Ip Man sounds like it should be a two-hour epic about a man getting pinched ("Ip! Yow!"), but instead, it's apparently one of the best martial arts movies to come out of China in years. It stars an epic badass, Donnie Yen, who's never really broken out in the states (although there's a moment in
Blade II where he's tracking down a vampire and just
points at the dude in such a cool way that I can't help but remember it), and tells the tale of the titular Ip Man, who helped mentor a generation of Wing Chun martial artists, including
Bruce Lee, all while dealing with the turmoil of the Japanese occupation of mainland China during World War II. Is it any good? Well, I should be getting it in my Netflix queue today, so we'll find out together. The other option for a weekly giveaway was
Clash of the Titans, so you can go ahead and thank me now for making the right choice.
How do you enter? It's simple, silly. Follow us on Twitter (
@screenedcom) (this is so that we can direct message you if you win) and retweet one of our stories sometime over the weekend! As long as you're somewhere in
this search page by the time we record our podcast on Monday, you're in! We'll pick a winner on Monday's edition of the podcast and send you a direct message on Twitter to confirm your address for the prize. So retweet a bit (but not enough to annoy your friends), and you'll automatically be entered in the contest. It's easy!
twitter.com You can do eeeet!
Great fight choreography, but it suffers from Steven Seagal-syndrome, in that the main character takes like maybe half a punch in the entire movie. IMO martial arts movies only work if the main character is the underdog, you can't just have the main character completely own people for an entire movie. That just makes me root for the bad guys.
Side note, I watched 15 minuts of Clash of the Titans on a plane to Comic-Con and was blown away at how bad that was.
I love Donnie Yen's work. In Hero he was great; in Iron Monkey, he was astounding. I'm sure a film expert such as yourself has seen Iron Monkey, but if you have not, I can't recommend it highly enough. Great wire work that fits within the mythology of the film, but you already knew that. Thanks for turning me on to another example of Mr. Yen's work.
one of the best kung fu movies made in a long time
Ip Man is awesome.