SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

An area for discussion of Dolph's past, present & future movies!

Moderator: Moderators

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 17 Aug 2015, 17:54

Rupert Pupkin Speaks:
As I mentioned, SHOWDOWN doesn't disappoint in the ass-kicking department and that undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that it still seems to have a cult following today. I believe that cult also has to do with the fact that it got a lot of play on cable television back in the 1990s and certainly got some attention on VHS at video stores in that period as well. I find it fascinating to see the gestation period of certain cult movies and how the fans suddenly come out of the woodwork when news of a long awaited Blu-ray catches their attention. We are certainly at point now where those of us who grew up as part of the video store generation can't possibly remember all the movies we used to love when we were younger. Keeping up with new movies is a full time job, so it's no surprise that some films tend to slip into obscurity. It's nice though to see something like SHOWDOWN end up on Blu-ray in 2015 and how happy it seems to have made a lot of people to remember this one.
The transfer on this Warner Archive Blu-ray looks good, no extra features included.

http://www.rupertpupkinspeaks.com/2015/ ... tokyo.html
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Travis on 22 Aug 2015, 17:26

In my opinion, this is the definitive Dolph film and it seems him and his career went pretty downhill after this (excluding Universal Soldier).

I still think this one of the best action films ever.

Kind of sucks some of the Blu-Ray reviews trash Dolph. He made this movie special.
User avatar
Travis
Regular
 
Posts: 480
Joined: 13 Jan 2004, 22:22


Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 12 Nov 2015, 19:44

Filmmaker: Given how successful it was, I’m surprised you didn’t do more big studio movies. You did Armed and Dangerous and another studio movie or two, but basically ended up going back to your roots as an independent. Why did you leave the studio system?

Lester: When I made Showdown in Little Tokyo for Warner Brothers, my cut was 90 minutes and they released it as a 78-minute movie. I had no control over it, and I was very unhappy with the final result. Today I’d probably just brush it off and go on to the next movie, but back then I took it a lot more personally and decided I needed to be in a position of total control. I didn’t have the money to finance big studio-level movies myself, but I went to the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 with the intention of announcing a bunch of titles and finding foreign buyers to invest in them – this was also the time of the hot video market. I ran into people from Lionsgate, which was just starting, and they said, “We need movies!” I asked, “How many do you want?” and they said, “Ten.” They were looking to finance these movies for $3 million a piece, so over the next three years I directed ten movies back to back and had that control I was looking for – they got involved a little bit with the casting, but that was it. They gave me half the money and I raised the other half foreign. I was going to these markets selling foreign rights, and eventually I started acquiring other people’s movies too and wound up a distributor – I was probably the only director going around to all these markets, and I directed something like twenty movies that way. When you do that, though, the studios stop calling you – they figure, “Oh, that guy’s got his own company and he’s doing his own thing.” You don’t even occur to them any more, like you’re in a kind of bubble. I’m not sure if I recommend it, because you become less of an artist and more of a businessman, but I did enjoy doing all these movies in that $3 to $5 million budget range where I had complete control again, like I did in my early days as an independent.

http://filmmakermagazine.com/95868-if-y ... kTA6N-rTdR
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 21 Nov 2015, 13:10

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa on The Man In The High Castle, Michael Bay, and Mortal Kombat:
I really like Wesley. He definitely has that street side to him, but he’s a serious actor—he’d gone to school for it—and he definitely knew what he was doing. He’d done a film called New Jack City, and I had done Showdown In Little Tokyo, and when I saw him, I said, “New Jack City!” And he said, “Showdown In Little Tokyo!” [Laughs.] So we immediately hit it off, both having played bad guys, and throughout filming we talked. He had been a martial artist for 20 years, so we talked about that.


Showdown In Little Tokyo (1991)—“Funekei Yoshida”
CHT: My major intention for coming to Hollywood—besides the fact that I was just enamored with acting from a very young age—was that I was tired of seeing wimpy Asian actors. Because the power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people’s minds, and they live with those images for their whole life. “Yeah, I saw it in a movie!” And they think that’s the way it is. So I was determined to change that image.

People say, “How come you play bad guys so much?” And I say, “Well, have you seen many Asian good-guy roles?” Especially back in ’86, when I first got to Hollywood. There were just no Asian roles. It was just the beginning of the bad-guy era. There was a movie called Year Of The Dragon, with John Lone, that sort of brought it to prominence, and all of a sudden all the TV shows, everybody had to have an Asian bad guy coming through their revolving door of bad guys. That’s when I came in. But I was clear: “I don’t want to play businessmen with bifocal glasses and cameras, so if you’re going to give me an Asian bad guy to play, then I’m going to give you the baddest Asian bad guy you’ve ever seen, and you’re not going to forget that I was in the film. We know that all the bad guys die in the end, but before I die, I’m going to give you something so scary that you will remember me.” Because that’s the worst thing for an actor: when you say to someone, “Yeah, I was in that movie,” and they say, “You were?” [Laughs.] That’s the worst. So I always made sure that never happened.

