June 2008

Calum Waddell wades through the best that extreme Asian cinema has to offer and returns with The Assembly, Spider Forest and Princess Aurora.

If you have seen Park Chan-wook’s contemporary classic Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (and if you’ve not then bow your head in shame!) then the chances are that you will find yourself with a funny feeling of déjà vu whilst watching 2005’s vigilante shocker Princess Aurora. Directed, and co-written, by erstwhile actress Bang Eun-jin (she appeared in Address Unknown and Rewind, among other recent Korean efforts), this is a thoroughly invigorating thriller that fleetingly drops the ball by revealing plot twists that throw all semblance of logic straight out of the window. Moreover, it really does feel like a lower budgeted take on Sympathy for Lady Vengeance - with a similar revenge motif and an unflinching moral ambiguity. Nevertheless, this should not subtract from the fact that, at least from a narrative standpoint, Princess Aurora is quite a daring little movie. For a start, let us take the picture’s leading lady: a doe-eyed beauty by the name of Sun-jung (played by Uhm Jung-hwa - who gives a powerful, uncompromising performance of the likes that you rarely see on screen these days). Perfectly cast, Jung-hwa blesses her character with charm and an innocent sexuality, which makes her acts of violence all the...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Impact looks at some of the UK’s martial arts heroes who’ve made a name for themselves both at home and abroad.

Hong Kong was a dependent territory of the United Kingdom from 1842 until the transfer of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China on July 1st, 1997. Being a British colony, Chinese language movies had to be released with English subtitles and it’s no surprise that, as a British colony, with a thriving film industry, many a British martial artist packed their bags and headed eastward to have a go in the high impact world of Hong Kong action cinema. Keeping up with this issue’s ‘British’ theme, Impact’s Eastern Editor and occasional actor himself, Mike Leeder takes a look at some of the British fighters in the world of Hong Kong action cinema...

Wayne Archer
Former coal miner turned martial arts actor, Wayne Archer arrived in Hong Kong in the early 1980s and went on to appear in a number of movies from the bloody Hong Kong Godfather directed by Shaw Brothers’ veteran Johnny Wang Lung-wai, Tiger On The Beat with Chow Yun-fatt and Conan Lee, Bloodsport (where he battled the monkey stylist) and a double bill of Armour of God and Operation Condor with Jackie Chan. Archer was last seen discussing his Hong Kong exploits on a railway track for...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Do you remember the first time you saw a martial arts movie? Do you remember being amazed by Ong Bak? Well prepare to feel like that again as the team behind the aforementioned Thai actioner return to back-to-basics, bone-crunching martial arts - with a female lead this time around...

Move over Tony Jaa, there’s a rival for the new face of Thai action cinema, and she’s a lot prettier! Yanin ‘Jeeja’ Vismistananda is the new female martial arts star on the block - the new protégé of the team behind Ong Bak and Warrior King, Director Prachya Pinkaew and action choreographer Panna Rittikrai. The first trailer for Chocolate caught a lot of attention, showcasing Jeeja’s skills in some bone crunching choreography and some high impact out-takes that confirmed that Thai cinema continues to pull no punches. Impact’s Eastern Editor Mike Leeder throws his diet to the wind and takes a bite of Chocolate to bring us the first UK review.

The film begins well with Yakuza enforcer Masahi (Hiroshi Abe) and his tattooed Thai girlfriend Zin (Ammara Siripong) in the midst of, shall we say, a disagreement with Thai gang leader No 8 (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) and his transgender enforcer Priscilla (Sirimongkol Iamthuam). Masashi loses his Bangkok privileges and is sent back to Japan, and Zin is left on her own in Thailand, as a single mother.

Some years later, Zin’s autistic daughter Zen (Yanin ‘Jeeja’ Vismistananda) has grown up, fascinated by the martial arts, she emulates the heroes and heroines she...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

British martial arts legend Dave Lea has made quite a name for himself as a fighter, a stuntman, choreographer and trainer. Impact talks to him about movies, martial arts and much more.

