Awesome collection/montages of some of the best Special movie effects explosions... hope you like em ;) Part 1 - Cars and Bikes



Part 2 - Boats and Planes



Part 3 - Buildings

As martial arts are a form of training for the fight, parkour is a form of training for the flight.

Parkour is a physical activity that is difficult to categorize. It is often mis-categorized as a sport or an extreme sport; however, parkour has no set of rules, team work, formal hierarchy, or competitiveness. It is an art or discipline that resembles self-defense in the ancient martial arts. According to David Belle, "the physical aspect of parkour is getting over all the obstacles in your path as you would in an emergency. You want to move in such a way, with any movement, as to help you gain the most ground on someone or something, whether escaping from it or chasing toward it." Thus, when faced with a hostile confrontation with a person, one will be able to speak, fight, or flee. As martial arts are a form of training for the fight, parkour is a form of training for the flight. Because of its unique nature, it is often said that parkour is in its own category.

A characteristic of parkour is efficiency. Practitioners move not only as fast as they can, but also in the most direct and efficient way possible; a characteristic that distinguishes it from the similar practice of freerunning, which places more emphasis on freedom of movement, such as acrobatics. Efficiency also involves avoiding injuries, short and long-term, part of why parkour's unofficial motto is être et durer (to be and to last). Those who are skilled at this activity normally have an extremely keen spatial awareness (a.k.a. air sense).

Traceurs say that parkour also influences one's thought process by enhancing self-confidence and critical-thinking skills that allow one to overcome everyday physical and mental obstacles. A study by Neuropsychiatrie de l'Enfance et de l'Adolescence in France reflects that traceurs seek for more sensation and leadership than gymnastic practitioners.

Jackie Chan Parkour Compilation

The official website for Wilson Yip’s martial arts biopic Ip Man with Donnie Yen in the title role was launched a few days ago. Only the Chinese section is active at the present and lurking within is a teaser & trailer and a gallery of stills. The teaser is essentially a behind the scenes video with historical background on the man who trained Bruce Lee in Wing Chun. It also contains footage of some Kung Fu demonstration in this style. The teaser hardy contain any footage of the film. Now a trailer has been added to the site and holy cow, Donnie Yen really cut loose. Look at his rapid Wing Chun punches!

Teaser



Trailer



www.ipman-movie.com

Enter the Dragon aka. The Deadly Three, originally titled Blood and Steel is a 1973 American martial arts film directed by Robert Clouse; starring martial artist Bruce Lee, John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It is the last completed film Bruce Lee appeared in before his death. He died six days before the movie was released.

Trailer



It was the first kung fu film to have been made by a major Hollywood studio and was produced in association with Golden Harvest and Lee's Concord Production Company. The film is largely set in Hong Kong.

Among the stuntmen for the film were members of the Seven Little Fortunes, including Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. This was arguably instrumental in Chan and Hung's further association with Golden Harvest studios, which later launched their careers. The portly Hung is shown fighting Lee in the opening sequence of the movie.

The finished version of the film was significantly different from the original screenplay drafts as Bruce Lee revised much of the script himself, including having written and directed the film's opening Shaolin Temple fight sequence. Lee wanted to use the film as a vehicle for expressing what he saw as the beauty of his Chinese culture, rather than it being just another action movie.

Highlights



Enter the Dragon was a huge success during its original theatrical release. It grossed an estimated $25,000,000 in North America, and an estimated $90,000,000 worldwide, off a very modest $850,000 budget, making it one of the most profitable films ever made.

