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2046 "Leung brings starpower stateside from HK" by

 
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Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:50 am    Post subject: 2046 "Leung brings starpower stateside from HK" by

The core of this article has been printed in other newspapers, but the only sentence that it mentions here worth noting is where Tony says restaurants personnel inform reporters of his whereabouts when he dines at their restaurants.
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kitsapsun.com

Leung brings starpower stateside from Hong Kong
By EDWARD GUTHMANN
August 22, 2005

http://www.kitsapsun.com/bsun/entertainment/article/0,2403,BSUN_19066_4023553,00.html

In Hong Kong, where he's the veteran of 65 movies, Tony Leung Chiu Wai can't go anywhere without asking for trouble. Paparazzi stalk him at home and trail him in cars. Whenever he dines out, restaurant personnel report his whereabouts to tabloids and collect hefty kickbacks.

"You are under surveillance all the time, 24 hours," Leung says. "And you don't know when they are going to appear." It's that way throughout Asia: Even China, once loath to follow Western cultural models, has a thriving industry of celebrity rags and gossip pages.

In the United States, Leung, 43, is unknown outside an ever-diminishing community of foreign-film enthusiasts. If you're lucky, you saw him play an undercover cop in "Infernal Affairs" and John Woo's "Hard Boiled," a master assassin in Yimou Zhang's "Hero," or a series of soulful, disaffected dreamers in films from frequent collaborator Wong Kar-Wai.

Their latest collaboration, "2046," is a futuristic fantasy about the impossibility of romantic love. The film casts Leung as Mr. Chow, the character he played in Wong's 2000 success "In the Mood for Love," for which he was named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. In that film, set in Hong Kong in 1962, Mr. Chow is a married man who falls for an elegant married woman, played by Maggie Cheung, who lives in the same rooming house. The couple rendezvous in taxis, take chaste walks down back alleys by night and play out an extended dance of exquisite, unconsummated desire.

Not doing it has never been so erotic - at least on film.

In "2046," Mr. Chow is relocated to Shanghai, bitter and alone, addicted to dead-end relationships that satisfy his taste for misery and fuel the pulpy stories he writes. The title refers to the number of the hotel room where Cheung met Leung in "In the Mood for Love," to the year when the former British colony of Hong Kong fully reverts to China and also to the future - to a place and time where lonely people go by train to recapture lost memories. In addition to Cheung, the cast includes Leung's former girlfriend of 12 years, Carina Lau, and Chinese superstars Gong Li ("Raise the Red Lantern") and Zhang Ziyi ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon").

It took five years to complete "2046," partly because of the SARS epidemic and also because of Wong's well-known penchant for delaying his pictures with incessant fine-tuning. When "2046" premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival, the print arrived 12 hours late. Two months later, it was pulled from the Edinburgh Film Festival because perfectionist Wong wanted more time to tinker.

There's not a lot that happens in "2046." The languid, carefully composed shots that Wong constructs for his actors are anathema to the frenzied rhythms of contemporary Hollywood. But Leung, who has starred in most of Wong's films - six altogether - is always compelling. Few actors have Leung's gift for generating emotion and sympathy with such economy of means. He never strains, but slips stealthlike inside his characters.

Last year, a French newspaper called Leung "the Asian Clark Gable," presumably because of the thin moustache he sports in "2046" and the retro look of slicked-back hair, thin neckties and suits with narrow lapels. The resemblance ends there. Whereas Gable was robust, athletic and lacking in mystery, Leung has the warm dark eyes and inner calm of a Zen priest.

He's equally adept at playing gangsters, gentlemen, killers and cops, but in person one is stunned at how short and delicate Leung is. Given the authority of his screen acting, the contrast between his screen self and real self is stunning. Leung is so quiet and soft-spoken, in fact, that he seems utterly defenseless - like a frightened schoolboy forced out of voluntary seclusion.

Leung has made dozens of films apart from Wong, so their collaboration hasn't exactly defined him, and yet their creative symmetry is so strong and their collective achievement so remarkable - beginning with "Days of Being Wild" in 1991 and including the influential "Happy Together" in 1997 and "Chungking Express" in 1994 - that one thinks of them as a unit. Leung once said, "We belong to each other."

Their partnership is also bizarre, in that they communicate very little on the set and Leung cannot "read" Wong's eyes because he always wears sunglasses, which he calls his "uniform." Leung never sees a script in advance, never knows his dialogue until the day he shoots it and never knows how the movie will end while he's working on it.

