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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1998 | 1997
1-20 of 273 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
Interview: John Woo
7 hours ago | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »
When I was in college in the 90s in Austin, Texas, I used to frequent a video store called "I Luv VIdeo." The locals all called it "I Heart Video," though, because of their distinctive sign. They had an amazing array of video tapes from all over the world, including a huge section of Asian cult hits. This is where I was introduced to John Woo and his movies like Hard Boiled, The Killer, and Bullet in the Head. The man is an amazing director, but since moving to Hollywood his work has been erratic. For every Mission: Impossible 2, there's a Windtalkers. For every Face/Off, there's a Paycheck.
Red Cliff is his first film since Paycheck, and it's a triumphant change for Woo as he moves into epic storytelling with a film so large it had to be split into two parts. Unfortunately, American audiences only received a cut-down version of both films, »
- Kevin Kelly
In the November Notebook
16 hours ago | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »
Acquarello
Now on DVD: "The Human Condition" (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961)
The Forgotten: Loose Talk
The Forgotten: Chains of Love
Now on DVD: "TheGoodTimesKid" (Azazel Jacobs, USA)
The Forgotten: Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden
Now Playing on The Auteurs: "Death in the Garden" (Luis Buñuel, Mexico/France)
The Forgotten: Strausswitz
Adrian Curry
Movie Poster of the Week: "Hausu"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Up in the Air"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Bright Star"
Movie Poster of the Week: "Home"
Ways of Love, or the Best Films that Didn't Appear on Other "Ten Best" Lists...
The Trouble with Movies: II
53rd London Film Festival: "La danse - Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris" (Frederick Wiseman, USA)
Daniel Kasman
Video Sundays
Video Sundays: The Modern Charade
God and Man: Aleksandr Sokurov's "The Sun"
Images of the Day
Video Sundays: Auteur Pantomime in the »
More Cast Details on Korean Better Tomorrow Remake
5 December 2009 3:34 AM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »
Last word on 무적자 (Invincible), the Korean remake of John Woo's 英雄本色 (A Better Tomorrow), was that Song Hae-Sung of 파이란 (Failan) would direct, and that Korean Wave star Song Seung-Heon and possibly Lee Min-Gi would be cast as the leads. But now producers Fingerprint have finalized the cast, and I suppose the ladies will be pleased.
Lee Min-Gi seems out, unless they cast him in a lesser role (wouldn't be out of the question, considering in how many films he starred this year, regardless of screen time), but Song Seung-Heon is confirmed for Chow Yun-Fat's role, and the other three main characters will be played by interesting choices: Joo Jin-Mo, last seen on the big screen playing Goryeo's King Gongmin in 쌍화점 (Frozen Flower), will play Ti Lung's role, while Kim Gang-Woo of 태풍태양 (The Aggressives) and 마린보이 (Marine Boy) will essay Leslie Cheung's role. »
Foreign Objects: Red Cliff (Chi bi 2008)
4 December 2009 11:31 AM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »
Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week to look for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent, this week we’re heading to… China! It's a full fifty-nine minutes into John Woo's new film, Red Cliff, before the first white dove appears. I don't mention that to be cheeky (well maybe a little cheeky), but instead I'm bringing it up because it shows a certain amount of restraint on the part of the dove-loving director. It's one of the very few instances where Woo's film seems to take it's sweet time, and while that sounds like a criticism it actually isn't for a couple reasons. One, the version of Red Cliff currently playing in limited Us release is actually a truncated two and a half hour cut of two complete films (that were themselves over two hours each). And two »
- Rob Hunter
When Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa Meet Prison Break - Update from Song Hye-Gyo's Management
4 December 2009 2:44 AM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »
Update 12/4
- Just a little update on this. Korean media picked up on this item (crediting it to Twitch and not Chinese media, which is kind of laughable. We're only the messenger, folks) by contacting Song Hye-Gyo's management on the matter, and they promptly denied any involvement. So either they'll get a script under their Xmas tree courtesy of Wong's folks, or it's another chapter in the "Chinese media plays wishful thinking" saga. Guess next in line will be Miller's folks. Oh well. That's what fervid imagination is for.
