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Paycheck (2003) More at IMDbPro »
2009 | 2008 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
1-20 of 37 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
John Woo's Return to Asia: They Have Confidence in Me, Unlike Hollywood
25 November 2009 4:38 PM, PST | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »
"I'd never get used to the meetings. I hate talk. I don't know how to talk."
John Woo was describing the difference between working in Asia and in Hollywood when he made a point to laugh at his own inability to adapt. It's not an alien trait in creative types, who are typically more adept at invention than negotiation. Though he seemed reluctant to criticize the American film industry, Woo had nothing good to say about it, either. One only had to look at the dip in quality in the director's filmography to suspect that he never fully adjusted.
Now having taken a productive six-year respite, he returns to America with a film called Red Cliff, brought back from his Chinese sojourn. It shouldn't surprise any of his fans that it shows a long-awaited return to form.
Seventeen years ago, John Woo was king of his genre. After a string »
- Arya Ponto
'Red Cliff' is John Woo's Best Action Epic in Over a Decade
24 November 2009 9:05 PM, PST | CinemaSpy | See recent CinemaSpy news »
Film geeks still slaver over the early output of John Woo such as Hard Boiled and The Killer for their devotion to style and fantastic action sequences. However, the mid-90s and early aughts brought disappointment in the director for his less-than-stellar fare including Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target, the shockingly bad Mission: Impossible II, and the forgettable Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck. But with exhilarating, epic action reminiscent of both Braveheart and Hero, the ancient Chinese war film Red Cliff restores Woo to the hall of the hallowed. It has the director's trademark style in spades, but it never skimps on story or character development.
Red Cliff is the most expensive movie in Asian cinema history, and it's easy to see where the money went. Countless actors in period costumes, numerous special effects shots, and impeccable sound all contribute to a masterfully created film that matches Hollywood's high standards with its impressive visuals. »
Movie Review: Red Cliff (2009)
20 November 2009 12:36 PM, PST | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »
Photo: Magnet Releasing In searching for a way to describe John Woo's Red Cliff the best I can come up with is to call it exactly what it is, a beautifully rendered 208 A.D. Chinese epic living in the world of a John Woo blockbuster popcorn feature. However, such a description seems almost contradictory, but nonetheless as accurate as I can get when referring to this equally playful, romantic and violent war story loosely based on the 14th-century Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms."
I wish I was more familiar with the early work of director John Woo, but other than his highly acclaimed Hard Boiled, I'm afraid my knowledge is limited to his mixed bag of Hollywood features with Face/Off being my favorite of the bunch. However, I guess I'm not entirely at a loss as Woo has commissioned one of his Hard Boiled stars in »
- Brad Brevet
The view: John Woo's departure from Hollywood is a loss to us all
20 November 2009 9:30 AM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »
Once hailed as the man to shake up Hollywood, the maestro of dizzying, exquisitely choreographed action movies has returned to the far east
Let's say from the start that the life of a major league film-maker, with a thriving career in several corners of the globe, is not one to be sniffed at. That said, it's hard not to feel some small twinge of fellow feeling for John Woo, Hong Kong's onetime bullet-spraying master of the action genre. You may not have heard his name for some time but he was, in the early years of this soon to be ex-decade, still being spoken of as the dominant force of the film industry's future. "The most influential director making movies today," The New York Times called him back in 2002, adding, "Woo embodies the globalising forces that have shaped motion pictures in the last two decades."
