Some cool Kung Fu movies while we wait for 6th of december

Spell Showdown! Two self-proclaimed celestial beings challenge the mightiest exorcist.

https://youtu.be/cE-w8fgL_L0?si=Qf2OGTrbGQdYjKxF

Eastern Fantasy Martial Arts World, Epic Demon Slaying Battle About to Erupt.

https://youtu.be/PzZpgBAVJkU?si=LIrfwGit8i-XvzsE

Demons Ravage the Land, Young Hero Becomes Demon Slayer to Protect the People!

https://youtu.be/NgTSxXQJ1uI?si=F1hoqyDkgmfFHdgt

Assassin's Alliance

https://youtu.be/tTpeiY6ieMI?si=coj0TEZeJ_3xai_V

A black-clad girl in a bamboo hat turns out to be a hidden kung fu master!

https://youtu.be/mKjTFMt0F-E?si=rVFlmq3FD0cQVAK5

These are not the kungfu movies i expected to see.

This is wuxia.

Not enough Yen, Li, Chow, Hung or especially Yuen Woo Ping to be my idea of kung fu.

They're not mutually exclusive but most fans of either genre agree that wuxia is one thing, martial arts another. And kung fu is...kind of a martial art.

To quote Ronny Yu, director of Bride with White Hair and Fearless:

'We want to use this opportunity to let the Western audience understand there’s another genre called wuxia, Chinese wuxia, because very easily people confuse… people think Crouching Tiger or my previous film, The Bride With White Hair or Hero or Flying Daggers, they think, ‘Oh, those are martial arts movies!’ Those are not martial arts movies – those are called wuxia movies, and those are not real. They’re like Lord of the Rings, where there’s fantasy and magic and people can fly – people can fight in trees and in the middle of a lake and all."

So basically, if it has fantasy elements -- even if it has martial arts action -- it is wuxia, not a martial arts movie, which focuses on normal people in the real world (although movies of both genres are happy to use wire work, of course!).

But I think Yu here is trying to be a bit too clean-cut: neither Kung Fu Hustle nor Shaolin Soccer are all that magical but they're not really realistic either.

Ronny Yu seems to ignore that kung fu at its cinematic apex *is* magical.

Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer are fun movies, for those who haven't seen them.

Kung Fu Hustle, my Mrs. and I saw that randomly waking up to the theatre one night, great movie.

The IP Man series starring Donnie Yen is pretty solid. There's a shoot off called Master Z IP Man legacy that's also pretty good.

Jet Li's Fearless is one his best film, IMO.

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DalaiLama#6738 wrote:

Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer are fun movies, for those who haven't seen them.

if we're going that direction i really love kungpao

weeeeuuuueeeeuuueeeee

Ip man 3 and 4 are increasingly ludicrous. But 1 and 2 are solid.

I recommand just looking at any Jacky chan movie before his coming to hollywood.
Not sure if purists would consider that real Kung-fu movies tho.

I really like "Project A", you might want to just watch it with subtitles tho because I the doubled version are funky sometime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STdbJa3tOGE

Drunken master serie is a classic too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFGEZatgWrY

There's a reason why you don't see Wing Chun practitioners in MMA, a lot of their techniques strike at soft tissue which are illegal areas to target by most MMA rules. I bet they're some underground no-rules stuff going on behind closed doors, I'd be interested to see how it would fare in that scenario. I'd imagine there would be fights ending with a single throat strike.

I asked a Kung Fu guy I met, he was fully Chinese, to teach me a throat strike technique. His response was, I know over 2 dozen throat strike techniques, so I asked him to teach me his favorite one, and he said that he has no preference. He was 55 years old, said he had been practicing Kung Fu for 50 years. He wouldn't even show me the mechanics of one technique. The fact that he didn't teach me a technique tells me all I needed to know, that he was legit. I also know the Americanized stuff is completely fake, I'd rather learn a few moves that're the real thing.