As reported last September, we're not exactly dealing with a confirmed deal, particularly as none of the major Chinese portals have an entry for the film yet, but Raymond Wong's dream Hk$ 150 million project 急先锋 (Vanguard) is creating more buzz, and going even more insane with potential casting shenanigans. You knew about the possibility of Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa cooperating for this, »
First Pictures of John Woo’s Rain of Swords, Starring Michelle Yeoh
2 December 2009 10:49 PM, PST | Slash Film | See recent Slash Film news »
It doesn't look like John Woo will be returning to Hollywood anytime soon. After a string of not-so-great Western films, Woo returned to China and delivered the massive two-part epic Red Cliff. I've only seen the first film of the Chinese release (haven't yet seen the condensed most other countries got), and while it certainly isn't perfect, it towers above anything Woo delivered while in Hollywood. Now we have a first look at his next project, Jianyu Jianghu (also known for now as Rain of Swords In The Pugilistic World), which stars Michelle Yeoh. Woo will be co-directing the film with Su Chao-Bin (Silk, Better Than Sex). They'll be joined by longtime producer bud Terrence Chang. The cast also includes Chang Chen, Kelly Lin, and Barbie Hsu. There's no official English title yet, but I suspect they'll run with something similar to Rain of Swords. It's apparently a wuxia film »
- Devindra Hardawar
John Woo's "Red Cliff" Movie Review
1 December 2009 5:57 PM, PST | Manny the Movie Guy | See recent Manny the Movie Guy news »
Action-cinema master John Woo returns with the breathtaking war epic .Red Cliff.. The film tells the legendary tale of the Battle of Red Cliff that took place in China in 208 A.D. It.s a well-directed action adventure that will delight moviegoers.
Making his first Chinese film in 16 years, Woo returns to his roots with a movie that can rival any Hollywood blockbuster in scope and scale. With an estimated budget of $80 million, .Red Cliff. is the most expensive Asian-financed film to date.
The story of .Red Cliff. was first immortalized in the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It evolves around a historical battle that tells of the great intelligence and bravery of the ancient people of China.
There are three distinct characters in the film. There.s the power hungry Prime Minister-turned-General Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) who vows to crush two rebel warlords, namely Liu Bei »
- Manny
Clip Premiere: Arrows Fly in John Woo’s Red Cliff
1 December 2009 7:59 AM, PST | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »
Magnet Releasing has provided us with a brand new clip from John Woo's action epic Red Cliff, which has not yet been seen on the web. The film is currently in limited release, and seems to be getting solid reviews. Just the other day, I was seeing some venomous John Woo hate on The Twitter, and it reminded me that I may be one of the few folks in the blogosphere who has enjoyed Woo's films. No matter what the result -- or in many cases, the problems -- I've mostly found his stuff to be exciting. And that's the sort of buzz that we're hearing for Red Cliff, that it has some cool action. As well, you will see below that it also delivers some humor. Anyway, check out the clip for Red Cliff below, followed by the film's official synopsis. To find out if the film is playing in your neighborhood, head »
- Neil Miller
"Nine" Dominates Satellite Award Nominations! See Complete List!
30 November 2009 10:52 AM, PST | Manny the Movie Guy | See recent Manny the Movie Guy news »
"Nine," the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical, led the Satellite Award scoring 11 nominations including Best Picture in the Comedy or Musical category.
Rob Marshall also received a Best Director nomination, and stars Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, and Daniel Day-Lewis received Best Acting nods, and the cast got Best Ensemble.
John Woo's "Red Cliff" followed with seven nominations.
Roger Corman is the 2009 Recipient of the Auteur Award while master cinematographer and eight-time Oscar nominee, Roger Deakins, is the 2009 Recipient of the Nikola Tesla Award.
The 2009 14th Annual Satellite Awards are given by the International Press Academy. Winners will be announced on Sunday, December 20th, at the Grand Salon/Intercontinental Hotel in Los Angeles.
Visit the Satellite Awards official site right here.
And the nominees for the 2009 14th Annual Satellite Awards are:
Film
Motion Picture (Drama)
"Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire »
- Manny
'Nine' Dominates 14th Satellite Awards Movie Nominations
29 November 2009 11:37 PM, PST | Aceshowbiz | See recent Aceshowbiz news »
The nominations for 2009 Satellite Awards have been announced by International Press Academy on Sunday, November 29. Based on the list, "Nine" has the possibility to become a big winner as it grabbed 11 nods, including Best Motion Picture in Comedy or Musical.
The movie also aided Marion Cotillard, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Penelope Cruz to be among the nominees for Best Comedy or Musical Actress, Best Comedy or Musical Actor, and Best Supporting Actress respectively. Moreover, the star-studded film has won the award for Best Ensemble.
Following the drama musical film with seven nominations was "Red Cliff", a John Woo-directed film starring Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro. The action drama movie received nods for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound (Mixing and Editing), and Foreign Language Film among many others.
