SOUL: Profile of Actor Jimmy Wang Yu

Jimmy Wang Yu (aka, Jimmy Wong in TIFF's programme notes) won a Best Actor award at the 2013  Taipei Film Awards for his role in Chung Mong-Hong's Soul, a film about a young man who might be possessed, might have lost his soul or might be mentally ill and what his father, played by Wang, will do to protect him. In a way, the highly aestheticized violence hearkens back to Wang's early career.


Wang got his start in the stylized swordsman cinema (wuxia pien) of The Shaw Bros. Studio.  He became a superstar in Chang Cheh's The One-Armed Swordsman (1967). And followed it up with other Shaw Bros. films such as Chang Cheh's The Golden Swallow (1968) with Cheng Pei-Pei, the Queen of Wuxia Pien.


Wang also helped bring kung fu, aka, "open fist," cinema to the world with The Chinese Boxer (1969), ushering in the films of Bruce Lee, David Chiang and Ti Lung while revealing which martial art is the supreme. (It's kung fu. It's always kung fu).


The popularity of The One-Armed Swordsman led to innumerable One-Armed Wang Yu movies, but I have a particular fondness for his show-down with Shintaro Katsu in, Zatoichi Meets The One Armed Swordsman (1971), co-produced by Taiwan's Golden Harvest and Katsu.


He also co-starred with George Lazenby in the Australian/Hong Kong co-production, The Man From Hong Kong (1975) directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, director and Trailers From Hell commentator. This co-production didn't go so smoothly, and various members of the production reminisce not so fondly about Wang in the documentary about Australian genre film, Not Quite Hollywood (2008).



While he's made, directed, produced and/or written over eighty films, most of them were in the years between1960 and 1980. But he played the folk hero Wong Fei-Hung in Sammo Hung's Lunar New Year extravaganza, Millionaire's Express (1986) and had a role with Jackie Chan in the "ghost action nonsense comedy," aka, batshit amazing, Fantasy Mission Force (1983).  Most recently, Wang appeared in Wuxia/Dragon (2011) with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Kara Hui (Rigor Mortis) and Let's Go! (2011) with Juno Mak (Rigor Mortis).

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

MOTORWAY Premieres Tonight!

Soi Cheang's Motorway premieres tonight at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema at 9:00 PM. Head over to our previous post to see the film's trailer and poster.

Tickets can be purchased:

• ONLINE: TIFF.net/thefestival
• BY PHONE: 416.599.TIFF or 1.888.599.8433 (Toll-free) 
• IN PERSON
• Festival Box Office; 225 King St. West
• Bloor Hot Docs Cinema Box Office; 506 Bloor Street West

Further information about Soi Cheang's Motorway can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Motorway IMDB page.

MOTORWAY screening times:

• Wednes., Sept. 12, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 9:00 PM
• Fri., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 3 12:30 PM
• Sun., Sept. 16, Scotiabank 9 6:30 PM

MOTORWAY: Profile of Director Soi Cheang

Soi Cheang (aka, Cheang Pou-Soi/Chang Po-Tsui) is a Hong Kong director, screenwriter and actor. Cheang's written four films and acted in forty, including Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai's Mad Detective (2007),  PTU (2003), and Raymond Yip Wai-Man's widely-beloved, Portland Street Blues (1998). He was the executive director for Triangle (2007), an ambitious "relay" film featuring one story and three directors, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark and Johnnie To.  And Cheang's directed fifteen films, but is probably best known in the West with his last three.

Dog Bite Dog (2006) can be rough-going, starring heart-throb and scandal-magnet Edison Chen as a Cambodian hitman with no name. It has some of the nihilistic brutality of Okamoto Kihachi's Sword of Doom, but with even the "good" guys only comparatively good and Edison Chen killing everyone in modern Hong Kong rather than Nakadai Tetsuya offing people in Edo-era Japan.

(Also, it has Lam Suet, an actor most recently associated with his work in Johnny To's production company, Milkway--The Mission (1999), Exiled (2006) and PTU--or as I like to call it, Run, Lam Suet, Run!).




Shamo (2007) is Cheang's adapation of an eponymous Hashimoto Izu manga. Shawn Yue plays a very different part than he does as the protagonist of Motorway. He's Narashima Ryo, a young man in detention for killing his parents. The ever-intense Francis Ng Chun-Yu is prison karate instructor, Kurokawa Kenji. Narashima goes on to become a prostitute and  underground fighter. Take it as straight, take it as camp, Shamo is really style slathered on top of a compacted narrative that is as important to the movie as you want to make it.  Also, the trailer really implies the cicadas tell Narashima to kill.




In Accident (2009), Louis Koo Lin-Tok plays Ho Kwok-Fai, a hitman who specializes in causing fatal accidents, not just making his hits look like one. When a member of his murderous organization makes a mistake, Ho suspects that he's being set up for an accident and not even Louis Koo's handsomeness or magnificent tan can save him from paranoia. Another Milkyway production.  Also, Lam Suet!




Cheang's next film is The Monkey King, but I'm really curious about is this, Horror Hotline:  Big Head Monster (2001) movie that Cheang wrote and directed.

In the meantime, buckle up, adjust your year and sideview mirrors because Motorway premieres tomorrow night!

MOTORWAY screening times:

Wed., Sept. 12, 9:00PM:  The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema

Fri., Sept. 14, 12:30PM:  Scotiabank 3 

Sun., Sept. 16, 6:30PM:  Scotiabank 9

MOTORWAY Poster and Trailer

Hong Kong action icon Anthony Wong persues an infamous getaway driver in this high-octane thriller from Soi Cheang, director of the 2009 Festival selection Accident, and legendary producer Johnnie To.

Below are the poster and trailer for Motorway, which plays the Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Further information about Soi Cheang's Motorway can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Motorway IMDB page.

MOTORWAY screening times:

• Wednes., Sept. 12, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 9:00 PM
• Fri., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 3 12:30 PM
• Sun., Sept. 16, Scotiabank 9 6:30 PM