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Wanna Take A Leap Off John Woo's RED CLIFF? Looks Like One Helluva Ride!
Hey folks, Harry here... When Paul Verhoeven went home, he made BLACK BOOK... Now, John Woo has returned to Asia - and he has made RED CLIFF - An enormous Asian production of $75 million - Woo is setting this epic in the Three Kingdoms period in China - and daammmnnnn.... it looks huge. I'm giddy to see what comes from this film - and can not wait to see it. Is this the rebirth of John Woo? A John Woo without the pain in the ass of dealing with Studios that just don't get him? Who knows - I do know that having John Woo make a Chinese Epic with this scale of finance and cooperation... it could be the makings of greatness. Check this pixelly YouTube trailer to see for yourself...
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Was he or wasn't he supposed to be in this?
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Fist bitches. Yeah, fist...right in your face.
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Bring it Woo!
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SHIPOOPI!
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this is epic. shits all over crouching homo hidden faggot.
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Ill pay to see this. It looks like one of my favorite filmmakers is returning to top form so ill support it. Glad to see him back in his native land away from garbage Hollywood scripts!
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More excited about the other one being made with Andy lau and Ti Lung by badass Danny Lee. Looks sweet though, like Tony Leung as well.
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Hope this changes but that has been the announced plan
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Awesome badass film available at many Blockbuster stores. Picture Chinese Gladiator with Andy Lau leading thousands of peasants and inexperianced troops against tens of thousands of hardened invaders. All while trying to fight off the treachery of a stone fall down drunk ingrate King he is trying to help. Great film. Better than The Warlords or Seven Swords.
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Pretty huge....
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Love Three Kingdoms story/games/history. John Woo doing this is amazing. Only thing better would be a trilogy with Ang Lee as director of the next one. But who the third???
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chinese brainless action!!! yeah again.
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But isn't the "A John Woo Film" superimposed over a white dove a bit redundant?
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That's exactly what it looks like. Just a meaningless jumble of action and cool poses. Much like most of Woo's films, actually.
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John Woo has had numerous opportunities in the U.S. to make the kind of action pictures he made in Asia, and while the results have often been fun, they haven't remotely compared to his earlier work. How is that the fault of the Studios, however? Verhoeven, given the same opportunities as Woo, did remarkable work in the States, edgy, audacious and wickedly satirical. I love Woo and will always root for him to make good movies, but as a director he has to take responsibility for his films. I hope RED CLIFF rocks.
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Feb 02, 2008 10:56:42 PM CST
Woo is at his best working without Shitseltown's interference
by killakane
So glad he's back working on home turf, this looks like a return to form of the brilliance of Killers, Bullet in the Head, Hard Boiled etc.
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Maybe they could have cut the cost in half if every shot didn't have hundreds of extras in it! :P
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I worshipped the ground John Woo walked on after I saw The Killer and Hard Boiled. I was afraid he might have lost it after the constant Hollywood neuterings. So gald hes back in familiar territory!
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I haven't enjoyed a John Woo film since Face/Off, to me windtalkers and paycheck where huge pieces of shit, I hope going back home brings back the Woo that got me interested in film
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Pretty bland looking trailer. Looks like yet another standard issue, generic Chinese period piece. Pretty strange that Woo would be involved with something like this. Not his type of genre at all.
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When I went to China the first time about seven years ago, it was my first trip outside the borders of the US. Talk about culture shock. The size of the country and the sheer number of people really impressed me. Another thing that made an impression was the horrific level of air pollution. I felt like my lungs were on fire in Beijing. I've been there three times since and they have made spectacular progress in the short time I've been going there. This is a good move for Woo. With China ascendant he can finally get in on the epic filmmaking he could only dream of in the US.
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Uh yeah, Woo can't stage a coherent fight scene to save his life.
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Seems better to me than all of Woo's US stuff combined. Okay, maybe excluding Face/Off.
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I think Edward Zwick's Last Samurai is as good as it's gonna be for a while. This crap is no threat to it. Yeah I know, this is Chinese and Last Samurai is Japanese, but they all look the same really.
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When Face Off was a hit.
Let Woo be Woo. Smart guy! -
Sponsored by Dove Soap and Dove Chocolate
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except for the dove shot, and the long haired girl mimicking an old Head&Shoulders ad. Apart from that this trailer kicked my ass.
