[QUOTE=GeneChing;1075186]@Jimbo - I think Tony Jaa is done for a spell - haven’t heard anything on him since this: tony jaa calls it quits. Nevertheless, we’ll have something on ONG BAK 3 next week. Stay tuned.
I feel ya - it will be fun to see IM2 on the big screen. I hope everyone here can go out and support it.[/QUOTE]
Gene:
Looks like Tony Jaa is back:
http://www.tony-jaa.net/index.php/topic,58.0html
why does it say 07/01/2011 were these pictures taken in the future?
[QUOTE=Yoshiyahu;1031684]I have just seen Ip Man the movie 2. It was great. Although I was kinda of disappointed with his fight with the White guy who does boxing. It almost glorifies western style fighting and gives off the impression that western fighters are stronger and more comptent fighters than the chinese?[/quote]
I agree with you there totally. The attitude you are referring to ruined an otherwise great film, as far as I am concerned.
So, we have the same Ip Man who destroyed around 10 Japanese Karate black belts, at the SAME TIME, almost not surviving his challenge with a mere boxer? LOL! A boxer who had previously somehow managed to kill a Hung Gar master (without the use of a machine gun)???:rolleyes:
We are talking about one of the best known kung fu masters of the last century and not some forum member who practiced couple of years of Wing Chun is some Mcdojo!!!
Maybe someone involved in the production of the movie was an Anglophile…
I don’t know, but IMHO on some level the movie can be seen to be disrespectful as regards the TCMAs.
[QUOTE=Yoshiyahu;1031684]What do you think about this movie?[/QUOTE]
It was a great movie that was ruined by the producers paying too much “respect” to an art such as boxing, to the point that they may be seen as disrespecting the all of the TCMAs and TJMAs.
Could the movie makers’ attitude be the result of the recently discovered secret traditional Western boxing technique of skipping rope???:rolleyes:
[QUOTE=doug maverick;1075350]why does it say 07/01/2011 were these pictures taken in the future?[/QUOTE]
Doug:
They probably say the dates like they do in Britain, i.e., day/month/year.
i saw at it last night and didnt care for it:p
Nice article on Donnie’s mom
She’s a wushu pioneer in America.
The martial arts hub
Bow Sim Mark’s legendary martial arts school in Boston is a world-class institution of learning
ABOVE: Bow Sim Mark with her daughter, Chris Chi-ching Yen. BELOW: Donny Yen in IpMan. ABOVE: Bow Sim Mark with her daughter, Chris Chi-ching Yen.
By Carlo Rotella
February 2, 2011
BOSTON DOESN’T fit with most people’s idea of a martial arts capital — not unless you broaden the range of disciplines to include dirty looks, tenure battles, and reserving shoveled-out parking spaces. But a tour of places that have played an important role in shaping today’s global martial arts media complex could make some interesting stops around here.
There’s Southie, which produced Dana White, impresario of the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand of pay-per-view mixed martial arts cage fights. There’s the Lowell boxing scene that produced Micky Ward and ****ie Eklund, heroes of “The Fighter,’’ nominated for seven Oscars. And then there’s the Chinese Wu Shu Research Institute, founded in 1976 by Bow Sim Mark and currently housed in a low-ceilinged basement space on Lincoln Street near South Station.
Master Mark’s martial arts school may not look like Harvard or MIT, but it’s one of Boston’s world-class institutions of higher learning. Dedicated students move here to study with her, and her most famous pupil, Donnie Yen, who is also her son, is one of the biggest martial arts movie stars in the world. (Her daughter, Chris Chi-ching Yen, is also in the movie business.)
I dropped by the school for a visit on Friday, the day that “Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster,’’ which stars Yen, opened in a dozen US cities (but not Boston). Master Mark, a small, self-possessed woman wearing red sweat pants and a white hoodie, was sitting around with students before class began.
Master Mark, who is best known for her virtuosity in a flowing style called Wu Dang Sword, insisted that she wants her students to practice martial arts in order to “be healthy and develop artistry,’’ not to fight. But the movies that popularize her calling are all about kicking butt. For all his rigorously proper mom-derived technique, Donnie Yen still has to blast stunt men through fake walls to make a living. Master Mark looks past the necessary exaggerations of cinematic spectacle to what matters most. “He has good form,’’ she said.
Veteran students got to telling stories about Yen as a teenager in Boston in the late ’70s, before he broke into the Hong Kong movie industry. His star persona now tends to emphasize a modest, studious discipline, but in his Boston days he was considerably more brash.
One student recalled that Yen used to go around dressed in pink from head to toe, hoping someone would give him a hard time about it. Another said that Yen once leaped entirely over an opponent and back-kicked him in the back of the head, causing a bystander to exclaim, “That stuff they do in the movies really happens!’’
The students also talked about their paths to their teacher. Nick Gracenin relocated from Pittsburgh in 1980. Rick Wong, who runs a martial arts school in Melrose, came from New York to attend Boston University so that he could study with Master Mark. Jean Lukitsch, who came to Master Mark in 1978, said, “It can take 10 years just to start feeling that you’re doing it right, but the longer you do it, the more you get out of it.’’ David Kessler said, “This isn’t just about fighting or art; I’m learning the grammar of movement, a working sense of how my body’s put together.’’
The Ip Man movies, like so many in the genre, are all about how people invest masters, schools, and styles with particular virtues, especially local or national pride. It’s funny to think of Boston as akin to the town of Foshan in the first Ip Man movie, a center for the dissemination of martial arts, but it is.
I would dearly love to report that, during my visit to Master Mark’s school, interlopers from a rival school attacked and were defeated after a great deal of acrobatic combat, but life is not as eventfully plotted as a movie. Instead, teacher and white-clad students got to work. Moving with preternatural ease and fluidity, Master Mark led them through preliminary exercises and into an extended sword routine. A lead student called out the moves — Fairy Shows the Way, Swallow Skims the Water — as the small group traced the elegant forms in the air.
Carlo Rotella is director of American Studies at Boston College. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
I was finally able to catch this at the theater. I actually enjoyed it, but even though part 2 has more fighting in it, part 1 was a lot better, IMO. Although, as has been pointed out in reviews, there’s a lot of foreign stereotypes, I’ll bet there were plenty of guys in HK like the British racists in the movie. I guess the stereotyping worked, because this movie had me despising the British boxer. He came across as even worse than the Japanese general in part 1, though not worse than the general’s underling.
BTW, the movie takes its biggest credibility hit when “Twister” is announced as the “world boxing champion.” I thought in 1950 the heavyweight champ was Rocky Marciano (or Ezzard Charles?). Whoever he was, he wasn’t a British fighter taking on Chinese kung fu guys. And I seriously doubt the initially smirking British audience members would have given Ip Man a standing ovation at the end. They would probably have reacted more like that lone guy shaking his head and walking out, or probably a riot. Another credibility hit is that Ip Man can beat like 20 guys(?) who are armed and coming at him with big chopping knives w/out breaking a sweat, but can barely beat one (albeit large) boxer?
Besides Sammo, it was nice to see old-schoolers like Lo Meng, and Feng Ke-an (Cantonese: Fung Hark-On) still making appearances. And I feel that Ip Man is Donnie’s best-acted role.
I’m not sure the Ip Man films do much for kung fu in general, since in each film, only Ip Man is able to win against the main foreign fighter. The other CMA teachers get trounced. However, the choreography is both 1 and 2 are leagues above most other kung fu and wuxia films coming out of China/HK in recent years, excepting Flash Point.
Is it out on blu-ray yet?
sanjuro ronin:
I believe Ip Man 2 will hit the stores in April.
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