TSUI HARK IN MALAYSIA : INTERVIEW : FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE 3D
————————————————————-
Renowned director Tsui Hark made a visit to Malaysia on 19 December 2011 to promote his latest 3D martial arts movie Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D.
The celebrated director was in Kuala Lumpur to attend a press conference, media interviews, film making workshop, as well as the movie’s gala premiere…and our friends at Golden Screen Cinemas made it happen .
This Interview begins with us telling Director Tsui Hark about how his movie influence from his Aces Go Places Days actualy influenced a Name a lil girl grew up with and is being called to this very day …PIPU ! She was awed everytime Tsui Hark in his Cameo appearance came on screen and her parents used it as a tool to calm her down …then, Director Tsui Hark talks about the new revolution of movie making – in 3D – Chinese action movies in 3D : How in Chinese Film History several big revolution moments have taken place – and this is a new exciting chapter in Chinese Movie Making -
He tells why he chose to film a classic action movie in 3D and also his hope for the future of moviemaking esp ..in 3D
Here’s the lil chat aforadio.com had with Director Tsui Hark
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
” I LIKE YOUR STATIONS LOGO “…
…” I’LL REMEMBER IT SO I NEVER HAVE TO TALK TO YOU GUYS AGAIN 
————————————————————-
A.F.O ‘ S LING TOOK THE VISUALS
————————————————————-
THE FAMED DIRECTOR WITH THE DUDES, NAVSTA & THE GREENMAN..NOPE THEY WON’T BE IN ANY OF HIS NEXT MOVIES
————————————————————-
About Tsui Hark
Tsui Hark (born 15 February 1950), born Tsui Man-kong, is a Hong Kong New Wave film director and producer. He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema (typically early 1980s to mid 1990s).
Tsui was born and raised in Saigon, Vietnam, in a large Chinese immigrant family with sixteen siblings. By the age of 13, he and his family immigrated to Hong Kong. Tsui showed an early interest in show business and films; when he was 10, he and some friends rented an 8 mm camera to film a magic show they put on at school. He also drew comic books, an interest that would influence his cinematic style.
Tsui started his secondary education in Hong Kong in 1966. He proceeded to study film in Texas, first at Southern Methodist University and then at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating in 1975. He claims to have told his parents he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps as a pharmacist, and that it was here he changed his given name to Hark (“overcoming”).
After graduation, Tsui moved to New York City, where he worked on From Spikes to Spindles (1976), a noted documentary film by Christine Choy on the history of the city’s Chinatown. He also worked as an editor for a Chinese newspaper, developed a community theatre group and worked in a Chinese cable TV station. He returned to Hong Kong in 1977.
New Wave period
Upon turning to feature filmmaking, Tsui was quickly typed as a member of the “New Wave” of young, iconoclastic directors. His debut film, The Butterfly Murders (1979), was an eccentric and technically challenging blend of wuxia, murder mystery and science fiction / fantasy elements. His second film, We’re Going to Eat You (1980), was an eccentric blend of cannibal horror, black comedy and martial arts.
Tsui’s third film, Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind (1980), put him beyond the pale. The thriller about delinquent youths on a bombing spree was nihilistic, grisly and pregnant with angry political subtext. Heavily censored by the British colonial government, it was released in 1981 in a drastically altered version titled Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind (or alternatively, Don’t Play with Fire). Unsurprisingly, it was not a financial success. However, it helped to make Tsui a darling of film critics who had coined the New Wave label and were hopeful for a more aesthetically daring cinema, more engaged with the realities of contemporary Hong Kong.
Blockbuster cinema
In 1981, Tsui joined Cinema City, a new production company founded by comedians Raymond Wong, Karl Maka and Dean Shek, that was instrumental in codifying the slick Hong Kong blockbuster films of the 1980s. Tsui played his part in the process with pictures like the 1981 crime farce All the Wrong Clues, his first hit, and Aces Go Places 3 (1984), part of the studio’s long-running spy spoof series.
In 1983, Tsui directed the wuxia fantasy film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) for the studio Golden Harvest. Tsui imported Hollywood technicians to help create special effects whose number and complexity were unprecedented in Chinese-language cinema and remains preoccupied with pushing back the boundaries of the industry’s effects technology.
Many former champions were disappointed by this turn to crowd pleasing pop films and in some quarters he is regarded as a sellout and a prime example of Hong Kong film’s inability to rise above vulgarity and commercialism.
Mogul
In 1984, Tsui formed the production company Film Workshop along with his wife and occasional co-producer, Nansun Shi, making it a home base for a tirelessly prolific roster of directing and producing projects. Here, he also developed a reputation as a hands-on and even intrusive producer of other directors’ work, fueled by public breaks with major filmmakers like John Woo and King Hu. His most longstanding and fruitful collaboration has probably been with Ching Siu-tung. As action choreographer and/or director on many Film Workshop productions, Ching made a major contribution to the well-known Tsui style.
Film Workshop releases became consistent box office hits in Hong Kong and around Asia, drawing audiences with their visual adventurousness, their broad commercial appeal, and hectic camerawork and pace. Tsui has the knack of trend-setting in film genres. He produced John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (1986), which launched a craze for the hardboiled mob film or “triad” movies, and Ching Siu-tung’s A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which did the same for period ghost fantasies. Zu Warriors and The Swordsman (1990) brought back the long-out-of-favor wuxia film.
In fact, Tsui’s “movie brat” nostalgia is one of the main ingredients in his work. He often resurrects and revises classic films and genres: the murder mystery in The Butterfly Murders (1979); the Shanghai musical comedy in Shanghai Blues (1985). Peking Opera Blues (1986) plays with and pays tribute to the traditions of the Peking opera that his mother took him to see as a small boy and which had such a strong influence on Hong Kong action cinema. The Lovers (1994) adapts a retold, cross-dressing period romance, best known from Li Han-hsiang’s 1963 opera film The Love Eterne. A Chinese Ghost Story remakes Li’s supernatural romance The Enchanting Shadow (1959) as a special effects action movie.