In Hong Kong, the film grossed HKD $3,307,536 — huge business for the time, but substantially less than Lee's Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon

Martial Artists

Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Kien Shih, Ahna Capri, Angela Mao, Jim Kelly, Robert Wall, Bolo Yeung, Betty Chung, Geoffrey Weeks, Peter Archer, Ho Lee Yan, Marlene Clark, Allan Kent, William Keller, Mickey Caruso, Pat E. Johnson, Darnell Garcia, Mike Bissell, Jackie Chan (stuntman, uncredited), Roy Chiao (uncredited), Paul M. Heller (uncredited), Sammo Hung (martial artist, uncredited), Ching Ying Lam (uncredited), Tony Liu (uncredited), Keye Luke (voice, uncredited), Hidy Ochiai (uncredited), Steve Sanders (uncredited), Wei Tung (uncredited), Donnie Williams (uncredited), Tadashi Yamashita (uncredited), Yuen Biao (uncredited), Yuen Wah (uncredited)

Trivia

Bruce was bitten by a cobra during filming of the scene in which he infiltrates Han's underground lair. Fortunately the snake had been de-venomized prior to Bruce handling the snake.

Lee's famous, running thrust kick into Bob Wall's chest at the end of their fight scene broke Wall's sternum, and broke one arm each of two extras, into which Wall was propelled and fell. The rest of the fight (with the glass bottles) was delayed for one month, until Wall had healed well enough to perform the choreography. The kick and fall were scripted and rehearsed, but Lee was unhappy that the kick would not look real on screen. Wall exhorted Lee, "Go for it, man. I'm a professional." The result, on the eighth take, put Wall in the hospital. This incident, as well as others, helped give rise to the rumor of an on-set feud between Wall and Lee, and that this feud prompted Lee to fight him for real.

Sammo Hung appears as Bruce Lee's sparring opponent at the beginning of the movie.

Jackie Chan appears briefly in a couple of scenes, as one of the guards or henchmen with O'Harra. The first is when he is kicked in the groin while coming on to Lee's sister. He is wearing the light blue clothing. He is also the only person to get any serious type of damage on Lee's sister. (Punches, a kick, and pushing her head into the wall) Later on, he gets his neck snapped by Bruce Lee during a battle with several guards, where Bruce Lee uses a number of weapons including the nunchakus.

According to Shannon Lee, who appeared on a Spike TV special, airing the film, she states there was a debate on deciding the title, as the film originally was supposed to be named "Blood and Steel" or "Han's Isle". The film was named "Enter the Dragon", as she states her father was known as "The Dragon".

Kien Shih, who played Han, did not speak English, he just simply mouthed the lines as best as he could. Chinese-American actor Keye Luke overdubbed his dialogue.

To get all the Asian extras for the training and fight scenes, the filmmakers had to literally recruit gang members from Hong Kong. Bruce Lee was reportedly slightly arrogant, and between takes, the gang members (who were obviously just plebs in the film) were always trying to fight Lee. This proved very time-consuming for the filmmakers.

Fight Scene 1



Fight Scene 2



Fight Scene 3



Fight Scene 4

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Fighter Profiles: Louis Koo | Russell Crowe

Episode six of RED HEROINE (a.k.a. RED KNIGHT-ERRANT), the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. Made at the height of the martial arts craze in 1920s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre’s then-characteristic blend of pulp and mystical derring-do. A rampaging army raids a village and kidnaps a maiden, causing the death of the young woman’s grandmother. At the general’s lair, the captive maiden faces imminent rape, but is lo and behold rescued by the mysterious Daoist hermit, White Monkey. Three years later, Yun Mei (“Yun Ko” in the English intertitles) reemerges as a full-fledged warrior, ready to deploy the magic powers learnt from White Monkey to avenge her grandmother’s death.

Trailer



This “maiden of the clouds” (the literal meaning of “Yun Mei”) flies across the skies to rescue another innocent captured by the marauding soldiers. Appearing and disappearing in a puff of smoke, Yungu scurries up and down walls on a rope, runs and jumps, dodges here and attacks there. While sprinkled with anachronisms and prurient incongruities (for instance, the general’s lair is part-country villa, part-operatic stage and part-DeMille den of iniquity with bikini-clad women and bestial men), the film is never less than a robust telling of a young woman’s transformation from abject victim to resolute warrior. Her flight of empowerment noticeably leads her away from family and marriage towards a chaste omniscience in an otherworldly plane. The film’s director Wen Yimin plays the archetypal non-fighting scholar to whom Yun Mei plays matchmaker. According to Fan Xuepeng who stars as Yun Mei, her warrior garb was originally tinted, the better to be a vision in red.

