After topped the local box office last December, fifteenth century Thai martial arts action film "Ong Bak 2" from actor-director Tony Jaa, now is ready to entertain you once again with its wider range of martial arts and perilous stunts in DVD version. “Ong Bak” is the film that launched Jaa glamorous career, where he’d demonstrated the amazing Thai-boxing with all of the stunning moves and acrobatics, and there’s all performed very naturally, there are no wires, no CGI, just perfectly skilled performers executing intentionally ferocious, graphic moves. Now, the Muay Thai fighter is back to the arena with the successor, “Ong Bak 2,” which actually not a direct sequel to the hugely popular first film. But in “Ong Bak 2,” Jaa was not only served as the leading actor here but also as the director for the first time of his career. "Ong-Bak 2" is the gigantic project features Tony Jaa as the captain who has developed his own screenplay, it also has become the most expensive Thai film ever made with the total budget 300 million baht, which is about three times what the studio Sahamongkol Film International wanted to spend.
In the film, Ting is a boy who aspires to grow up to be like his father, Lord Sihadecho (Santisuk Promsiri), a gallant and loyal warrior. The treacherous and power-craving Lord Rajasena (Saranyoo Wongkrajang) plots to seize total control of the country. He sends out vicious assassins do murder Lord Sihadecho's family and his loyal soldiers. The only survivor from this massacre is Ting, who manages to escape with deep vengeance in his heart. Ting is then captured and almost killed by slave traders before being saved by Chernang (Sorapong Chatree), leader of the renowned “Garuda's Wing” guerilla band, who takes Ting in as his adoptive son and raises him up as a bandit. Ting grows up excelling in all kinds of martial arts and war strategies including man-to-man fighting, boxing, incantation, and skills of such war weapons as sword, saber, club, and explosive.With all forms of martial arts instilled, Ting (Tony Jaa) eagers to vanquish the vengeance in his heart by killing Lord Rajasena with his own hands. But he must first get pass Rajasena's highly-skilled and vicious killers.The battle leads to the origin of the scar of vengeance that comes at a price of one's blood, flesh and soul. Only unwavering faith can save Ting’s life.
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The first part was the highest-grossing film shown in China last year, taking more than 300 million yuan across the country and 700 million yuan around the world, and it seems that the second part will do the same or more this year. “Red Cliff 2” which centers on the epic Battle of Red Cliff during China's Three Kingdoms period (220-265) is John Woo’s ambitious epic that has featured impressive battle scenes, including one in which 2,000 ships are burned. The second part movie also has rushed past the 100 million yuan ($14.6 million) threshold in its five-day opening weekend in China only. It was very clearly that this "M:I II" director wanted to make a Chinese-language blockbuster that rivaled the Hollywood productions he worked on. And the Hong Kong native filmmaker obviously succeeded to putting the "epic" in "historical epic" in the second installment of his two-part series based on the famous ancient Chinese battle of the same name. Following a legendary story about a fight between the imperial army and two allied warring states, which won because of their superior military strategy despite being outnumbered. Now, the epic historical film is ready to purchase on the DVD version, so get ready to re-experiencing the "Red Cliff" part 2 with its more battles, more drama, and even more jaw dropping action.
The ambitious Prime Minister Cao Cao, by using the Emperor as his puppet, waged war on a kingdom in the west, Xu, ruled by the emperor’s uncle, Liu Bei. Cao Cao’s ultimate goal was to wipe out all the kingdoms and install himself as Emperor to a unified China. Liu Bei sent his military advisor Zhuge Liang as an envoy to the Wu Kingdom in the south, trying to persuade its ruler Sun Quan into joining forces. There he met Wu’s Viceroy Zhou Yu, and the two became friends amidst this uneasy alliance.
Enraged to learn that the two kingdoms have become allies, Cao Cao sent an army of eight hundred thousand soldiers and two thousand ships down south, hoping to kill two birds with one stone. Cao Cao’s army set up camp at Crow Forest, across the Yangtze River from Red Cliff, where the allies were stationed.
With the food supply running short, and the army vastly outnumbered by Cao Cao’s, the allies seemed doomed. Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang had to rely on their combined wisdom to turn the tide of battle. Numerous battles of wits and forces, on land and on water, eventually culminated into the most famous battle in Chinese history, where two thousand ships were burned, and the course of China’s history was changed forever. That was the Battle of Red Cliff.
MOVIE CAFE REVIEW:
While the first part was inclined more on storytelling, launching and interlacing together a colorful cast of characters, in this sequel, it pointing the focus on the final showdown, the epical battle that showed off Woo's mastery of some of the largest and most complex scenes in modern Chinese cinema. The war scenes are as impressive in scale as in detail. It probably the biggest, the longest, and the most extended battle scene you have ever seen in a Chinese movie. One of the most entertaining parts in this film is also seeing some cunning tricks played by both opponents, including the famous 'Borrowing the arrows using the scarecrows', which was one of the main highlight in Three Kingdoms. It also showed the rebel soldiers making bombs by packing explosives into clay urns, and extracting the oil from fish to use as an accelerant.
With facilitate from California-based CGI company, The Orphanage, Woo captures the splendor of the combat sequences best known to Chinese audiences — like the rebels burning the imperial army's fleet and sending in boats staffed with straw dummies to attract a sea of arrows.
The only pitfall is that the battle's dazzleness overshadows Woo's characters, executed by strong presentations by Cannes-winning Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai as the rebel leader Zhou Yu; China's Zhang Fengyi as the imperial prime minister Cao Cao; and Japanese-Taiwanese heartthrob Takeshi Kaneshiro as the rebel military strategist Zhuge Liang.
