Jackie Chan

fire_and_ice

Think its more of a fantasy list, though if only ;-)

001

They should get grace jones next. :)

linglingqi

thelordflasheart wrote:

And with Chan, I rented a DVD many years ago from a video store in Chinatown that had Jackie Chan doing 20 minutes of demonstrations of different styles of fighting. It blew me away; I was used to seeing his comic - but incredibly impressive - fight scenes in films, but to watch him here he looked like the deadliest martial artist in history. I suspect that when he was in his early 20s he was FAR better a fighter than we'd ever think.

Do you happen to remember which DVD this was or know where one might be able to find it elsewhere? This sounds very interesting! 成龙最棒！

thelordflasheart

linglingqi wrote:

thelordflasheart wrote:

And with Chan, I rented a DVD many years ago from a video store in Chinatown that had Jackie Chan doing 20 minutes of demonstrations of different styles of fighting. It blew me away; I was used to seeing his comic - but incredibly impressive - fight scenes in films, but to watch him here he looked like the deadliest martial artist in history. I suspect that when he was in his early 20s he was FAR better a fighter than we'd ever think.

Do you happen to remember which DVD this was or know where one might be able to find it elsewhere? This sounds very interesting! 成龙最棒！

Sadly, no. This would have been in the mid-90s when I used to live close to Chinatown. There was a HUGE video store there and the saying was that if they didn't have the videotape then you'd never find it - they had lots of old tapes that had been out of print for years, and some that seemed "unofficial". Sadly, it closed down a long time ago. For a film buff at the time, especially with the rise of popularity of Asian action films that place was a goldmine.

The Jackie Chan tape seemed rather...unofficial. It started out with about 20 minutes of him demonstrating different techniques and his speed and skill was incredible. These weren't scenes in one of his films played for laughs, it was just a serious martial artist going through his paces on a stage, sometimes with other fighters, sometimes on his own. Then the tape got very strange - the next hour was clips from many different films of his all from when he was very young, with two old men narrating a story to go along with it. For example, after a fight scene a suddenly long haired Chan was walking down a dirt road and one of the narrators would say something like "And now Jackie remembers that he has to go to the market and get some wine for his uncle - I hope nothing happens on the way!" to which the other guy would make surprised or approving noises (and of course, a fight scene then happens). Then a suddenly short haired Chan is training with an old man and the narrator says "Now Jackie has come home from the market so it's time to train again! But this is his other uncle!" The subtitles were ridiculously badly translated, and the sides of them (and the picture) was cut off. But the fight scenes were incredible.

The only tape that was funnier was a "documentary" about Jet Li, the Greatest Martial Artist Ever. The tape followed him around training, working, and spending time with his family. But he never spoke, and the narrator kept talking about what a good boy he was and how he held up good Party values (and they kept doing these hilarious insert shots of Communist China statues, shot from dramatic angles with glorious lighting).

chrisM

he's a lovely guy too, been a Chan-fan since the early 80's, and met him in 1996 when he was promoting Rumble in the Bronx and did some drunken kung fu with him, and he didnt mind when I asked to put my finger INSIDE his head (coz he has a hole!!!)

His latest film Chinese Zodiac is the best thing he's done in decades!!, but if you look at recent photos of him, with his new short hairstyle for Police Story 2013, you can see his age (59 April 7th this year!!!) has caught up with him, and I dread him appearing in Expendables 3....time to go behind the camera JC!!!