SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Kung Fu Hip Hop Poster

This is a story about Chu Dong (Jordan Chan) who has to look after his partially-blind sister, Ya Ya (Wang Yue). In order to collect enough money for an operation to save her sight and to make ends meet, he sells trinkets and works as a mechanic during daytime.

His talent for dancing is discovered one night when his nifty moves outside a club is caught on camera by accident. The club’s deejay, Tina (Fan Bing Bing) is impressed as Chu Dong’s gyrations makes her fingers feel “resurrected”.

The club’s resident dance king and everybody’s darling, Shaoxiong (Poppin Hyun Joon, who is Korean superstar Rain’s choreographer and the holder of the Asian Dance King title) feels threatened when he learns about Chu Dong’s dancing skills.

Tina persuades Chu Dong to enter a dancing competition in order to pay her back the money that was taken from her handbag. Chu Dong decides to give it a try since he needs the money for his sister’s crucial operation. To enter the competition, he ropes in his garage pals (played by China dance group Kung Fu Pop) at the car workshop he works at to form his dance team, and call his group, "Kung Fu Kids". Chu Dong does not take too much time in training his group members to learn how to dance from the basic since all of them have kung fu backgrounds.

Shaoxiong also enters the contest as his boss has threatened him to enter the contest or else…

Jordan Chan does not disappoint but his performance lacks behind when compared to that of Poppin’s.

Only watch this movie if you are a dance enthusiast, otherwise, you will feel the nonsensical of disco lights and noise constantly flashing and banging at your face as the entire movie is about dancing.

Overall, it is another movie which tries to incorporate kung fu in something else but fails miserably. It also has poor product placement of Pepsi soft drink.

My ratings: 6 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Master Oogway (a tortoise who knows kung fu) summons Shifu only to tell him his prophecy of Tai Lung (Ian McShane) will escape to become a treat to the civilians, therefore, Oogway must select a new Dragon Warrior to defend the town. The whole village gathers to find out which of the Furious Five will be the Dragon Warrior only to see Po accidentally being selected as the chosen one.

Po and Shifu in Kung Fu Panda

After learning the prophecy of Tai Lung’s escaping, Shifu sends Zeng (Dan Fogler), the messenger goose to send a message to Commander Vachir (Michael Clarke Duncan), a Javan Rhinoceros to beef up the security by as much as twice but Vachir arrogantly says no one can escape his prison, with 1,000 soldiers guarding 1 prisoner. Unfortunately, Zeng carelessly drops a feather which enables Tai Lung to escape and easily trashes all of Vachir’s soldiers who try to stop him.

When Shifu learns from Zeng that Tai Lung has escaped, Shifu consults Oogway only to have Oogway strongly tells Shifu to believe Po is the chosen one and slowly nurture him like the peach tree. Oogway then passes away like dust in the air. While Po is upset by his clumsiness and his failure in his earlier training, it is Shifu who convinces Po to stay when Po decides to leave. Shifu discovers that Po is able to climb up to the highest kitchen cabinet just to steal some cookies and therefore uses food as a whole new way of training Po. When Po is finally equipped with the kung fu to fight Tai Lung, Shifu brings down the dragon scroll to Po only for both of them to realize the scroll is totally empty.

Po, Master Monkey, Master Tigress, Master Viper, Master Mantis and Master Crane

Knowing that Tai Lung is on his way, Shifu asks his students including Po to help the villagers to evacuate the place, believing he will be able to at least, momentarily holds off Tai Lung. Po meets his father, Mr. Ping (James Hong) who finally reveals to Po his secret ingredient’s secret — nothing. Po finally understand the secret behind the blank scroll, which is nothing but to believe in oneself. He boldly goes back to the palace in order to face Tai Lung. The fight between both of them doesn’t last very long, but like the entire show, is nevertheless hilarious. Po, somehow, manages to defeat Tai Lung and earns the respect of the Furious Five as well as Shifu.

Overall, this is one of the best animated movie and definitely the best so far this year. Great voice acting by Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, beautiful landscapes and background arts, what’s more, the dumplings and bowl of noodles look extremely real! Worth watching with the entire family.

My ratings: 9 out of 10.

Kung Fu Panda was in Mid Valley Megamall on May 23, 2008

Kids love to take photographs with Po, the Kung Fu Panda

Po, the panda in the movie Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda opens on June 6, 2008. If you haven’t view the trailer, check out Kung Fu Panda trailer here.

Thanks to my friend, Sheryne for sending me these lovely photographs.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Michael Angarano and Liu Yi Fei in "The Forbidden Kingdom"

In Forbidden Kingdom, American teenager Jason (Michael Angarano), who is obsessed with Chinese kung fu, always rent classic Chinese kung fu movies from an old Chinese man from a pawn shop. Inadvertent, he finds the legendary stick weapon of the Chinese sage and warrior, the Monkey King (Jet Li) in the pawn shop. A group of Southie uses a gun to force Jason to bring them to the pawn shop so that they can rob the money from the shop. After the leader of the Southie shoots the old man, the lost relic falls into Jason’s hand and after narrowly escaping to the roof of the building, Jason unexpectedly finds himself transported back to ancient China.

