Chinese Zodiacs

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

It's JC's new movie which was going to be called Armour of God 3

But here is the trailer.

[youtube]6Y_XpS0lbAI[/youtube]

[Drunk Monk]

I watched AoG1 again last night. It's such a cheesey flick in that old skool kung fu exploitation way and it almost killed Jackie. I saw AoG2 a few months ago with T. It's still great, one of Jackie's more consistently entertaining efforts. Ironically, it was released in the U.S. as Operation Condor, which did okay for Jackie in America back then, so they dug up AoG1 and released it as Operation Condor 2.

AoG is a translation misnomer. It's not called that in Chinese. The armor only figures into the first film.

[Drunk Monk]

[youtube]1IT0idnn9HA[/youtube]

[Drunk Monk]

Part way through this film, I thought of Greg's criticisms of Skyfall, which struck me as kind of absurd given that it was a Bond film and wtf did he expect? Sure, the story line had a ton of issues and there was incredible suspension of belief, but there were gun fights, car chases, hot Bond girls, cool spy stuff and great theme music. That's all I ask of Bond films.

CZ12 is very much the same, but for Jackie Chan films. This is the kind of film that only Jackie Chan can make. It's classic Jackie - a comical farce, filled with the kind of stunts and fights that only Jackie can deliver. And at 58, he still has the moves. Even with his wire work and special effects, you got to hand it to Jackie. There's a lot of fakery, but there's enough stuff that can't be faked to show he's still the real deal. When it comes to action, Jackie remains fast, funny and furious.

CZ12 attempts to be international, being 1/3 in Chinese, 1/3 in English and 1/3 in French, and there are other languages spoken by news reporters, protestors and pirates. Yea, pirates. CZ12 has pirates, SPOILER including Capt. Jack Sparrow END SPOILER The villains are clowns. There's this theme of returning stolen treasures to their rightful owner nations, which gets a little heavy handed, but it's Jackie on his podium and I'll grant him that between the action sequences.

CZ12 uses the same formula as in AoG2. SPOILERS CZ12 opens with an preposterous theft and chase scene but this time with the roller blade suit. Jackie is saddled with three hotties (1 moral, 1 tough and 1 for comic relief), there's even another hottie shoots up the place with a machine gun scene like in AoG2. And for the final fight, instead of the wind tunnel, he turns that on it's side for a physics-defying leap of faith. END SPOILERS The stunts are good enough for some amusing NG. Jackie shows all those Parkour guys that he's still King. The fights are fun. Jackie against a gang of henchmen in a factory. Need I say more? An imaginative sofa fight against a rival that is so Jackie that it hurts. SPOILER There's even a good shot to the gonads gag. And there's even a cat figh - Beijing TKD champ Zhang Lanxin vs. stuntwoman Caitlin Dechelle END SPOILERS There's some weird cameos, mostly of Asian stars that I didn't quite recognize, and I totally missed Kenny G. Seriously. Kenny G. And pirates. And a big fight in a factory. And good NG. What more could you want from a Jackie Chan flick?

I will see this again on the big screen with my family when it comes to the U.S. It's totally family friendly. This is pure park-your-brain-outside fun entertainment. If you see it expecting anything more than Jackie fight and do stunts and pratfalls at 58, if that isn't enough, you will be sorely disappointed.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Now you are picking on me in the KFM forums.

I pick on Skyfall because they are the same people who made Casino Royale. Royale had all the same elements as Skyfall, guns, boobs, car chases, but presented in a much smarter and more enjoyable way.

[Drunk Monk]

The more I think about CZ12, the more preposterous it is. It's not a movie to think about at all. DON'T THINK. CZ12 is just a movie to see and admire Jackie being Jackie at 58. In that regards, it is PURE AWESOMENESS!

