Hong Kong & Japanese Films
Interesting sites that highlight the use of martial arts in movies and television programs.
Articles about classic Hong Kong and Japanese martial arts films, their respective industries, and cinematic commentary.
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The Real Fight Club: Kung-Fu Cinema (Express)
by Suemedha Sood
“STEP ASIDE, JACK BLACK. National Geographic is going kung-fu fighting. This weekend, the museum celebrates two new China exhibits with a kung-fu film festival sure to make martial arts geeks salivate. Kung-Fu Cinema: Masters of Shaolin features three classic films by the legendary Shaw brothers...”: “Shaolin Temple” (1976), “Executioner From Shaolin” (1977), and “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” (1978). (Originally Published: 6/12/2008; Last DCTKD update: 6/12/2008)
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On DVD: Come Drink With Me (Film.com)
by C. Robert Cargill
“...Come Drink With Me is a classic that helped invent the genre, and as a seminal ‘woman warrior’ movie it’s a great piece of history. It was an inspiration to many filmmakers and a bridge between the heyday of the American Western and the kung fu explosion of the 1970s.” (Originally Published: 6/3/2008; Last DCTKD update: 6/6/2008)
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King Hu’s House of Flying Daggers (New York Sun)
by Bruce Bennett
“From the rough-hewn, Ming Dynasty-era rural tavern in which the first half of the film primarily takes place, to the set-bound fairy-tale wonder world in which it climaxes, Come Drink With Me is a visual feast.” (Originally Published: 5/27/2008; Last DCTKD update: 6/2/2008)
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Kung Fu 101: An Intro With Plenty of Kick (The Washington Post)
by Michael O’Sullivan
“Taken together, this carefully chosen lineup of films from the golden age of martial arts cinema offers a crash course in the history of the Shaw Bros. studio”: The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), King Boxer (1972, a.k.a. Five Fingers of Death), The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) and My Young Auntie (1981) (Originally Published: 6/15/2007; Last DCTKD update: 6/19/2007)
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The geopolitics of kung fu movies (Asia Times Online)
by Paul Foster
“Through these new kung fu movies, China emerges as dynamic, fast-paced and disciplined, as well as Confucian in its devotion to a strict moral order. The movies also suggest a China that is not subservient to the West but somehow superior, capable of being a strong nation, a multi-ethnic empire, and an internationally dominant player. In short, Charlie Chan is no more. On the big screen, China not only speaks in its own voice, it kicks butt as well.” (Originally Published: 2/14/2007; Last DCTKD update: 2/17/2007)
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Legendary Weapons of Hong Kong (PopMatters.com)
by Michael Buening
UCLA’s “Heroic Grace,” film series “includes oddball pleasures and cult favorites like King Boxer (1972), the first kung fu movie brought to the United States under the title Five Fingers of Death, and the oft-imitated The Five Venoms (1978)...[and] highlights the works of three prime Shaw martial arts directors—Chang Cheh, Chor Yuen, and Liu Chia-Liang—showing their differing levels of gore and whimsy.” (Originally Published: 1/29/2007; Last DCTKD update: 2/6/2007)
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Fight back (Minnesota Daily)
A martial arts film series punches Kung Fu into the art realm
by Emily Garber
"The second installment of the Heroic Grace Film series is insisting that, despite unconvincing sound effects, martial art cinema is as much of an art form as the kung fu itself." (Originally Published: 9/21/2006; Last DCTKD update: 10/12/2006)
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The Shaw Brothers’ Elephant (Film Comment)
Assessing the monumental legacy of Hong Kong’s legendary producers
by Chuck Stephens
An article on Celestial Pictures’ transfer to DVD of the Shaw Brothers Studios films: “every fuchsia sunset and severed limb is still oozing its original colors, and every flourish of ecstatic camera-whoosh and frantic splice-flurry are still as sharp as the edge on Golden Swallow’s blade...it’s a miraculous rolling away of the stone. One-armed swordsmen and oily maniacs, killer clans and castrating courtesans, disco bumpkins and lecherous eunuchs, flying guillotines and mighty Peking men — back from the grave they’ll all come a-marching. Kingdoms and beauties and lovers eternal; three smiles, five venoms, seven golden vampires, and The Sexy Girls of Denmark, too.” (Originally Published: 9/10/2006; Last DCTKD update: 2/22/2007)
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All Roads Lead to Hong Kong
Martial Arts, Digital Effects and the Labour of Empire in Contemporary Action Film
by Andrew Schroeder, PhD Candidate, Programme of American Studies, New York University
The title says it all. The author is "not concerned primarily with questions of piracy and the chaotic trade in cultural goods across national borders. [He is] concerned with the remarkable conjunction between Hollywood’s wholesale adoption of digital effects technologies and of Hong Kong action cinema’s vital tradition of continuous-motion martial arts choreography during the moment of full-scale globalisation in the 1990s" and "argue[s] here that the technical logic of the digital ‘composite’ is key to understanding both the dimensions of aesthetic and industrial crisis in Hong Kong and the framing social logic of globalisation in the 1990s." (Originally Published: 3/2/2005; Last DCTKD update: 3/2/2005)
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Hong Kong Influence in the United States (High Impact)
“The fast paced world of Hong Kong cinema has made a major impact on the world of Hollywood. Not since the showing of the 1970’s chop socky films has this brand of action showed any major impact in the United States.” (Originally Published: 9/2/2004; Last DCTKD update: 1/8/2008)
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Slay It Again, Samurai (The Washington Post)
In Frustrating Times, a Cadre of DVDs Might Hack Away the Blues
by Stephen Hunter
With the stylized sword fighting of Troy and the interest in the origins of Kill Bill, Post movie critic "...wandered into a different neighborhood and feasted on the samurai films of the ’60s and early ’70s, when the films became less historical, more vengeful, more violent, much crazier, less distinguished, much more entertaining." (Originally Published: 7/4/2004; Last DCTKD update: 7/6/2004)
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The Origin of the Hong Kong Martial Arts Movie Genres... (Whoosh!)
