Meet the Pirate Lords of PIRATES 3
“Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” is coming to a theater near you very, very soon (May 25, 2007 to be exact), but before that, you can meet (or at least see the pictures of) the film’s Pirate Lords. Two of them you’ve already met — Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and his kinda-maybe-not partner Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). The third is Chow Yun Fat, playing Singapore Pirate Lord Sao Feng, Lord of the South China Sea. There are six more, and here they are via Yahoo! Movies.
John Woo and Chow Yun Fat: Still BFF?
They came up together. They became internationally famous together. And they even came to Hollywood (and left) together. So can the three-decade long friendship of Hong Kong director John Woo and Hong Kong actor Chow Yun Fat survived the battle that is “The Battle of Red Cliff”, even after Fat pulled out of the movie at the last minute, leaving his best bud hanging over a (ahem) cliff? According to Woo: Yes. Says Woo at a press conference for “Red Cliff” about Fat: “…he’s still one of the actors I admire the most, and my good friend.” Of course it probably helps that having either Chow Yun Fat or Tony Leung as the star of “Battle of Red Cliff” probably isn’t going to do all that much to the movie’s box office; when was the last time Fat opened a movie? Exactly.
First Pictures from Andrew Goth’s GALLOWWALKER
Fangoria’s got your first look at Andrew Goth’s upcoming supernatural/zombie/western “Gallowwalker”. (See images below.) The film will star Wesley Snipes and here’s a nice little plot synopsis via IMDB.com: “A gunman knows too well the ways of vengeance. Fast and furious, he has killed every man who crossed him. But his gift with a gun comes with a curse. All those who die by his hand will return. Enter the world of GALLOWWALKER, where vengeance lives forever.” Most people probably won’t care, but Snipes is playing a role that was originally slated for Chow Yun-Fat. I remember seeing sketches with Fat in the role a few years back, when the project was still called “The Wretched”.
Tony Leung Back in John Woo’s BATTLE OF RED CLIFF
It wasn’t that long ago that Chow Yun Fat vacated the lead role in John Woo’s massively expensive Mainland Chinese epic movie “The Battle of Red Cliff”, Tony Leung, who left the movie himself earlier, has now returned to assume Fat’s role. Say what? No, really. Variety says, “Leung dropped out of the film in March when he was skedded to play a different character. At the time, he said he felt unable to commit to the six-month shoot that the pic entails. He was replaced by Takeshi Kaneshiro.” So basically Leung left, was replaced by Takeshi Kaneshiro, then Fat left, and now Leung is back, but playing Fat’s role, while Kaneshiro still has his original role. Ooooh boy. I just hope all of this moving around doesn’t damage the film.
Did Cho Seung Hui Copied Park Chan-Wook’s OLDBOY?
By now everyone knows the name Cho Seung Hui — the 23-year old South Korean student who massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech because, according to his own writings, he was tired of those “rich kids” and their “debauchery”. Of course, the fact that he just killed random people who didn’t even know who he was, much less his name, seems to discount his “motives” as just that — an attempt to have a motive. And we know Cho Seung Hui sent pictures of himself wielding his weapons and spewing profanity-laced “statements” to NBC News in-between his killings. Here’s the thing: everytime I watched those pictures he snapped of himself with his gun (and one with a hammer), I realized I had seen them before, and today, SkyNews figured it out: Cho Seung Hui was copying scenes from Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy”.
Chow Yun Fat Leaves THE BATTLE OF RED CLIFF
Only three days into shooting his mega chinese pic, “The Battle of Red Cliff”, and John Woo has already lost two of his leading men — first Tony Leung (”Infernal Affairs”), and now his longtime muse, Chow Yun Fat (”Replacement Killers”), reports Variety. So what happened, and what’s going on over there in China? The film’s producer, longtime Woo collaborator Terence Chan said: “We are replacing Chow Yun-fat since the bond company CineFinance would not approve his agreement.” Um, that doesn’t make sense. Read on…
New “Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End” Pics
Oh those rascally pirates. You can’t keep a good scurvy bastard down, that’s for sure. Or at least, that’s what Disney is hoping when they launch “Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End” on a salivating populace sometime in Summer 2007, which is already shaping up to be the Mother of All Summer Event Films Battle, what with “Transformers”, “Live Free or Die Hard”, “Spiderman 3″, and “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” all vying for your hard-earned dollars. Oh man, it’s gonna be a battle royale! Anyhoo, here are some new “Pirates 3″ pics via AICN. Check out Chow Yun Fat. Damn, nice tats, Fatty.
“Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End” Promo Stills
With just four months until its impending release, the powers behind “Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End”, has started dishing out the promotional stuff to the usual places. These promo posters are from AICN, and since the posters weren’t yanked a second after being posted (studios eyeball AICN for “booty” like hawks), I think I’m safe in assuming that the studios sent them out themselves under the guise of “spies”, etc. In part 3, “At World’s End”, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom goes in search of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) who was “eaten” by the Kraken at the end of “Dead Man’s Chest”. And oh yeah, Chow Yun Fat plays a Chinese pirate. Arghhh, ’tis sounds cool!
Movie Preview: “Curse of the Golden Flower”
Via Joblo, here’s a nifty little scene from the new Zhang Yimou martial arts epic “Curse of the Golden Flower”, which features ninjas attacking a building and getting ambushed themselves in turn. Kinda cool. The film stars Jay Chou (”Initial D”), Chow Yun Fat (the upcoming “Pirates of the Caribbean 3″), and Gong Li (”Miami Vice”), who returns to working with Yimou for the first time in a long while. The film is about “the ill-fated romance between an imperial bodyguard and a prince takes the lovers on a dangerous journey where royal family secrets are revealed.” Doesn’t sound all that hot, but the video and the pictures below do show that this is an actual martial arts movie, and not some wacky road movie.