Which makes it all the »
- Danny Leigh
Film: Review:Red Cliff
19 November 2009 12:02 PM, PST | avclub.com | See recent The AV Club news »
Financed for $80 million, the most money ever allotted to a Chinese production, the immense period action epic Red Cliff is John Woo’s first film in the six years since Paycheck ended—for the time being, anyway—his rocky sojourn in Hollywood. From the looks of it, the cultural exchange cut both ways: Woo’s flair for slo-mo theatrics has become a common visual stamp for Hollywood actioners, while his longtime interest in Western themes found a natural home in America, even though the blockbuster conventions of movies like Mission: Impossible II often eclipsed those themes. Bringing all his ... »
Interview: John Woo On Red Cliff And Wanting To Make A Musical
19 November 2009 8:56 AM, PST | cinemablend.com | See recent Cinema Blend news »
John Woo is a master of action movies, of guns and explosions and hardened criminals and the things that defined 90s male-centric filmmaking. So what happens when he goes back to a past without handguns? Red Cliff, Woo's immense epic recounting a famous event in Chinese history, a David and Goliath story played out across thousands of warships, fireballs, and one very well-timed tea ceremony. We talked to Woo at a roundtable interview a while back, in which he graciously talked about all the reasons he's returned to make films in China (his last English-language film was 2003's Paycheck), working again with Tony Leung, and how what he really wants to make is a musical. Yes, a musical. Even several decades into his career, John Woo is clearly still full of surprises. You can see one of them in Red Cliff, in theaters now. Are there any other genres you »
cinemadaily | Back in Action: John Woo’s “Red Cliff”
18 November 2009 10:49 AM, PST | IndieWIRE | See recent indieWIRE news »
From international action auteur (breakout hit “Hard Boiled”) to Hollywood hack (2003’s widely panned “Paycheck”), John Woo’s career has ridden a critical rollercoaster. “Now he’s back, in two senses: back making movies in Asia and back in theaters with ‘Red Cliff,’ a nearly two-and-a-half-hour historical epic set in the third century A.D. that reunites him with Tony Leung, one of the stars of ‘Hard Boiled,’” writes Mike Hale in the New … »
Tuesday Morning Foreign Blu-ray disc Report: "Red Cliff" and "Red Cliff 2" (John Woo, 2008)
17 November 2009 8:07 AM, PST | The Auteurs | See recent The Auteurs news »
A critic and enthusiast as old as myself was feeling bad for director John Woo a few years back. The American-produced 2002 World War II epic Windtalkers, concerning Native American code-breakers, was both widely misunderstood and unfairly subject to Private Ryan fatigue. It threw one-time cinephile cult-favorite Woo's already tentative Hollywood career into a tailspin; or at least that's how it looked to both his American claque and the detractors who felt his highly personal style of action-movie direction created too much friction with Tinseltown convention. His next picture, the indifferent, star-driven P.K. Dick adaptation Paycheck, provided a ready-made punchline concerning its ambitions and executions with its very title.
So rather than force the issue, Woo and longtime producing partner Terence Chang headed East once more, to embark on the most ambitious project of their long on-hold Asian careers: a massive two-part historical epic budgeted at $80 million—the biggest Asian-movie budget in history, »
Tom Cruise Not Attached to John Woo's 'Flying Tigers' ... Yet
9 November 2009 1:32 PM, PST | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »
Is John Woo going to work with Tom Cruise again? Quite possibly, and in a World War II setting to boot. Woo has been in a hold pattern over Hollywood ever since Paycheck came out, although he's recently struck gold with both audiences and the box office overseas with Red Cliff, which hits American shores on November 20th. Now he's circling Flying Tigers, a project about the first American volunteer group in the Chinese Air Force during WWII.
We spoke to Woo recently about Red Cliff, and you can read the full interview with him later this week. However, we couldn't resist sneaking in a question about Cruise, and you can read what we got after the break.
Filed under: RumorMonger, Tom Cruise
Continue reading Tom Cruise Not Attached to John Woo's 'Flying Tigers' ... Yet
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- Kevin Kelly
Exclusive Clip From John Woo's 'Red Cliff'!
22 October 2009 11:32 AM, PDT | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »
John Woo's Red Cliff isn't just the most expensive Asian movie ever made, it's also an epic testament to history and actual wars that were waged on both land and sea. In China the film was four hours long and split into two parts, but American audiences are getting a 2.5 hour version that (unfortunately) has a lot trimmed out of it. There are massive battles, martial arts, trickery, and of course, doves. It is a John Woo film, after all. It is also awesome, and enough to make you forget that he directed Paycheck.
Check out the exclusive clip after the jump which features the initiation of the climactic clash between Cao Cao and Zhou Yu's forces. This is just one of three massive battles in the film which is available today on VOD, Amazon, and the Xbox, and will appear in theaters on November 18th. This movie marks »
- Kevin Kelly
John Woo: 'After Paycheck, I Couldn't Get Better Scripts'
13 October 2009 7:15 AM, PDT | Movieline | See recent Movieline news »
After building a trailblazing career as an action director in Asia, John Woo left for Hollywood over fifteen years ago to make megabudget films like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. Still, the director always intended to return to his home country and bring his blockbuster knowledge to bear on a Chinese production, and he's done just that with Red Cliff, a massive war epic taken from Chinese history. The film was such a success in China that it outgrossed Titanic there; it'll have its Stateside debut next Friday through video-on-demand services before opening in theaters November 20th.