Directed by Wen Yimin Studio: Youlian
Cinematographer: Yao Shiquan
Cast: Fan Xuepeng, Shu Gohui, Wang Juqing, Wen Yimin, Sao Guanyu
With Chinese and English subtitles. Silent, 94 min.

The Devil Music Ensemble

The Devil Music Ensemble (DME) will be performing their new original score live to the silent martial arts film “Red Heroine” (1929, directed by Wen Yimin), on different locations. This film is the only surviving extant Chinese silent “Kung Fu” film left from the silent era and is a prime example of the terrifically popular Chinese swordplay genre (wuxia pian), often based on published novels or serials, and an early cinema export, which was banned after the Cultural Revolution.

The score that the DME has composed pulls from the traditions of Chinese classical and folk music, as well as soundtracks from classic Kung Fu cinema and is the only modern score made expressly for this film. This is a very rare performance that showcases the combination of the ancient tradition of martial arts, early 20th century Asian film and 21st century music.

Formed in Boston, the DME is comprised of Brendon Wood on electric guitar, lap steel and synthesizer; Jonah Rapino on electric violin, lap steel, vibraphone, erhu and synthesizer; and Tim Nylander on drums and a variety of Chinese percussion instruments. The DME has been making its name since 1999 with live original score performances to classic silent film. The DME has established itself as one of the primary American groups in this field and is capable of tightly synced, genre bending, hypnotic musical performances that can make an audience forget that there is a live band directing the mood, emotion and pace of the visual imagery they are watching. The 2008 “Red Heroine” tour (sponsored by the Boston Asian Community Development Corporation) will take the DME to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the Seattle International Film Festival, The Pasadena Asian Museum, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Los Angeles silent movie theater and many other venues throughout the U.S. To find out more about the DME go to www.devilmusic.org.

I grew up watching them in the '70s. The movies were poorly produced, the film was grainy, the dubbed English and acting were even worse and the good guys almost always wound up dead in the end. Despite all those flaws, it was still fun to watch.

In the '70s, the popularity of kung fu in America was largely due to Bruce Lee. His movies "Enter The Dragon" and "Fists of Fury" captivated American audiences, bringing martial arts to the masses. His high kicks and high-pitched screams are what makes Bruce Lee movies legendary.

Today, we have many enjoyable kung fu movies such as "Kung Fu Panda," "Iron Monkey" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Last week, "Forbidden Kingdom" was released on DVD. It's a winner, and I've already watched it four times. A modern day teenager learns to fight from two masters, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, in ancient China. Jet Li is both the mischievous Monkey King and an extremely skilled monk. Jackie Chan adds the comedy. It's extremely entertaining from beginning to end.

A common theme in Chinese martial-arts movies is the use of animal styles in movement and fighting.

In ancient times, Chinese people lived in isolation and took inspiration from their environment. What is popularly known as kung fu today is based upon nature, folklore and customs. In the beginning, people observed the animals around them and copied their movements. Some popular fighting styles we see today are the praying mantis, the tiger, the monkey, the snake and the crane. Taken from folklore, even mythical creatures were copied: the dragon and phoenix.

These forms are not just beautiful to watch but very effective against the opponent.

Besides copying the movement of the animal, the martial- arts forefathers also incorporated the attitude or spirit of the animal in each style. The tiger is fierce and aggressive with claw-like movements while the crane is graceful and agile and uses a "hook" to deflect attack. The snake moves in soft, circular movements while striking at vital points and the leopard uses quick speed and power against his opponent.

Calvin Ching, president of the Chinese Physical Culture Association, said, "When martial arts was in its formative stages, the arts were handed down by word of mouth. Much of the martial arts postures were described in terms using animals such as 'repulse monkey,' 'snake creeps,' and 'stork spreads its wings.' "