ARTS & LIFE BEATTY’S LADIES
That scandalous new bio details
Warren’s womanizing north of the
border, too. Govani, Page AL3
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COMIC TIMING
How the
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Page AL3 BY MELISSA LEONG
“Every independent producer,
studio executive and wannabe
AVENUE
movie mogul in Hong Kong
was scouring the sidewalks
for martial artists who looked,
talked, acted or fought like the
Dragon — hunting for the next
A RED GREEN Bruce Lee. ... When we gath-
ered in the evenings to drink
SHOW and talk, the conversation
always ended up turning the
New photos same way: What did Lee have
from Mars make that we didn’t?”
— Jackie Chan in his autobiog-
the planet look
oddly forested.
raphy, I Am Jackie Chan
Page AL8 In the trailer for Jackie Chan’s
new film, The Spy Next Door,
which arrives in theatres to-
morrow, a voiceover gravely
informs us: “Secret Agent Bob
BAD Ho has taken down dictators,
terrorists and evil empires, but
he is about to face his toughest
ADVICE assignment yet: babysitting.”
As I watch Chan in the pre-
view burning his hands on a
muffin rack, I think of his clas-
OBESE CITY sic movie, Police Story. During
the 1985 film’s final fight scene
If your cat is too in a mall, he slid down a 70-
foot pole wrapped in Christ-
fat, he may need mas lights, bulbs exploding
a vacation. around him, and he burned
the skin off of his hands.
Page AL2 The man is 55. He has ap-
peared in more than 100 mov-
ies, broken just about every
bone there is and suffered brain
injuries. He has earned some
time doing family comedies.
But still, the stunt makes
me yearn for the old Chan, and
logically, the next Chan. Who
will follow the acrobatic and
comedic Chan and the skillful
and now-retired Jet Li? Who
will continue the legacy of the
legendary Bruce Lee?
Chinese martial arts super-
stars came in two generations:
Chan and actor Sammo Hung
practised backflips, splits and
handstands at the same opera
N A T I O N A L P O S T, T H U R S D A Y, JA N UA R Y 1 4 , 2 0 1 0
KUNG
FUTURE
As the masters move on,
who will step in to fill
the martial arts void?
school in Hong Kong in the
’60s; then performers such as
Li and actor Donnie Yen stud-
ied wushu in mainland China
in the ’70 s. They were cata-
pulted to fame in Hong Kong,
which had one of the largest
movie industries in the world.
But the industry has since
deflated; kung fu films fell out
of fashion and stunt job oppor-
tunities (where Lee and Chan
got their start) declined.
“The martial arts film is
similar to the Western: its
heyday is long over, but there
will be small cycles of films
from time to time when some-
one finds a fresh spin,” says
Leon Hunt, who teaches film
studies at Brunel University
in the U.K. “There hasn’t been
any fresh blood since the ’90s
in terms of ‘proper’ kung fu
stars.”
Chan himself recognized
the need for new talent, and in
2007 he launched a reality TV
competition called The Dis-
ciple. Sixteen finalists braved
gruelling training, car stunts
and high-altitude wire sus-
pension in hopes of becoming
the next big action movie star.
?
The winner, Jack Tu, who was
born in Taiwan but grew up in
Canada and the U.S., has been
shadowing Chan to learn the
trade and was on set for the
filming of The Spy Next Door.
Other than his participation
as an extra, though, he has yet
to break out as a major figure.
But when — and if — he
does, he may find that the de-
mand is no longer there.
Our culture of celebrity
means that star power drives
action films today. No one
cares if Ben Affleck wields a
cane with all the dexterity and
attitude of a grandmother.
CGI will fix that.
The real stuff is no longer
practical. Why spend months
choreographing an action se-
quence, risking injury to the
actors, when tighter editing,
short cuts and computers will
produce the same result?
Hong Kong filmmakers
are now co-producing mov-
ies with China and creating
blockbuster-style films. “Re-
cent action films such as Red
Cliff are big budget, and post-
production special effects
along the lines of Lord of the
CLOCKWISE TOP LEFT:
FILE PHOTO;
GOLDEN HARVEST
LTD.; COLUMBIA
TRISTAR FILMS
Rings generate panoramic,
breathtaking scenes that real-
life stunts and action some-
times cannot match,” says Kay
Li of the Canadian Foundation
for Asian Culture.