I sat down with Woo last week to talk about Red Cliff, his career, and his departure from Hollywood after directing the Ben Affleck thriller Paycheck. Part of our conversation (about what two English-language films might lure Woo back to the States) was published on Movieline last Wednesday; here's the rest. »
Woo's Le Samourai?
8 October 2009 3:29 PM, PDT | JoBlo.com | See recent JoBlo news »
When it comes to major influences, you'll see the name of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville pretty high on the lists of craftsmen such as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and mayhem maestro John Woo. While it's been a number of years since Woo's last Hollywood attempt (um, Paycheck), he tells Movieline that he's not yet finished with Tinseltown. In fact, he says he's interested in doing an American remake of Melville's 1967 crime noir masterpiece Le Samourai (one of my own all-time... »
- Dave Davis
John Woo Update: A Remake of ‘Le Samourai?’
8 October 2009 2:04 PM, PDT | ScreenRant.com | See recent Screen Rant news »
Since 2003’s much-panned Paycheck, American audiences haven’t heard much from the often-imitated action auteur, John Woo. But he hasn’t been resting on his laurels. In fact, he’s been adding feathers to his cap. His latest film, Red Cliff, is an over four-hour-long historical epic that broke the record for the highest-grossing film in China (a title once held by Titanic).
However, Red Cliff, like Woo’s next project, Jianyu Jianghu (The Swordsman’s World), is in Chinese. And we all know that subtitles - especially on an action film that won’t play with the art-house types - dooms a film to limited release in America. So when Will the director return to American screens with an English language film?
IMDb lists a slew of projects in development, but the two Woo is most excited about haven’t been announced till now. One is a remake of »
- Brian Gresko
Mill Valley Film Festival '09: Honorary Guests and Must-Sees
8 October 2009 1:48 PM, PDT | JustPressPlay.net | See recent JustPressPlay news »
The Mill Valley Film Festival opens tonight, filling the next 10 days with some of the most anticipated films of the rest of the year, as well as a selection of international films making its way to the Bay Area. In addition, the festival will also host the awarding of talents such as Woody Harrelson, Clive Owen, Uma Thurman, Jason Reitman and screen legend Anna Karina.
We'll have reviews coming in for the festival soon, but for the moment, here's a brief preview of what to look for.
Clive Owen gets a spotlight for bringing his latest work, the patriarchal drama The Boys Are Back, which opens the festival tonight. Owen plays a father who has to raise his two sons on his own after his wife's sudden death. As part of the program is a screening of Owen's breakout role in the gambling thriller Croupier.
Paired with fatherhood is Motherhood, »
- Arya Ponto
John Woo Wants to Remake 'Le Samourai'?
8 October 2009 10:47 AM, PDT | Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news »
Movieline has posted a few snippets from their interview with Red Cliff director John Woo, whose new film is the first feature length film he has released since 2003's abysmal Paycheck. It's his return to Chinese language films, but as he tells Movieline's Kyle Buchanan, "It doesn't mean I have given up on Hollywood."
Nope, instead he has a pair of films he would like to make, the first being an English-language remake of John-Pierre Melville's outstanding 1967 feature Le Samourai, a film Buchanan says Woo already touched upon so much with his Chow Yun-Fat starrer The Killer, that he has nearly remade the film already. I haven't seen that film, but the idea of someone trying to get Le Samourai remade now seems impossible. Woo says, "I want to make it into a modern film," but the quiet nature of Melville's film simply isn't a feature that can be brought »
- Brad Brevet
John Woo Considering Two English-Language Projects; Wants to Remake Le Samouraï
8 October 2009 7:30 AM, PDT | Slash Film | See recent Slash Film news »
John Woo hasn't made an English-language film since 2003's Paycheck. Arguably he's made only one good (or only one truly entertaining) film in America, Face/Off, though the Nic Cage war film Windtalkers does have defenders. Leaving the studio system seems like it was the best option for Woo, and in addition to his completed film opus Red Cliff he's got Jianyu Jianghu (The Swordsman's World) going now with Michelle Yeoh. But Woo continues to flirt with the idea of making another movie in America, as his lengthy list of attachments shown on IMDb can attest. Now he says there are really two projects he's interested in making here, and they're after the jump. Movieline reports on the two projects. The first seems wholly superfluous, which means it'll probably the one the gets made. That's a straight-up remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's amazing pseudo-gangster movie Le Samouraï. The film, which »
- Russ Fischer
Red Cliff Official Us Movie Trailer
6 October 2009 4:06 PM, PDT | Filmofilia | See recent Filmofilia news »
The trailer for the upcoming John Woo’s “Red Cliff” has appeared online.
