Kung Fu Cult Masters

Kung Fu Cult Masters PDF Author: Leon Hunt
Publisher: Wallflower Press
ISBN: 9781903364635
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Chinese Martial Arts films have captured audiences' imaginations around the world. In this wide-ranging study, Hunt looks at the mythic allure of the Shaolin Temple, the 'Clones' of Bruce Lee, gender-bending swordswomen, and the knockabout comedy of Sammo Hung, bringing new insights to a hugely popular and yet critically neglected genre. 12 photos.

Kung Fu Cult Masters

Kung Fu Cult Masters PDF Author: Leon Hunt
Publisher: Wallflower Press
ISBN: 9781903364635
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book

Book Description
Chinese Martial Arts films have captured audiences' imaginations around the world. In this wide-ranging study, Hunt looks at the mythic allure of the Shaolin Temple, the 'Clones' of Bruce Lee, gender-bending swordswomen, and the knockabout comedy of Sammo Hung, bringing new insights to a hugely popular and yet critically neglected genre. 12 photos.

Legacies of the Drunken Master

Legacies of the Drunken Master PDF Author: Luke White
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824881575
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In 1978 the films Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master, both starring a young Jackie Chan, caused a stir in the Hong Kong cinema industry and changed the landscape of martial arts cinema. Mixing virtuoso displays of acrobatic kung fu with knockabout humor to huge box office success, they broke the mold of the tragic and heroic martial arts film and sparked not only a wave of imitations, but also a much longer trend for kung fu comedies that continues to the present day. Legacies of the Drunken Master—the first book-length analysis of kung fu comedy—interrogates the politics of the films and their representations of the performing body. It draws on an interdisciplinary engagement with popular culture and an interrogation of the critical literature on Hong Kong and martial arts cinema to offer original readings of key films. These readings pursue the genre in terms of its carnival aesthetic, the utopias of the body it envisions, its highly stylized depictions of violence, its images of masculinity, and the registers of its “hysterical” laughter. The book’s analyses are carried out amidst kung fu comedy’s shifting historical contexts, including the aftermath of the 1960s radical youth movements, the rapidly globalizing colonial enclave of Hong Kong and the emerging consciousness of its 1997 handover to China, and the transnationalization of cinema audiences. It argues that through kung fu comedy’s images of the body, the genre articulated in complex and often contradictory ways political realities relevant to late twentieth-century Hong Kong and the wider conditions of globalized capitalism. The kung fu comedy entwines us in a popular cultural history that stretches into the folk past and forward into utopian and dystopian possibilities. Theoretically rich and critical, Legacies of the Drunken Master aims to be at the forefront of scholarship on martial arts cinema. It also addresses readers with a broader interest in Hong Kong culture and politics during the 1970s and 1980s, postcolonialism in East Asia, and action and comedy films in a global context—as well as those fascinated with the performing body in the martial arts.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas PDF Author: Carlos Rojas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019976560X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any single approach to a vast field like "Chinese cinema" difficult at best. Accordingly, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas situates the term more broadly among various different phases, genres, and distinct national configurations, while taking care to address the consequences of grouping together so many disparate histories under a single banner. Offering both a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue and a mapping of Chinese cinema as an expanded field, this Handbook presents thirty-three essays by leading researchers and scholars intent on yielding new insights and new analyses using three different methodologies. Chapters in Part I investigate the historical periodizations of the field through changing notions of national and political identity — all the way from the industry's beginnings in the 1920s up to its current forms in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global diaspora. Chapters in Part II feature studies centered on the field's taxonomical formalities, including such topics as the role of the Chinese opera in technological innovation, the political logic of the "Maoist film," and the psychoanalytic formula of the kung fu action film. Finally, in Part III, focus is given to the structural elements that comprise a work's production, distribution, and reception to reveal the broader cinematic apparatuses within which these works are positioned. Taken together, the multipronged approach supports a wider platform beyond the geopolitical and linguistic limitations in existing scholarship. Expertly edited to illustrate a representative set of up to date topics and approaches, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas provides a vital addition to a burgeoning field still in its formative stages.

Defining Cult Movies

Defining Cult Movies PDF Author: Mark Jancovich
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719066313
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This collection concentrates on the analysis of cult movies, how they are defined, who defines them and the cultural politics of these definitions. The definition of the cult movie relies on a sense of its distinction from the "mainstream" or "ordinary." This also raises issues about the perception of it as an oppositional form of cinema, and of its strained relationships to processes of institutionalization and classification. In other words, cult movie fandom has often presented itself as being in opposition to the academy, commercial film industries and the media more generally, but has been far more dependent on these forms than it has usually been willing to admit. The international roster of essayists range over the full and entertaining gamut of cult films from Dario Argento, Spanish horror and Peter Jackson's New Zealand gorefests to sexploitation, kung fu and sci-fi flicks.

