Word: yuen
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With good or bad luck, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would have provided a stern challenge. Consider these factors: a $15 million action movie that was also to be a poignant, tragic romance; a fight choreographer, Yuen Wo-ping, who had won international acclaim for his work on The Matrix and was bound to tangle with the soft-spoken, hard-to-budge Lee; a top-flight all-Asian cast featuring Chow Yun Fat (Hong Kong), Michelle Yeoh (Malaysia), Zhang Ziyi (Beijing) and Chang Chen (Taiwan). Only one of the stars--Zhang, then a 19-year-old ingenue--spoke anything like...
Before shooting, Zhang and her young screen lover Chang worked with an acting coach. Chow and Yeoh crammed to speak Mandarin. And throughout, Lee was learning the limitations in the laws of stunt physics from the martial master Yuen. Movies are an education on the fly, with pop quizzes every moment. How apt, then, that the theme of Crouching Tiger should be teaching. In this war of the generations, the adults are as eager to instruct the young as the kids are to rebel against authority. In life as in martial arts, knowledge is power. And only the most powerful...
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...
...been accused of fielding a mediocre band to serve as a foil for his spectacular extemporaneous flights. The same cannot be said of his present band. In pianist Stephen Scott and trombonist Clifton Anderson, Rollins has two tremendous talents with which to share feature time. Percussionist Victor See-Yuen, drummer Perry Wilson and bassist Bob Cranshaw (an intermitent member of Rollins' bands for 40 years) keep rock-solid time and provide the springboard for the virtuosic solos of the three leads...
...Salvador," from his recently-released album This Is What I Do. Scott provided the first fireworks of the night with his dazzling, percussive piano solo (although his occasionally audible singing served as a distraction in this performance as well as at various points throughout the night). Scott and See-Yuen divided time between their primary instruments and kalimbas for the calypso "Global Warming," a tune which simultaneously reflected Rollins' environmental concerns as well as the African influence in Carribean and American music. Anderson proved a worthy front-line counterpart for Rollins. Their joint choral statements were closer to interplay than...