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[Lilly Solo]

There is an opinion in some quarters that martial arts movies are violent. Many are, to be sure, but the best ones have the same relationship to violence that Astaire and Rogers have to romance: Nobody believes they take it seriously, but it gives them an excuse for some wonderful choreography.

Lurking beneath the surface of most good martial arts movies is a comedy. Sometimes it bubbles up to the top, as in Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle." The joke is based not so much on humor as on delight: The characters have overcome the laws of gravity and physics. To be able to leap into the air, spin in a circle and kick six, seven, eight, nine enemies before landing in a graceful crouch is enormously gratifying.

Realists grumble that such things are impossible. Well, of course they are. The thing about Astaire and Rogers is that they were really doing it, in long unbroken takes, and we could see that they were. Stephen Chow uses concealed wires, special effects, trick camera angles, trampolines and anything else he can think of. We know it, and he knows we know it. But the trickery doesn't diminish his skill, because despite all the wires and effects in the world, a martial arts actor must be a superb athlete. Hang your average movie star on the end of a wire and he'll look like he's just been reeled in by the Pequod.

"Kung Fu Hustle" is Chow's seventh film as a director and 61st job as an actor, counting TV. He is 41 years old, and has been busy. His only other film seen by me is "Shaolin Soccer" (2002), the top-grossing action comedy in Hong Kong history. Purchased by Miramax, it was held off the market for two years, cut by 30 minutes, and un-dubbed: Yes, Harvey Weinstein replaced the English dialogue with subtitles. The movie opened a year ago, inspiring a review in which I gave my most rational defense of the relativity theory of star ratings.

Now comes "Kung Fu Hustle." This is the kind of movie where you laugh occasionally and have a silly grin most of the rest of the time. It must have taken Chow a superhuman effort to avoid singing a subtitled version of "Let Me Entertain You" -- or, no, I've got a better example -- of "Make 'em Laugh," the Donald O'Connor number in "Singin' in the Rain." In that one O'Connor crashed into boards and bricks, wrestled with a dummy, ran up one wall and through another one, and sang the whole time. Stephen Chow doesn't sing, but he's channeling the same spirit.

The movie is centered in a Shanghai slum called Pig Sty Alley. It's ruled by a dumpy landlady (Yuen Qiu), who marches around in slippers and has one of those cartoon cigarettes that always stays in her mouth no matter what happens. Shanghai is terrorized by the Axe Gang, which mostly leaves Pig Sty Alley alone because the pickings are too slim. But when counterfeit gang members are confronted by neighborhood kung-fu fighters, the real gang moves in to take revenge. The Axe Gang doesn't exactly blend in: They all wear black suits and top hats, and carry axes. That'll make you stand out. I am reminded of Jack Lemmon's story about the time he saw Klaus Kinski buying a hatchet at Ace Hardware.

The war between the Pig Stygians and the Axe Gang is an excuse for a series of sequences in which the stylized violence reaches a kind of ecstasy. Of course nothing we see is possible, but the movie doesn't even pretend it's possible; maybe everyone is having matching hallucinations. One of the jokes is that completely unlikely characters, including the landlady and local middle-age tradesmen, turn out to be better warriors than the professionals.

Chow not only stars and directs, but co-wrote and co-produced. We get the sense that his comedies are generated in the Buster Keaton spirit, with gags being worked out on the spot and everybody in orbit around the star, who is physically skilled, courageous and funny. Chow plays Sing, also the name of his character in "Shaolin Soccer" and at least six other movies. This time he's an imposter, pretending to be an Axe Gang member in order to run a shakedown racket in Pig Sty Alley. Imagine how inconvenient it is when the real Axe Gang shows up and he's in trouble with everyone. By the end of the movie, he's going one-and-one with The Beast (Leung Siu Lung), in a kung-fu extravaganza. The joke is that most of what Sing knows about kung fu he learned by reading a useless booklet sold to him by a con man when he was a child.

It's possible you don't like martial arts movies, whether funny or not. Then why have you read this far? Or, you prefer the elegant and poetic epics like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or "House of Flying Daggers." Those are not qualities you will find in "Kung Fu Hustle." When I saw it at Sundance, I wrote that it was "like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meet Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny." You see how worked up you can get, watching a movie like this.

