The first upcoming Jackie Chan vehicle is tentatively titled Manhattan. Set in New York, it will star Jackie Chan as a Jackie-Chan-like character who “converses with love and hate.” The second is called Wolf Flag, and will star Jackie Chan in what Huayi Brothers describes as a “mournful ode concealed in the stricken desert.”

Aside from these brief snippets, we won’t know much else about these future Jackie Chan projects until they begin filming. Will they be keeping with Jackie Chan’s recent pledge to be “a true actor”? Will they feature blooper reels with Jackie Chan flubbing dangerous stunts and then grinning into the camera? Will they be popular enough to get eventual North American theatrical releases? Perhaps only Jackie Chan can tell.

Jackie Chan.

I had always thought that Jackie Chan was the guy you used to get grit off your movies. And Chris Tucker was the guy you used to get them to taste like white bread and water.

Now what will the fourth Rush Hour entail, plot-wise? Hmm. Probably a sassy talking dog, maybe sassy Puerto Rican wives, or maybe a sassy eight-year old that the duo are charged with protecting.

There will be sass.

Yes, I see your hand up, you in the back, and director Brett Ratner’s involvement isn’t imagined at this time, though Mr. Sarkissian did say Ratner was “more than welcome to do it,” which is a nice way of saying, “Mr. Ratner can go fuck himself. I have a gay son who I love very much.”

“I don’t just want to be an action star, I want to be a true actor. So for the last 10 years I’ve done other films like The Karate Kid, where I’d rather play an old man.”

“I will ask my body how long I can go. I’m not young anymore,” he said, but added: “In the future I’ll still do Karate Kid 2, Rush Hour 4.” (BBC)

And Expendables 3. And the Las Vegas-set Shanghai Rollers. But then that’s it. Acting only after those.

Here’s my take on exactly who should work together and why. If anything, it would lead to really pretty films about dudes getting punched.

Wes Anderson – Sylvester Stallone

This pairing seems like a partnership made in movie heaven. Wes Anderson is fond of crafting his stories around damaged men with enormous egos. Sylvester Stallone has proven himself adept at drama and comedy. I’d think Anderson and one of the Coppolas could create a memorable character for him. Here’s what I’m thinking: Stallone stars as a painter who can’t sell his work. However, due to a clerical error the world believes he died. His works become enormously successful but he can’t enjoy the notoriety because no one believes he’s still living. Luke Wilson and Jennifer Hudson co-star.

Quentin Tarantino – Jackie Chan

What Jackie Chan needs right now is a chance to shake up his image. A string of family friendly films have tarnished his box office shine and Hollywood is beginning to forget about him. Sound familiar? That’s right. QT has the power to reignite Chan’s fading star. He did it for John Travolta AND he loves kung fu. Kill Bill Vol. 3 ain’t gonna cast itself. Just saying.

Steven Spielberg – Tony Jaa

Steven Spielberg has jerked many a tear in his day with his emotional stories of bravery and redemption. But has he ever filmed a guy kicking ninjas while riding an elephant? I’ll save you some research time. He hasn’t. That’s why he should work with Tony Jaa. It’s not like Tom Hanks is going to learn Thai martial arts, let alone how to ride an elephant. War Elephant anybody?

In honor of Jackie’s 100th film, and to give this accomplishment some historical context, how about we take a look at his career and the careers of eight other members of the hundred-film club?

Jackie Chan (100)

Jackie Chan is, without a doubt, one of the greatest action/kung fu movie stars in the history of cinema. No, screw it. He’s the best.* Sadly, he is also 57-years-old and, therefore, has been gradually (and understandably) moving away from the types of films that made him famous. These days you’re more likely to see him in war epics (Shaolin, 1911) and unnecessary remakes (The Karate Kid, which they didn’t even have the decency to rename The Kung Fu Kid, even though Jaden Smith clearly learns kung fu from a Chinese man in China) than movies with painstakingly choreographed action sequences like this one from First Strike:

*My shrink told me I should be more assertive.

Samuel L. Jackson (106)

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Sam Jackson’s membership in the Century Club is the fact that he only started getting regular work around 1987, when he was pushing 40-years-old. That means the guy has made 101 of his 106 films in the last 23 years, which comes to about 4.4 per year. To give you some perspective, prolific actors such as Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Charlton Heston aren’t members of the 100 film club despite careers that are twice as long as Jackson’s.

Incidentally, if you count Jackson’s work in the four recent Star Wars abominations, his 100th film was Iron Man 2 If you’re a supernerd who would prefer to excise those films from his resumé, that would make Captain America number one hundred. Either way, it’s a superhero movie.

James Earl Jones (107)

James Earl Jones is the only 100-film actor who didn’t even appear on screen in his most famous film.* But that’s not to say he hasn’t had some great moments on the silver screen. After all, the very first movie he ever made was Stanley Kubrick’s classicDr. Strangelove. Since then he’s done a little bit of everything, from the beloved baseball film Field of Dreams, to the not-so-beloved Dana Carvey bomb Clean Slate, to a made-for-TV vampire flick called Feast of All Saints—his 100th.

