Word: kung
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...films. New cinemas are being built in China every day; the mainland box-office market increased by 50% from 2003 to 2004 alone, to $180 million. Piracy remains a concern, but the fact that a pair of co-productions this past December?A World Without Thieves and Kung Fu Hustle?were able to clean up at the box office shows that movies can make real money in China. "This is the only film market in the world where the economy is growing, where there are more people with more disposable income every day," says...
...Hong Kong filmmakers know the promise China holds, but making a movie that works in the mainland and in Hong Kong is no easy task. One man who figured out how to straddle the border is Hong Kong's Stephen Chow, whose Kung Fu Hustle took in $20 million on the mainland and a record $8 million at home, and is on a pace for $100 million globally. It's tough to copy Chow's style, but his film may provide a blueprint for a changing industry. Shot in China with a cast and crew that was mostly from Hong...
...battle is about to begin--good guys on one side, bad guys on the other. They advance and clash, executing kung-furious feats of acrobatic derring-do. It's like a Hong Kong action film, but every take has to be perfect. It's being done live, in a theater at Las Vegas' MGM Grand, so any misstep could injure a performer and kill the flow of the drama. Moreover, the battlefield is a large platform that has been tilted 80°, a nearly vertical position. That gives the audience a unique, God's-eye view of the action...
...doesn't work much anymore. The genre needs another hero, and Jaa (Thai name: Phanom Yeerum) is the fellow to fill the void. He's young--28--and good-looking, with a quiet élan to match his athletic skill. He's also a throwback to kung-fu film's early days, when stars and stunt men alike took a licking and kept on kicking. Ong-Bak has no crouching, no hiding, no wires, no pixel-perfected stunts. Like Chan's early epics, it convinces you that the mayhem is real, that the star is enduring the pain for your...
Like most other martial-arts stars, Jaa has been preparing since childhood. Born to elephant trainers in the hard-luck northeast province of Surin, the boy watched kung-fu movies on outdoor screens during temple festivals. Soon he was aping his heroes and studying gymnastics as well as Muay Thai, an ancient Siamese boxing discipline that is a kind of combination of karate and kickboxing. He worked as a stunt man, doubling Robin Shou in Mortal Kombat, before director Prachya Pinkaew saw a reel of Jaa's best stunts and built Ong-Bak around...