Talk:Hong Kong action cinema

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Contents 1 Vandalism 2 New page, new problems 3 Comments about the article 4 Citations needed 5 Fraternal bonds 6 Latest edits 7 "Most successful Chinese film" 8 mohap/wuxia and other Cantonese/Chinese spelling pairs

[edit] Vandalism

As a featured page, shouldn't editing the article be locked for the moment?

the policy is not to lock any featured page. usually vandalism gets reverted quite quickly on a featured page. Zzzzz 12:56, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The policy needs to be changed PRONTO. The last couple of days have been rediculous and obscene. I see someone finally had the sense to lock this page down for the day. Good. If the main page is locked, there is no good reason for the featured article not to be locked for 24 hours as well. People put a lot of work into these articles just to see them trashed. I have a featured article scheduled for tomorrow and I am seriously considering requesting it to be remove from the queue and having its featured status removed. Lately, FAs of the day have been getting 40 vandal hits per 1 constructive edit. If this policy isn't changed permanently, editors such as myself are going to leave Wikipedia altogether. No point spending months working on articles only to have them replaced with pictures of penises and littered with vulger epithets... --Jayzel 16:13, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

See user:Raul654/protection Raul654 20:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New page, new problems

Encountering zero objections and one concurrence after suggesting so weeks ago, I've created this entry and moved a large chunk of the Cinema of Hong Kong entry here, more or less intact, so far. HK Action Cinema inspires so much interest in its own right and is so influential in global cinema today that it probably needs its own space. Clearly it did, since it was getting so huge and unwieldy in its original spot.

First order of business: Can anyone tell me how I get the 'k' capitalized in 'kong' in the page heading? My first mistake on the new page.

What we have here now clearly needs more information, as usual. Particularly pre-'70s. Also a reduction in rambling anecdotal material, some of which could get moved to relevant entries, especially in the case of the Bruce Lee material.

Thank you, all. Michael Wells 03:01, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Comments about the article

i like this article alot, and think it has definite potential to become featured. i can help to take it thru WP:GA and WP:PR. some issues need to be addressed first though:

• why is there an empty "postwar martial arts cinema" section?
• do people like King Hu deserve a mention, or does the fact he was taiwanese exclude him completely?
• important 60s/70s figures like cheng pei-pei and jimmy wang-yu are not mentioned at all.
• bey logan once mentioned that HK films were dominated with "Jane Bond" type female fighters and men were sidelined, but masculinity began to dominate in the 70s, but there is no mention of this in the article.
• why did the films switch from mandarin language to cantonese language in the 70s? were they always in mandarin before the 70s or at one time were they cantonese?
• wasnt five fingers of death the first breakthrough kungfu film in the west? or maybe one-armed boxer? or king boxer? i know it was pre-bruce lee but dont know any details. "The kung fu wave" should be expanded to say something about that, plus the "Venoms" should get a mention.
• "Reinventing action cinema" section should mention the prevalence of supernatural/horror stuff that started from shaw bros' legend of the 7 golden vampires, was popularised by sammo hung's spooky encounters, and hit heights with mr vampire and chinese ghost story.
• regarding "influence in the west", did things only kick off in 1989 with the killer? what about the popularity of HK kungfu flix (esp. jackie chan) on video in the 80s? what about john carpenter's big trouble in little china? what about Jonathan Ross's tv series "the incredibly strange film show" which highlighted many of these HK-action figures like JC, TH and others?
• what about the strange role of "action choreographer" and how it worked together with the real "film director"?

i'm not enough of an expert to write it myself, and dont have any of those reference books used (i think the logan book will definitely have answers to the above though). if this stuff can be fixed then its well on its way to featured status already. thx! Zzzzz 19:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions. "Not enough of an expert," huh? I was thinking while I was reading, "Zzzzz knows a lot about this - why not put this stuff in the article?" Jump on in, the water's fine! I'm just an amateur obsessive myself, with a handful of good books at hand.

