The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai, 2013)

[Matt]

Film Comment (March/April 2010) reports that Wong is currently shooting The Grand Master, a biopic of Yip Man starring Tony Leung, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Brigitte Lin.

[broadwayrock]

Film Comment (March/April 2010) reports that Wong is currently shooting The Grand Master, a biopic of Yip Man starring Tony Leung, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Brigitte Lin.

He's going to have difficulty marketing the film after the sequel to Donnie Yen's successful Ip Man gets released next month in Hong Kong.

...but i suppose that because Ip Man didn't get a US release, it could do better there.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

If the early '90s had room for 500 Wong Fei-hung films, the early 2010s have room for two Yip Man films (edit: Make that three). Plus The Grand Master should be at least a year removed from Ip Man 2, although they could conceivably have a part 3 by then...

It'd be sorta nice to know if FC's mention of Brigitte Lin was based on any recent info -- Yip's son went on TV a year ago and said she was in it, but nobody else ever confirmed it, and it was later reported she'd turned it down. That was the last I'd heard about it until now. There were also reports she's actually going to star in Wong's next next movie, an adaptation of The Eternal Snow Beauty. The other actors mentioned (Leung, Zhang, Gong) are definitely in (even though Gong publicly slammed 2046 and The Hand), and so are Chang Chen and Zhao Benshan. Shooting was supposed to run from December to April, but that's a sucker bet, and Chang might be pulling out of John Woo's new movie because of scheduling problems.

[belated edit: Gong isn't in it after all, shooting finished in May...2011)

[Foam]

Wong Kar Wai's upcoming film about Kung Fu master Ip Man has apparently been retitled The Grandmasters. Art.

Horribly translated synopsis:

With martial arts getting more popular in the Thirties, more people seek to learn them via the professionals at Foshan in Southern China. Some of the experienced masters like to challenge their counterparts and undergoing battles. To have their whole concentration, it is their practice to lock up the venues and no one is allowed to leave during battles. No food and no rest before reaching any results.
Ip Man is a young rich man extremely talented in martial arts, but he chooses to keep a low profile. Yet this doesn't keep him out of these troubles ahead. One day he is trapped in this battleground so he has to use every means in order to get out of there. The masters are amazed by his abilities. Master Kung and his daughter Kung Yi are amongst, and the latter is attracted to this newcomer.
A high warlord is assassinated by his own guard Yi Xian Tian. All masters in Foshan vow to take Tian down no matter what.

[Jeff]

No English subs on this teaser for Wong's The Grandmasters.

[Matt]

I'm kind of reminded of Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal" video.

[domino harvey]

I'm kind of reminded of nonsense because that action scene is utterly incomprehensible

[Cosmic Bus]

That Grandmaster footage might as well have been a Matrix clip with Tony Leung pasted over Neo's face.

[Grand Illusion]

That Grandmaster footage might as well have been a Matrix clip with Tony Leung pasted over Neo's face.

Was going to say this, with the witty addition of "as shot, edited, and muddled by Christopher Nolan."

[Zot!]

That Grandmaster footage might as well have been a Matrix clip with Tony Leung pasted over Neo's face.

Was going to say this, with the witty addition of "as shot, edited, and muddled by Christopher Nolan."

Oh come on guys. Obviously Matrix owed a huge debt to HK actioners, not the other way around, and muddling is WKW stock in trade (see Ashes of Time). That being said, Bluebery Nights was an enormous piece of shit, so I'm actually looking forward to this.

[ianungstad]

I'm not liking the teaser for The Grandmasters. The fight scene has neither flow or geography; couldn't follow it at all. It looks like something I would expect from Brett Ratner, James McTeigue or McG. Meh.

I also agree that the visual palette recalls "The Matrix" and not in a good way.

The Amazing Spiderman somehow looks to be even worse than the Raimi movies.

[Murdoch]

I'm hoping the Wong trailer isn't representative of the actual film, as others have said it looks like a Matrix/Zach Snyder ripoff. I love Wong, even if his post-90s work has left me mostly underwhelmed, so I'll see this new one eventually but I'm not rushing.

[Alan Smithee]

On a side note this reminds me that I actually think the Keanu vs 100 Smiths fight is one of the better fight scenes ever. Reloaded sucks but that fight is great. The highway scene is also pretty good.

