Shaolin Movie Full Movie
Nguyet Mahrenholz
"Shaolin Soccer" is like a poster boy for my theory of the star rating system. Every month or so, I get an anguished letter from a reader wanting to know how I could possibly have been so ignorant as to award three stars to, say, "HIDALGO" while dismissing, say, "Dogville" with two stars. This disparity between my approval of kitsch and my rejection of angst reveals me, of course, as a superficial moron who will do anything to suck up to my readers.
What these correspondents do not grasp is that to suck up to my demanding readers, I would do better to praise "Dogville." It takes more nerve to praise pop entertainment; it's easy and safe to deliver pious praise of turgid deep thinking. It's true, I loved "Anaconda" and did not think "The United States of Leland" worked, but does that mean I drool at the keyboard and prefer man-eating snakes to suburban despair?
Not at all. What it means is that the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if "Hellboy" is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to "Mystic River," you're asking if it's any good compared to "The Punisher." And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if "Superman" (1978) is four, then "Hellboy" is three and "The Punisher" is two. In the same way, if "American Beauty" gets four stars, then "Leland" clocks in at about two.
And that is why "Shaolin Soccer," a goofy Hong Kong action comedy, gets three stars. It is piffle, yes, but superior piffle. If you are even considering going to see a movie where the players zoom 50 feet into the air and rotate freely in violation of everything Newton held sacred, then you do not want to know if I thought it was as good as "Lost in Translation."
"Shaolin Soccer" has become a legend. It's the top-grossing action comedy in Hong Kong history, and was a big hit at Toronto 2002 (although for some reason I didn't see it; I must have been sidetracked by "Bowling for Columbine"). Miramax bought it, and shelved it for two years, apparently so Harvey Weinstein could cut it by 30 minutes, get rid of the English dubbing, restore the subtitles, and open it one week after his own "Kill Bill Vol. 2." To put this movie up against Tarantino is like sending Simon Cowell against William H. Rehnquist, but Simon has his fans.
The movie has been directed and co-written by Stephen Chow, who stars as Sing, a martial arts master turned street cleaner, who uses his skills in everyday life and is in love with Mui (Vicki Zhao), who sells buns from her little street stand and combs her hair forward to conceal a complexion that resembles pizza with sausage and mushrooms. It is a foregone conclusion that by the end of this film Mui will be a startling beauty. Less predictable is that Sing recruits seven soccer players from his former monastery to form a soccer team.
His inspiration to do this is Fung (Ng Man Tat), known as the Golden Leg because he was, years ago, a great soccer hero until his leg was broken by Hung (Patrick Tse Yin). Hung now rules the soccer world as owner of Team Evil (yes, Team Evil), while Fung drags his leg like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It is another foregone conclusion that Team Evil will meet the Shaolin soccer team formed by Fung and Sing in a thrilling match played before what looks like a vast crowd that has been borrowed from a computer game.
The game doesn't follow any known rules of soccer, except that there is a ball and a goal. As the players swoop high into the air and do acrobatics before kicking the ball, I was reminded more of Quidditch. There is also the matter of ball velocity. The players can kick the ball so hard that it actually catches fire as it rockets through the air, or digs a groove in the ground as it plows toward the goal.
Since the game is impossible and it is obvious Team Evil will lose, there's not much suspense, but there is a lot of loony comedy, a musical number, and the redemption of the Poor Spotted Little Bun Girl. As soccer comedies go, then, I say three stars. It's nowhere near as good as "Bend It Like Beckham," of course -- but "Beckham" is in a different genre, the coming-of-age female-empowerment film. It's important to keep these things straight.
In 1979, my cousin took me to 42nd Street to see some kung fu movies and I was blown away. We started going every weekend after that. There was a movie directed by Chang Chen called Five Deadly Venoms [78] and when I saw it, I was totally geeked out. The plot was crazy, and the characters . . . The Toad, the Lizard, the Scorpion, the Snake, the Centipede! They seemed like superheroes. And there were no guns or weapons, just hand-to-hand fighting.
