July
9
Red Cliff: Woo's Part One Opens in Asia
Part One of John Woo's two-part, four-hour Red Cliff will open in Asia on July 10. Woo and his producer Terence Chang took on the Herculean task of mounting--on their own, with backing from five Asian countries--the $80-million production, the biggest ever in China. Part Two of this period epic romance, based on 2000-year-old Chinese history, comes in January, plus a 2 1/2 hour edit for western audiences. After that cut is complete, Woo and Chang will seek a North American distributor.
One Asia spy writes: "It is great. This feels like the film that John Woo has been saving up his skills to make for the last decade. Two hours 20 went by in a canter. Lots of strong action, but not as gory as some I've seen. It should be an absolute smash in Asia where the story and 22 characters are well known. Elsewhere, will it be the breakthrough or a new CTHD? Not sure as it is not Jackie Chan style chop socky."
At Cannes, Woo unveiled some pretty stunning battle footage. He told the film's global buyers that he was thrilled to be able to bring western movie techniques--including VFX, special effects and CGI (like The Orphanage from the U.S.)-- to the Chinese film community via his "dream project," which he had wanted to make for over 18 years. The movie's pan-Asian ensemble is led by Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro.
Even Woo seemed staggered by the film's scale and scope. "Thousands of horses, 800,000 soldiers, so many battle ships." Woo burned three large boats, and sixteen smaller boats. With CG, it looks like 2000, he said. The great battle was 50,000 against 800,000, he said. "They needed great wisdom and smarts and skill to win it. I wanted to make this the biggest action sequence ever." Woo enjoyed working with freedom away from the constraints of commercial Holllywood filmmaking. "I did whatever I want," he said.
The weather didn't help. "It was extremely hot and extremely cold," he said. "Some scenes needed 100,000 people running in the heat. A lot of people got heat fever. It took a lot of time and patience to let the crew know how to make the shots work. After this experience they can handle all kinds of movies."
"Welcome home, director Woo," said veteran actor Zhang Fengyi.
The LAT's Rachel Abramowitz talked to Chang about what happened on the set of Red Cliff, when a stuntman was burned to death. When the wind turned and fire headed for the Red Cliff stuntmen, Chang said, "It was horrible, truly horrible."
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Looks interesting, let's hope it turn out better than Woo's horrid Hollywood movies.
Posted by: Mark | July 10, 2008 at 07:08 AM
The film already has one convincing rave review under its belt:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/08/arts/AS-MOV-Film-Review-Red-Cliff.php
Of course, the narrative detail praised here is probably the first thing that will be snipped when preparing the half-length US release version.
Posted by: David C | July 10, 2008 at 09:08 AM