...And Its Influence On The American Television And Movie Industry
by L. Crystal Michallet-Romero
Based upon the author’s Senior Thesis at San Jose State University (submitted 2003), this is an interesting examination of the Hong Kong influence upon Hollywood. Look at the graph at the bottom of the page for a quick overview. (Originally Published: 6/1/2003; Last DCTKD update: 12/20/2007)
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Shaw ’Nuff, Ya Dig? (MN CityPages.com)
The Shaw Brothers’ classic chopsocky epics are kickin’ it again
by Peter Ritter
A brief overview of the Shaw Brothers-style filmmaking where their
"extravagant kung fu bloodlettings have never really gone out of favor among connoisseurs of camp. The Wu-Tang’s RZA makes a habit of sampling their awful dialogue...and the Keanu Reeves character in the Matrix films, as glazed and pacific as a Taoist novitiate lo-jacking enlightenment, is just a sleek millennial update of the typical Shaw Brothers monk-hero." (Originally Published: 4/16/2003; Last DCTKD update: 11/30/0002)
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Heroic Grace: Selected Martial Arts Films (Hollywood to Hong Kong Express)
by Peter A. Martin
An overview of the films presented at the UCLA Film and Television Archive series beginning with THE STORY OF WONG FEI-HUNG, PART 1 (1949). "The 1960s could be described as the swordplay decade and the 1970s as the unarmed conflict decade. If so, FROM THE HIGHWAY (Hong Kong/Taiwan, 1970) can be credited as the first movie to signal the trend toward unarmed battle." (Originally Published: 3/12/2003; Last DCTKD update: 9/18/2006)
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Heroic Grace: The Chinese Martial Arts Film
Editor’s Introduction to the catalog of the landmark touring film series curated by Cheng-Sim Lim for the UCLA Film and Television Archive, 2003
by David Chute
“How much do you actually need to know about the martial arts to appreciate a good martial arts movie? Just enough, perhaps, to read the visual clues that indicate where a given fighter stands in terms of some very broad distinctions. The ones that crop up again and again are the split between Northern styles and Southern, and between the inner disciplines and outer ones. Roughly speaking, the Northern, Daoist, Wudang-based styles emphasize the husbanding of inner forces, while the Southern, Buddhist, Shaolin styles concentrate on physical prowess and endurance. Thus the soft Northern styles favor broad, sweeping dance-like movements, while the hard Southern styles concentrate on short fast punches. (Bruce Lee was a key exponent of the shorter-harder-faster Southern style known as Wing Chun.)” (Originally Published: 3/1/2003; Last DCTKD update: 1/31/2008)
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Hong Kong to Hollywood (MovieMaker.com)
A “ridiculous amount of interest” in Hong Kong cinema is redefining Tinseltown
by Patrick J. Gorman
“Hong Kong films have surpassed their cult status. Hong Kong superstars have stormed the U.S. to the point where their influence is now beginning to define aspects of Hollywood itself, with the internationalization of Hong Kong talent, such as Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li and John Woo continuing to raise the profile of Hong Kong cinema...The effect is that Hong Kong cinema culture stays alive and vibrant. In fact, it’s this reputation for innovation that has always made Hong Kong cinema so distinctive.” (Originally Published: 1/29/2003; Last DCTKD update: 1/17/2008)
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Hong Kong Style action movies a boon to Hollywood producers (Hong Kong Trade Development Council)
by Liz Hodgson
"So what is ‘Hong Kong Style’, and how is it translated into film? Hollywood observers believe The Matrix in 1999 first revitalized the expression in American films, thanks to Yuen Woo-Ping’s choreography, changing the approach to action...‘it has come to be an all-purpose label for a highly-stylised and carefully-choreographed manner of dealing with violence and physical action, everything from various kinds of martial arts to swordplay and gun battles.’" (Originally Published: 3/28/2002; Last DCTKD update: 3/28/2005)
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Kung Fu Chaos: The Hong Kong Martial Arts Film (kamera.co.uk)
by Leon Hunt
A well-written summary of the Hong Kong wuxia pian film genre over the past 40-plus years. “...as Kill Bill confirms, with its Shaw Brothers [Studios] logo and cameo by former Shaws star Gordon Liu, the impact of Hong Kong Martial Arts films is still being felt around the world.” (Last DCTKD update: 1/29/2007)
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The Martial Artist’s Guide to Hong Kong Films
An excellent and extensive list of Hong Kong films that includes helpful reviews and even a rating system for how well done (or not) the martial arts choreography is. Includes reviews for familiar titles such as Enter the Dragon (Bruce Lee), Drunken Master (Jackie Chan), and Once Upon a Time in China (Jet Li) as well as not-so-familiar titles like Enter the Fat Dragon, Skinny Tiger, Fatty Dragon, and Pantyhose Hero (all Sammo Hung and with the highest martial arts ratings). (Last DCTKD update: 11/30/0002)
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