Birth of the Dragon- Bruce Lee biopic

[terry78]

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/b...n-director-george-nolfi-exclusive-1201198747/


I liked Dragon, so we'll see what this guy brings.

 

[Gabe99]

THR 2/19/2013:

Bruce Lee Origin Story Heading to Big Screen
Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele, whose credits include "Nixon" and "Ali," have been hired to write the script.

QED International and banner Groundswell Productions are aiming to tell a Bruce Lee origin story with Birth of the Dragon, tapping scribes Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele to pen the tale.

Dragon, according to QED and Groundswell, is inspired by the true-life duel between Lee and Wong Jack Man, who was China’s most famous kung fu Master. The no-rules fight took place in San Francisco in 1965, when the city’s Chinatown was controlled by Hong Kong triads.

The writers are using this true event as a jumping-off point for a wider-canvas action movie in which Wong and Lee team up to battle a band of Chinatown gangsters.

QED CEO Bill Block and Groundswell’s Michael London will produce the project along with Wilkinson and Rivele. Groundswell’s Kelly Mullen will exec produce.


"Stephen Rivele and Chris Wilkinson have taken a little-known chapter in the life of Bruce Lee and used it as a jumping-off point for a bold, exciting story about the making of an international legend,” said London in a statement.

Wilkinson and Rivele are best known for their biopic work. The duo’s credits include Nixon, the 1995 drama directed by Oliver Stone that netted them an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay, and 2001's Ali, directed by Michael Mann. They also wrote Mercury, the story of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, which is set up at GK Films with Sacha Baron Cohen to star.

 

[Kaleb]

 

[The Rocket]

Philip Ng is great.

He starred in Once Upon a Time in Shanghai (2014), which co-stars Andy On and Sammo Hung. The action is directed by Yuen Wo-ping. That film is an homage to Bruce Lee films and the old Shaw Brothers style of kung fu cinema, and is probably the reason why Ng secured the role as Bruce in this film.

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[DaddlerTheDalek]

Looks good.

 

[Brian Braddock]

Hopefully they wont use as much 'creative licence' as the makers of Dragon did.

 

[Dr.]

Hopefully they wont use as much 'creative licence' as the makers of Dragon did.

An entire movie based on a fight which either lasted 3 minutes (according to Lee’s people) or was a 25 minute stalemate (according to Wong’s witnesses) is pretty much guaranteed to be “creative.”

 

[Brian Braddock]

Yeah, but its stuff like the way they changed the 'good morning' back injury into something that happened during a fight, like Bruce simply injuring his back when weight training wasnt entertaining enough. Yes, there may be inconsistencies in accounts and a balance has to be met but dont just blatantly throw something in there that you know isnt true; I hate it when Hollywood does that.

 

[Thundarr]

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/b...n-director-george-nolfi-exclusive-1201198747/


I liked Dragon, so we'll see what this guy brings.

I also enjoyed Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. There's also the lesser known movie Bruce Lee: A True Story, which starred Bruce Lee's martial arts student, Bruce Lai, who doubled for Lee in Game Of Death so that they could finish the film without its star. He then went on to make several other martial arts films, cashing in on his strong physical likeness to his mentor.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I also enjoyed Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. There's also the lesser known movie Bruce Lee: A True Story, which starred Bruce Lee's martial arts student, Bruce Lai, who doubled for Lee in Game Of Death so that they could finish the film without its star. He then went on to make several other martial arts films, cashing in on his strong physical likeness to his mentor.

Uh... NO. This person, Bruce Lai is in no way shape or form a student of Bruce's. I know that they put that nonsense out there post Bruce's death but I have to tell you that is categorically untrue. The only two people that were students of Bruce's in the unfinished film that was released as GAME OF DEATH are Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who of course was the final opponent Bruce faces at the top of the tower and Guro Dan Inosanto, the opponent Bruce faces that uses the long and short sticks and the nunchuks. The film you are referring to is a quickie and quite cheap cash grab that has little to no resemblance to the reality of Bruce's life. Hell, I love DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY to death but it plays fast and loose with many of the facts of Bruce's life. Great movie, bad biography to say the least.

 

[Lencho01]

Toronto Film Review: ‘Birth of the Dragon’

 

[sweetre15]

toronto film review: ‘birth of the dragon’

smfh.....

 

[Pink Ranger]

You know, what I really hate about movies about Asians is there's never an idealized white male main character shoe-horned in there with an interracial romantic subplot. So BAM! this movie apparently delivers on that.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

That review sounds about what I expected. Sigh...