[Kirkinson]

Compared to Ashes of Time (Redux), which I like a lot and which is the only other example I've seen of "choreographed" fights in a WKW film, following this new teaser is about as difficult as drawing in a dotted-line picture in Highlights magazine. I'm disappointed in it, too, but if anything I want less geography.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Grandmasters opens in China on December 18th, for real this time, they swear. They announced the date with a neat promotional envelope thingy, enclosing a photo of Tony Leung with his "students" (including a kid who is apparently supposed to be Bruce Lee).

In other news, Yip Man 3 begins shooting at the end of the year. So Wong at least has a head start on that one.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Grandmasters supposedly finished shooting sometime within the last week (riiight). The December 18th release (in China and Hong Kong) is still a go. Some minor plot details have been filtering out: Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen and Zhao Benshan (the last is best known abroad as the lead in Happy Times and Getting Home) play the heads of rival martial-arts schools, with Zhang specializing in Baguazhang, Chang in Bajiquan, and Zhao in something else. Supposedly one reason filming took so long is because Wong would frequently break off shooting to do research with actual martial-arts masters, just in case you still question his commitment.

Ironically, after all the concern The Grandmasters would get lost at the tailend of the Yip Man wave a few years back, it now looks like it'll be the start of another one: not only do Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen have another Yip Man film coming up, so does Herman Yau.

[Matt]

Here's the first full-length trailer. No step-frame action sequences like we saw in the teaser. Zhang Ziyi looks great doing her moves in that giant coat.

[Dansu Dansu Dansu]

Does Tony Leung not age or something? Other than that creeping hairline, he looks the same as in his Days of Being Wild days.

The only full-on action scene we see in this trailer (and teaser) is the rainy streets at night scene, which, in true trailer fashion, has been entirely ruined for us. The train station sequence appears to be more of a final showdown, which, thankfully, has been completely ruined as well. The good news is, since the trailer largely depends on these two scenes for its non-stop action, we can assume the rest of the film is too "boring" to excite a mainstream audience.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Reports are going around that the film will miss its December release date and come out next summer instead. The distributor is "studying" the situation and will give a "final answer" within two days. There's pretty solid evidence they're still shooting: one of the supporting actors (Xiao Shenyang) made a blog post along the lines of, "Such a long night! How can it not be done yet? Five hours and we only shot a few close-ups!" So you may still be able to collect if you had "Cannes 2013" in your office pool.

[serifmehmet]

Reports are going around that the film will miss its December release date and come out next summer instead. The distributor is "studying" the situation and will give a "final answer" within two days.

Source?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

No English sources, but tons of Chinese ones: Mtime has a decent rundown. The distributor's spokespersons spent most of the day deferring their answers ("we'll let you know soon"), but Phoenix Online appears to have gotten hold of someone at the end of the day (their story went out a little before 11 PM) who issued an actual denial. Fingers crossed the whole thing was just rumors stemming from the blog post -- I partially scheduled my Christmas vacation around the December release date and it would be a nice surprise if it actually pays off.

[warren oates]

WKW's production schedules sometimes remind me of a moment in a TV movie I once saw about the Beach Boys. There's a big meeting at Capitol Records and the executives are gathered to question Brian Wilson about when exactly the band might be done with Smile. Wilson doesn't say a word. Instead, he presses a button on the tape recorder in front of him which doesn't play music, but instead has a looped recording of him repeating a single phrase: "When it's finished." The suits try and ask a follow-up. Again: "When it's finished."

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Delayed to...January 8th, for now at least. Not much of a delay after all the hue and cry, though it seems a little dicey from a business POV since Skyfall and The Hobbit both open two days later. And it sucks for me since it might be gone from theaters by the time I get back to China :(

Strangely, these new character posters have reverted to the old non-plural English title. Or maybe it's just "The Grandmaster" because there's only one of them on each poster? And apparently this is going to be the rainiest movie of all time.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Grandmaster to open 63rd Berlin Film Festival

Out of competition, since Wong is head of the jury. And it looks like the s at the end of the title is definitely gone, because there can be only one.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Hopefully this will be the last "it's still not done?" article we'll see on this film: Wong in last-minute rush to finish film before premiere

The article doesn't mention that the planned IMAX release has been postponed to an unspecified date because they don't have enough time to convert it. But theaters are already reporting a 133-minute runtime, so the movie itself should be pretty much locked at this point.