Ask for the Moon

Ask for the Moon PDF Author: Meredith Lewis
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0244073899
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
In the 1960s Shaw Brothers Studios revolutionised martial arts filmmaking. Movie mogul Sir Run Run Shaw developed a way to churn out lavish blockbusters quickly and cheaply. An assembly line approach kept his filmmakers busy but access to an extraordinary pool of resources meant they could "ask for the moon". This book is a case study exploring how a brilliant, driven entrepreneur and his audaciously creative filmmakers conducted a bold experiment in business and movie-making innovation.

Asian Popular Culture in Transition

Asian Popular Culture in Transition PDF Author: John A Lent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113630097X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Asian Popular Culture in Transition examines contemporary consumption practices in South Korea, China, India, and Japan, and both updates and extends popular culture studies of the region. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this collection of essays explores how recent advances and shifts in information technologies and globalization have impacted cultural markets, fashion, the digital generation, mobile culture, femininity, matrimonial advertising, and a film actress’ image and performance. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources and methods including historical research, content analysis, anthropological observation, textual analyses, and interviews, Asian Popular Culture in Transition makes a significant contribution to this growing area of research. Given its broad range of countries, theories, and approaches, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Asian studies, cultural studies, media and communication studies, and gender studies.

Afrofuturism in Black Panther

Afrofuturism in Black Panther PDF Author: Karen A. Ritzenhoff
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793623589
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This book examines Black Panther not only as a film grounded in Afro-futurism, but also as an invitation for viewers to think about relevant real-world social questions about identity, liberation, and racial justice, ultimately posing the question of how Black Panther invites a reimagining of Blackness.

Films of Fury

Films of Fury PDF Author: Ric Meyers
Publisher: Eirini Press
ISBN: 9780979998942
Category : Martial arts films
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From Bruce Lee to James Bond, Jackie Chan to Jet Li, Enter the Dragon to Kung Fu Panda, kung fu films remain a thrilling part of movie-lovers' lives. Now the acknowledged pioneer in the genre presents his magnum opus on the subject, incorporating information and revelations never before seen in America. From the ancient Peking Opera origins to its superhero-powered future, Ric Meyers reveals the loony, the legendary, and everything in between. This vivid, action-packed book may delight, surprise, fascinate, and even enlighten you with a personal V.I.P. tour through the wondrous world of the most ridiculously exhilarating movies ever made.

Experts in Action

Experts in Action PDF Author: Lauren Steimer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478021268
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Action movie stars ranging from Jackie Chan to lesser-known stunt women and men like Zoë Bell and Chad Stahelski stun their audiences with virtuosic martial arts displays, physical prowess, and complex fight sequences. Their performance styles originate from action movies that emerged in the industrial environment of 1980s Hong Kong. In Experts in Action Lauren Steimer examines how Hong Kong--influenced cinema aesthetics and stunt techniques have been taken up, imitated, and reinvented in other locations and production contexts in Hollywood, New Zealand, and Thailand. Foregrounding the transnational circulation of Hong Kong--influenced films, television shows, stars, choreographers, and stunt workers, she shows how stunt workers like Chan, Bell, and others combine techniques from martial arts, dance, Peking opera, and the history of movie and television stunting practices to create embodied performances that are both spectacular and, sometimes, rendered invisible. By describing the training, skills, and labor involved in stunt work as well as the location-dependent material conditions and regulations that impact it, Steimer illuminates the expertise of the workers whose labor is indispensable to some of the world's most popular movies.

Introduction to Buddhist East Asia

Introduction to Buddhist East Asia PDF Author: Robert H. Scott
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 143849243X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This anthology provides an accessible introduction to East Asian Buddhism, focusing specifically on China, Korea, and Japan. It begins with a detailed historical introduction that includes an overview of the development of the various schools of Buddhism in East Asia and traces the transmission of Buddhism from Northwest India to China in the first century CE, and then to Korea and Japan in the fourth and sixth centuries CE. The first part of the book contains five chapters that offer creative pedagogies that can help college professors infuse East Asian Buddhism into their courses. The second part includes six interdisciplinary chapters that explore thematic links between East Asian Buddhism and religious studies, philosophy, film studies, literature, and environmental studies.