9-3-09: Pieces and bits

News and views from Planet Loganville

Shooting from the lip: The ISHK Panel

For anyone out there with no better way to spend their Wednesday evening, there's a film-making panel with Wu Shu director Anthony Szeto, Lorna Tee and myself at 8.30pm in California (the bar, not the gym!), Lan Kwai Fong.

My thanks to the indefatigable Craig Leeson for shepherding this thing through twelve changes of date and five alternative venues! Now its all systems go for what's sure to be a fun...Read more

4-3-09: ME AND WONG FEI-HUNG, part two

Memories of Kwan Tak-hing (continued)

Unique among kung fu movie icons, Master Kwan was actually listed in the prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong ‘phone book. The reason was that, in his semi-retirement, he had opened a Chinese herbal medicine clinic. This was located on Queen’s Road in North Point. On an early visit to Hong Kong, I decided, with my usual youthful impetuousness, to call up and ask for an appointment to see Kwan Tak-hing. I th...Read more

27-2-09: TRANSPORTED BY COREY YUEN

Meeting a bona fide martial arts movie maestro.

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When I first became a fan of Asian action cinema, there was a vast amount of disinformation written about the genre. One enterprising journalist seized on the prevalence of ‘Yuens’ in the ...Read more

26-2-09: ME AND WONG FEI-HUNG

Memories of Kwan Tak-hing.

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Never in the history of cinema has a performer become as synonymous with a single role as actor Kwan Tak-hing did with that of Wong Fei-hung. The major reason for this is that no-one ever played the same ...Read more

23-2-09: GIVE THE MAN A HAND

THE ‘PROTÉGÉ’ AWARDS FOR TEN MOST SHOCKING HK MOVIE MOMENTS.

‘Protégé’ is a great movie, but it’s a hard one to summarize on a video sleeve. Yes, I have to admit, that is not Daniel’s hand holding the gun in the cover montage, but we have made all five extra fingers available to him every second Sunday…

Otherwi...Read more

15-2-09: SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE PEAK

Checking out the Terror of the Wax Museum

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This Sunday, at their insistence, I took the three wise monkeys to Madame Tussauds. My eldest son Ryan is obsessed with height, and wants to ascertain how many celebrities are taller (or shorter) than Daddy. We duly took the Peak Tram. I can never ride it without remembering that classic scene in ‘Bloodsport’, after Van Damme’s buddy has been beaten, where he sits in the tram, looks a...Read more

12-2-09: A CENTURY OF THE TIGER

Happy Birthday to Grandmaster Lam Cho.

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Grandmaster Lam Cho is walking, talking proof that kung fu training will allow you to live longer and (more importantly) healthier. Here’s a man born before World War One, still upright of p...Read more

11-2-09: FROM SOUTHAMPTON TO SOUTH CHINA

JEFF LAU REMEMBERS THE LONG ROAD TO ‘FONG SAI YUK’.

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Triple threat writer/director/producer Jeff Lau is one of the many unsung heroes of prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kong...Read more

10-2-09: 36th CHAMBER REVISITED (part two)

The influences and the influence of a kung fu classic (continued) prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

36 th Chamber of Shaolin was released in prefix = st1 ns = &qu...Read more

8-2-09: 36th CHAMBER REVISITED

The influences and the influence of a kung fu classic (part one) prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

I am delighted that, through our friends at Momentum, the Dragon Dynasty edition of 36 th Chamber of Shaolin is finally getting a UK DVD release. I first saw the film when it...Read more