 

[BlueLanternKal]

**** man, how hard could it be to get an honest to God biopic about him? I want to know who he fought, why, who won. Why did he developed Jeet Kune Do? Did Muhammad Ali really train him in punching? Him training Kareem Abdul Jabar. Not more embellishments about how he fought millions of people blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. He's already larger than life, the truth would hardly impact his legend.

 

[Lencho01]

‘Birth Of The Dragon’s George Nolfi On The Legend Of Bruce Lee: First Promo

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

**** man, how hard could it be to get an honest to God biopic about him? I want to know who he fought, why, who won. Why did he developed Jeet Kune Do? Did Muhammad Ali really train him in punching? Him training Kareem Abdul Jabar. Not more embellishments about how he fought millions of people blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. He's already larger than life, the truth would hardly impact his legend.

People don't want that. They don't want to hear about how he had one testicle, was near sighted, cheated on his wife, ate marijuana ect. They don't want to hear about how he sustained his back injury through weight lifting and not in a fight.

FYI, no Ali didn't directly teach him how to punch but Lee did collect fight footage. He would watch the footage and run it through a projector so he could see it going forward and backward and reversed it, that is put it into the projector so that a person in an orthodox fighting stance would look to be in a right forward position.

As seen with this page alone though there are still a lot of "myths" about Bruce that people would rather believe in than the reality.

 

[Patchwork Man]

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is a very entertaining film with great action sqeuences (they wisely left out nunchaku sequences, except for the one at the end, because Jason wasn't too hot with those). What makes Dragon worth watching is the cast. Dan Inosanto alleges the film is 70% fiction, and that sounds about right.

I'm not sure about this new movie. I don't like what I've read, but I'm sure I'll see it at some point. But I'm convinced we're never going to get a proper Lee biopic because The Powers That Be aren't convinced it will make enough money, I can only assume...

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I can't help but think that Linda Lee is also somewhat reluctant to sanction a true warts and all biopic. Again... DRAGON is an awesome movie, but it is a piss poor biography. It gives us the essence of the Lee story but it's very glossy... And very entertaining. What's the old quote about printing the legend over the truth?

 

[Patchwork Man]

I can't help but think that Linda Lee is also somewhat reluctant to sanction a true warts and all biopic. Again... DRAGON is an awesome movie, but it is a piss poor biography. It gives us the essence of the Lee story but it's very glossy... And very entertaining. What's the old quote about printing the legend over the truth?

Ditto. It would not paint her in a flattering light. That's my theory.

 

[Gabe99]

Bruce Lee VS Wong Jack Man (Birth of a Dragon) 2016 Trailer

 

[The Rocket]

[YT]nrFhIz1GLMo[/YT]

It looks very bad. I like Philip Ng, but he doesn't nail the role. His delivery of his lines is rushed, and the accent is wrong. Due to his proficiency in English, he has to do an impression of a Cantonese accent and doesn't get it right -- he sounds like somebody trying to fake an accent. Half the time, he breaks away from it and speaks in a Chinese-American accent much closer to his own.

The character seems like a caricature rather than an accurate representation of the real man. The information in the film is exaggerated and sometimes blatantly false.

From the perspective of appearance, Philip is too bulky in the film; Bruce was a slender, lean, but muscular man.

Also, Bruce referred to "kung fu" the way it is supposed to be pronounced -- "gung fu."

The Caucasian lead, meanwhile, seems entirely unnecessary and doesn't even seem to fit as a period film character. This takes place in the 1960s, yet Billy Magnussen's character seems like somebody from the present day.

I am disappointed.

I feared that this would be bad when I heard it was a Hollywood production and not a Hong Kong film.

 

[Silvermoth]

Urgh, who's the loser white guy

 

[The Rocket]

I can't help but think that Linda Lee is also somewhat reluctant to sanction a true warts and all biopic. Again... DRAGON is an awesome movie, but it is a piss poor biography. It gives us the essence of the Lee story but it's very glossy... And very entertaining. What's the old quote about printing the legend over the truth?

Bruce's daughter Shannon Lee was the executive producer of the 2008 Chinese biographical TV series, The Legend of Bruce Lee, which ran for 50 episodes and was a ratings giant in China.

Danny Chan, who played Lee again in Ip Man 3 several years later, played the role of Lee in the series.

Here's one clip from that series.

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Chan looks remarkably similar to Lee, but it's not exactly an accurate representation of his life. The fact that Shannon Lee was the executive producer tells us something.

Here's Danny Chan as Bruce Lee fighting The Chairman of Kitchen Stadium himself, Mark Dacascos.

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It's all in Mandarin (made for the Mainland audience), whereas Bruce spoke Cantonese.

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[Pink Ranger]

Urgh, who's the loser white guy

He's the real hero of the story, coming in to teach us crappy pie-faced orientals how to overcome our backwards ways and to help Asian women learn about true love.