Besides, viewers in the West
have regressed 20 years in their
understanding of martial arts,
according to Mark Pollard,
Kungfucinema.com’s founder
and senior editor. He notes
that the upcoming Karate Kid
remake starring Chan and Will
Smith’s son Jaden actually fea-
tures kung fu. (Karate is Jap-
anese; kung fu is Chinese.) The
Karate Kid is due out in the-
atres later this year.
Those in the industry, how-
ever, continue to search for
new blood in the hopes that
audiences will tire of CGI.
“There’s a shift back to-
wards the real thing,” says
Bey Logan, a Hong Kong film
producer and former vice-
president for Asian acquisi-
tions at Weinstein Brothers.
He says there are possible
candidates lurking in the wings,
citing Hong Kong actor and
martial artist Wu Jing. There is
even a future for the 46-year-
old Jet Li contemporary Donnie
Yen, who Logan suggests “has
just come into his own.”
Pollard, though, is not hold-
ing his breath.
“In the old days, you had a
whole string of actors and you
knew someone was going to
follow in their footsteps,” Pol-
lard says. “But I’m thinking
there is nobody else.”
National Post
mleong@nationalpost.com
NP nationalpost.com
Melissa Leong relives
kung fu’s glory days with
Fight Club, a new blog
feature that begins today at
nationalpost.com/
theampersand
Would you
like some
Cisco with
that?
Why Ellen Page
is trying to sell
us networking
solutions
BY BEN KAPLAN
Zooey Deschanel’s film (500)
Days of Summer is nominated
for two Golden Globe awards,
which will be handed out
this Sunday night. Deschanel
hasn’t taken to the airwaves
as part of a pre-award show
marketing campaign, though
— instead she’s singing for
cotton.
Like Luke Wilson and El-
len Page, the Juno-starring It
girl who oozes sass as effort-
lessly as her fellow Nova Sco-
tians dissect the Bay of Fundy,
Deschanel is now appearing in
a TV commercial.
“It used to be that people in
Hollywood didn’t even want
to work on television, but
these days anything goes,” says
Janet Wasko, author of How
Hollywood Works. “Appear-
ing in television commercials
just isn’t seen as demeaning
any more. Look at the woman
married to Michael Douglas,
the one who does TV commer-
cials for hair. I think she’d still
have no problem getting ser-
ious roles.”
Catherine Zeta Jones, in-
deed, may have no trouble
finding interesting work even
after shilling for everything
from T-Mobile to Alfa Romeo
to Lux shampoo — an only-
in-Japan-and-China spot that
reportedly netted Mrs. Mi-
chael Douglas a cool US$2.5-
million.
But to see someone like El-
len Page squirming uncom-
fortably in a commercial for
Cisco, a computer network-
ing conglomerate, marks
a significant demographic
switch. William Shatner
sending himself up for Price-
Line is one thing, but does
Luke Wilson, star of The
Royal Tenenbaums and Old
School, need money so badly
that it’s worth making adver-
tisements for AT&T?
“Look at what’s happening
on Wall Street. You wouldn’t
think someone earning $5-
million would need a $10-
million bonus to motivate
them, but I think people’s
aspirations move up,” says
Charles Weinberg, a profes-
sor of marketing at the Sauder
School of Business at the Uni-
versity of British Columbia.
“Actors don’t need the money
in the sense that they’re bank-
rupt. It’s more like how Matt
Dillon alternates between art-
istic and commercial films. A
television commercial today
is part of the portfolio of what
people do.”
Actors and actresses have
long felt comfortable exploit-
ing their personal brand.
Many accounts suggest the
British actress Lillie Langtry
first opened the floodgates
when she appeared in an
1893 advertisement for soap.
Since then, everybody from
Tom Cruise to O.J. Simpson to
Tommy Lee Jones, currently
appearing in a round of coffee
commercials in Japan, have
added their reflected celebrity
to products.
These days, the average
lifespan of a celebrity in Holly-
wood can be awfully short, so
there’s some logic in young
stars cashing in while they
can.
“You might wonder,” says
Wasko, commenting on the
fickle nature of Hollywood,
“where else are these people
going to get work?”
National Post