Word: swordplay
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Audiences watching the aerial ballets, lightning swordplay and Astaire-worthy foot fights in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon may gasp with childlike wonder and delight. Who is brilliant and daft enough to choreograph these nonstop battles? The answer is Yuen Wo-ping, stunt master supreme and, not incidentally, the director of a couple of dozen films--among them some of the most exciting in Hong Kong movie history. "He's directed more movies than I have," says Ang Lee. "And better ones...
First, a disclaimer: No adorable cartoon critters were harmed in the writing of this column. Unfortunately, certain characters in the G-rated animated films many of our children watch are not so lucky. Fistfights, swordplay, falls from great heights, insults leading to injury and (my favorite) "squishings" increasingly dominate many of the movies we let our kids watch, leading to the inevitable--an earnest Harvard study. Normally, I'd rather have the Roadrunner drop an anvil on my head than endure another research paper on violence permeating the media--especially one that views with alarm Tigger's playful bowling over...
...finds its behavioral rhythm in the commanding stillness and loping gait of Whitaker, the star of Bird and director of Waiting to Exhale, who perfectly embodies Jarmusch's anachronistic antihero. The director knew that Whitaker had nailed the part one day when they met to talk about a complex swordplay scene on Ghost Dog's roof. "So we're walking from my loft in the east Bowery to East River Park," Jarmusch recalls. "Forest has his sword in his knapsack. We get to the park, and he says, 'Let me just show you a few things I've been working...