There, he meets the drunken kung fu master, Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), a resillient and skillful Silent Monk (Jet Li) and a vindictive beauty who always speak of herself as the third party, Golden Sparrow (Liu Yi Fei), who lead him on his quest to return the staff to its rightful owner, the Monkey King – imprisoned in stone by the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) for five hundred years. Along the way, Jason and gang meet the scores of Jade Warriors, Cult Killers and the deadly White Hair Demoness, Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing) as part of their journey to free the Monkey King.

While the movie has eye-popping, delightful-lighthearted and gravity-defying moments, the movie has many flaws as a result of poor editing. In the film, Li Bing Bing and Liu Yi Fei speak almost flawless English (probably through voice-editing) while Jackie Chan and Jet Li attempted to speak long sentences of English non-stop but fail nevertheless with certain words uttered from their mouth too difficult to comprehend without the subtitles. Michael Angarano meanwhile may not be the most suitable actor for the role he plays, his character seems like the biggest flaw of the film usually covers up by the silence of Jet Li’s Silent Monk and the unprecedented beauty of Liu Yi Fei’s Golden Sparrow. Sometimes, the movie looks like the adolescence of the movie Double Dragon mixed with the glumness of Mortal Kombat with little or no special effects at all. Overall, the kung fu moves of Jet Li and Jackie Chan and of Collin Chou who plays the Jade Warlord and the weak witchery of Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing) show that the movie needs more special effects, or does it? Perhaps, a lighthearted movie like this is natural unlike most Hollywood films which seem too superficial.

My ratings: 7 out of 10.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film revolves around an orphaned boy, Shi-Jie (Jay Chou) who grew up in a kung fu university but get thrown out of the university after making trouble at a nightclub. Eventually, he meets Wang-Li (Eric Tsang) who discovers Shi-Jie’s talents and Wang-Li is keen to make Shi-Jie his cash cow.

On the excuse of helping him search for his long lost parents, Wang-Li invited him to play basketball at the First University.

After joining the basketball team, Shi-Jie is often distracted by Li-Li (Charlene Choi), sister of Ting-Wei (Bo-Lin Chen), the captain of First University basketball team. In order to get the attention of Li-Li, Shi-Jie competes with Xiao-Lan (Baron Chen) but the conflicts between each other when Ting-Wei helps Shi Jie to combine his Kung-Fu with the important basketball techniques.

Jay Chou in Kungfu Dunk

After winning games after games, finally First University meets its major competitor in a team led by Lee Tien, a former captain of First University basketball team, who has betrayed them in the previous season. Lee Tien also used to taunt Ting-Wei by telling the tale of what he has done to Ting-Wei’s girlfriend. Ting-Wei has resorted to drink alcohol to overcome this.
Earlier, Wang-Li has made great efforts to persuade four grand masters from the kung fu university in which Shi-Jie grows up to take up a challenge at the last moment. With Ting-Wei and Xiao-Lan both injured, will Shi-Jie manage to overcome this obstacle and win the championship? Well, let me spoil it for you — First University initially loses the championship due to a bribed referee but Shi-Jie uses his Kung Fu to freeze time and reverse it to win the championship.

Kung Fu Dunk is a way better movie than Jay Chou’s previous efforts in Initial D, though his Cantonese has not improved much. Perhaps, with the profits from the box office, Jay Chou should after all, have a make-over or something. Both, Bo-Lin Chen and Baron Chen overshadowed Jay in the movie as they are better-looking in every sense, making Jay looks very much like a cow dung. Perhaps, the movie should be name Kung Fu Dung?

My ratings: 7 out of 10. With a $10 million budget, Kung Fu Dunk doesn’t even have a decent babe in it makes you think where all the money goes to? However, despite that and the bad storyline, Kung Fu Dunk excels as more than just another film that is inspired by a manga.

Many of us know movies that are based on books and novels or computer games are usually boring unless a little twist is added to the film. Films like Hitman and Beowulf have no storyline, thus, the entire film is based on the cinematography. Therefore, in The Forbidden Kingdom, don’t expect the tale of the Monkey King to be anywhere near the actual story.

This movie reminds me of The Myth and how horrible The Myth was with different races and culture blend together in that movie, the storyline and cinematography somehow fail to entertain. Hopefully The Forbidden Kingdom prevails the only bad “Jackie Chan” movie that I have watched.

Yahoo has recently released 6 posters of The Forbidden Kingdom displaying all the main actors in the posters. One particular poster which I like very much is Li Bing Bing with her white hair almost looks like its coated with gold as the lights shine from behind.

Check out The Forbidden Kingdom trailers.

(Via Filmplosion)

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