Meanwhile, Johnny Depp through his performance in "Public Enemies" was among the contenders to receive Best Drama Actor award. He was going up »
- AceShowbiz.com
A Serious Man and the odd movie out
29 November 2009 1:30 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
A Serious Man may be getting rave reviews – but it's like nothing the Coens have made before. Joe Queenan on weird one-offs and the directors who make them
About halfway through the very funny, very disturbing, very ethnic new film A Serious Man, the modern-day Job who is the serious man in question climbs up on to the roof of his ghastly 1960s Minneapolis suburban home and tries to adjust the antenna to improve his TV reception. Beleaguered on all fronts – conjugally, professionally, medically – Larry Gopnik, a dorky physics professor who may be about to lose his job and is very likely to lose his family, is a bright, principled Jewish man whose children have begged him to fix the antenna so they can watch F Troop, an idiotic 1960s comedy. Many of Larry's travails unfold as songs from Jefferson Airplane's seminal 1967 LP Surrealistic Pillow play in the background. »
- Joe Queenan
Postcards From China: Poster for John Woo’s Next, Teaser Trailer for Jackie Chan’s Latest
29 November 2009 12:07 PM, PST | Slash Film | See recent Slash Film news »
I'm in the middle of watching Red Cliff and I'm amazed that, for the first time in at least a decade, I'm excited by a John Woo movie. (Import DVDs for the win, and I'll probably still go see the half-length Us edit out of curiosity.) So I'm happy to see that his next Chinese production seems to be going forward. Given that Woo has a habit of developing and announcing films that would never happen, there was good reason to be skeptical that we'd ever see Rain of Swords in a Pugilistic World, which would be an all-out wuxia film with Michelle Yeoh. But now there's a sales poster and we have the synopsis as well. After the break, we've also got a short teaser for Little Big Soldier, Jackie Chan's latest Chinese film. His Chinese stuff hasn't been great -- it's no match for his classic output »
- Russ Fischer
[Russian Reviews] Тарас Бульба (Taras Bulba)
29 November 2009 4:01 AM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »
There is no need to bother Leni Riefenstahl and her Triumph des Willens to demonstrate how powerful propaganda can often be, but it's exactly in cases like hers that you often wonder what her legacy would have been, if ridden of all the political ramifications of (some of) her works. That is one of the reasons why today's Mainland Cinema is so vibrant and interesting, even in its most quintessential main melody form: we're often dealing with pretty obvious pieces of cinematic propaganda, works funded by the government and whose foremost purpose is to drive the masses into supporting a certain creed or philosophy. But for every insipid turd like 建国大业 (The Founding of a Republic), you get plenty of eclectic variations on this melody, works which do fulfill their "quota" of bleeding-heart national sentimentalism, but also manage to focus a large portion of their makers' efforts in building a cohesive, »
Poster And Plot Details For John Woo's Rain Of Swords!
27 November 2009 12:02 PM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »
"Sounds great, but will it actually get made?" That was the first thought that ran through my head when I first heard that John Woo had cast Michelle Yeoh for a hopefully triumphant comeback as the lead in his Jianyu Jianghu - or, Rain Of Swords In A Pugilistic World. How could I not be more excited about Woo making his first full-on wuxia picture in what seems like forever and doing so with Michelle Yeoh in the lead? Pretty simple: For the past ten years or so Woo has had a less than encouraging record of announcing films the never get made. But it looks like this one is really happening. Or, at the very least, sales agents Fortissimo Films are certainly behaving as if it is, having produced that spiffy sales flyer to the left. And you know what they like to put on the back of these flyers? »
Poster and Plot for John Woo’s Rain of Swords in The Pugilistic World (Jianyu Jianghu)
27 November 2009 7:37 AM, PST | Affenheimtheater | See recent Affenheimtheater news »
The good folks over at Wu-Jing.org have found the first (a bit bland and generic) poster and a detailed plot description from the upcoming wuxia film Rain of Swords in The Pugilistic World (Jianyu Jianghu).
Rain of Swords is currently under production by John Woo and Terence Chang with Su Chao Bin directing. It stars Michelle Yeoh, Jung Woo Sung, Barbie Hsu, Paw Hee Ching, Wang Xue Qi and Shawn Yue, and will be released in Summer 2010.
428Ad, Bodhi, a Southern India prince became a Buddhist monk and set off for China, earning a hallowed reputation as a mystical martial artist. Following his death, his remains mysteriously disappeared.
Hundreds of years later, Zhang, a high-ranking court official, is assassinated by Drizzle. Zhang’s son Jingxiu, whilst mourning his father’s death, is assailed by a group assassins. They leave him for dead, but somehow he survives and escapes their clutches. »
- Ulrik
'Red Cliff' Just the Latest Film Re-Edited for American Consumption
26 November 2009 9:10 PM, PST | CinemaSpy | See recent CinemaSpy news »
Last Friday marked the arrival of Red Cliff (read our review here) the new war epic by Chinese action-meister John Woo. But this wasn’t the same version that graced Asian theaters prior to its international release: In its home country, Red Cliff was released as two films, the first in mid-2008; the second in early 2009.