A number of your concerns occur because this section started when I moved it over in one chunk from the general Cinema of Hong Kong page because the action cinema material was getting long and unwieldy as a section there. I was hoping others would be inspired to get busy cleaning up and expanding this subject, as I was busy attacking the general HK cinema article, which burned me out after a little while. Not much has happened in the nearly one year since then, and today I got a burst of energy; some of your concerns, I was taking care of as you typed! To address some specific points:

• I had just created, and was busy writing, the "postwar martial arts cinema" section at the moment you asked the question. Maybe it's better to wait until there's some text typed in the edit box to hit "save."
• King Hu started in Hong Kong before moving to Taiwan, and his Taiwanese work still influenced HK films greatly.
• Cheng Pei-Pei and Wang Yu definitely belong. Anyone? Anyone? Zzzzz?
• The masculine/feminine dichotomy is now briefly mentioned by me but might deserve a little more discussion.
• The Cantonese/Mandarin relationship is discussed in some detail (see here and here) in the main HK Cinema article. The '70s change might be worth a passing mention here.
• As far as what films are most influential or "groundbreaking" or deserve mention, there's plenty of variation from source to source and fan to fan. That's the sort of thing that should be worked out as different writers contribute (hint, hint). I'd love to see most of what you mention included, as long as we don't go fanboyishly overboard with too many titles and movie descriptions.

We also need to note more recent trends, even regrettable ones like bad CGI and Cantopop pretty boys on wires.

I still feel the section on Brucealikes is skippable. I think I'll kill it unless anyone wants to leap in front of the bullet.

Michael Wells 21:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

i like the brucesploitation stuff (although listing "game of death" as "just another brucesploitation flick" is a bit inaccurate), it is (was) an important part of HK action in the 70s/early 80s... still would like more on the supernatural/horror scene... i *could* add/change some stuff myself but would have to rely on web references which could break the "scholarliness" of the article... any objections to putting the article on peer review? Zzzzz 21:15, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Brucesploitation certainly merits a mention, but a whole subsection is going quite a bit overboard, I think. A sentence might be good. In fact, the whole Bruce Lee section needs to be slimmed down; the biographical details are either repeated in, or can be moved to, the looooooong article on him. This article should stick to detailing his place and importance in the HK industry as succinctly as comfortably possible.

In the first paragraph of the "1970s kung fu wave" section, I mention "seriously trained martial artists" as stars. Would be nice if someone else could supply a couple or three verifiable examples. I know names, but sometimes I'm unclear on which started out as martial artists and which didn't and were faking it. Jimmy W.Y. was a swimmer, for example. Was Chen Kuan Tai the real deal? I know Gordon Lau Kar-fai was. How about David Chiang and Ti Lung? Michael Wells 22:14, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and I'd prefer to wait for some more work to be done before it goes to peer review. My two cents. Michael Wells 22:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

ok please trim brucesploitation and bruce lee as u see fit. p.s. i striked out some more comments & added 1 new one. Zzzzz 08:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

"Ti Lung was born August 3rd, 1946 in Hong Kong and began studying Wing Chun under Master Chu Wan" [1]

[edit] Citations needed

new school wuxia:

(1) "The trend may also have been encouraged by a need to win back local audiences from the newly popularized medium of television." - who said it?

70s kunfu wave:

(2) "Kung fu cinema was particularly influenced by Chang's concern with his vision of masculine values and male friendship;" - who said chang's film had these concerns?

(3) "African-Americans and other racial minorities particularly embraced the genre (as exemplified by the popular hip-hop group, the Wu-Tang Clan) perhaps as an almost unprecedented source of adventure stories with non-white heroes, who furthermore often displayed a strong streak of racial and/or nationalistic pride." - need a strong source for this statement.

bruce lee:

(4) "The fad did little to engender mainstream respect in the West for the relatively new phenomenon of martial arts cinema. But despite such posthumous treatment, Lee continues to cast a long shadow over Hong Kong film." - any evidence of the west hating brucesploitation?

jackie chan modern kunfu:

(5) "The new formula grossed over HK$19 million." - where did this figure come from?

(6) also need a citation for the whole section - i assume one of the reference books covers it

wire fu wave:

(7) "she made an unlikely specialty of androgynous woman-warrior types, such as the villainous, sex-changing eunuch in The Swordsman 2 (1992), epitomizing martial arts fantasy's often-noted fascination with gender instability." - who noted that fascination?

