Classic or classic-style kung fu movies are exiting because of the martial arts and action. But apart from those and the infusion of drama and comedy that we can usually expect from Chinese movies that we have loved to watch over and over again, there's also something else that makes them so appealing to watch. In a way, it plays a role that pretty much makes the film worth watching as it gives more realism to the Chinese nature of the production and the setting. What is it? The answer is food!
You may or may not have noticed it, but food in Chinese kung fu movies, particularly the classic ones, have a role that can sometimes rival those of the astors. In fact they are like supporting actors that add to the ambience of the situation. Somehow, it also makes the scene all the more oriental and exotic, especially if traditional Chinese food like noodles, dumplings, rice, and soups are used together with porcelain tableware.
From comedic fight scenes of a young Jackie Chan with Samo Hung in Drunken Master (scene shown at left), to the social nuances displayed in later movies like Iron Monkey and Ip Man (starring Donnie Yen and model-actress Xiong Dai Ling), we see and experience how food is used in many cinematic ways - from humor, to drama, to action. If there's no food in a classic-feel kung fu movie, you can't help but feel that something's missing. So, if you plan on making your own kung fu movie, don't forget the scene with the hot noodles.
Sooo, you are a fan of kung fu, eh? Ah, then this graphic novel is perfect for you, hehehe! It's about Marvel's Iron Fist and by the looks of the cover, you are in for a lot more cool Chinese-style martial arts stuff inside! Come, come! Why not click here or on the image to place your order now, eh?
If you've watched the trailer of the movie 2012, you may or may not have noticed that there are words written on the first number "2" of the 2012 title in the movie ID animation sequence at the end. The animation is too fast for you to read it in full, but it is just enough for your mind to take in the word "apocalypse" together with other words like "into a place."
While you can surmise as to where director Roland Emmerich (left) and writer Harold Kloser got the phrase, it's likely used to give viewers a sense of dread as the year 2012 nears. It does have some Biblical echoes and you'd likely find something similar if you look in the Book of Revelation. But let's not get too deep, it's just a movie after all - one that's banking on the people's fear of the end of the world - for it to become a blockbuster. It has lots of special visual imagery, but it has one or two graphical special effects that should have been redone to fix mistakes.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger of California is the first terminator robot in the Terminator movie series. If there's no scowling face of Arnold, then a terminator movie doesn't really cut it. It would be like making an Elvis movie with only Elvis impersonators to see. Director McG of Terminator: Salvation knew this, so he had to think of a way to get Governor Schwarzenneger into the picture even when the governor himself said he's too busy with governorship to make a cameo appearance.
So what does McG do? Celebrity news had it that he got another bodybuilder with a body that kind of looks kind of like that of Schwarzenneger's in the 1980s His name is Roland Kickinger and he's also Austrian. The Movie Catcher blog had his face pasted on Arnold's as Conan the Barbarian (left) and the effect is amazing - a less glum barbarian! There's also news about a body cast of Arnold's used to recreate his old winning form digitally.
So in Terminator: Salvation, it's either McG places a computer-generated image of Arnold's face over Kickinger's body or he uses a body-cast recreation. Yes, the picture on top shows the results of this merger of human and computer-technology and it's amazing since it appears in a movie about cyborgs!
You can judge for yourself how realistic Arnold's face is in the movie (above and top left). It's supposed to look like how he appeard way back when he was cast in the first Terminator, although his hair appears to look up-to-date. Remember the scenes in the first movie where the terminator operates on his own eye? That was a mechanical special effect using a dummy (left). Now, it's in CG along with the use of another bodybuilder's body - Kickinger's.
Terminator: Salvation director, McG had a few things to say about how he makes the post-apocalyptic world of the possible future realistic. In the official blog of the Terminator: Salvation movie, Visual Effects supervisor Charles Gibson revealed that McG combined science-fiction, horror, and action seamlessly in the movie using such techniques as brisk camerawork. For his part, Gibson said the challenge was to "bury the effects into the photography."
Gibson's words may be a bit vague but it may be his way of saying that the special effects (whether computer-generated or mechanical) are supposed to be unnoticed in the presentation. That aside, there's also the need to make things believable such that the elements in the movie, whether flesh-covered robot or flying killer machines, are seen as plausible. The video above gives some hints as to how a Terminator movie robot is made to look real.
The original design of the terminators was from Stan Winston, who passed away in June 15, 2008. He made a cameo appearance in Terminator: Salvation as a resistance fighter who encounters a hydrobot, one of his creations.
Classic or classic-style kung fu movies are exiting because of the martial arts and action. But apart from those and the infusion of drama and comedy that we can usually expect from Chinese movies that we have loved to watch over and over again, there's also something else that makes them so appealing to watch. In a way, it plays a role that pretty much makes the film worth watching as it gives more realism to the Chinese nature of the production and the setting. What is it? The answer is food!
You may or may not have noticed it, but food in Chinese kung fu movies, particularly the classic ones, have a role that can sometimes rival those of the astors. In fact they are like supporting actors that add to the ambience of the situation. Somehow, it also makes the scene all the more oriental and exotic, especially if traditional Chinese food like noodles, dumplings, rice, and soups are used together with porcelain tableware.
From comedic fight scenes of a young Jackie Chan with Samo Hung in Drunken Master (scene shown at left), to the social nuances displayed in later movies like Iron Monkey and Ip Man (starring Donnie Yen and model-actress Xiong Dai Ling), we see and experience how food is used in many cinematic ways - from humor, to drama, to action. If there's no food in a classic-feel kung fu movie, you can't help but feel that something's missing. So, if you plan on making your own kung fu movie, don't forget the scene with the hot noodles.
Sooo, you are a fan of kung fu, eh? Ah, then this graphic novel is perfect for you, hehehe! It's about Marvel's Iron Fist and by the looks of the cover, you are in for a lot more cool Chinese-style martial arts stuff inside! Come, come! Why not click here or on the image to place your order now, eh?
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