*If you just read that sentence without realizing I was talking about his role as the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars, please be so kind as to punch yourself in the face for me.

I was really excited to see Jackie Chan’s latest Hong Kong movie at ActionFest. I’ll always order the DVD and see it before its American dub, but to see it in a theater! Little Big Soldier is amusing, but never amazing. There’s no ladder twirling, conveyor belt sticking or cashier slot jumping through, but it’s always fun to see Chan move.

The Soldier (Chan) wakes up on a battlefield strewn with dead bodies. He has a collapsible arrow on his chest plate so he could fake his death and wait out the battle. He manages to capture The General (Leehom Wang) of the Wei army. That could actually make The Soldier look good to his Liang superiors.

Little Big Soldier is basically an antagonistic buddy movie. The Soldier drags The General as a captive, the upper hand shifts, they have to team up to get out of greater danger, etc. All fine, as there’s been much thinner backdrop for Chan’s awesome work.

Chan is intentionally taking a backseat though. He’s designed his character as someone who can’t fight, which has never stopped him from making outrageous scenes of dodging attackers. He’s got moments but usually it’s other soldier fighting while The Soldier and/or The General look on and plan an escape.

When The Soldier has to, Chan gives him some cool skills. He climbs a tree trunk using a cloth. He throws a stone in the air and hits it with another stone, which pays off in a later fight scene. He parries incoming bolos with branches he finds on the ground. His battles with The General are played for bumbling comedy and their bamboo escape is funny.

Those moments are all very spread out. I’ll give Jackie Chan a rest. He’s been killing himself for us for decades, but that’s what Little Big Soldier is. It’s taking break, providing a decent show, but not one for the books.

Of course it wants to have more emotional and historical weight, because Chan really wants to do drama. The bond The General and The Soldier form is sincere and well acted, but typical of buddy movies. The film is about the Wei and the Liang battling before China was unified, and it reveals deep issues in the Wei side. That’s all fine but there are hundreds of other filmmakers and actors who can tackle history and character. There’s only one person who fits through a Vegas cashier slot. And that’s a stunt from an American movie!

We still get the bloopers in the end credits. The film’s most memorable action all had snafus, but there are still a lot of language blunders. Even in Chinese, they include flubbed lines, but at least you see Chan still push himself when he doesn’t quite take a beating hard enough and has to go again.

“…the founding of the Republic of China when nationalist forces led by Sun Yat-sen (Winston Chao) overthrew the Qing Dynasty.”

Hopefully, he falls off the side of a building or something, too?

A lot of American action stars have gone from beefed-up muscle heads to broken-down warhorses. Some folks are doubting whether Arnold Schwarzenegger can headline an action movie anymore, and he’s made less than half the films that Jackie Chan has. (Both Arnold and Jackie are middle aged – 63 vs. 57.) So, Chan, it seems like you’r unstoppable. Think you can do another 100 movies in 40 years? (Collider)

The Karate Kid raked in 56 million dollars at the domestic box office this weekend, pretty much guaranteeing that Hollywood is about to go apesh*t with family-friendly 80s remakes. No one’s certain if it’s Jaden Smith‘s charisma, Jackie Chan’s broken English, or the subject matter that attracted audiences, but one thing’s for certain: Jackie Chan seriously hates karate kids. You’d assume he’d have more patience with them considering he’s a master of the art form they’re learning, but no, he just wants to jam his foot in their faces. Don’t take my word for it though.

Watch the manipulative/cleverly edited video below.

(/Film)

The Karate Kid
PG, 140min., 2010
Cast: Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson, Rongguang Yu, and Jackie Chan
Directed by Harald Zwart
Screenplay by Christopher Murphy based upon the 1980s movie of the same name.
 
The Karate Kid is as epic as a kid’s movie can come, yet falls into the same pitfalls of most prequels/sequels/remakes.
 
As the overlong prologue begins, we meet 12-year-old Dre Parker of Detroit (Jaden Smith, a rail thin swagger type like his parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith) who with his Mom (the great and underused actress Taraji P. Henson) move to Beijing, China. Once they arrive, Dre makes new enemies with a bullying martial arts gang, gets beaten to a pulp on the school’s  playground, meets his first girlfriend, and learns the art of Kung-Fu by way of the local hermit Mr. Han (Jackie Chan in surprisingly great dramatic role).

More after the jump…

Ironically nobody got the memo about changing the title of the movie, since Smith is learning kung-fu, an ancient Chinese martial art and karate is a Japanese one.
 
The story is the same as the 1984 classic, only brighter, more expensive, and more exotic with the Great Walls of mainland China replacing the beaches of Southern California, where the kids are younger and more innocent, but five times deadlier than before, and some of the action scenes are quite tense and believable.
 