Every genre of film has a group of movies that has outgrown the medium over the years. These movies become staples of their respective categories but more importantly, they are looked upon by outside forces as something powerful. Something that has inspired different artforms or even the next generation of creators. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin may be the initial film that comes to mind when I say Shaw Brothers Studios, and for good reason. Directed by legendary filmmaker Lau Kar Leung and starring one of the most notable names in Kung Fu cinema in Gordon Liu, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin has become a must-watch for martial arts and cinema lovers alike. Until only recently, I had only seen the sequel which is a vastly different comedy.
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin sees Gordon Liu as a rebellious villager wary of the dangerous militia who governs the area. After his friends are murdered, he seeks asylum in the Shaolin temple. He soon decides that in order to save his people he must learn Kung Fu, not just to fight the militia, but to teach the people to defend themselves. Before he can do any of this, he must pass through 35 chambers of the temple, each housing a different test.
Even when he is finished with the chambers there are still lessons to learn. The abbot and others in charge decide that Liu is ready for a promotion and new responsibilities, but one monk steps up to disagree. It is quickly realized that the monk did not mean to antagonize him. When he bests Liu in a fight, Liu thanks him for the challenge and declines the promotion. This continuous growth in defeat is a highlight of the story.
The temple is where all of the best moments happen but perhaps the film spends too long in this setting. There are only twenty minutes left in the film when Liu leaves the temple. This is it, this is the driving force of the story, and there is barely any time to subtly accomplish the ending. In this final act, the film introduces four new characters before the final battle, I remember almost nothing about them because fifteen to twenty minutes is not nearly enough time to get to know them.
It is lessons like this that make not just the action but the ideology of martial arts so alluring. Every single test that Liu passes is later applied in his later ordeals. Tests that are passed with strength, focus, patience, or even consistency are never taken for granted and help shape Liu into a mature and balanced person. As Liu goes on to teach Kung Fu to those in need one would hope that his experiences and instructions would be passed on as well.
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I watched in France a kung-fu movie in the early 80's (I believe) of which I do not remember much except one specific scene. The movie was part of the trend "a more or less random guy is taught kung-fu and becomes a better person" (the 1984 Karate Kid kind, and similar ones).
The scene I remember from this one is that the hero (a grown man, I do not remember if he was Asian or American) learns kung-fu (or a derivative) in an Asian monastery and the final test consists of him holding a red hot bowl (about 80 cm wide) in (or rather on) his forearms (not hands). He must transport the bowl over a few meters, during that time some signs on the bowl are burned into his forearms (I think he chooses the ones he wants when grabbing the bowl).
I am aware that this is just one scene from a movies like there were many, but it was quite significant (it stayed in my memory for all these years) and the fact that the movie was broadcasted on French TV suggests that it must have been at least quite well known.
Kung Fu is an American action-adventure martial arts western drama television series starring David Carradine. The series follows the adventures of Kwai Chang Caine (portrayed by David Carradine as an adult, Keith Carradine as a teenager, and Radames Pera as a young boy), a Shaolin monk who travels through the American Old West, armed only with his spiritual training and his skill in martial arts, as he seeks Danny Caine, his half-brother
The series aired on ABC from October 1972 to April 1975 for a total of 63 episodes. Kung Fu was preceded by a full-length (90 minutes, with commercial breaks) feature television pilot, an ABC Movie of the Week, which was broadcast on February 22, 1972. The series became one of the most popular television programs of the early 1970s, receiving widespread critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release
Vengeance might be the bloodiest Chang Cheh film Ive personally seen. Most of his films have some kind of heroic bloodshed.
The Chinese Boxer has a great bloody fight sequence in it. Thats a Jimmy Wang Yu film. It is one that inspired Kill Bills HOBL sequence.
Any of the Lone Wolf and Cub samurai films are bloody. My favorite one is Babycart To Hades.
Speaking of the Chinese Super Ninjas (aka Five Element Ninja), IVL will be releasing a half-arsed remaster later this year, and Media Blasters, who have promised to fix all the mistakes IVL keeps making, also has this on their release list. No date yet, though.