant," the understudy of a retired contract killer, who has taken over his master's work for the mafia.

In a reference to the film "Leon," the well-trained underling has a hobby of cultivating potted plants, but experiences some difficulties in taking a life.

The movie, a genre flick that packs action, romance and comedy, was adapted from a short story by best-selling writer Jiubadao or "Nine Knives," real name Giddens Ko.

Hsiao, who found musical fame on One Million Star -- Taiwan's e