Beach Spike! Press Call

A rainy day in San Po Kong... on the sand...!

A rainy day on the beach in San Po Kong...

Today we had the press call for 'Beach Spike!', which was held at a beach volleyball court in the Kowloon district of San Po Kong. I lived here (downstairs from Jackie Chan's father!) when I first moved to Hong Kong, many moons ago... It was nice to come full circle. If you'd told me then that I'd one day be back with a bevy of volleyball playing beauties, two kung fu legends, the producer of 'Kung Fu Hustle' and the city's hottest new production team... I'd have thought you'd been smoking your own tea leaves.

The sunny day turned grey and brought rain, and a shadow to the brow of producer Charlie Wong. I reminded him that 'water' means 'money' in the Hong Kong movie circles, so we're actually off to a good start. Charlie, Peggy Lee and director Tony Tang are the best and most professional team I've worked with in years; its great to be spiking this beach with them!

As our 'money' fell, we all took cover under a near-by awning, and the assembled Hong Kong press shot their load of photos...

As for our cast...

We have the lovely and tenacious Chrissie Chau. Chrissie must be the most famous face in town, visible on posters, photo books, DVDs... In person, she's very focussed and hard working, not to mention fun and funny! That's her to the right of the top row in the shot below... 

She's really impressed all of us with the way she's applied herself to both the martial arts and volleyball training, as has her on-screen partner in crime, Theresa Fu (aka Fu Wing). I first met Theresa when we released her film Fatal Contact on DVD on Dragon Dynasty. Then, she was side cast to the high kicking Wu Jing; now she's a kung fu queen in her own right.

She has a photobook of her own out now: our entire cast is all over the local papers and magazines every day, and in a good way!

Then there are out bad girls (who are very good in real life!). Making her movie debut, super model Jessica C. Our director, Tony Tang, previously shot mainly animated features, and it makes sense that he should work with Jessica, who resembles so closely a cartoon character.

Jessica brings some sunshine into all our lives.

She makes a perfect 'little' sister for our other nemesis, Phoenix Valen. Regular readers will have seen images of Phoe as the heroic Deva in Blood Bond and its sequel. Here, she's firmly on the other side of the net as a 'Beach Spike''s spiky bitch...

With this kind of cast, its just so tough going to work every day... Of course, we also have a few guys in the picture, including myself, playing the girl's father. In a flashback, of course, I'm not THAT old! (Oh, wait a minute, yes, I am...). Here's a family photo:

More importantly, we have the annoyingly handsome and fit Law Jung-heem, a great guy and a young star on the rise, Ngo Kui-ying, known, to me, anyway, as 'Tarzan' (his real English name is... Albert) and comic star Lam Tse-sin, from Kung Fu Hustle...

AND we have a brace of kung fu legends playing the our heroines teachers: the legendary Lo Mang, of Five Venoms fame, and the wonderful Yeung Pang Pang, who I remember from the classic Duel of the Seven Tigers.

After the rains cleared, we moved to the outdoors beach volleyball court, where the great and indefatigable Coach Lam, who has been teaching our cast how to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge, put the girls through their paces.

The press got some great shots of the girls in flight...

Before everyone posed for yet another cast photo...

We start Friday; here's hoping the ball bounces for us as it should!