Wong has never visited Leung's home and Leung has seen Wong's only rarely. They may to dinner occasionally, but Wong never talks of his personal life.

Leung says he has few friends; he enjoys being alone. To escape public scrutiny, he goes on his yacht to relax and read scripts undisturbed.

The reserved, passive Leung came to acting in the early '80s through Hong Kong TV station that was looking for new talent for an actor's training class. Audiences responded to his ability to express complex, vivid emotion without seeming to try.

Abandoned by his father when he was 6, Leung grew up with his single mother and younger sister and never discussed the absence - even when the father briefly returned and then disappeared three more times. After 13 years of this, Leung got into the actor training class and found a way to express himself.

Leung is set to shoot his next film with Wong next summer. Their seventh collaboration, it's the story of Ip Man, the Hong Kong kung fu master, now dead, who taught action star Bruce Lee in the 1960s. Fond of extensive preparation, Leung will spend several months studying wing chun, a type of martial arts.

Contact Edward Guthmann at eguthmann(at)sfchronicle.com.
Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.
Copyright 2005, kitsapsun.com. All Rights Reserved.
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Pungyo



Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 400
Location: New Jersey, U.S.A.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:03 am    Post subject:

In the United States, Leung, 43, is unknown outside an ever-diminishing community of foreign-film enthusiasts.

(I have to figure out how you all copy comments into your own message!)

Anyway, I just noticed what it said about an "ever-DIMINISHING community." Is that true? Crying or Very sad

Maybe that's why so few theaters get to play Tony's films... although Hero was widely released. Hmmmm. I wonder how we can change this?

-K
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news



Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Posts: 1772
Location: U.S.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:28 am    Post subject:

Pungyo,

Click on the "quote" icon of the poster you wanted to quote from. One of the method fans can assist with his popularity in the U.S. or worldwide is keep on support his movies by sees it in the cinema. “Hero” got the kind of success it did because Jet Li was attached to the project; also ZZY-- whose career is hiking hastily—obviously other factors contributed to its victory besides star names. Tony is still a relatively new face with the U.S. audiences because majority of his films haven't made it to U.S. theaters.

Hope after Tony makes one or few “triumphant” U.S. projects his profile will change and American audiences will seek him out more. After "KF Hustle" releases here, Stephen’s status in the U.S. is soaring and he's become a more recognizable face- -U.S. and worldwide moviegoers are tracing his previous works.
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Pungyo



Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 400
Location: New Jersey, U.S.A.

PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:29 am    Post subject:

Hi news,

The quote button!!! d'oh! That's what that's for!!! Ha Ha.

And, oh yeah, right... Jet Li was in "Hero?" You mean not just Tony? There were OTHER actors in the film?! Wink Silly me. (Just kidding of course... the whole cast was amazing!!)

You're right, though about supporting any of Tony's films in the theaters... it's just that they tend to be released in major cities... not in little dinky places like the Jersey Shore. Very Happy Well, I went to see "Hero" twice, and bought the DVD... so I guess we have to do our best to talk others into doing the same type of thing! Right?

Anyway, and I could be wrong, I think the only reason why "Hero" was released here was because Quentin Tarantino... another Asian cinema fan... really pushed for it. I, personally, waited for it for two years before it was released! What a bummer!!

But, you're right, he's gotten a lot more exposure in this country because of "Hero's" release, and now with the promotional tour for "2046." He's "top of mind" as we say in the business. And people are very interested!! I just wish the media would stop comparing him to an Asian Clark Gable... he's more an Asian Tyrone Power! (Well, maybe you all are too young to remember him... heh heh.)

Thanks!!

-K
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waterlilly
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 1:29 am    Post subject:

Tyrone Power - hey, you ARE going back far. He was one of my Mum's idols and she's aged...well let's say pretty Ancient ! - but fit - bless!
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Pungyo



Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 400
Location: New Jersey, U.S.A.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:58 am    Post subject:

Ha Ha! Waterlilly, you're too funny!

But, he was a handsome man... my mother had pictures of Tyrone Power as well ... he was her movie idol, too. He also was a great actor in his time! Have you ever seen some of his old movies? I think Tony would be able to slip into those roles quite easily!

Idea In fact, that's maybe what he should do!!! Remakes of some of those films!!

Think Hmmmm... now let's see.... who would play the Elizabeth Taylor parts? Smile

-K
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