Word: kung
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...office success of Chinese kung-fu movies has in turn revived kalarippayat. Indian filmmakers, hoping to mimic the high-kicking fights and gravity-defying leaps in Jet Li's Romeo Must Die and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are hiring kalarippayat fighters and teachers like Kumar as stuntmen. They're even making sure Bollywood stars have basic training. "Even five years ago, Kerala martial arts had nearly died out," says Kumar, who with his two brothers runs C.V.N. Kalari Sangham in Calicut, among the best known schools in the country. "Now suddenly it is popular again...
...China's Ge You (known for To Live), Hong Kong's Rosamund Kwan (Once Upon a Time in China) and Hollywood's gravel-voiced perennial Donald Sutherland. Backed by the might of Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, Big Shot will try to do a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon without kung fu, swirling costumes or any of the standard chinoiserie?and on a measly $5 million budget...
...part, Columbia's intention is for Big Shot to appeal to even more than that massive audience, hoping that a Chinese film?even without fancy costumes or kung-fu kicks?will succeed overseas. "Modern China may have Starbucks, but it's still a fascinating place," says Sutherland, who plays a Western director coming to grips with the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. Filmed in Beijing's august Forbidden City, Big Shot critiques the consumerism sweeping the capital today. "Xiaogang captures the hilarious and tragic contradictions of Chinese society," says his star, "like no one else...
...Staff writer Michelle F. Kung can be reached at mkung@fas.harvard.edu...
...when Shu Qi went to the U.S. to talk with Taiwanese director Ang Lee. He was working on Crouching Tiger and wanted her in it. Shu Qi was Lee's initial choice for the role of Jen, the young beauty who steals the sword, the center of the kung fu epic's plot. "Physically, she's incredible," Lee enthused at the time. Shu Qi was on board?for eight weeks. Then manager Wong pulled her because he had committed her to a Japanese tea commercial for Coca-Cola. "She was supposed to shoot from April to November," Wong says...