We had the pleasure of interviewing Hong Kong cinema trendsetter and legend Tsui Hark (the man behind Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain, Once Upon A Time In China, Blade, Peking Opera Blues plus much more… not enough can be said so let’s not say too much!) who was kind enough to share with us his thoughts on the past and the now, including on Detective Dee: Mystery Of The Phantom Flame (available now on UK dvd and Blu Ray).
The moment has come and the waiting is over, The Magnificent Trio that is Podcast On Fire re-unites for the first time in 8 months! Mike Banner sacrifices sleep to join Stoo and Ken for a bit of formal and informal chat about various bits and pieces including Last Movies Watched covering the inappropriate Happy Hour, City Of Violence and Mike has gone on his patented Shaw run! Mike also gives us a glimpse into his new mostly POF free and cold life but it comes with the advantages of meeting a legendary Hong Kong director on the streets of Seoul. Dance routines are a big disadvantage to life in Korea though…
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Note; This is when I first started reviewing, when glancing over it looks pretty dire. I apologise now for completly leaving Brigitte Lin out of the review. A possible re-review in the future.
Plot (HKL Edition): Featuring an all-star cast led by acrobatics genius Yuen Biao, ‘Zu Warriors’ depicts the adventures of a young solider caught in a war between two rival armies. To escape certain death he takes sanctuary in a cave within the ominous Zu Mountain, where he becomes entangled in a battle with supernatural forces threatening to destroy the world.
Guided by a mysterious swordsman (Adam Cheng), Biao must harness the power of two mystical swords; the only weapons on Earth capable of defeating his omnipotent enemy. Read More
Plot: Ling Choi San (Leslie Cheung) is a humble tax collector who arrives in a small village to collect the tax from some of the local businesses. Unsurprisingly, no one is willing to give him shelter for the night, so he decides to travel through the forest to the Lan yeuk temple, which turns out to be abandoned and haunted.
Whilst staying there for the night he meets a Taoist Swordsman Yin Chek Hsia (Wu Ma), who warns him about the evil sprits. Unable to sleep Ling wonders off into the forest where he meets the beautiful Nip Siu Sihn (Joey Wong), with whom he falls in love with.
Unfortunately, Siu Sihn turns out to be a ghost, bound for all eternity by a hideous tree spirit (Lau Siu-Ming) with an incredibly long tongue that wraps itself round its victims and sucks the life right out of there body, but this wont stop Choi San… Read More
Plot: Brainwashed by his masters to feel no pain, Tsui (Jet Li) is a member of China’s elite 701 Squad – a merciless team of assassins. But Tsui wants out. Escaping to Hong Kong, he creates a new identity for himself and attempts to lead a normal life.
When the city is rocked by a series of gangland murders, each hit bears all the hallmarks of the 701 Squad assassination. Their master plan is global domination of the drugs trade and, as their killing spree takes it’s mounting toll, the local cops grow ever more powerless to stop them. Tsui realizes only he can end the Squad’s reign of terror. Read More
Plot: Ho (Ti Lung) was sent to prison after the death of Shing (Waise Lee), although now he’s given the chance to be released from prison. Chance being that he accepts to work as an undercover agent, his mission to hunt down his master, Lung (Dean Shek) and have him arrested under the suspicion of counterfeiting. Although it turns out that Ko, Lungs right hand man, is counterfeiting the cash and frames Lung for murder.
Lung flee’s to America where he takes cover in a local church with his friend, Sam (Whom also is a ex-Triad). Yet Ko’s man have followed him. Lung manages to escape alive, but ends up going insane due to these situations.
Kit (Leslie Cheung) is still an undercover cop, who is actually working on the same case as Ho. But, Billie (Kit’s undercover name) has actually gotten close to Lung by dating his daughter, Peggy. If your wondering, yes Kit is still with Jackie and she’s pregnant!
Now with Ho meets an old friend, who is a comic book artist. He’s obsessed with Mark (from A Better Tomorrow 1). He even has collected the jacket he wore the night he died. The coat was known to contain over 40 bullet holes! Ho soon finds out from the artist that Mark actually has a twin brother named Ken (Chow Yun-Fat). But he lives in America running a Chinese Restaurant.
Ken seems quite harmless until one day where he as to fight off some Americans whom trying to force Ken into paying them protection money. Ken refuses and ends up shooting one person and embarrassing the other.
Ken soon finds out about Lung (also his master) turning insane and finds out that he is being kept in an local asylum. Ken knows that locking him up in a padded room wont help, so Ken takes Lung home. Both Ken and Lung return to Hong Kong to meet Ho and Kit. Now these four men plan to finish Ko and his counterfeiting business for good. Read More
Plot: Wealthy property director – Tsang Siu-Chi (Eric Tsang) and his contractor Jacky (Jacky Cheung) managed to buy two of four property’s. When he buy’s all four he plans on knocking them down and replacing them with a grand hotel. Yet his arch rival Hung Tai-Po (Sammo Hung) managed to buy the last two. Both developers wanting to make this grand hotel, they decide to agree on a 50/50 purpose.
When returning home Jacky lets in on a scheme which could land them a nice one billion dollars. The prince of kuwait, Allabarba (George Lam) is coming to Hong Kong to look for a tender for his properties there. Jacky has also done his research, the prince was a menace when he was young never paying attention to his father until after his passing, now he deeply regrets anytime he missed with his father. Now Jacky’s plan for Tsang is to show the prince the strong relationship between him and his father!
The only problem is that Tsang hasn’t seen his father for over ten years. Tsang goes off to find his father with his snobby wife (Carol Cheng), they soon find out that he is living with Tsang’s sister, Gigi (Rosamund Kwan) and her husband (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Tsang tries to sway father Tsang (Richard Ng) to come live with them, but he refuses as he loves his simple life.
Tsang then pull’s out the big guns and plea’s for his father to stay with him since that he only haves a month and a half to live. yes, he’s got cancer! As you can expect the big guns convinced father Tsang to go home with Tsang and his Wife.
Tsang plans to throw a big banquet for the Prince and make it out to be a birthday party for his father too!
When everything seems to be going to plan, we find out that Jacky is secretly working for Hung Tai-Po and he’s going to help him convince to sign the contract over to him instead of Tsang… Read More
The Podcast On Fire Network aims to provide a large, continually expanding overview of Asian cinema. On the flagshow Podcast On Fire, the big guns out of Hong Kong cinema gets a spotlight through discussion and review while the remainder of the network shows gives you insight into Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese cinema and the history of adult oriented Hong Kong cinema!