[cranefly]

It's probably dangerous to step between a longtime martial brother and another brother who can pull small aircraft with his southern cousin, but I'm going to agree with Greg on this one. I suspect I could greatly enjoy CZ12 while still utterly despising Skyfall. Well, not utterly, though the more I think about Skyfall, the more peeved I get with it. Because Daniel Craig makes a great James Bond, and he deserves better material.

CZ12 will likely impress me with its zany inventiveness, and I'm okay with implausibilities in this world.
Skyfall was not zany and inventive, due to an incredibly lame and lazy script. Yes, it had all the big action scenes one wants of a Bond movie, so it definitely had the look, but it lacked the underlying feel. There was dumbness where there should have been cleverness. International espionage really needs to appear cerebral, and there was just too much idiocy for me to stay aboard.

My two cents...

[Drunk Monk]

Remember this?
[youtube]NiDvpeWk0P8[/youtube]
CZ12 tops this for skydiving absurdity. You see, there's this volcano...

[Drunk Monk]

Jackie Chan's CHINESE ZODIAC Has the U.S. Blues Again
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=1127">http://www.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/art ... ticle=1127</a><!-- m -->

In all honesty, I didn't make half of the points I wanted to make with this review. In the wake of the Shaolin Cult Fest, and my other distractions, time ran out (and I even messed up by making CF copy edit my notes). The U.S. promotion for this film has been horrible. I was hoping the promoters would at least send me a screener as promised. At least that strengthens my point with the review.

[cranefly]

When Lady Cranefly and I went with Greg and the Queen to that wealthbuilding seminar down in LA (okay, it was a screenwriting awards ceremony, but as LC pointed out later, it was odd how little art or writing got discussed, with the focus on financial opportunity), there was a question and answer period after the talking heads got done. I didn't ask anything. In fact, I didn't do much of anything at that shindig, didn't mix, didn't talk to people. But later on, back at the hotel, I thought of a question I should have asked.

Why was CZ12 getting only a limited release in the US? I mean, come on. Jackie Chan? The most recognized Chinese actor in the U.S.? Arguably the most successful in Hollywood? A limited release?

Well, now that I've seen the movie on the big screen (thanks, DM), it's clearer to see how it came down. First off, most readers of Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine would enjoy this movie. I know I did. But the martial arts audience is not the American audience. The American audience has a comfort zone the size of a mung bean, and the least little thing can put them in a tizzy.

Here are what I see as the distributor's main concerns:

1) Too many Chinese trying to speak English. It wasn't too bad, but still, you could see how some of them struggled, which affects acting. By the way, some Caucasions (French?) struggled with English phrases (I couldn't understand one of them at all).

2) The "you stole our cultural artifacts" message got a bit heavy-handed, too much fingerpointing at the viewing audience (they needed a way to blame it all on the North Koreans). Americans won't stand for being lectured by foreigners, or being blamed for any of the world's ills.

3) The type of offbeat humor that mung beans just can't understand. Hand it to the Chinese to find humor in the oddest places, which to me is funny, but not so to most Americans. There was this hornet's nest, see? Leading to makeup you'd never find in Hollywood. And there were countless little bits of humor flying all over the place, a fair amount of it sort of working, but some of it a tad too odd.

4) A confusing array of characters that one simply could not keep straight. I mean, I was befuddled. Who were the good guys, who the bad? Please don't test me. And Americans? Americans want good and bad painted in white and black. Zebra-striped characters just piss them off, because that's like an IQ test, and Americans are too smart and knowledgable to be subjected to such things. Some characters started out good but turned bad, and others started out bad but turned good, and this was fine and dandy with me (if I followed it correctly). But for most Americans this was just another thorn in the burr in the seat of the pants of their intellect.

5) Jackie at 58 looks old to the American audience. Americans want youthful heroes. American businesses want youthful employees. In a very real sense, despite all his persistent and amazing athleticism, Jackie just got hit with age discrimination. Welcome to the good ole U S of A, Jackie.

