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Hi. I'm Leigh, the person who built and maintains this site and
spends too much of her free time messing about with it. Thank you
for visiting. I hope you are enjoying your stay.
I first saw Chow Yun-Fat on screen, as so many others did, in the
Hollywood-made film The Replacement Killers. At that time I
was no fan of action films by any means, and being totally ignorant of
Hong Kong cinema except for the most superficial facts, I was prepared
to hate The Replacement Killers. To be honest, I rented it from
my local videostore only because I was curious as to what sort of
film would have music by Crystal Method in it.
From the first moment Chow Yun-Fat appeared on the screen, I was
mesmerized. Not just by his astounding good looks (although
that certainly didn't hurt), but by his manner, his screen presence
and above all the performance he gave though obviously hampered by
performing in a foreign language - a language with which it seemed
he had all-too-recently become acquainted - and a sparse, muddy
script.
Like other geeks before me, I turned to the Internet to see what I
could find about this actor. I subscribed to alt.asian-movies on
Usenet, and reading through the posts there I gleaned some very
useful URLS (which you can visit yourself - the best ones I've found
are listed in the links
section) which had a lot of good info about Mr. Chow.* After perusing a few sites, I went out in search of more films,
starting in the obvious places - my local video store - and ending
up in some not-so-obvious places (some via the Web - see the
resources section
for reviews on the various places I've come across).
Even though my second film was a very awful English-language
dub version of John Woo's classic The Killer, I knew that my
first impression of Mr. Chow had been right on the money: this was
an incredibly talented artist who deserved better recognition
outside of Asia.
As I began to watch more of his films, and read more of the
commentary about his work, I noticed there was another area in which
Mr. Chow's work deserved more recognition: that of his fine
portrayals of characters outside the action genre. Chow Yun-Fat has
starred in everything from low-budget thrillers to mega-budget
comedies, picked up an impressive array of acting awards, has been
idolized in many countries and is generally known as one of the
most handsome men alive. While I have found many moving paeans to
the "balletic violence" aspects of his work, and seen many tributes
to his prowess in the 'heroic bloodshed' genre, most of the writings
are from the more masculine standpoint which has a tendency to
overlook (and sometimes actually dismiss) his finely crafted
dramatic, comedic and tragic characters in such films as
Hong Kong 1941, Dream Lovers, An Autumn's Tale
and All About Ah Long.
Because of this, I decided to sit down and actually write about what
it was that I admired about Mr. Chow's body of work, and to share it
with anyone who might be interested, as I am, in the
entire repetoire of Mr. Chow; while I admire films such as
The Killer (indeed, I consider it one of the finest films
ever made), I believe that his body of work is all the more amazing
that it can include gut-wrenching portrayals in modern morality plays
such as A Better Tomorrow as well as silly slapstick such as
the hysterically funny The Eighth Happiness. As my
significant other remarked at the time, "it takes big cojones for
The Killer to play a sissyboy".
Originally this site was just one small page with a couple of
comments about some of his films outside the action genre which I
found interesting, and a picture gallery of screen captures I had
made; I had seen plenty of pictures of Chow Yun-Fat with gun in
hand, but had seen precious few, outside of some publicity shots, of
his more genial aspect. I won't even pretend not to be a bit in awe
of his physical beauty; that would be silly to deny in the context
of the image galleries which I have assembled for the site; here you
will see numerous pictures which I find appealing, very few of which
involve guns, explosions or splattered blood. This aspect of his
popularity - that of his allure based on depth of character and his
charming persona - can't be dismissed either. Just ask his legion of
female Asian fans who keep him consistently among the top box-office
draws, or of the growing number of Western women who were first drawn
to him by his appearance and found out that this was more than just
a pretty face or a guy with a gun.
I hope you have found something of interest here; if so, the time
spent has been amply repaid. If you would like to make suggestions or
comments about the site, just drop me a piece of email at
leigh@nbi.com;
I'd love to hear from you.
Leigh
* Yes, I know he doesn't like to be called 'Mr. Chow', but
I simply can't bring myself to use just a first name for someone
I think deserves respect, and typing out his whole name each time
seems a bit much. So 'Mr. Chow' will have to do. -
Leigh,
September 14, 1999
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