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John Woo / News / 1999 / August |
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[15 .08.1999] Mission
Impossible 2 and other John Woo / Chow Yun-fat related [22 .08.1999] Ten Thousand Bullets - The John Woo Book and another possible film project (Dirty 30), and another look at Hard Boiled. Mission Impossible 2 and other news E! online hase report on Mission impossible saying that John Woo and Tom Cruise maybe are not the best friends. That is because actor / producer Tom Cruise wants to control film more than Woo would like to. "Cruise is very controlling of this project. Woo shot a lot of scenes not involving Cruise while the actor was promoting Eyes Wide Shut, but whether they'll be accepted or not in the rough cut will depend on Cruise's approval." Following article was from from chinese newspaper www.appledaily.com.hk Aug 14th entertainment section. English translation was posted to alt-asian-movies.
Since Eyes Wide Shut wasn't very successful at the box office, Cruise was very anxious to work on Spielberg's Minority Report. As reported earlier, Minority report filming will start this fall. The way Cruise will share his time between two films is that he will spend weekdays on Minority Report and weekends on MI2. Windstalkers Terence Chang tells nothing about problems between Cruise and Woo. But maybe
he wouldn't tell even if there was anything... However is tells us that next Woo
film would be WWII action/drama called 'Windtalkers'. I told some rumours
about it in January
and February.
set against the bombing of Pearl Harbour. American army officer is instructed to
protect a soldier of Navajo Indian descent who can use his native language to
send coded messages to other American naval forces which the Japanese forces
could not understand for nuts. Script will be written by John Rice and Joe
Batteer's for John Woo. Chow Yun-fat (King's Ransom) This all means that King's Ransom (Cant: 'Wong Dei Siok Gum') with Chow Yun-fat will be delayed again. Some rumours say it might never come true, but I believe it is still possible. Also Chow Yun-fat will be busy in future. While Anna and the King is waiting to be released (december 1999?) his next movie will be 'Fighting Tiger, Crouching Dragon' ["Cant: Ngor Fu Chong Lung/Mand: Wo Hu Cang Long," ], martial arts feature directed by Ang Lee. It will be starring also Michelle Yeoh. I did hear that John Woo wanted her to star in Once a Thief remake but studio did not want Asian actress. Later she did really great work with James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies. Anyway Jet Li was supposed to star in 'Fighting Tiger, Crouching Dragon' but because he must be filming Romeo must die, a sequel to clever mafia 'thriller', CYF apparently accepted Ang Lee's offer to co-star. Filming is scheduled to occur this fall in Beijing and Xinjing, China, with a budget of US$15m.
Also, I've found out that John Woo and Terence Chang are producing with the folks from IGNITE... well they're producing Lance Mungia and Jeffery Falcon's next film Out West Devil's Pale Moonlit Kiss, The (2000) And Internet Movie Datebase ells about future films produced by John Woo, The Last Word is still there but not much info about it. Another John Woo production semms to be Devil's Pale Moonlit Kiss, The with scheluded 2000 release. Film will be directed by Roger Spottiswoode who has made mainly TV productions lately, including Hiroshima (1995), realistic feature about Hiroshima atomic bomb, what happened how and why, co-directed with Koreyoshi Kurahara. About the plot: Suave adult magazine publisher Hugo Hughes travels to East
Germany at the end of the Cold War to help a beautiful ice skater defect.
Ten Thousand Bullets - The John Woo Book Just got Canadian edition of this book last Friday, so I have't had too much time to read it yet. Amazon.com says that it will be released in September (sept. 1st I hear from somewhere). Canadian edition doesn't mention Quentin Tarantino as author altho Amazon.com does so... But it is only 269 pages including index... Ten Thousand Bullets is a John Woo biography. I would say it is well written, easy and interesting to read, given many interesting details about the situation when movies were made. It also includes a chapter for Chow Yun-fat. It also tells about other people Woo has worked wit during his career. Quotes from John Woo and are interesting, altough most of them have been seen released somewhere else before. About movies Heard says more or less. But it is amazing how efficiently he manages to tell everything, main story and ending, in a few small sectences. Or do you want to know that '[he] dies in the end of the [movie]' before you have seen the movie in question? The closer to present day this book gets the more it has to say. So about early years it only has few pages actually. Especially about Woo's Hollywood period is very well covered. But maybe ut could have been a little a bit more in depth and go a little a bit deeper. After 10 000 Bullets is a good book to any John Woo fan, but if you read (almost) everything written about John Woo then this book does not give too much new for you. There are also two other interesting books around: John Woo: The Films by Ken Hall and German book by Thomas Gaschler which will be released in October. Ken Hall's bokk should be available any minute now, but at least I haven't got a copy yet. Thomas Gaschler's book looks very promising according what I've heard so far. It will include a lot information about John Woo's early film career at Cathay Studios - including filmography. Hopefully it also has the same from Woo's Shaw period. Interesting addition is also early story written by John Woo himself at age or 20 something or storyboards of scenes which were never shot (although Woo never actually used storyboards in Hong Kong). So you better write to Thomas that English version of this book is required!
Another project for John Woo: Dirty 30 (?) Hey I just read the following news from Hollyreporter.com , this was also posted to alt.asian-movies. It would be nice to hear more about this one. Article in printed edition also talks about Woo and Terence Chan, their perious films and so on.
Hard Boiled: Another look Luis Canau posted this to alt.asian-movies, but I think this is worth repeating here. Opening has been a difficult to understand for many. Later in movie Chow says he killed a cop in Tea-House-scene but it is not so easy to find out who that undercover cop was. For sure it is not the one Chow shoots at the close range. But Luis explains this very well:
And when I was watching opening scene again it did look like Chow actually shoots that guy. Not once but at least 5 or 6 bullets into him. This is just before Tequila's partner gets injured. I think the guy Chow shoots is the same as mentioned before as undercover cop but you can see his face only a very short moment.
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Red on White Last updated Thursday, 26-Dec-2002 01:00:00 EET |