Bruce Lee was the first guy to bring film recognition of Asian men not being wimps, so it made me want to be as powerful as he was. So he was an inspiration, as were the Japanese samurai movies of Toshiro Mifune. The power and depth of Japanese acting certainly inspired me, so I was determined that Hollywood was going to get a taste of that, that Americans were going to get a taste of Japanese action. And Showdown In Little Tokyo was my first real chance to do that.

I had a little apprehension in cutting the girl’s head off, though. [Laughs.] I thought, “Why is that really necessary?” I knew what it would do. It’d certainly make you hate the person. But it was a bit radical for Hollywood stuff. But, no, they wanted to keep it in, so I did it.

A distinction of that film, besides being my first big studio film, was that I had a most intricate and elaborate set of tattoos. The guys who did The Illustrated Man had at that point done the most extensive tattoos in a film, but the character for Showdown In Little Tokyo had more. Walking in, they told me it would take 12 hours to do those tattoos. It’s, like, “12 hours? An entire workday to put them on?” It took several people: one to silk-screen them and put the patterns onto my body, two people to paint them… It was an ordeal just holding still.

AVC: How was it working with Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee?

CHT: I don’t know if many people realize that Dolph Lundgren is a chemical engineer. He’s not a dumb blond guy. This guy is smart and he’s a martial artist. He definitely pumped up for the movie, and he was pumping weights in between takes. But there’s one thing about weights with action movies: Once your muscles get that tight, it’s sometimes hard to stop your movement, especially if you’re trying to move with some strength, and with the swords in the film… Granted, they’re not steel swords, they’re aluminum swords, but if you swing them hard enough, they can cut you. And there were a couple of times when he got awfully close. [Laughs.] But he was a good guy. We got along well. And Brandon was one of my heroes by association, because of his dad, so we talked about that. He was just the sweetest guy. He had a really wonderful nature. So did Dolph, for that matter. They were both powerful in their way, but we’re not talking about hardcore menacing guys. So, yeah, it was a great experience. I had a lot of fun with those guys.

http://www.avclub.com/article/cary-hiro ... y-a-226091
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Ringy on 09 Jan 2016, 11:15

Image
Selected poem(song) was good. However as you see it is not made up as Japanese language 8) :shock:
aka Hanako
User avatar
Ringy
Member
 
Posts: 92
Joined: 15 Nov 2011, 19:34
Location: Rim of the World

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 01 Feb 2016, 18:06

Brandon Lee would have been 51 today. Here's a pic from the official Brandon Lee FB page held by his sister Shannon Lee:
Brandon sitting outside the Warner Brothers Studios under the poster for Showdown in Little Tokyo, 1991.
https://scontent-cdg2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/11149396_795596263868823_851785261676301037_n.jpg?oh=56675df774e7cc7c055a957373daa536&oe=5742FC3D
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 12 Mar 2016, 00:48

[Blu-ray Review] Dolph and Lee Take On the Yakuza In ‘Showdown In Little Tokyo’
http://bloody-disgusting.com/reviews/33 ... tle-tokyo/
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03


Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 13 Jun 2016, 21:44

Trivia:
Brandon Lee was already attached to RAPID FIRE when he landed the part in SHOWDOWN
(according to his last interview for BLACK BELT, August 1993 issue):
https://books.google.fr/books?id=6s8DAA ... pt&f=false
Attachments
Screen Shot 2016-06-13 at 20.44.10.png
Screen Shot 2016-06-13 at 20.44.10.png (76.02 KiB) Viewed 14639 times
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 11 Jul 2016, 11:42

Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa tweeting back on SILT, apparently the tattoos took a mere 11 hours to get done !
http://actionagogo.com/2016/07/10/remem ... ki-tagawa/

Image

Image

Image
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 23 Aug 2016, 16:29

Thanks to Mike Fury for reminding me that SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO was released (discreetly) in North America 25 years ago!

Image
Above is an advert from Impact (UK) reprising the Hong Kong poster for the unique theatrical screening held in London before it's DTV release in the spring 1992.
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby savagesketch on 23 Aug 2016, 21:08

Jox wrote:Thanks to Mike Fury for reminding me that SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO was released (discreetly) in North America 25 years ago!


Out of curiosity, how DISCREET was its release? I was too young to remember, but I'm curious how this was released compared to a film with more marketing... It get the same # of screens or considerably less?
User avatar
savagesketch
Member
 
Posts: 736
Joined: 20 Dec 2007, 05:55

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 23 Aug 2016, 21:33

Warner no longer being high on the movie, they dumped it on a mere 140 screens over the entire US and I don't think there was much an announcement or publicity prior...

MASTERS, RED SCORPION and I COME IN PEACE each came on about 1,200 screens so SHOWDOWN was very limited in comparison. But in retrospect of its $2 million gross, SHOWDOWN did much better per screen than the $4 million both SCORPION and PEACE earned.

And 8-10 months later it came out DTV everywhere else (except in a few other countries).
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO (Mark L. Lester, 1991)

Postby Jox on 24 Aug 2016, 22:34

TUNES OF LEGEND: REMEMBERING THE MUSIC OF ‘SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO’
http://oneperfectshotdb.com/news/tunes- ... tle-tokyo/
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

PreviousNext

Return to Dolph's Movies

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 45 guests

cron