British martial arts maestro Dave Lea travelled the world studying a variety of martial arts and fighting styles, including Karate, Wing Tsun, 5 Animals Style Shaolin Kung Fu, Eskrima and Jeet Kune Do, before making the move into film-making. He began his film career doubling for Michael Keaton in Tim Burton’s Batman, and Warner Brothers were impressed enough by his abilities and attitude to bring him over to the States for Tango & Cash, and he’s gone on to appear in, choreograph and train actors for such projects as Batman Returns, Demolition Man, The Crow 3 & 4, Daredevil, Alias, Martial Law, and many more. His most recent project Cass based on the true story of Cass Pennant and his turbulent and often violent life, brought Dave back to the UK where we caught up with him for the following interview about martial arts, movies and more.

Mark Holland: Dave, how did you first get involved in the martial arts?
Dave Lea: It all started when I was about 14 or 15, and it’s taken me on a hell of a journey. I started off in Karate, then I got into Wing Tsun with Joseph Cheng, then Pak Mei, bits of...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

The best-selling manga adaptation finally his UK shores with its tale of demonic exercise books and what kids will do with them. Anime Attack takes a look at the first volume of the franchise.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

This month: Bionic Woman, The Equalizer, The Abandoned, Buried Alive; Grand Theft Auto 4, Condemned 2, Ninja Gaiden 2 Competition; Seagalogy; D. Gray-Man and The Prince of Tennis.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Our hard-nosed industry insider continues our coverage of Iron Man with a look at how Marvel, finally got the casting spot on for a super-hero movie... and looks forward to some future cinematic outings of the super-powered ilk.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Rounding off our Iron Man coverage, Impact’s resident comic book fanboys dissect Marvel Studio's first film outing.

Hammering home with more than $200 million worldwide, Iron Man has stepped up to kick off the summer movie season with big fun and bigger excitement. Robert Downey, Jr. is Tony Stark, the world’s largest defense contractor whose devastatingly effective technologies have earned him the nickname ‘the Merchant of Death.’ Tony doesn’t mind at all: he’s making the world a safer place and the money pays for fast cars, fast girls and booze, booze, booze. But on the way back to base from a desert weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, Tony’s caravan is attacked and the brave American soldiers assigned to protect him are obliterated by terrorists wielding none other than Stark’s own most recent technologies.

That kind of sucker-punch can change a man’s heart in a hurry, and Tony’s case his heart is changed both figuratively and literally. His fellow captive Yinsen (played by The Kite Runner’s Shaun Toub) helps him build a small electromagnetic device that fits in his chest to help keep all the shrapnel he ingested from reaching his heart. The terrorists make Tony a deal: build us a missile to use for our own nefarious purposes, and we’ll let you go. Tony knows better. Fortunately for...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Our Tokyo correspondent, Andrez Bergen has just returned from two weeks in Hawaii - the jammy fella. Before he went, he had time to check out two new series from Japan and visited the Tokyo International Anime Festival.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

John Mosby begins his look at British action television in an interview with a leading light of TV production from Kudos - the company behind Spooks, Life on Mars and Hustle...

Once upon a time the schedules were full of American shows and any self-respecting action or genre fan had to look across the Atlantic to get their action fix. Now that’s no longer true AND shows from over here are also doing well over there. Take the likes of Spooks, Life on Mars, Hustle, Ashes to Ashes and others. The common thread in that resume of excellence... they are all produced by Kudos. Simon Crawford-Collins, the company’s Director of Drama, tells John Mosby how they tapped into the public consciousness...

