The 24th annual Kung Fu Extravaganza was held on Thursday evening as planned with hosts Ric Meyers and Preston Downey (a.k.a. That Phat Samurai Guy). The two held a panel that also included Frank Djeng of 88 Films, Justice For Hire co-creator Jan Lucanus, filmmaker Chris Mancini and Hong Kong action veteran, actor/musician Vincent Lyn, comprising a 208-minute celebration of Asian films and action cinema, from the classics to contemporary works, to independent movies and shows, and an interview by Meyers and Downey with actors Philip Ng and Van Ness Wu of Well Go USA’s Undercover Punch And Gun.
I live in the east coast, so I only stuck around for the first two hours before hitting the sack and skimming the remaining hour and a half prior to this post, but Meyers and the panel do dive quite a bit into things. This partly included some philosophy on Kung Fu in movies, the business end of films and filmmaking – much ado with the current state of Hong Kong cinema and film production compared to the halcyon era with stars like Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen and Jet Li filling the VHS and DVD/Blu-Ray kiosks, and the stifled releases of director Xu Haofeng’s two recent movies, The Hidden Sword and The Weary Poet, the supposed cancelling of other franchise installments of Wu Jing’s Wolf Warrior and Dante Lam’s Operation films, among other bullet points.
There’s lots of detail here to absorb – in addition to trailers for current and upcoming home releases on disc and digital – and much of it goes to the heart of appreciating a genre of film that only a few niche physical media distributors are currently active in preserving, while celebrating some of the trailblazers working today to keep the legacy going in their own way. This is a fun, informative showcase and it finishes out nicely with the action-packed 20-minute sizzle reel full of montage fight action to close things out, which you can view seperately below.
I have to commend Preston, specifically, for the work he’s done leading up to this point and getting to share the virtual stage through his platform at The Movie Dojo. From toiling away at reviews, trailer reactions and other fun videos, he’s moved up to even more gargantuan tasks to bolster his channel. At one point some several years back, he had to start anew because his original channel got hacked, and so with this latest milestone effort after its cancellation for this year’s ComicCon @Home, and mitigating all the hurdles that come nowadays with managaing anything on YouTube, he’s handling it like a pro.
Click here so go sub to the channel and support it. He’s more than earned it.
