Talent is no guarantee for success, Welsh-born filmmaker Gareth Evans and Indonesian ‘silat’ sensation Iko Uwais will tell you. They are the creative minds behind ‘The Raid: Redemption’, only the most talked-about martial-arts movie in and around the world since premiering at Midnight Madness in the Toronto International Film Festival. So dazzling is their movie that it ...
Scale was first and foremost on acclaimed director Dante Lam’s mind when he first approached ‘The Viral Factor’. “I wanted to do action on a much larger canvas that I’ve ever done before,” he said. “And so right from the beginning, I knew that this was not going to be a movie that we would film in Hong Kong and even China.” Best known for his ...
You probably won’t associate Mandopop singer Jay Chou with the likes of Donnie Yen or Jackie Chan, but that’s exactly the surprise the man hopes to give his fans with the release of his latest movie ‘The Viral Factor’. Not only did the 33-year-old Jay crop his hair short to adopt a grittier look for the movie, he also decided to risk life and limb together with his co-st ...
JOHN'S 10 BEST MOVIES OF 2011 1. THE MUPPETS 2. 127 HOURS 3. THE TREE OF LIFE 4.YOU ARE THE APPLE OF MY EYE 5. THE ARTIST 6. BIUTIFUL 7. STARRY STARRY NIGHT 8. THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 9, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS ...
How do you resurrect a franchise that’s been dormant for the past 20 years? With some Hollywood magic that’s how, veteran Hong Kong producer Raymond Wong revealed at a press conference to promote the release of ‘Magic to Win’, a reimagining of the popular ‘Happy Ghost’ series which spawned five films including the original from 1984 to 1991. As was typical fo ...
The common adage goes that ‘it is better to be safe than sorry’- that was the advice some of the young actors in the new Singapore-Malaysia horror film ’23:59’ were reminded of when they first told their family that they were going to be flirting with ghosts. First-time Singaporean actor Lawrence Koh said: “When my mother found out that my first film project wo ...
If you had a choice between watching ‘Real Steel’ in conventional 2D or IMAX, which would it be? You’d probably be thinking what the difference is between the two formats, notwithstanding the higher ticket price for IMAX. And frankly, we did not know better too- until we decided that we should compare one with the other to understand just how much more the extra $10 was worth. ...
It was March 2010 when a new variety show called ‘Liza and the Three Gods’ made its debut on Hong Kong television starring veteran Liza Wang and three erstwhile supporting players Wong Cho-Lam, Louis Yuen and Johnson Lee who were known collectively as the ‘Fuk Luk Sau’ (or the ‘Fortune Buddies’ in English). With their impersonations of other celebrities such ...
In this age where big-budget Mainland China co-productions are the norm, veteran actor Gordon Lam Ka-tung decided to take the road less travelled by making the low-budget true-blue Hong Kong film ‘Gallants’ his first producing gig. Indeed, the actor best known for his supporting roles in Johnnie To movies, as well as the much lauded ‘Ip Man’, said that he so loved the sc ...
Julien Leclercq was only 14 when a group of four heavily armed Muslim terrorists hijacked an Air France plane in Algiers bound for France. He says the images he saw on television of the GIGN team (the elite counter-terrorism paramilitary unit of the French National Gendarmerie) storming the plane to rescue the hostages are firmly etched in his memory. Of course, he is not alone- an estimated 21 ...
