Call it ‘Yen-mistry’- that was what Peter Chan felt with Donnie Yen on the set of ‘Bodyguards and Assassins’. Peter was producer of the Teddy Chan film which starred Donnie, and there was an instant chemistry between the two which paved the way for their first collaboration, the martial arts epic ‘Wu Xia’. Indeed, so strong was this ‘Yen-mistry&rsqu ...
There are few, if any, actors that can rival Donnie Yen’s current position as an action star in Asia, but the actor, who turns 48 this year, is not resting on his laurels. In town to promote his latest big-budget martial arts epic ‘Wu Xia’, Donnie says that he constantly pushes himself to take on different types of characters, in order that he be able to offer something differ ...
"Forever" isn’t a romantic comedy- despite what its poster and trailer may suggest to audiences. What was your inspiration behind the film? This film was inspired by a real character, who was much darker, more of an "Alex Forest" in Fatal Attraction-type of gal, but I wanted Joey to feel she was a heroine, someone who could be in a rom com, the girl everyone roots ...
Can you give us a little background to Larry Crowne? Tom: We started thinking about this- myself and [producer] Gary Goetzman, and I talked with Nia Vardalos, who wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, about six years ago. Originally, we just started out with the idea of a man’s reinvention, a man who loses his job and ends up in college one reason or another, and we actually imagined back t ...
Your sophomore feature after "Blood Ties" is once again in the horror genre. What is it about the horror genre that fascinates you? A: I love science fiction and adventure. I grew up watching things like the Twilight zone, the outer limits, amazing stories and B-grade horror movies. Many of these early sci-fi and B-movies were made on extremely low budgets. The energy of these fil ...
Nick Cheung and Wong Jing go back a long time, way back in fact to close to 20 years- and it is this enduring partnership that convinced Nick Cheung he should give comedy another go with Wong Jing's latest movie, "Treasure Inn". After all, as Nick himself declared at a press conference held in conjunction with the inaugural ScreenSingapore to promote the movie, he had all but turn ...
While "Painted Skin" may not have been one of Gordon Chan's best films, it did well enough at the box office for the producers to invite Gordon to do a sequel. The veteran Hong Kong director's answer to that call is his upcoming US$13mil action fantasy "Mural"- although he insists that he only decided to do the latter when he was convinced that it would be different ...
It's no secret that the Chinese censors are often stricter with content than our own local censors- and director Zhang Qi said that a movie like "The Devil Inside Me" was just the kind that filmmakers in China had to tread carefully, lest they step across some boundaries. At the press conference the morning after his second full-length feature film was screened as the ope ...
Never before have so many Asian stars converged on our little island state at the same time, and thanks to the inaugural ScreenSingapore, we got to experience what star-gazing meant at festivals like Cannes, Pusan and even Bangkok- albeit on a much smaller scale. The opening night of the festival saw many celebrities from Asia walk the red carpet for the film The Devil Inside Me, a horror t ...
Li Nanxing is widely known as Singapore’s Chow Yun Fat, but Taiwanese star Aaron Chen discovered that besides Nanxing’s good looks, the star also has the same affable easygoing charm as the Hong Kong actor. In fact, Nanxing’s charm was so winning that Aaron accepted a supporting role in the actor’s big screen acting and directing debut after just one meeting with hi ...