Red Cliff Synopsis: “Legendary action cinema master John Woo (Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Paycheck) and international superstar Tony Leung reunite for the first time since the 1992 classic “Hard Boiled” with this epic historical drama set based on a legendary 208 A.D. battle that heralded the end of the Han Dynasty. “Red Cliff” opens with power hungry Prime Minister-turned-General Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) seeking permission from the Han dynasty Emperor to organize a southward-bound mission designed to crush two troublesome warlords that stand in his way, Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen).
As the expedition gets under way, Cao Cao’s troops rain destruction on Liu Bei’s army, forcing the latter to retreat. Liu Bei’s military strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) knows that their only hope for survival is to »
- Allan Ford
Philip K Dick adaptation Adjustment Bureau gets cast
2 October 2009 1:43 PM, PDT | 24framespersecond.net | See recent 24FramesPerSecond news »
Bourne Ultimatum writer George C. Nulfi makes his directorial debut with the upcoming The Adjustment Bureau, an adaptation of sci-fi author/genius Philip K. Dick's short story Adjustment Team, and it looks like the cast joining him is starting to fill out, as well. It was reported back in July that Matt Damon and Emily Blunt would be playing the leads and yesterday The Hollywood Reported informed everyone that Daniel Dae-Kim (Lost), John Slattery (Mad Men) and Michael Kelly (Dawn Of The Dead remake) have also joined the cast.The story centers on a congressman (Matt Damon), on the rise in politics, who meets a beautiful ballet dancer (Emily Blunt) only to discover that a strange organization is keeping them apart. It begins shooting this fall. Philip K. Dick is a favorite around these parts. Here's to hoping this adaptation is more A Scanner Darkly or Minority Reporty than it is Paycheck or Next. »
DVD Weekly Roundup – Mon 5th October 2009
2 October 2009 10:34 AM, PDT | FilmShaft.com | See recent FilmShaft.com news »
Red Cliff
John Woo hasn’t exactly lit up the screen with his Hollywood films has he? Face/Off is enjoyable I guess but the less said about Windtalkers, Paycheck and even Mission Impossible 2 the better really. It’s a shame because the man is capable of directing action sequences better than anybody else on the planet.
Red Cliff sees John Woo look to Chinese history for inspiration. It’s a sweeping, magnificent epic that looked amazing on the big screen.
The Han dynasty is coming to an end in third century China so as a last ditch attempt for survival the Emperor raises an army that stretches close to a million to attack the two neighbouring kingdoms.
Red Cliff boasts beautiful cinematography and action set pieces. It’s great to see a Director back at the top of his game.
Looks incredible on Blu-Ray.
Leave your brain at the door for this one. »
- Alex Wagner
Uma Thurman to Walk Red Carpet For Opening Night of 45th Chicago International Film Festival
23 September 2009 5:09 PM, PDT | HollywoodChicago.com | See recent HollywoodChicago.com news »
Chicago – The 45th Chicago International Film Festival will open with Katherine Dieckmann’s “Motherhood” and a star-studded red carpet where the film’s writer and director, Dieckmann and actress Uma Thurman at the AMC River East 21 Theater (322 E. Illinois St in Chicago) on Thursday, October 8th at 7pm.
Photo credit: Freestyle Releasing Cinema/Chicago also plans on honoring Thurman’s work and her contribution to film with the Festival’s “Career Achievement Award,” which will be presented prior to the screening.
“Motherhood,” which opens to a limited amount of theaters on October 23, stars Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver. The film, which was shot on location in New York’s West Village, is a comedy about the dilemmas of the maternal state (marriage, work and self) into the trials and tribulations of one pivotal day. The film isn’t like any other film because it uses both humor »
- adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
2009 | 2008 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
1-20 of 37 articles from 2009 « Prev | Next »
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