While most of the movie is pure bubble gum and gears towards kids 13 and under (the movies theme song is sung by Jaden Smith and the ever annoying Justin Bieber), the now grown adults who remember the original might get a sly kick out of seeing a series of nods to it. The best is the new Cobra Kai leader being played by Rongguang Yu of Iron Monkey fame.
 
Chan’s performance as Mr. Han holds the movie together. Through all of its sweeping shots of China and kid training montages, he gives a quiet and powerful performance that in one moment really tugs at your heart – it’s always tough to see a favorite action hero cry.  This may come as a surprise to many stateside audiences as we’ve seen him do more of his comedic action stick, but in the Hong Kong cinema he has played all types of characters. Chan is an actor who shows that he can be as dramatic as he is glowingly funny.
 
If this movie was a little more serious and adult-themed like the original, Chan would be looking at a possible nomination like Pat Morita before him.
 
The Karate Kid works for those kids who couldn’t get into Kick-Ass because of it’s R-rating, but for the rest of audience – unless you have a soft spot for Chan – you’ll be knocked into another seen-it-before remake.
 
Grade: C
 

_{Jaden Smith is better than you at life.}

Sony has released the final trailer for The Karate Kid reboot starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. The film, which premieres this weekend, looks pretty good, provided you can overlook two annoying flaws.

I’m sure I’m not the first to point out that the film lacks any actual karate, which is from Japan, and instead focuses on kung-fu, which is from China. It’s like remaking Eight Men Out, but having them play Cricket, or remaking Squirt Woman 2 and having it focus on "water sports." There’s a big difference.

The second barrier to enjoying the film is Jaden Smith. Based on the trailer, he seems like he might be a decent actor. But the fact that a 12-year-old kid will probably nail more women this weekend than I will in my entire life makes it hard for me to concentrate. Instead of focusing on the kung-fu, I just keep tracing the veins in my wrist with the corner of my debit card over and over again.  Weird, huh? (First Showing)

Enjoy the last Karate Kid trailer after the jump.

^{"I just go where they tell me to."}

The biggest problem I have with The Karate Kid remake isn’t the casting or the performances but the premise. In the second trailer, we see Jaden Smith uprooted 11,000 miles away from home and forced to adjust to life on the rough and tumble streets of Beijing. I’m sorry but I refuse to believe that China is worse than Detroit. If you’ve ever been to Michigan, you know it looks like the aftermath of a zombie war. In China, the only real menace is subway overcrowding.

All that withstanding, I can see this movie doing well. Jaden Smith’s smugness is played down and Jackie Chan works as the grizzled mentor. Also, a monk threatens to bitchslap a cobra. The only thing that doesn’t work for me are the "humorous" moments. I mean, c’mon. Is this a remake of The Karate Kid or Rush Hour 2?

WATCH JACKIE CHAN BEAT CHILDREN AFTER THE JUMP…

The Karate Kid Theatrical Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Katherine Boecher has made a few guest appearances on TV shows, most notably playing Lilith on two episodes of Supernatural. She’s one of those hot actresses you see pop up every now and again, and then fade away into a see of day-players.

A word from Katherine: “Who wakes up and thinks, ‘Next week I’m going to be fighting Jackie Chan.’”

I do every day, Katherine. Every. Day.

Wake up and think about the pics after the jump instead.

Now, this is a trailer all about how I learned to karate kick and flip upside down. If you’d like to take a minute and hear about this thing, I’ll tell you how I became the only black kid in Beijing. My moms moved to China and that really sucked. In the playground, getting my ass beat up. I talked to one Asian girl and then I’m like, "Damn! Did Jackie Chan just break off that kid’s hand?" (via Yahoo)

Somehow Dre-son doesn’t have the same ring to it as Daniel-son. And as you can tell from the above photo of The Karate Kid remake/re"imagining," it doesn’t have the same look either. They must have photoshopped out the Hollywood producers giving each other congratulatory spanks on the ass.

Apparently, Jaden Smith trained every day for four months with the film’s fight coordinator Master Wu, and they filmed a scene atop the Great Wall of China. Most likely his dad Will Smith, the guy from the Bad Boys movies, was with him every step of the way shouting, "Wax on, wax off, Jaden-son!" then giggling uncontrolably into the palm of his hand.

Check out more pics of what’s sure to be another slaughter of my fond childhood memories after the jump.

(via /Film)

Cast: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan

Synopsis: Dre, a skateboarding video game buff who is forced to move to China after his single mother is forced to transfer to the China for work. Of course, unable to speak Chinese, Dre finds it hard to settle in, and gets beat up by the local bully. Mr. Han (the Mr. Miyagi character), a maintenance man who spots Dre’s black-eye and offers to teach him both martial arts and Chinese, so he can defend against the students of Li Quan Ha’ Fighting dragon school of Kung-Fu.