Red Cliff And Hellboy II Beat Down The Box Office

John Woo and cast members from Red Cliff

This turned out to be a nice weekend not only for Big Blockbusters - but also for the great directors behind them as Hellboy II: The Golden Army, directed by Guillermo del Toro, hit #1 in the U.S., and John Woo's epic war drama Red Cliff claimed victory in Asia (in the countries where it was shown).

Both films did well monetarily - Hellboy II raked in about $35.9 million on about 4400 screens, and Red Cliff took in about $25 million on around 2000 screens.

If you had to choose a clear cut winner however (and why not do that?) - based on a strict dollar to screen average - technically Red Cliff beat out Hellboy II by quite a large margin (and still has yet to be released in Malaysia and Japan).

I'm thinking Guillermo del Toro probably isn't too upset though because he's still got the #1 U.S. movie and it's not like he put out Meet Dave.

Worst Asian Movie Of 2007 That I Thought Would Rock

Blood Brothers



When a movie has as many recognizable and heavy hitters attached to it like the film Blood Brothers, you automatically think that it's going to be a great movie - but maybe that's what they were counting on - because in the end - this was the most uninspiring film in comparison to what it could have been, and the worst letdown of the year.

So what happened to it?

For starters there was the bad editing and scene cuts where the plot moves in a direction that left you scratching your head going "When did that happen?", and like Tran who's made his living doing music videos - in a way that's what it seemed like - just a bunch of videos strung together with just enough filler to make a film.

At the same time, the movie had underdeveloped characters and dialogue that didn't make use of the great stars that were attached to it. Sure it had some good performances in small doses (Liu Ye was a notable bright spot in the movie), but overall you never got a feel for any one of the characters because they felt more like cheap imitations of the real thing.

I could go on (and really I could), but for a more in-depth review check out www.lovehkfilm.com which mirrors a lot of what I thought about the film, and what makes it the winner of this category looking back at last year.

John Woo’s “Blood Brothers”, Shu Qi and Daniel Wu

Talked about in a recent summer post, here’s the trailer for the new Shu Qi and Daniel Wu film Blood Brothers directed by Alex Tran.

For more information on the movie check out the official site.

Gamer: John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat, Stranglehold - sequel to Hard Boiled?

Whether or not a game can actually be a sequel to a movie, the game Stranglehold is being billed as the sequel to Hard Boiled - and agree or not on the sequel aspect - everyone seems to agree that this is an exceptional game which does in fact live up to the hype, as well as having the names John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat and Hard Boiled attached to it.

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The images are grabbed from the game’s official site where you can see images, play trailers, as well as demo the game created by Midway.

Here’s a clip from a review down at sfgate.com:

Stranglehold has been billed as the sequel to John Woo’s movie “Hard Boiled,” casting Chow Yun-Fat (or, rather, his likeness and voice work) as Tequila Yuen, the “hot-handed god of cops” who has a talent for stylishly shooting his way out of - and into - bad situations. There’s not much of a plot to work with here, but the game absolutely nails how it feels to have Chow walk into a room and destroy it with bullets.

Here’s another clip form a review down at signonsandiego.com:

Director John Woo and actor Chow Yun-Fat team up once again for what could be the most intense and stylish action game of the holiday, “Stranglehold.” As the official sequel to their popular movie collaboration, “Hard Boiled,” the game mirrors the awesome “gun ballet” sequences that made the movie such a hit.