The director also shows a penchant for melodrama when he sends Zhou's wife, played by Taiwanese model Lin Chi-ling, to seduce Cao. But the side plot only serves to bog down the narrative and delay the spectacular climax.
In conclusion, everyone should give Red cliff a try. It is entertaining with the intensity in it. It also quite exceptional, somewhat different from other war films. Those, who had experienced the previous part, absolutely should watch this because you will see Woo’s signature stamped in a lot of action sequences, which were muffled somewhat in the first installment.
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Portrait of a Beauty is a 2008 South Korean film directed by Jeon Yoon-soo. Adapted from the novel Painter of the Wind by Lee Jeong-myeong, the film portrays Joseon-era painter Shin Yoon-bok (better known by his pen name, Hyewon) as a being a woman disguised as a man. Sin Yoon-bok is a painter from the 18th century who is famous for his erotic and satirical paintings. In particular, ‘Beauty Island’ or ‘Miindo’ is a representative Korean belle painting similar in its mystery to Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring.’ However, except for a family pedigree, no documents relating to the painter's life exists in the present day. “Portrait of a Beauty” aka “Miindo,” is a film that was based on a fictional story about Shin Yoon-bok’s prohibited love affair with the model of the miindo, and the price he had to pay with the vindictive punishment he received and the destruction of his documents.
Born to a family of established court painters, seven-year-old Yun-jeong is a young girl gifted at painting. However, the pressure is on her brother to carry on the proud family tradition, as women aren’t allowed to become professional painters. While her brother trains to take his place in the court, Yun-jeong helps him out by secretly painting for him. The little girl’s life is turned upside down when her brother kills himself.
In order to preserve the family honor, she is forced to take her brother’s name and lives as a man. Yun-bok’s genius and talent captures the heart of another great master of the time, Kim Hong-do. But her daring depictions of women are condemned by the royal institute as obscene. Yun-bok meets Kang-mu and falls deeply in love. For the first time, she feels the strong desire to abandon everything she has built and simply be a woman in front of the man she loves. Kang-mu sacrifices all for his love as well. Kim Hong-do, who loved the genius of his best student, ends up loving everything about her, and Seol-hwa, a Gisaeng at the courtesan house, possesses a love for Hong-do that turns into fatal jealousy. The secret behind Shin Yun-bok’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Beauty, is finally revealed after 250 years of silence.
A major television network has also followed suit by launching a drama series of the same title based on the novel. Both the novel and the drama are based on a wild supposition that Hyewon was a woman disguised as a man. This film also will paint him as a woman who trying to hide as a man, as a way to overcome the discrimination in heavily Neo-Confucian Joseon. This recent trend that depicted this painter as a woman, might be the result of his girlish penname “Hyewon” which meaning “a garden full with orchids” and his frequent portrayals of women. “The Portrait of a Beauty" itself seems to be a latecomer in the Hyewon frenzy, but the director Jeon who well known with his blockbuster "Le Grand Chef" (2007) which sold about 3 million tickets, set about the project several months earlier than the television adaptation.
Some Special Features included in the disc:
- Making of
- Production Design Featurette
- Costume Design Featurette
- Deleted Scenes with Director Commentary
- Poster Shoot
- Music Video
- Trailer
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Set in the 1930s where guns and knives were rampant on a train, a miniature version of the kaleidoscopic and lawless Manchurian desert with various different ethnic groups entangled, three Korean men struggling through the turbulent times encounter each other by fate.
Do-won (JUNG Woo-sung) is a hunter who hunts anything for money including criminals with rewards on their heads. Chang-yi (LEE Byung-hun) is the leader of a group of bandits. He cannot stand to be second best. Tae-goo (SONG Kang-ho) is a self-commando train robber with nine lives. The three strangers start off on a chase across the continent to take possession of the strange map Tae-goo discovers while robbing the train. With different speculations on a mysterious map, the Japanese army and bandits also end up joining in the chase. In the midst of a great, unpredictable, mixed-up battle, who will stand in the end as the winner?
This Korea's biggest film of 2008, acclaimed kimchi western "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" now comes to DVD with sky-high anticipation and buzz, almost nine months after the Kim Ji-Woon directed film conquered the Korean cinemas.
Kim Jee-woon, who has an impressive track record of having successfully tackled a wide range of genres, from sports comedy (The Foul King) to horror (A Tale of Two Sisters) and European-style film noir (A Bittersweet Life), now turns his sight on the western. As one can surmise from the title, the movie is intended as a conscious homage to Sergio Leone's Eastwood triptych.
There is a lot of action in this film and it is very stylish and well choreographed but it is incredibly over the top, it goes from believable to completely ludicrous without pausing but as long as you go with the flow it is immensely enjoyable to watch. That said some of the the action scenes are too long and well done as they are they get a bit boring with the film perhaps being over-long for what it contains. The humour is brilliant, mostly coming from the antics of The Weird, as you'd expect, and that character is what makes this a good film, when he isn't involved it starts to take itself seriously and becomes a little dead, too much style not enough substance. It isn't a comedy though, the humour is spaced out between the action and violence with the plot being developed in a few interesting ways along the way.
Special Features:
Special Edition of The Good, The Bad, The Weird DVD comes with both the Korean Theatrical Cut and International Cut of the film, plus 181 minutes of special features:
Disc 1
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird Korean Theatrical Cut (136min)
- Audio Commentary by Director, Cinematographer, Art Director
Disc 2
- The Good, The Bad, The Weird International Cut (129min)
- Audio Commentary by Director, Song Kang Ho, Lee Byung Hun, Jung Woo Sung
Disc 3
- Making Of
- Interview with Director & Cast
- Cinematography, Lighting, Action, and Sound Featurette
- Production Design, Costume, and Set Featurette
- Deleted Scenes with Audio Commentary
- Character Featurette
- Trailer
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