Word: !kung
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While "Little Lit" has been published by an imprint of HarperCollins, other traditional trade publishers are also exploring the children's comix genre. Simon and Schuster has just released two volumes of Frenchman Joann Sfar's wonderful "Little Vampire" series: "Little Vampire Goes to School" and "Little Vampire Does Kung Fu!" (30 pp.; $12.95 each.) Marketed to readers 10 and up, the first book begins when Little Vampire, feeling lonely at the haunted mansion with nothing but adult monsters and ghosts around, decides he wants to go to school. He goes at night, but sadly discovers no one is there...
However, the music is clearly meant to complement the movie’s kung-fu schlock. Without the movie’s visual hi-jinks, the collection of songs comes across obscure and often bizarre: take Zamfir’s four-minute flute rendition of “The Lonely Shepard”, or “Crane / White Lightning” by RZA and Charles Berenstein, which sounds like the street fighter version of an Ennio Morricone piece...
...woman in front of her 4-year-old child," says Thurman. "You can't really stack the cards against a character much higher." There was also the matter of the martial-arts training Tarantino expected his leading lady--three months removed from childbirth--to endure. "Three styles of kung fu, two styles of sword fighting"--Thurman says this through pursed lips, as if she's going to spit--"knife throwing, knife fighting, hand-to-hand combat, Japanese speaking. It was literally absurd...
Director Benny Chan has packed Heroic Duo with sophisticated weaponry, high-speed car chases and dizzying stunts, including one stomach-quivering sequence in which a character traverses two skyscrapers using a wobbly, metal stepladder. Noticeably absent are high-wire kung fu acrobatics; Chan, who first gained notoriety with kung fu fantasy Magic Crane, apparently no longer wants anything to do with Chinamen in robes?unless they're behind the wheel of a Ferrari Testarossa...
...Abandoning his cultural kung fu roots may have proved to be a wise business move for Chan?Arclight, a U.S. film distributor based in Australia, has already bought the movie's international and U.S. distribution and licensing rights for a seven-figure sum. (Chan's 1998 Jackie Chan vehicle Who Am I? and Gen-X Cops were both distributed overseas by Columbia TriStar.) Like his previous action flicks, Heroic Duo goes for the mainstream jugular, but this time Benny Chan devotes enough screen time to character development so that you care (slightly) about these characters before they're blown...