DREAM STORY: Sakamoto, Shimomura, And Tanigaki Take The Helm For Yasuaki Kurata’s New Anthology Celebrating A Life Of Action
Crowdfunding is underway ahead of a summer screening slate.
yasuaki kurata
NINJA WARS: BLACKFOX VS SHOGUN’S NINJA Official Teaser And Poster Signal Next Chapter Of Koichi Sakamoto’s Ninja Universe!
Launching exclusively on the 24/7 Samurai Shinobi YouTube channel.
THE EMPTY HANDS Review: A Journey Of Self-Discovery Through Martial Arts
Although karate is the central theme of the plot, this movie is not a typical martial arts movie, and although there is some fighting scenes, the drama prevails over the action. The story focuses on the relationship of love and hate that Mari (our protagonist) maintains with her father (the great Yasuaki Kurata) and the art that he taught her since childhood, karate. At one point of the story, she will face the dilemma of continuing with her father´s legacy or following the path of what she considers her freedom. Chapman To, who in addition to directing, also reserved himself a role as an actor, playing one of the key characters in the plot. seems to want to get out of the established canons and do something different within the already so exploited martial arts genre. It has intellectual inflows, although that, it does not become pedantic, and all that […]
Koichi Sakamoto’s BLACKFOX: AGE OF THE NINJA Teaser Revealed
World-renowned martial arts champion, actress Chihiro Yamamoto, makes her lead debut in Blackfox: Age Of The Ninja. Hailing from Nihon Eiga Broadcasting for in-house paid TV service, Samurai Drama Channel, the first teaser is already making the rounds – billed as a live-action prequel feature to the pending October 5 release of sci-fi anime, Blackfox. Yamamoto will play a girl named Miya whose special ability makes her the target of mercenaries. In wake of her father’s murder at the hands of the killers, Miya not only salvation in a chance meeting with Hyoe and his granddaughter Rikka Isurugi, who comes from a long line of ninja in her family, but also a potential ally in avenging her father. Legendary action director and filmmaker Koichi Sakamoto, who has worked on numerous costume television franchises like Ultraman, Kamen Rider, Super Sentai and Power Rangers among other film and TV credits, directs from […]
ICEMAN: THE TIME TRAVELER Review: Part Two Of Donnie Yen’s Reboot Push Defrosts With Gusto
Ask almost anyone in my circles and they’ll tell you how supportive I usually am for remakes and reboots if done right. Obviously not all remakes have worked in cinema history and it’s all but added to the stigma that permeates around current remakes either completed or already in the making. Effectively, this includes the last eight years in which action star Donnie Yen has spent bottoming-out with his overbudgted and overwrought redo of Hong Kong fantasy classic, Iceman Cometh, thus bringing us Law Wing-Cheong’s Iceman 3D, and its long-gestating follow-up, Iceman: The Time Traveler. I won’t get into the specifics of the story connecting both films, and for several reasons – frankly one of them being that as I tried to watch the second film for which this review is attributed to, I kept tuning out and falling asleep. What I will say, in place of this, is what […]
The Korean Roots of Hong Kong Kicking
The fast and precise kicks of Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Donnie Yen, and other great Hong Kong action stars are staples of the Hong Kong style of action choreography, but if we look before Bruce’s 1971 breakout hit The Big Boss, there were almost no kicks to be found in any action cinema. Only Billy Jack, released in the same year in America, featured the same high-flying kicks courtesy of Korean Hapkido artist Bong Soo Han. The similarity between Billy Jack’s kicks and Bruce’s in The Big Boss is no mere coincidence: Bruce had picked up his cinematic kicking style by studying from Korean and Vietnam war vets who brought Korean kicks to the USA, Chuck Norris being a major player. In his backyard home videos, we see Bruce shooting spin kicks and stepping side kicks, experimenting with how to make these kicks cinematic. Bruce’s backyard filmmaking endeavors would become […]
Happy Belated Birthday To GOD OF WAR Co-Star Jiang Luxia!
I spent my Christmas weekend catching up on quite a few titles, including Hung Yan Yan’s 2008 directorial effort, Coweb (unfortunately granted the U.S. title of Ninja Masters by Lionsgate). The film wasn’t exactly the best I’ve seen save for some of the amazing action sequences, but it’s certainly a milestone for actress Jiang Luxia who has continued starring in a fair share of actioners in one role another. Needless to say, it’s quite rewarding that we’ll be seeing more of her in 2016, particularly returning among the likes of action director and co-star Sammo Hung for Gordon Chan’s The God Of War. Filming is still underway with action star Vincent Zhao joining her fellow Once Upon A Time In Shanghai co-star Hung and fellow action star Kurata Yasuaki with a period story that sees a Ming general and a Shaolin master train an army to fight Japanese pirates on […]
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