December 2003

Hong Kong entertainment diva Anita Mui has died. She was 40. Recently diagnosed with cervical cancer, her condition continued to deteriorate and she eventually succumbed to the illness. In Anita's illustrious career, she appeared in Tsui Hark's A BETTER TOMORROW III (pictured above with Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung Kar Fai) and THE MAGIC CRANE. She also starred in THE HEROIC TRIO (with Maggie Cheung and Michelle Yeoh ), JUSTICE MY FOOT (with Stephen Chow) and ROUGE (with the late Leslie Cheung).

Read moviehole.net's interview with John Woo.

Four movie clips from John Woo's PAYCHECK entitled: "Motorcycle Chase", "See The Future", "One Big Paycheck" and "BMW Key" can be viewed here. Visit the official PAYCHECK movie website for more goodies.

It is reported in today's papers that Taiwanese actor/stuntman Blacky Ko Shou Liang has died from excessive drinking. He was 50. Blacky was last seen in Tsui Hark's BLACK MASK 2 . Incidentally, he was also an action director in John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW.

More news (in Chinese) and pictures can be found at sina.com.cn

I spotted this new poster for John Woo's PAYCHECK in theatres.

November 2003

The Asian Film Foundation is presenting six movies starring Leslie Cheung in tribute to the versatile actor who died on April 1. Tsui Hark's THE CHINESE FEAST is one of the featured movies. Also featured is THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR, one of most stylish swordsfighting movies ever made. More details at the Asian Film Foundation's official site.

More info about XANDA, including a decent selection of pics, can be found at this site (in Chinese though):

http://ent.163.com/ent_2003/editor/movie/film/031015/031015_196607.html

October 2003

View the poster artwork at the url below:
http://www.lightsoutentertainment.com/news/news.php?id=1921

September 2003

1) INITIAL D live action movie
Tsui Hark will commence photography for the INITIAL D movie in October. The movie, starring Edison Chen, is adapted from the popular manga and anime of the same title.

2) SEVEN SWORDS DESCENDING TIAN MOUNTAIN (Qi Jian Xia Tian Shan) TV series and movie
Tsui Hark is adapting Liang Yu Sheng's swordsfighting novel for a 60 part China TV series. Shooting has commenced in the Xin Jiang province of China. One of the male leads is Wu Jing (Legend of Zu).Taiwanese song-writer/singer Jonathan Li has been roped in to score music for the series.

The movie version will begin photography in February 2004. Tony Leung (Dragon Inn) has confirmed his involvement and Tsui Hark managed to lure Charlie Yeung (The Lovers, Love In The Time of Twilight) out of retirement as the female lead. Tony and Charlie as brushing up their Mandarin in preparation for their roles.

In the meantime, Tsui Hark is in Korea to seek collaboration for an animated version of TIAN. A comic and video game are being planned as well.

July 2003

View the trailer for John Woo's PAYCHECK at this url:

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=trailer&id=1808466030&intl=us

Tsui Hark has produced a new martial arts movie, XANDA. The movie is directed by Marco Mak Chi-Sin, a long-time collaborator of Tsui Hark.

The movie synopsis in a nutshell:

Set in the near future, Xanda is the name of a modern form of martial arts focusing on extreme speed and power that has arisen in China's heartland. A former fighter turned Xanda coach named Tieh (Zhang Hong-jun) relentlessly trains Lung, his son (Zhao Zi-long) to be the next champion. But after he suffers a defeat by the reigning Xanda champion (Teng Jun), Lung's friend Qiang (Sang Wei-lin) combines his traditional kung fu expertise with unorthodox Xanda training in order to become the next champion.

For the FULL synopsis, head down to Fortissimo's (the distributor for XANDA and THE ERA OF VAMPIRES) website:

http://www.fortissimo.nl/catalogue/title.asp?filmID=192

There's an interesting article over at www.wu-jing.org where Tsui Hark talks about XANDA and shares his perspective on the Pugilistic World.