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Even with all those crazy switching of roles. Leung leaves, Watanabe denied,Chow Yun-Fat leaves. I was really worried at this point. BUT... Then Leung comes back as Chow Yun-Fat's role and then Kaneshiro comes in and takes his old role. Sheesh. Its like musical chairs. But I am happy and very anxious to see this one on the big screen.
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When a massive big fat one flies in there at the end to say ''John Woo Film!''That's the problem for me with all these Floating Daggers/Flying Heroes, they all look the same! : Big temples, lots of banners, masses of soldiers with Spears in snow with red flags and end of level bosses doing rediculous Sword slashy poses trying to look all Hard in Slo-Mo.
I like John Woo - The Killer or Bullet in The Head amazed me but not American Woo - Broken Arrow or Mission Improbable 2! the cross over doesn't work bit like Jackie Chan just looks like a fish out of water when he has to listen to that asscrack Tucker blabbering in his lug iunstead of just kicking ass!
Least it's a home made flick for Woo though although i doubt i can sit through another Swords and Bamboo 3 hour Melodrama! -
It really does. Lowering expectations.
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has not put out good American product. I loved the over-the-top carnage of Hard Boiled, but the only things that stand out in his American movies are the stupid doves (he may as well just lean into the frame in the middle of his movie and wink at the audience), and the insufferable slow-mo shots that don't magnify the action, they just water it down and kill the excitement.
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of the doubt. But the trailer did absolutely NOTHING for me. All the movements were hyper dramatized and silly looking, especially the extended slow-mo shots (and there are a plenty). It looks to cobbled together, and just like every other chinese epic war movie I've seen in the past few years. Such as The Warrior, Curse of the Golden Flower and The Banquet. I'm sue there are plenty others...oh yeah, Hero too! Myabe the actual movie is good, but this trailer does nothing to get my excited.
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I mean they wrote it by coming up with a bunch of set-pieces and then writing a shitty story around it. And they hired Thandie Newton who always makes a film instant fail.
Woo's best work in Hollywood by far was Face/Off, if only he could have made more films like it. -
Feb 03, 2008 9:45:11 AM CST
If you speed up all the slow-mo shots in MI:2, the movie is
by creasybear
fifteen minutes long, and thus, still fifteen minutes too long.
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...fail to realize: there's really not that much difference between Woo's HK and US films.
No, seriously.
Pretend that the entire casts of his HK films consist of western actors and then imagine his American films with Asian actors. It's all the same glossy, maudlin, stylized, homoerotic tubthumping. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but at least be honest about it. People who say that no American Woo film feels like a "real" Woo film are deluding themselves.
Here's another test: how many of you who love Face/Off could watch that final atrociously sappy scene with the kid and not scream bloody murder if it had been directed by an American?
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MI:2 is better (okay, not saying much). I never buy Travolta in an action movie or as a bad guy. Cage, yes; Travolta, no.
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impossible to imagine him making a good film again. I liked both Broken Arrow and Face/Off (his best American film) but after that he's made a string of failures. At this point I think he's just lost "it".
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for recognizing so many characters and scenes. Let's go Zhang Fei!
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I can't wait for JJ Abrams to "reinvent" it.
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the movie! But in a good way. Looks cool.
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Get the fuck over it, Mr. Woo, and learn that some dove flying around in-between scenes doesn't make your movies more profound or deep. You need a good script and vision and perspective for that.
I loved your movies "The Killer" and especially "Hard Boiled"...but what have you made since? Face/Off was mediocre, and everything you have made since is pure pig shit.
Get your thumb out of your chinese asshole, quit with the lame fucking doves flying around and get your act straight.
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Van Damme's only "good" movie - Bloodsport and No Retreat, No Surrender excluded - of his moder career...All thanks to John Motherfuckin' WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!1!1!;)
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Any movie that has Van Damme replying to the question, "Why do they call you 'Chance'?" with "my momma took one" is instant fucking classic material. It's true.A while back, one of my buddies had the editor's reel and in the scene where Van Damme kills Marwan (from 24), he shoots him, with two handguns, a total of 48 times, meaning there were 48 distinct trigger pulls and gunshots. out of two 9-millimeter handguns.nothing like using exposition in regards to clip capacity, aye John?