Even with these and other problems, I still felt CZ12 deserved a major release. I mean, come on. There's so much going on in this movie. It has a surprising amount of high tech inventiveness (with 3D printers, a clever-if-implausible solution to a password, a film studio of props), but also a nice long jungle sequence full of crazy action, and then that 10-minute tacked-on opening that has nothing to do with the story but which is wildly entertaining in and of itself, and then the climactic scene that, as DM says, turns the wind tunnel scene on its side.

I suspect the original edit of CZ12 was closer to 2.5 hours, and that it got heavily trimmed down to 1 hr. 49 min. Many of the scenes -- especially those with dialog -- seem clipped to the point that the movie has a rough "rushed" jumpiness to it. Still, I sense that the cuts were judicious, leaving in the fun action scenes while sacrificing some of the story continuity.

Is there a director's cut of this on DVD? If so, it would be interesting to see that someday.

Years ago, when Jackie was working in Hollywood, he mentioned how he had lost his inspiration for creating inventive fight scenes. It just wasn't in him anymore. Well, I think that was a Hollywood malaise, because this movie shows a return of Jackie's inventiveness. No, he's not capable of the crazy stunts he used to do, but still, he is amazing. I say this as someone 4 years his elder, and wholly incapable of any of that stuff.

[Drunk Monk]

What's trippy about this was how it was distributed to 101 theaters with almost no ads. Jackie went on a promo tour including a Hollywood premiere and cameos on The Talk. What a waste really. Even Box Office Mojo wasn't covering it.

But here are my thoughts on your thoughts...just cuz.

1) Too many Chinese trying to speak English.
True. What's worse is that white people featured in JC flicks are always directed so they come off even more stiff. I think it's some sort of caricature of the way the monotone sound of English is perceived by Chinese speakers.

2) The "you stole our cultural artifacts" message got a bit heavy-handed.
As a direct result of this film (which had a fine showing at Cannes) some of the actual heads were returned.

3) The type of offbeat humor that mung beans just can't understand.
True. JC humor is a refined palette. You gotta like awesome and absurd choreography.

4) A confusing array of characters that one simply could not keep straight.
Bro, I can't keep the damn Avengers and the X-Men straight.

5) Jackie at 58 looks old to the American audience.
Sly and the governator were just in a film. And there's that Vegas one that's out now, the Hangover - senior citizen version w/DeNiro, et.al.

I give you 2 out of 5.

That being said, I did see the U.S. cut on the big screen with T. T is luving JC and it's been a great father/daughter bonding experience. The U.S. edit seemed much choppier (it's 15 minutes shorter) although I was amused by the end credit short letter-of-appreciation/JC's-greatest-hits&stunts reel, which was apparently done by Jaycee (Jackie's son). I forgot there were some major cameos of Chinese stars that went flying past the U.S. viewers. It was worth it just to see the warehouse fight on the big screen.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Come on. That is a line from this film.

If you guessed tQ has left town, you are correct.

I agree with all that's been said before, especially the cultural artifacts stuff.

But I think the biggest failure for me in this film was taking Jackie seriously as this sketchy outside the law kind of guy. He's do-gooder. It's in his DNA. Him trying to play shady guy, didn't work.

There wasn't any stunt that really blew me away, either. They seemed derivative of his earlier work, which makes sense then to have a greatest hits rollout at the end. Too much of the film was built on the premise people are stupid, too, which never goes for me. And yes, I did like Jack Sparrow the pirate.

The Bees!. Or the Dobermans.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

Verdict: Meh.

[Drunk Monk]

Told you not to think. It ruins it.

But think about this - since the release of CZ, the French returned two of the zodiac heads, the rat & rabbit.

Then think about this - the next Shaolin Cultural Festival, set for next month in London, also features a tour of the Zodiac heads. The event is officially titled:
3rd Shaolin Cultural Festival Chinese Zodiac & Treasure Exhibition 2014.

OK, I really hoped to shield you all from this, but now is the time - more food for thought:
[youtube]yZFHZmykg9w[/youtube]

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

I hope they are sending you to London.