Rather than unleash a nearly six-hour magnum opus on audiences worldwide, Woo pared both films down into a single two-and-a-half hour cut. In interviews, he said the deleted scenes mostly placed the film’s events in historical context, which might not have appealed to Westerners unfamiliar with Chinese history. Woo’s movie depicts the famous Battle of Red Cliffs, which was fought around early 200 A.D. between warlords from the northern and southern regions of China.
It’s too early to tell how successful Red Cliff will be with North American viewers (In mainland China, »
Movie Reviews: “Red Cliff”
26 November 2009 12:34 PM, PST | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »
Opening in limited release is John Woo's epic Red Cliff, the most expensive Chinese film ever made and featuring -- literally -- a cast of thousands. The American release runs 2 1/2 hours, about half the length of the movie when it was originally released in China earlier this year (not including an intermission). Critics appear impressed with the grandeur of the production; less so with its script. As Amy Biancolli writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: "The movie doesn't handle nuance too well, and the dialogue spins pretty frequently into unmitigated corniness. But anyone who enjoys stylized hyper-violence should be enthralled by this long, sweeping, murderously vivid dramatization of ancient Chinese warfare, circa A.D. 208." Indeed, Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal comments, "The immensity encompasses such variety, subtlety and intimacy that you may find yourself yearning for more." The critics also bestow high praise on the actors, in particular Tony Leung; several of them use the term "impressive" to describe his performance. But Mike Hale in the New York Times seems less than overwhelmed by the movie's epic scale. "Red Cliff, while handsome and intelligent and perfectly easy to sit through," he writes, "never really approaches the visceral tug of Mr. Woo's Hong Kong hits." Undoubtedly, the entire five-hour original will be available on DVD in the months ahead, but John Anderson in the Washington Post comments. "There should be a law against seeing this thing anywhere but in a theater. It's a big ol' movie, the way Lawrence of Arabia was a big ol' movie." »
John Woo's Return to Asia: They Have Confidence in Me, Unlike Hollywood
25 November 2009 4:38 PM, PST | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »
"I'd never get used to the meetings. I hate talk. I don't know how to talk."
John Woo was describing the difference between working in Asia and in Hollywood when he made a point to laugh at his own inability to adapt. It's not an alien trait in creative types, who are typically more adept at invention than negotiation. Though he seemed reluctant to criticize the American film industry, Woo had nothing good to say about it, either. One only had to look at the dip in quality in the director's filmography to suspect that he never fully adjusted.
Now having taken a productive six-year respite, he returns to America with a film called Red Cliff, brought back from his Chinese sojourn. It shouldn't surprise any of his fans that it shows a long-awaited return to form.
Seventeen years ago, John Woo was king of his genre. After a string »
- Arya Ponto
Review: Red Cliff
25 November 2009 10:23 AM, PST | Twitch | See recent Twitch news »
[Our thanks to Peter Galvin for offering his review to the Twitch readership.]
Everyone loves an underdog story. From The Bad News Bears to perhaps a more suitable comparison, Braveheart, people love seeing the little guy pull through against all odds. At its heart, John Woo's Red Cliff is an underdog story set in the war theatre of ancient China, and it delivers all the fist-pumping you would hope for a film of the genre. For Woo--a director known for delivering action experiences like Hard Boiled and The Killer--Red Cliff is a delightful change of pace, and it is made perfectly clear Woo is very much at home trading guns for swords.
Loosely based on the 600 year-old text Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Cliff is set in 208 Ad China. Cunning prime minister Cao Cao has convinced malleable Emperor Han that the best approach to uniting China is to ferret out those in the south who would oppose his rule, »
John Woo Talks Red Cliff
25 November 2009 6:12 AM, PST | Thompson on Hollywood | See recent Thompson on Hollywood news »
John Woo’s historic epic Red Cliff is one of the best films of the year. Already a huge hit in Asia, which financed the original two-part $80-million five-hour war film (the most expensive movie ever produced in China), the two-and-a half-hour western cut of Red Cliff launched stateside last week in New York without much fanfare, and opens on 30 screens in 15 markets including L.A. this holiday weekend. The reviews are strong (Tomatometer 86%, Metascore 73.) What gives? Well, indie distributor Magnolia was shocked at how easily they landed the movie against no other bidders for a low upfront fee. Part of the problem is … »
2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1998 | 1997
1-20 of 273 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles. News articles are published for the entertainment of our users only. The news items do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the site responsible for the article in question to report any concerns you may have.
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