The pattern is also seen in perhaps Tsui’s most successful work to date, the Once Upon a Time in China film series (1991–97). Jet Li played the role of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung in the first three films and the sixth, Once Upon a Time in China and America. This series is the clearest expression in his oeuvre of Tsui’s Chinese nationalism and his passionate engagement with the upheavals of Chinese history, particularly in the face of Western power and influence.
Tsui also dabbled in acting, mostly for other directors. Notable roles include one-third of the comic relief trio in Corey Yuen’s film Yes, Madam! (1985) and a villain in Patrick Tam’s darkly comic crime story Final Victory (1987), written by Wong Kar-wai. He also made frequent cameo appearances in his own productions, such as a music judge in A Better Tomorrow and a phony FBI agent in Aces Go Places II.
In the face of an industry downturn in the ’90s, he produced two expensive and unpopular movies that proved he could fold the caustic cynicism of his early work into his blockbuster formula. Green Snake (1993) was an erotic and darkly apocalyptic take on a favorite Chinese fairy tale. The Blade (1995) was a gory, deliberately rough-hewn and anti-heroic revision of the 1967 wuxia classic The One-Armed Swordsman.
American films
In 1990, Tsui had already attempted a low-budget American action film, the barely released and little seen The Master, with a pre-superstardom Jet Li. In the mid-’90s, Tsui tried Hollywood again with two films starring Jean-Claude Van Damme: Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998). In 2002, Tsui released Black Mask 2: City of Masks, an American market sequel to Jet Li’s 1996 film.
2000s
Tsui returned to directing at home in 2000 after not having made a local film since 1996. Time and Tide (2000) and The Legend of Zu (2001) were action extravaganzas with lavish computer-generated imagery that gained cult admirers but no mass success.
Tsui continues to push technical boundaries and revise old favourites. Master Q 2001 was Hong Kong’s first combination of live action and Pixar-style 3D computer animation. Era of Vampires (2002; U.S. title, “Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters”) reworked a sub-genre popular in the ’80s, hybrid martial arts / supernatural horror films featuring the “hopping corpses” of Chinese folk legend.
In 2005, Tsui launched the multimedia production Seven Swords, a film adaptation of Liang Yusheng’s novels Saiwai Qixia Zhuan and Qijian Xia Tianshan. The film came with a television series counterpart (Seven Swordsmen), a comic book series, a cellphone game, clothing brand, and an online multi-player video game. The film was relatively successful, and in February 2006 Tsui announced plans to begin filming the second late in the year. As of 2008, Tsui continues to work on the script for Seven Swords 2 in between filming projects. In 2011 there has been no news nor plans about a Seven Swords 2. Rumors has it that due to lack of interest by the filmmakers of finishing the hexalogy lead the project into being cancelled.
In August 2008, Tsui provided art direction for the direct-to-video anime feature titled Kungfu Master (a.k.a. Wong Fei Hong vs Kungfu Panda), an apparent unofficial sequel to Kung Fu Panda, featuring Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung. Also in 2008 was the thriller Missing starring Angelica Lee. His latest comedy film All About Women features wonky sound editing and comic graphics.
2010s
Tsui’s latest work in 2010 is Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, a rare but successful blend of wuxia, suspense-thriller, mystery, and comedy, which was in competition for the Golden Lion award and was also nominated and won numerous amount of other awards.
In 2010 he announced his first 3-D film, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, which is a re-imagine of his 1992 film New Dragon Gate Inn starring Jet Li. In 2011 Huayi Brothers announced that Tsui will be making a prequel to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, possibly in 3-D. Recently he announced another children’s film project titled Monster Wanted (possibly a working title.)
In October 2011, Tsui received the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award at the 16th Busan International Film Festival for his contributions to Hong Kong cinema. He is the fifth Chinese filmmaker to receive this award at Busan.
Info Credit : Wikipedia
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
About Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D
“Flying Swords of Dragon Gate” picks up three years after the infamous Dragon Inn was burnt down in the desert when its innkeeper JADE (played by Zhou Xun) vanished. A new gang of marauders had taken over: innkeepers by day, and treasure hunters by night.
The inn is the rumored location of a lost city buried under the desert and its hidden treasure would only be revealed by a gigantic storm every sixty years. The gang used the inn as a front to locate the lost treasure.
The storm is arriving. But the situation becomes more complicated when a pregnant concubine who escaped from the palace came to the inn. The concubine was saved by a mysterious woman LING (played by Zhou Xun), and the two fled to the Dragon Inn in hiding.
Hot on their trail were the Imperial Assassins led by the powerful eunuch YU (played by Chen Kun), followed by the righteous general ZHAO (played by Jet Li) who was determined to take down Yu to restore order in the palace.
—————————————————————
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D marks Tsui Hark’s reunion with action superstar Jet Li, star of his legendary Once Upon A Time In China series after a 18-year hiatus.
In this first ever 3D martial arts live action movie, Jet Li alongside with an all-star cast including Zhou Xun, Chen Kun, Kwai Lun Mei, Li Yuchun, Mavis Fan and Louis Fan Siu Wong, rises to the challenge of an action-packed movie which combines swordplay, suspense and sensational visual effects.
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D will be released in cinemas nationwide on 22 December 2011 in both Cantonese (3D version) and Mandarin (35mm film version).
Fans can look out for more updates and contests of Flying Swords of Dragon Gate 3D on www.gscmovies.com.my and www.facebook.com/gscmovies.
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
————————————————————-
APPRECIATION …