Impact: Simon, though Kudos was formed in 1992 it was probably Spooks that really put it on the map. I remember talking to writer David Wolstencroft in Los Angeles a few years ago and we discussed the fact that the success of Spooks was a combination of a good idea and ‘good’ timing - debuting as it did not long after the September 11th attacks. As the producer when it debuted, do you think that factored into the way it succeeded?
Simon Crawford-Collins: I think Spooks would have been very well received without 9/11 occurring. The pace of the show, the camera style, the look of the actors and their...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

‘What becomes of the broken hearted?’ They build nuclear powered armour and go crime fighting, that’s what... Over the next two pages, Impact meets Iron Man - the metal skinned vigilante who has been a staple of Marvel Comic’s super-hero stable for over forty years.

When director Jon Favreau unveiled the first Iron Man teaser trailer at last year's San Diego Comic Con, the internet nearly shook apart from all the cat-and-mouse chases between bootleggers posting copies of the clip and the suits at Paramount who couldn’t send out the cease-and-desist letters fast enough. The teaser spread far and wide, putting smiles of drunken glee and hope on the faces of fans who couldn’t believe they were seeing something so fresh, fun and cool.

And man, does Iron Man look cool. The project has had some high-profile near-starts over the years, with an early 2003 rumour that Leonardo DiCaprio would wear the metal pants with a script by Smallville architects Al Gough and Miles Millar. DiCaprio’s an excellent actor but he just didn’t seem to fit the image of billionaire industrialist Tony Stark, who has a change of heart (almost literally) and begins using his own creations against the worst terrorists, tyrants and other unique threats the world has to offer. (DiCaprio went on to play Howard Hughes in The Aviator; Iron Man co-creator Stan Lee says that Hughes was his original inspiration for Stark.) Tom Cruise was also attached to the film for quite a...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Tadanou Asano (Survive Style 5) essays the greatest warrior general since Alexander the Great headed East, as Genghis Khan rampages West towards a screen near you...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Comic book writer and occasional Who scripter, Paul Cornell sits down for a chat with our absent editor (enjoying a month off in Oz), to discuss his reboot of Captain Britain - lesser known cousin to the recently deceased Captain America - who has merged with Cornell’s own Wisdom series to create an interesting cross pollination.

Even in death, Captain America is a flagship character (in every sense) for Marvel Comics, but his transatlantic ‘cousin’ Captain Britain has had less exposure even in his native country. Sure there’s been acclaimed outings with no less than Alans Moore and Davis providing popular runs on his solo and team titles, but he’s remained something of an enigma, representing different things to different creators and too often snatching defeat from the jaws of victory... While he’s come a long way since Chris Claremont penned a ‘magical’ origin story in which young aristocratic Brian Braddock is charged with protecting the island kingdom by no less than Merlin himself, a firm, consistent style has remained annoying out of reach.

Not any more. Paul Cornell, a writer whose credentials read like the Who’s What of officially cool geekiness is bringing the character back to the land of his birth, surrounding him with equally enigmatic and driven heroes and giving him the chance to be the inspirational hero he should be.

“The idea essentially sprang out of the Wisdom limited-series comic from Marvel and I think it’s best described as ‘superheroes in an Intelligence context versus the supernatural’. For reasons that will become clear,...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Troubled, outrageous, a law unto himself, a dictionary definition of the word ’reputation’. Are we talking Tony Stark or Robert Downey Jnr himself? Impact meets the man behind the Iron mask.

Acclaimed actor Robert Downey Jnr has survived a self-destructive streak that saw him make tabloid headlines for years, but like billionaire Tony Stark, the actor seems to has come out the other side a more thoughtful person - albeit with a wicked glint in his eye.

John Mosby: A lot of people say you were an inspired choice for the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man. What was it that attracted you to the role?
Robert Downey Jnr: I’d like to say that I was (originally) on NOBODY’s list to play this role. But Tony Stark offered me the chance of a lifetime. It’s rare in movies like this... the first thing you get is a release date, then a poster, then you talk about a trailer, then you think about a director and casting and maybe at some point a script. What was really great - and some of this has been for reasons which are obvious enough - was that John and I got to have a series of conversations when he was meeting other people who were putting money up. There was a point where Jon just didn’t think it could work out and I said ‘I’m going to...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

It’s been a while since the Wachowski boys have brought anything new to the screen, but this month Impact takes a look at the neon hued, kinetic car ballet that is Speed Racer.