Hot off of Shaolin Soccer, funnyman Stephen Chow was just getting warmed up for what may be the crowning achievement of his career, a film that pays homage to cinema in general and kung fu movies in particular. Part kung-fu, part cartoon, Kung Fu Hustle raises the kung fu comedy bar to new heights.

Hong King cinema is getting a makeover at the hands of writer/director/actor Stephen Chow. The Shanghai-born filmmaker and self-professed martial arts addict is one of the hottest names in Hong Kong cinema, having starred in more than 50 films and directed seven. Chows name in the west is only just getting mainstream recognition from the success of Shaolin Soccer in 2001. The quirky action-comedy film mixed kung fu, soccer and outlandish visual effects, producing what might best be described as Shaw Brothers meets The Matrix by way of the Looney Tunes. Soccer made important ripples with critics and enthusiastic cult audiences, creating enough buzz to open the door for his new follow-up film, Kung Fu Hustle (Gong fu in Asia, opening April 8 on a limited basis).

With Hustle, Chow again goes back to classic Asian martial arts films for his basic inspiration, but then twists expectations by taking his signature, skewed use of visual effects and humor to an even more heightened level. In the film, he plays Sing, a small time thief yearning to join the ruthless Axe Gang. Looking to become worthy, he attempts to extort the residents at the apartments known as Pig Sty Alley. He accidentally kicks off a turf war between the residents and the Axe gang, leaving him stuck in the middle of an outrageous battle of legendary martial art proportions. In helping him achieve the films distinct look and visual effects sequences, Chow returned to Centro Digital Pictures in Hong Kong, the vfx house that helped him create Shaolin Soccer. Visual effects producer, Tommy Tom says they happily accepted the challenge of collaborating again with the filmmaker to bring his gravity defying ideas to life.

Four months before the shooting, Centros vfx team started pre-production meetings with Stephen Chow, Tom explains. Stephen was confident that Centro could bring the visual effects of Kung Fu Hustle to a new level, so we discussed the concept and possibility of the vfx during those meetings. After we had a rough idea of how Stephen would like the vfx to be, concept artwork was developed by Centro Creative Art Department. We also started to develop our software for creating certain effects and animation tests. Having worked together before, Tom says Hustle was easier to develop from the start. One advantage of working with Stephen on this film from Shaolin, was that he understands what effects can and cant do now. We worked with him on Shaolin Soccer and we think hes a very talented director and a really fast learner when it comes to special effects. When he was shooting Shaolin, I feel that he didnt feel as safe and as confident in using effects. Now, I think he has confidence with us and in using effects as well. Also, when he would suggest what he wants to do and we think it was quite impossible to achieve, we would talk to him and he would listen. Hes the smartest director that Ive ever worked with and he actually listens to us! he chuckles.

Due to the intense visual effects sequences blocked in the film, Tom and other Centro colleagues made sure they were present on set during the shoot so they could help facilitate the post-production process as early as possible. We did read the script before the production began and we had many meetings before the shooting to discuss about the treatment of the visual effects. He will always listened to us whenever there was an effects shot. When there was an effects shot, we would have a meeting first and we would suggest to him how we needed him to shoot the effects shot. Sometimes, he even asked our opinion with other shots. He will not always accept our opinion and he would always make the final decision, but he would digest our input and listen. Stephen was also filled with creative ideas during the shooting, so there were visual effects shots that were improvised along the way. He loves to improvise, not even just on effects, but also with the script Hes a thinker.

While Hustle is primarily a martial arts film, Chow also introduces a myriad of other styles and a strong comedic tone that meant Centro had an equally diverse array of visual effects to create. Theres a lot of wire work, CG stunts and effects sequences. We shot some scenes in chroma key and composited it with a live background. There are some shots that are 100% CGI, like a shot in the casino where Stephen wanted us to break all of the casino up with a kind of kung fu, called Lion Roar. Its almost like a sound effect. He wanted us to break all the walls, so we had to create the scene totally with CGI. The main difference between this one and Shaolin Soccer, was that this one is full 2K resolution, Cineon tech scan. This is one is a step higher for us. We did work like it on Kill Bill, but this one has a lot more effects shots compared to Kill Bill. We did a lot of preparation for this one and revised the pipeline in order to work in a 10-bit film. We also did the digital intermediary for this movie, so the whole movie was scanned using a Thomson Spirit Datacine scanner and it was color corrected in Quantel IQ.

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