WING CHUN FILMS: THE BIG BOSS

The classic that started it all?! Almost!!

Well what can you say? Despite the fact his on screen antic got better with each film, with the odd little exception, this is fantastic and that famous Ice Factory scene even featured in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

If there is any downside to this film its is that almost everyone dies!!!

LMAO!

The sound on this version was amazing and I even heard Pink Floyd in their and what they managed to do with the picture over time is stunning too!

In fact I have often wanted to buy The Way of The Dragon to see if that is even better still?! Could not honestly answer that at this moment in time you might be surprised to hear.

I remeber seeing this much later and thinking...ooh there is Nora Miao and I wondered when she would enter into the story...only to have her being in such a small part in Bruce Lee's first major film.

I cannot help but wonder if they can keep up the improving of the picture as they have managed to do so far and the fact that both this and Fist of Fury have a better picture than my BLU-RAY Enter the Dragon is saying quite something.

Upsetting then that there have been as many releases as there has been for Enter the Dragon and yet this has a better picture quality?! Madness!!

Maybe one day...

WING CHUN FILM SERIES: GAME OF DEATH

Game of Death.

Oh my god, how many of is still cry today that he never finished this?! LOL! A real shame on so many levels and what I would not have donated to have a finished version of this and another few movies with the legend in on my shelf.

Film speeded up indeed! I think not.

There is one thing about this though...the Nunchaku he used were fakes and I always though they behaved a little funny?!

Stumbled across this quite accidentally when I froze the image, on this version oddly, while Bruce was spinning his famous yellow Nunchaku and one end was pressing all its weight on one arm before being flung back in the opposite direction. Only I suddenly did i double take when i noticed that this end of the Nunchaku was doing an extremely good representation of a BANANA?!

It was bending in other words!

Now oddly enough I jhad heard, in a British TV Program I love, that in Bruce Lee's movies they had SPED UP the film to make him look good and I wholeheartedly disagree on this. It is also a little open ended as it may be one or two sequences they did it, someone mentions it and suddenly all film parts of Bruce doing his thing are sped up?! You see there... ambiguous!

HOWEVER! I will say that using soft, foam or otherwise, Nunchaku you cannot get the speed up due to the lack of weight. When I first taught myself years ago I found foam ones to be useless and though about putting ball bearings inside the hollow handles?! Now if say as I prefer to think that Bruce was showing signs of illness filming Game of Death, after all I saw an outake of him nearly knocking himself out with a pair of Nunchaku for that scene, he may have switched to foam ones and then just sped up the film in places to make them look like full weighted Nunchaku?!

That is what I would have done.

Also this film is famous for Bruce planning to use George Lazenby, James Bond on On Her Majesty's Secret Service, on the set and had met up with him several times about it. They were friends but then they had similar difficulties when it came to films so I guess they must have related. Hmm I need to find firneds like this but with LIFE, LMAO!

Sad but Legendary and always will be.

WING CHUN FILM SERIES: THE LEGEND IS BORN

Or its full title of Ip Man: The Legend Is Born or some refer to it as Ip Man ZERO and I think I have seen it sold as this too?!

I like this film and the director, Herman Yau, has now done another where Ip Man is old called Ip Man The Final Fight (or the Final Battle) and I did not see this one coming. Starring a favourite actor of mine in Anthony Wong who also starred in House of Fury and The Return Of Chen Zhen with Donnie Yen. Ip Man is played by Dennis To in this film and I thought him very good and enjoyed it immensely...repeatedly.

Not sure about the story seems a bit iffy in places but do not care. It is Ip Man and Wing Chun and if you see the little old man on the right of the cover that is Ip Man's living son Ip Chun or the one who circles Donnie Yen while riding his tricycle in the first Ip Man movie.

I like the medicine store scene let down a little by the use of a stand in and an obvious WIG being used, lol. But STILL I do not care.

Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao also star, though the former is rather brief at the beginning. I had to get this from overseas on Blu-Ray as rather annoyingly the releases of these films in the UK is as abysmal as it eve has been. Only ever available on DVD and I do have to ask myself why the distributors even bother to get the licencing of they are going to be half hearted at their releases.

