Stephen Chow
29 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
This laugh til your sides hurt flick pays comical homage to movies as disparate as "West Side Story," spaghetti westerns, 1940's dance musicals, "Spider-Man," "The Matrix," "The Mask," "The Shining," Bruce Lee movies, "The Seven samurai," film noir and Warner Brothers cartoons.
Chow manages to create some of the most screwy comedy I’ve seen in a long time, while he manages to spoof much of his influences such as “The Shining” and “Thriller” as do all the directors whom have been impacted by pop culture.
There's a great gush of blood reminiscent of a similar pictorial element in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," and a sudden blossoming of Spanish guitar music that seems to derive from the taxi sequence in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours."
References to GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE SHINING, and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS are among Chow’s many other tips of the hat to Hollywood movies.
Pigsty Alley is a delightful mix of the downtrodden and the optimistic, reminiscent of both Robert Altman�s Sweet Haven from Popeye and Jean Renoir�s slums in The The Lower Depths.
Martial arts sequences are akin to dance scenes, and Chow mirrors a poster for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in TOP HAT with a man holding a woman at knifepoint.
Pigsty Alley is a delightful mix of the downtrodden and the optimistic, reminiscent of both Robert Altman�s Sweet Haven from Popeye and Jean Renoir�s slums in The The Lower Depths.
There's a great gush of blood reminiscent of a similar pictorial element in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," and a sudden blossoming of Spanish guitar music that seems to derive from the taxi sequence in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours."
Game Night (2018)
Directed by John Francis Daley
influenced by From Beijing with Love (1994)
Visuals
They even apply some subtlety to the jokes (like not showing the bodily fluids) and that pays off beautifully in a scene that involves a bullet extraction that is reminiscent of Hong Kong director Stephen Chow‘s spy comedy, From Beijing With Love .
Sing and a mute street vendor develop a relationship that recalls Chaplin’s Little Tramp and the blind flower girl in CITY LIGHTS.
The movie refers glancingly to dozens of Hollywood classics, from West Side Story to City Lights, but at heart it is a debt of honor richly paid by Stephen Chow to his martial-arts forebears and to the traditions that shaped his sensibility.
And Pig Sty Alley looks like something out of Jeunet and Caro, including a swinging pig sign lifted straight from the credits of Delicatessen.
As with John Ford's Wagonmaster or Jacques Tati's Playtime, the absence of a central star reinforces the sense of community that's integral to the creative vision being presented.
The orchestral score gives way to traditional Chinese music (original music by Raymond Wong, non-original music by Pablo de Sarasate from various works) and the three sided tenement known as Pig Sty Alley, run by a sleazy, aluminum hair-clipped Landlord (Yuen Wah, "Enter the Dragon") and his battle axe of a wife, the indomitable Landlady (Yuen Qiu, "The Man With the Golden Gun").
Original, it is its own piece, but forced to compare, I might say that "KFH" is a sort of Chinese "Pulp Fiction" with a vibrating funny-bone and a taste of "Matrix."
The Panda creative team displays a keen reverence for chopsocky and Asian cinema with the elaborate action scenes repurposed from Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle and the bold opening and closing credits paying homage to Miyazaki’s unique hand-drawn animation.
I’d add that the conventions are taken to their illogical extreme, but after Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and The Protector (2005), the only illogical extreme left is the bulk and shape of this film’s hero.
It’s the classic heroes vs. villains story on display as the groovy hip Axe Gang of millions are running 1940’s China (whom gather around their victims very similar to the style of “Gangs of New York”) and decide to pay a visit to the only village not under their control, the village of “Pig Sty”.
But movie geeks in general will appreciate Chow's often amusing nods, from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" (which is mercilessly skewered here) to Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion classic "Jason and the Argonauts."
References to GANGS OF NEW YORK, THE SHINING, and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS are among Chow’s many other tips of the hat to Hollywood movies.
Chow, who cowrote with Tsang Kan Cheong, Xin Huo and Chan Man Keung, excels with slapstick humor, referential ribbing and his artful yet hilarious action (choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Matrix") and frequent Jackie Chan collaborator Sammo Hung).
And, with the studio's deep pockets, he updates the wuxia myth by staging fight scenes with the kind of CG effects used in The Matrix and other American sci-fi films that had appropriated kung-fu choreography in the first place.
Humor bordering on slapstick combined with thrilling choreography by Yuen Wo Ping, who masterminded the fight scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, make Kung Fu Hustle a lively, visual treat.
But what about the average viewer, whose lone experience with martial arts may have been a flirtation with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the Westernized The Matrix?
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
influenced by Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Themes
Not quite as inspired as Stephen Chow's work in Kung Fu Hustle but delightfully goofy in its absurdity.
It must have taken Chow a superhuman effort to avoid singing a subtitled version of "Let Me Entertain You" -- or, no, I've got a better example -- of "Make 'em Laugh," the Donald O'Connor number in " Singin' in the Rain ."
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Directed by Cathy Yan
influenced by Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Visuals
Perez is fine, Winstead is unexpectedly funny as a crossbow-wielding tough, and Smollett-Bell gets a triumphant moment that brings to mind Kung Fu Hustle .
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Visuals
The result combines the slacker graphic-novel vibe of "Ghost World," the inside-the-video-game conceit of "Tron" and the martial-arts exuberance of "Kung Fu Hustle," as if shaken and stirred by Quentin Tarantino.
Last year, Stephen Chow’s wondrous The Mermaid became the most financially successful film in China’s history but barely caused a ripple in the U.S. Chow took the alien thesis of his 2008 CJ7 (which was an expansion on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) and made a human-based, adult comic fantasy about threats to cultural heritage within modern China’s class-divided society.
Bong’s humorously cynical approach to all sides of this struggle likens Okja to Stephen Chow’s environmentalist action comedy The Mermaid , as does its descent into some unsparing brutality toward the hunted super pigs, but he eventually abandons the broadness of his satire and settles more on a good-guy-vigilante-versus-evil-corporation narrative, back-peddling on more interesting thematic ambitions.
Last year, Stephen Chow’s wondrous The Mermaid became the most financially successful film in China’s history but barely caused a ripple in the U.S. Chow took the alien thesis of his 2008 CJ7 (which was an expansion on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) and made a human-based, adult comic fantasy about threats to cultural heritage within modern China’s class-divided society.
(When Kung Fu Hustle director Stephen Chow was attached to direct the movie he wanted Kato to implant a microchip in Britt's brain and operate him with a joystick.
Initially Stephen Chow (director of the hysterically funny Kung Fu Hustle ) was set to play the role of Kato (the sidekick), and then came word that Chow would be directing as well.
The film lost other directors along the way, including Kevin Smith and, later, Hong Kong master Stephen Chow ( Kung Fu Hustle ).