Dina Burgess caught up with Joel Silver and stars of the movie, Emile Hirsch and Susan Sarandon while they were in London for the UK premiere...

Flinging itself on to the screen like an explosion in a fluorescent paint factory, Speed Racer is a garish mixture of live action and technicolour CGI aimed primarily at audiences of pre-pubescent boys and gamers. In fact, it’s probably the nearest thing you can get to playing a video game without actually having a console in your hand.

Speed Racer’s heritage is never completely forgotten though, with some affectionate references to anime throughout the movie. The creator of the original cartoon, Tatsuo Yoshida is also acknowledged in the writing credits.

Emile Hirsch plays our hero, Speed Racer who is not only struggling to come to terms with his older brother’s death on the track, but is forced to choose between working for a corrupt sponsor and earning a fortune, or supporting his father’s car building firm and potentially never winning another race.

The actor jumped at the chance of taking on the lead role, having been a fan of the anime series since he was a child and was also keen to work with Andy and Larry Wachowski,

‘I...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Our favourite Bollywood action hero, Akshay Kumar, returns to the fray in this internationally released Hindi actioner. Richard Hawes takes a look at Tashan.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Impact has covered the making of this homegrown action-fest since its inception. Well, Ten Dead Men finally recieved its premiere last month. Impact was there and brings you its full review of the movie.

Ryan (Brendan Carr) used to be a bad boy, working for and with a very nasty bunch led by Hart (Terry Stone), but a life of crime went out the window when he met the love of his life, Amy (Pooja Shah). But Ryan forgot one thing, you can’t just walk away from that kind of life, you can’t just hand in your papers and expect a golden handshake from your boss and a letter of recommendation.

An old workmate reappears and asks for a favour; Ryan reluctantly agrees and literally signs the death warrant for himself and Amy, when Hart finds out just what’s going on. Hart unleashes his ‘dogs of war’ to even the score, and Ryan is forced to watch his wife’s brutal murder before they turn on him, leaving him left for dead. But somebody made a mistake, and didn’t finish the job. And as the film’s tagline aptly puts it, “10 men took away his life, and now 10 men will pay with theirs!”

The UK’s independent action movie scene takes another giant leap with the release of the second feature from Modern Life. 10 Dead Men shows great progress from their debut with Left for Dead....

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

Adrian Paul (you know, from Highlander...) is back on home turf and chats to John Mosby about the making of this Brit-grit gangster movie, co-starring Gary Stretch and Vinnie Jones.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

The brothers Strause are currently promoting AVP: Requiem but here they discuss both that movie and their SFX work on other blockbusting franchises and the affect the video-game industry is having on Hollywood action.

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]

...and no look at UK television would be complete without examining the sudden surge of our oldest sci-fi franchise - Doctor Who. This month, John looks at the history of Who, up to the present incarnation.

It was November 23rd, 1963, a day after the world had sat glued to its TV sets because of the assassination of President Kennedy, that a certain blue box opened its doors for the first time. Only it wasn’t a box, it was a cosmic vessel - which was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside - and called a Tardis (an acronym for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space). And for the moment, it wasn’t even blue. Televisions were several years away from being anything other than monochrome. On that cold November evening, the pictures were grainy, even somewhat ‘unearthly’, but the potential was there.

Film actor William Hartnell was the crusty old time-traveller who had made touchdown on Earth with his ‘grand-daughter’ Susan and had made, temporarily, a second home here. However two inquisitive teachers, bemused by Susan’s knowledge-beyond-her-years came a’knocking and soon the adventures began. Conceived by the late Verity Lambert as both entertaining and educational, the idea was to have the group visit different time-periods and have them explore the world(s) with an eye to make learning fun and exciting. However by the second story, the adventure was far from Earth and in the...

[To read this article in full you must buy the June 2008 edition of Impact]