Sunday, July 31, 2011

The culture that is China: Ip Man edition

or MAN!, the Chinese still really hate the Japanese.

Mrs. A and I watched the "bio-pic" Ip Man over the weekend. I really liked the film, great fighting and decent acting.

However, it's more propaganda than bio.

In the movie, Ip Man (who ended up being Bruce Lee's master) is driven out of China to Hong Kong by the sadistic Japanese military after crunching a ton of Japanese martial artists.

In reality, Ip Man was driven out of China to Hong Kong by Mao and his minions who were not happy with how rich Ip's family was.

Ooops.

Good luck getting THAT movie made or shown in China.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good movie indeed. There are two Ip Man sequels. One called Ip Man 2 the other one Ip Man Zero.
Another Ip Man movie will be relased in 2012, which has no connection to the other ones.
All movies were shot in China or HK as far as I know.

They are of course not 100% accurate. Most noticeable thing to know about the real Yip Man is that he supposingly was the last grandmaster that knew all kung fu styles. The myth is that he refused to teach Bruce Lee all of "secrets" of kung fu, although he offered him an apartment and money as exchange.
So Bruce Lee created his own style up from the scratch what is now Jeet Kune Do.
The last living closed door student of Yip Man is supposingly Leung Teing, founder of Wing Tsun.
As the old stories continues, there is a lot of controversy/rivalry between all remaining and new founded ~ing ~ung styles going on.

Bruce Lee himself was potrayed in the recommendable movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.