LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Kung Fu Hustle: Stephen Chow
built 223 days ago
Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle may be the pinnacle of Chow’s unique vision. Prior to Shaolin Soccer, he painstakingly developed his unique brand of comedy – one that is very visual without resorting to old school slapstick. The visual gags could be very subtle (the parked car and lamp post in Magnificent Scoundrels) or over the top (the transvestite with a beard that is a staple of most Chow movies). Chow’s genius is in pacing. He knows how to put together scenes to maximum effect. With Shaolin Soccer he perfected his visual trademarks, borrowing heavily from anime and wuxia.
Source:
Veering like a drunken driver between naïve sweetness and startling cruelty, Kung Fu Hustle is infuriatingly erratic, very, very funny and occasionally just flat-out insane. Chow, who writes and directs, must share credit with fight choreographers Yuen Woo Ping and Sammo Hung. Together they have cooked up an extraordinary collection of smackdowns, culminating in a full scale tenement assault that makes a mockery of The Matrix and kicks Gangs Of New York in the gonads.
Source:
In Kung Fu Hustle, this Cantonese reference to the Kowloon Walled City marks out a distinct territory of word play that is impenetrable to audiences who are outside of the Hong Kong community. The Kowloon Walled City has a unique role in Hong Kong's colonial history. It was China's tiny enclave in the middle of British Hong Kong for decades, an extra-territory within the British colonial Hong Kong that became a place of no-man’s land since even the British colonialist did not have sovereignty over it. It was said that as late as the 1970s the local triads were the only real administration within the Walled City until it was finally torn down in 1993 (Leung 34). Chow expands his early nonsensical wordplay of Cantonese vocabulary and slang, and in Kung Fu Hustle creates a new source of communal solidarity for Hong Kong people who are familiar with the history of the Walled City. In the film, Pig Sty Alley is the one neighborhood that is immune to the Axe Gang’s assaults for a very long time because the Alley is so poverty-stricken it holds no interest for the gang. The relaxed and idyllic mood of Pig Sty Alley, shown accompanied by traditional Chinese folk music (“Fisherman’s Song of the East China Sea”), contrasts with the urban setting the Axe Gang occupies (accompanied by Raymond Wong’s western style music “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained”).
Source:
What’s more, in ‘Kung Fu Hustle’, Stephen Chow chooses to elevate the status of martial arts over comedy. Stephen’s childhood love of Bruce Lee is more apparent with his latest, more Westernized fare. In both ‘Shaolin Soccer’ and ‘Kung Fu Hustle’ he is toned, taut and nothing like his earlier Hong Kong image – malleable, fun and a bit pasty. A lot of Chinese fans find that Chow’s unique humor is replaced by mere homage to Bruce Lee and a host of other Western films. Martial arts, a tried and well-worn Asian genre, is dangerous ground for Stephen Chow, whose best card is really comedy.
Source:
According to the Taiwanese media, filming of the sequel to Kung Fu Hustle will begin in Shanghai this September or October and will complete by the yearend. Almost everyone, including Stephen Chow himself, Lam Tse-Chung (Chow's sidekick), Yuen Qiu (the Landlady) and Yuen Wah (the Landlord), will reappear in the sequel. Even Chan Kwok-Kwan, whose character died in the first film, will return with a new character. However, Huang Shengyi, who played the female lead, is currently trying to leave Steven Chow's agency and her chance of returning to the sequel is quite small. The action will still be handled by Yuen Wo-Ping and there will be more action sequences in the sequel. The budget is about US$ 15 million and part of it comes from Sony Pictures.
Source:
In Kung-Fu Hustle, both Chinese and Hollywood film have a pervasive cultural influence. Chow's narrative, scenery and style both integrate and contest the logic and effects of an implacable capitalism. The opening sequence of the Axe Gang dance pays tribute to a number of U.S. genres from different times. It is a crossover of the Matrix films and Gangs of New York (2002). Kung Fu Hustle combines them with musicals such as Top Hat (1935) and West Side Story (1961). The film is reminiscent of ensemble choreography instead of solo performance, and of West Side Story’s long opening gang dance that is set in the Upper West Side of New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Stephen Chow