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Kung Fu Hilarious

The spectacular Stephen Chow is at it again. Just yesterday I found out about Kung Fu Hustle, his latest comedy/action effort.

Stephen Chow

The use of “Ballroom Blitz” (in the American trailer, the original, by the band Sweet) is absolutely brilliant. And the action director was Yuen Woo-ping, who also choreographed the fight sequences for the Kill Bill and Matrix movies (among dozens of others). Stateside we’ll be seeing it on the big screens March 18th. Last night I was talking to a friend about other movie news. There’s a whole slew of films coming out this year that I’d like to see (Jonathan has a decent roundup here). I’m not terribly excited about the upcoming Fantastic Four flick, but apparently a previous attempt had been made about a decade ago, and never released. My friend managed to see a copy, either at a comic book con or at the comic book store he used to work at. Sounds like it was a good thing it never saw the light of day. I just had to re-post the below trivia tidbit from imdb (the last line is the kicker):

The movie contains one of the all-time great “bad movie” moments. Doctor Doom’s henchmen come to kidnap Alicia Masters. They sneak up behind her and do the standard “chloroform rag over the mouth” bit to render her unconscious. And we get the standard point-of-view shot from her, seeing the bottom half of the screen covered by the rag and then the rest of the image going from clear to fuzzy to black, as to show us what she is seeing as it happens. Pretty standard for numerous low-budget action movies. One problem though. The character of Alicia Masters is completely, totally, and in all ways, blind.

Stellar. That’s the single biggest continuity error I have ever come across. Though I do recall seeing Ice Pirates with my Dad when I was a kid, and during one futuristic spaceship sequence we could suddenly see a current era parking lot in one edge of the frame, complete with parked cars. In higher quality film news, we’re very excited about the upcoming Wallace & Gromit full length, which I’ve previously mentioned. But now there’s a new trailer/featurette online…which the little man insists upon watching over and over and over again.
Bonus: It’s strange to wake up and discover I strongly desire something I didn’t even have a name for before I went to bed. Via Knitting in Public, I give you over thirty versions of the Clapotis. I wish one of them was mine.

another Stephen Chow shot