(8) also need a citation for the whole section - i assume one of the reference books covers it

influence in the west:

(9) whole first pgraph needs citation.

exit of many leading figures:

(10) "many of the leading lights of Hong Kong cinema left for Hollywood, which offered budgets and pay which could not be equalled by Hong Kong production companies." - anybody actually say this is the reason?

recent trends:

(11) "The number of local films produced, and their box office takings, are dramatically reduced; American imports now dominate in a way they had not for decades, or perhaps ever. This crisis and increased contact with Western cinema have probably been the biggest recent influences on Hong Kong action cinema." - this is a strong assertion, needs a strong source.

(12) also need a citation for the whole section - i assume one of the reference books covers it

Zzzzz 19:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fraternal bonds

I deleted the words "particularly Chinese" from the sentence about John Woo's films having "a particularly Chinese emphasis on the fraternal bonds of duty and affection among the criminal protagonists". American gangster movies are also about fraternal bonds between gangsters; if there's something distinctive about the Chinese version of this, it needs explaining. The Singing Badger 16:04, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latest edits

the title is "chinese boxer" not "the chinese boxer" (see imdb), jimmy wang yu is the famous name of the man, i've never heard anyone call him "jimmy wang", also he does not need to be wikilinked there as he is lready wikilinked one/two pgraphs up. and i think linking "cinema of america" is way too vague and uncontextually useful, so i prefer less wikilinks (especially in the lead).

Wang is his family name. It's confusing to combine his name in the western style and romanised form of his Chinese name on an encyclopædia. — Instantnood 17:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

i would rather go with the "famous" name, which is the combined western+romchin Jimmy Wang Yu which always appears on the movie posters, film reviews, publicity etc, and is the more likely search term also. it also matches with the Jimmy Wang Yu article itself, which uses this name as his "main" name. on imdb it states: "Sometimes Credited As: Wong Yu Lung / Yue Wang / Yu Wong / Jimmy Wang Yu / Wang Yue". no mention of Jimmy Wang, although that name could still be made into a redirect also.

I'm no expert but I'd be interested to see such posters. :-) (And please be reminded to sign your messages.) — Instantnood 00:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Most successful Chinese film"

Re [2] - In what way is it a Chinese film? It was a Hong Kong-United States production, and Hong Kong was then a British crown colony. — Instantnood 00:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] mohap/wuxia and other Cantonese/Chinese spelling pairs

An anon has been changing "wuxia" to "mohap/wuxia" and "gongfu" to "gong fu" everywhere in the article. [3] Is there any consensus for this change? Kimchi.sg | talk 13:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

i agree with kimchi's reversions. Zzzzz 23:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I happened to be the chap who modified the wuxia to mohop/wuxia. It is the same characters in Chinese but mohop is more universally used by normal Hong Kong Chinese (I was one of them, now an expatriate in the US). Wuxia is generally used by the mainlanders, Taiwanese, and others who speak Mandarin. Prior to the handover to the People's Republic of China, HK predominately speak Cantonese. No offense to Mr .(?, sorry) Kimchi but it appears his country identifier seems to be Singapore. This being an article on HK, I believe I owe it to the HK citizens who are proud to have created the mohop/wuxia phenomenon and have annotated it as such in their honor. If the Mandarin speakers wish to call it 'wuxia', ok but we Cantonese, Hakka, Tanka Hkers and ex-HKers know it only as 'mohop' or the whatever dialectical name (but 'mohop' will suffice). By the way, I only changed the 'gongfu' to 'kung fu' whenever it was a HK production orf mention not when it was not. Lastly, I reside (still) in a free and democratic society with flaws but nevertheless still free and if wikipedia still stands for freedom and honour then please permit me to modify the mandarin wuxia to Cantonese mohop. Pre-revolutionary China may have made 'wuxia' but HK made 'mohop'.It is one of the HK's more endearing legacies before the 1997 takeover. Please restore the changes or allow me to restore the changes and you chaps can supervise or edit it. Unlike perhaps some others, I can never return home. Thank you. Anonymous but still an HKer.

thanks for your comments. this article uses the most commonly used term worldwide, which is "wuxia". few english speakers have ever heard of "mohop". discussions about different terms for "wuxia" should go in the wuxia article, not here. Zzzzz 10:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)