The swordfighting heroes of wuxia films are generally drawn from novels, but the heroes of kung fu films are often folk legends who may have really existed. Wong Fei-hung is well known , but below we look at two other heroes, Hong Xiguan and Fong Sai-yuk. Both are believed to have trained at the southern Shaolin Monastery in Fujian –.
WTF Happened to JET LI?
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WTF Happened To This Celebrity? – The JoBlo series that examines the careers of stars and filmmakers who may have fallen out of the spotlight, and tells where they are now!
Martial arts whirlwind Jet Li has kicked an incalculable amount of ass over his cinematic career, from his early Hong Kong hits like ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (playing his signature role, Wong Fei Hung) and FIST OF LEGEND, through his Hollywood breakthrough in LETHAL WEAPON 4 and ROMEO MUST DIE. His legendary status even qualified him to join other action stars in THE EXPENDABLES. But during the last decade, his output drastically diminished and concerns were raised about his health. Follow the flying fists and find out “WTF Happened to JET LI!”
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Hong Kong martial arts films owe much of their success to martial arts choreographers. But their history is mainly undocumented.
A brief 1999 essay by the Hong Kong Film Archive’s Yu Mo Wan, called Martial Arts Directors in Hong Kong Cinema, set out the historical framework of the craft and provided some of the material for this story.
The first wuxia films were made in Shanghai, then known as “the Hollywood of the East”, in the 1920s. According to Stephen Teo’s all-encompassing book Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, 1922’s Vampire’s Prey is the earliest example of a film with wuxia characteristics, and The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, released in Shanghai 1928 and directed by Zhang Shichuan, is generally considered to be the first of the genre as we would recognise it.
A snapshot of Mohd Dhihya Sahlan reading the Berita Wilayah wearing the controversial outfit. Photo: kosmo.com.my
A picture of a male newscaster on Malaysian TV presumably wearing a cheongsam (also known as qipao), usually a women’s outfit, attracted attention among the netizens.
However, RTM spokesperson clarified that what the newsreader was wearing is actually an outfit called samfu that’s worn by men.
K. Krishnamoorthy, RTM’s director of public relation division, said: “As a government agency, RTM is sensitive towards cultural and racial matters. We always refer and countercheck on things like this.
“(On the outfit), we referred to our stylist Jenny Kueh who told us that this is a trendy wear at the moment which originates from a traditional outfit from the Machu ethnic group in China. It is called a samfu.
Why this might not seem so easy
Describing Tsui Harkâs standing within the Hong Kong film industry is far from straightforward. Heâs a director, producer and sometime actor, a restlessly industrious polymath with more than 80 films to his name in one capacity or another. As director, he helped usher in the Hong Kong New Wave with a trio of biting (quite literally with 1980âs Weâre Going to Eat You) political satires before an abrupt left turn towards populist blockbusterdom with All the Wrong Clues for the Right Solution (1981). This hit paved the way for his landmark effects extravaganza Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), a film that brought Hollywood tech-wizardry to the domestic marketplace.