zhou xun

HIDDEN BLADE Review: Cheng Er’s Brooding Period Espionage Mishmash Settles All Deadly Scores

Well Go USA’s press pack for director Cheng Er’s latest film, Hidden Blade, partly states that he’s best known for keeping his audiences guessing. That he does, this time with a story set in the early 1940s with events chronicled before, and afterward, amid the Communist party’s campaign as it’s set against the backdrop of the invasion of imperial Japanese forces. The film weaves in its elements and characters from all angles, flashing forward in its efforts to set things in motion for the audience to begin following our main characters and learn more about them. That process eventually begins to materialize a little more about a half-hour into the film where we’ve then come to acquaint ourselves with the likes of He (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), Ye (Wang Yibo), the sinister Captain Wang (Eric Wang), Tang (Da Peng) and Watanabe (Hiroyuki Mori), all members of a Japanese spy agency operating […]

Li Weiran’s THE YIN YANG MASTER Acquired By Netflix

Lee B. Golden III

Not to be confused with Guo Jingming’s latest currently on Netflix, next on deck with director Li Weiran will be The Yin Yang Master, having also landed home at Netflix with global exclusive rights (sans China) per the streamer’s announcement on Tuesday. The Yin Yang Master takes its cues from the popular mobile game, Onmyōji, reuniting Painted Skin: The Resurrection actors Chen Kun and Zhou Xun, as well as the two with producers of said film, Chen Kuo-fu and Chang Chia-lu. Additionally, the film will see the respective roles of Kun and Xun as the titular master himself, Qingming, and Bai Ni, as love interests, along with actor William Chan as Ci Mu, a sophisticated character that transforms from good to evil. In The Yin Yang Master, the world is on the verge of a devastating war with the monsters who are coming back to retrieve the Scaling Stone. Yin […]

Trailer: Li Weiran’s THE YIN YANG MASTER Mitigates Conflict Between Two Worlds

Lee B. Golden III

Between two films that bare the same title, director Li Weiran’s incarnation of The Yin Yang Master takes its cues from the popular mobile game. The new dark fantasy epic stars Chen Kun, Zhou Xun, William Chan and Wang Likun, and tells of an “Onmyoji” – a magic specialist – whose human hybrid identity may be the key when confronted by a Demon Emperor following a contract officiated with a group of monsters. A 2020 release in tow, and for this, we have a first poster and trailer. (H/T: Far East Films)