Boxer From Shantung

Had a fun Friday night today. The wife of a colleague of mine happens to work with the Arts House - which is kinda like an multi-disciplinary arts space setup by the Singapore government. It plays host to quite a few events, and I got invited to the opening for 100 Years of Chinese Films.

So after huffing and puffing from the bus stop to the venue (Singapore's old parliment house, renovated) I got there towards the end of the opening reception. After a bit of white wine, random dim sum and Celestial Movies promo presentation, they introduce the day's guests of honour - Gordon Liu and Chen Kuan Tai.

Hmm.. Gordon Liu.. the name sounds familiar. Then my friend reminded me that he played Pai Mei in Kill Bill Vol. 2! Of course the old master with the white beard who did some kick-ass eye goughing!

He gave us a short speech in Mandarin then professionally posed for us in the martial arts stance (he's on the left below):

I didn't know too much about Chen Kuan Tai, but just that he's the star of the opening film of the festival - Boxer from Shantung. So I went not expecting too much and as a result was blown away by the movie!

I think if you are a kid growing up in Asia, there was probably a few periods in your life when you are really into kungfu martial arts (kum lung pai nai in Thai) serials. I had quite a few fights with toy swords with my brother while making swishing (sword cutting through air) sound effects.

Seeing this movie made me realize how derivative of those serials and the Kill Bill movies are - here I was seeing the source and inspiration of kungfu on the screen! And no wonder Quentin Tarantino supposedly got hooked on this stuff when he was a video store clerk.

The movie is sorta 'The Godfather' meets kungfu. Chen plays Ma Yongzhen, the boxer of the title, to starts of humble beginnings to become gangster boss of Shanghai (think Godfather, Part II - the rise of Vito Corleone - a lot less subtle) and then his fall from grace. The director made the effort to inject some big themes on the corruption of power and sacrifice in between some incredible action sequences.

And the coolest one has to be the finale fight in at a teahouse (rong tiam) at the end. By the end of the fight, our hero has taken down 4 of the rival gangboss's henchmen (the "Four Champions"), fallen down the balcony 3 times and fought about 101 underlings armed with axes and daggers - all while bleeding with a hachet stuck in his side!

And the blood, oh the blood! I reminds me of an espisode of Fear Factor I just saw in which they had to bob for rings in a vat full of cow blood.

Phew... that was fun! I'm thinking of catching more shows soon. They told me there's an open air screening of "The Kingdom and The Beauty" - maybe some classic period drama for a change. My friend told me the star, Linda Lin Dai, was the It-girl of her day or something like that. Hmm... thinking of going with some mooncakes to the screening and having a mini picnic.