Oh, golly ... it looks as though the incredible Sha Po Lang is shaping up to be merely the launching point of an impressive long-term collaboration between martial arts star Donnie Yen and director Wilson Yip. Immediately after wrapping up SPL it was announced that the duo would be re-teaming for Dragon Tiger Gate, an adaptation of a popular Chinese comic following three brothers taking on the underworld, and they'll also be working together on the coming prequel / sequels to SPL.
Now, I'll confess to some initial misgivings about Dragon Tiger Gate. First, instead of working with a cast of pure martial artists Yen is training pop stars for this one. Nic Tse and Shawn Yue have both done some decent work in the past, but when it comes to martial arts they're no Wu Jing or Sammo Hung. Second, the initial shots of a floppy-haired Donnie from the film just made me cringe. Icky. But bad feelings all gone now.
A reel of behind the scenes footage from Dragon Tiger Gate has just turned up on Sina - a major portal evidently powered by nothing more than hamsters on their exercise wheels, good lord is it slow - and the lovely and talented Chelle of DonnieYen.us has been kind enough to capture the video and make it available on her site to spare both the health of the poor Sina hamsters as well as our own mounting frustrations waiting for the damn thing to load. We're also mirroring it here to spread the bandwidth load around a bit.
The reel gives you looks at a good number of production stages, from character design to set building to training and actual shooting. And it looks great. The scope is beyond what I expected, Nic Tse is surprisingly bendy, and you get the Bruce Lee idolizing Yen whipping a set of nunchuks around, which is always a good thing. And watch for the mob fight. Nice.
Behind the Scenes footage at DonnieYen.us (Embedded WMV)
Behind the Scenes footage at Twitch (downloadable WMV)
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this looks like it's gonna be one of the sweetest HK releases next year... I really cannot wait. Finally something that's not either romcom, police drama, or wuxia.
I been watching and collecting Asian action films for the past 30yrs. And Im feel really fortunate to see how far movie making in the Oriante come but what some kung fu fans or buffs whatever they call themselves today. What they dont realize is that the martial arts styles and systems has always been there and to see a lighting fast action star like Donnie Yen direct and coreagraph a film is one of the highlights to see just what his take on making a action film is what new ideas and movements this films has the looks of a breakthrough film in movie making I know theres alot of good action films out there this summer but this is the one for Me.
Lats night i had the opportunity to sit down and watched this movie. It is the 2nd day of showing here in Malaysia. I had high hope for this movie but it fell short of my expectation.
This is a great martial arts movie and Donnie Yen did a great job for the fight coreagraphy. The action sequence was fresh and fast paced but i hope they would take it to another level.
There was a cameo by Tony Wong ( feels like Stan Lee in Spiderman )...nonetheless it was a good action flick but not great
Donnie Yen did a great job.
Pity that in order for the movie to attract the non-martial arts fans (a.k.a. most of the fairer sex) and thus rope in higher profits, pretty boys had to be added in. The pretty boys did good, but hardly great.
Casting has always been important. Well, my two-cents worth is that Tiger could easily had been Yuen Biao and Black-stone Dragon could easily had been Qian Xiao Hao.
What a let down to all the martial arts fans... Imagine what it would be if it was all martial artist cast. WOW!
Don't let us down for SPL2, ya?
we are so pleased to hearing the great news that Yen will shoot the new films like SPL2 and Dragon Tiger Gate 2,as we have seen all your movies and we really enjoyed so much, Yen is the best. The movies will be great if Yen acting as the main cast, action director and so on . we are looking forward to see your movies .
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