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Were all awesome Woo and although he was handicapped by a bunch of coked up hollywood fruitcakes telling him he needed this and that and had to have a certain number of this ect, I think at this point Johnnie To is the king of artistic balssy action. The Mad Detective is on the way!!!!!
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He does a great job of parodying Woo. Very very funny. Doves flying all over the place.
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But when can expect some Fatty gunplay?
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from the looks of things, Woo's using most of the ingredients in the "asian period/action war film" recipe... might as well go all in.
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Agree with datascream, the hyper dramatized stuff with the recent Eastern epics is a big turn-off. Golden Flower and Crouching tiger in particular were so obsessed with creating beautiful images that the visceral power of the combat was lost - it all seemed too staged, like a dance. I far prefer the kind of gutsy, messy combat seen in films like Conan The Barbarian, Excalibur and Braveheart.
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in every possible way. Never seen any of his other movies, but, based on that one, I don't want to.
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Another example is the baby pissing in order to put the fire out in Hard Boiled. When I saw it I thought it was bizarre but funny because, ultimately, I'm watching a Hong Kong movie and I figure they go in for that kind of thing. Maybe there's some stuff that just doesn't cross cultural boundaries. If that baby scene happened in an American film I would have been pretty upset. Does this mean his films are just bad to begin with or does this mean his films don't necessarily translate. I'm going to go with the second option.
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Feb 03, 2008 3:03:02 PM CST
Looks EXACTLY like Golden Flower / Flying Daggers / Hero
by stollentroll
...which means I'm not going to watch it.
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They really need to find a new angle for all these Eastern period epics.
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Looks good to me.
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I can't stop laughing. The point where the dove came out like some 70's logo had me on the ground. Anyways, this looks like a sloppy Yimou Zhang production more then anything else. Pass.
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The cast is fantastic. What is wrong with you people? Because its an Asian film and it doesn't have a fight sequence in the trailer you pass? I guess we will have to wait till someone on AICN sings its praises, then you naysayers can jump on the bandwagon. As always...
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I don't get that at all, Hero had practically nothing in common with GF or FD. Hero was going back to the old school of martial arts storytelling, it was about the individual and was a great attempt to break thru the generic epics that's plaguing HK cinema.
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Well, unfortunately the three movies have the same director, Yimou Zhang.
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That sucks Sly.
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And all of the subtitles are in some kind of gibberish! What the heck?!
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it's the ONLY proof that his migration to hollywood was not for nothing! it's been downhill ever since he sold his soul to cruise and did that stupid ass pg-13 movie. a woo movie with no blood??!! wtf??!!
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you guys complaining about the doves are getting cliched. the doves are in the movie how long? 5 sec at the most? how about the gunbattles and debris flying for half the movie? how about the little cool character moments he always give to his actors? how about the punchline of his actions that nobody in hollywood does better?
to me, hard-boiled is the single best action movie ever made. yup, better than any film cameron/spielberg/wachowski ever done! there's so much artistry in any one action scene in that movie, it outclasses any stunts/special effect hollywood have ever conjured up. -
MI:2 was actually 45 minutes long if played without all that slo-mo BS.
Woo is the shining example between "fast-paced action" vs. "stylized-artistic action"... Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. -
Both times...
The fact that "Hannah Montana", which having been subjected to (like secondhand smoke), is putrid.
HOWEVER, I hope my two step-daughters take after her vs. Jamie Lynn Spears. -
Bring it on, I want this in my theater NOW. And love Tony Leung and that guy from House of Flying Daggers. WOO WOO
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I'm down for this. And yeah the signature doves can get retardedly noticable, but whatever, some directors like to put some stuff like that in there, I'll get over it. And for for Chow Yun Fat, he was supposed to be in it, but apparently there was some falling out between him and Woo and he left or something...
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And what is it doing in our cinemas?
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the future. God help us all...
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Feb 05, 2008 1:06:31 AM CST
i'd take slo-mo over frenetic camera where you can't see shit
by cloudrider`
shaky cam is superficial. it's a copout. it's what you do when you can't stage action scenes well. everyone can shake their cameras and make the action looks busy. only woo can use slo-mo and makes the action looks beautiful.
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Setting: Warehouse in Hard Target
Line: Hey! Pigeon...
Action: Roundhouse kicks a barrel into a baddie and blows barrel and guy to hell with a chrome shotgun. Now that's cinematic!
Holy fuck i'm going to watch it now!
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