Still I have it and it has English Subtitles as the only word I know is Doh-je, or thank you in Cantonese?! LOL!

The Wing Chun is will represented as is a Long Pole that get used as Baat Chum Do, or Butterfly (8 Way Cutting) Knives.

More please!

WING CHUN IN FILMS SERIES: THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE

I took the plunge with this one in HMV and on Blu-Ray and I honestly thought that it would turn out to be a mistake?!

Yes it is low budget but, and I never thought I would say this, I thought it better than DRAGON THE BRUCE LEE STORY?!

HE came across more like Bruce Lee, he LOOKED more like Bruce Lee and even at the end, for those that see it and missed it, he fights Ray Park. The guy famous for being big headed, or so I am told, being the Phantom Menace's Darth Maul and TOAD in the first X-MEN!

I liked it and glad I bought it in all honesty but oddly the acting by the Caucasians is a bit hammy and iffy at times. It is really weird there must be some kind of law handed out secretly by the Chinese government that states that any Westerners used if films must seriously either HAM IT UP or do a first take and the wrap it so they are crap. Or the voice overs are crap, lol. The Ip Man films with Donnie Yen are the same.

This film was produced by Shannon Lee, Bruce's very attractive daughter who was selling fan merchandise the last I looked.

Oddly I have a signed book by James W Demile, Tao of Wing Chun Do 1984 (or 86?) and keep forgetting to try and work out which films he is featured in and who he is played by, haha.

Or maybe I am just so passionate about Wing Chun, Jeet Kune Do and Bruce Lee that even the bad stuff appears good to me?!

No wait, I used to own much of the Bruce Li stuff and liked it but saw one or two again recently and they were DREADFUL! Haha!

WING CHUN FILM SERIES: ENTER THE DRAGON

ENTER THE DRAGON

Lots of efforts gone into the picture and sound quality of his other 4 films with dazzling results EVEN ON DVD and yet his most famous film...NOTHING other than this release.

I had forgiven them the grainy scenes due to the age of the film and everyone said the same, but then after seeing the last releases of The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon and The Game of Death there IS NO EXCUSE any longer and I still wait for a re-release of this on BLU-RAY?!

Thses labels are quic to want to sue money for taking things without paying but also I believe they should introduce fines for them for taking money for SHODDY work?!

Just saying! lol.

Well how about that I finally get around to the one that started it all and no not KING BOXER, or as that film was known in the west, but Enter the Dragon!

I can hear the wails from the Jeet Kune Do fanatics of the one that refused the fight scene in Way of the Dragon (what a moron), or some of them at any rate, from here to White Crane Mountain but sorry it is baloney, lol.

Wing Chun was what he did when he lived here, well at least the Siu Nim Tao and Chum Kui forms. When back living in Hong Kong he got together with Wong Shun Leung, Leung in Ip Man 2, where he learned more and the Bil Jee and it was WSL who liked to evolve the style that led to Bruce Lee coming up with JKD.

How this took place within the timelines of creating the HK films I do not care. But at the end of the day the core of JKD has Wing Chun as its foundation, or its birth and it is as simple as that.

The Bong Sao, Wing-Arm, and Tan Sao, Deflecting Arm, are key. Then of course there is the Six and a Half Point Pole in this film and you will not how bloody long that pole is and that is because unlike Bo Staffs and the like, which normally max-out at 6 feet, the Six and a Half Point Pole (named on the moves being six and a half) this is normally 8 or 9, that is EIGHT OR NINE, feet long.

Yes the Nunchaku are not part of Wing Chun I give you that. But he just stripped away things he thought no good in a REAL fight and added things he thought were good.

Then you have the likelihood that he added things because they looked good on film, yes I know it may be sacrilege but you do have to wonder.

Then there is his philosophy and he sounds like Confucius reborn at times.

The man is and always WILL BE a legend and there is a great many reasons for that. Forty years on and I still have not got over finding out he had died?! LMAO!!!