So Close Issues of Transcultural Remakes and Multicultural Reception

Transcription

1 Hyung-Sook Lee Issues of Transcultural Remakes and Multicultural Reception Imagine Charlie s Angels in Cantonese--with the Angels fighting each other! Cory Yuen s latest opus, a Charlie s Angel sort of film. Hong Kong s answer to Charlie s Angels... The above offers a sample of e-commentaries by US film critics in regards to Hong Kong director Cory Yuen s recent action film,. 1 First released in East Asia in 2002, the film was shown in select US theaters in the late Appearing on the first page of the search engine Yahoo for this film title, these reviews clearly have made a close association between, an apparent Hong Kong production, and Charlie s Angels (dir. McG, 2000), an American production globally released in Of course,not all reviews construe the former production as an imitation of Charlie s Angels. Indeed some reviewers have defended the film against such accusations, and they do so by emphasizing the difference between the two films. 3 Some others have turned a blind-eye to the resemblance between So Close and Charlie s Angels. 4 As far as I know, no one has claimed that is a remake of Charlie s Angels. Similar connections or rather prejudices were also apparent when I saw this film with American undergraduate students in a cinema class at the University of Southern California. After the screening, I had a chance to discuss this film with approximately thirty students. They expressed discontent with the film, and were suspicious of the film s cinematic plagiarism. To them, was first and foremost a knock-off of Charlie s Angels. Hybrid Media, Ambivalent Feelings Hyung-Sook Lee, editor, Spectator 27:2 (Fall 2007): Most agreed that this film only exemplified, in an affirming way, the ceaseless and desperate ambition of a local cinema to emulate the globallyly successful Hollywood cinema. Looking at these responses to the film by US critics and cinema students, I wondered why no one seemed to consider the possibility that could be a legitimate remake of Charlie s Angels, not just a shameful knock-off. There are reasons for my curiosity. Most of all, the Charlie s Angels film itself is a remake of the 1970s American TV series of the same title. If it has been widely and openly promoted as a legitimate remake of the earlier TV series, why is constantly disparaged as a Charlie s Angels sort of film? The situation appears more unfair when you consider that the film was not produced solely by insiders of the Hong Kong film industry, but, in fact, was co-produced by Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, whose sister company, Columbia TriStar in the US, in turn produced and distributed the Charlie s Angels film in If this is the case, why is there a difference in the labeling of the two films? What are the standards of the evaluation, and what factors inform these opinions? The main aim of this essay is not to prove whether is a remake of Charlie s Angels or not. Instead, I shall look at the factors that 79

2 contribute to the impressions that a certain cultural product be deemed as a remake, rip-off, or take-off. This would entail exploring matters apropos to artistic and industrial practices such as transnational production, distribution, and reception that create a product s cultural identity in association with particular cultural prejudices. The resultant fictive identity of a local cultural product is created for a specific purpose. However, in the current active encounter between global and local cultures, this fictive identity is not simply imposed on the local sphere by a certain imperial judgments. Instead of understanding global-local relations as confrontational, I shall pay special attention to voluntary collaborations of the local subjects with the global hegemony that Hollywood has come to represent in the world film scene. As a transnational co-production, would offer interesting insights into collaborations as such. By looking at the co-production process of this film, I want to explore what is or is not negotiated in such a global-local cultural cooperation, and what are the factors that affect the negotiation process. In relation to that, I also want to investigate what kind of new cultural tactics are devised for such a transnational co-production film to be marketable to diverse groups of global audiences, and how the tactics transform the textual quality of the film. The story of revolves around two sisters Lynn (Shu Qi) and Sue (Zhao Wei) who are assassins-for-hire; for their work, they use highly developed technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS). A female cop, Kong Yat-Hung (Karen Mok), initially pursues the two sisters for their crimes. When Lynn is brutally murdered, Yat- Hung finds herself framed for the murder instead. She then joins force with Sue to combat the villains who are responsible for Lynn s death. Featuring three glamorous female combatants fighting for social and/or personal justices, the film, without doubt, resembles the narrative structure of Charlie s Angels, except the fact that the three female fighters in the American production are private detectives rather than assassins. The similarity extends to the choreography of the fighting scenes,,in which young women with 4.5 inch high-heels execute deadly actions through wired stunts. But that is not all. The original Chinese title of is literally translated as Sunset Angels, and in her mission in the opening scene, Lynn introduces herself as Computer Angel. 5 The Hong Kong version of the poster even features the three female leads in white suits, reinforcing their angelic image. The visual and literal emphasis on the trope of an angel in the poster, title, and the character name of inevitably create an explicit association between the film and Charlie s Angels, featuring three main characters called by the same name. Thus, it seems that borrows some of its elements from the American film. However, if Charlie s Angels is considered a legitimate remake of the earlier TV series, the practice of cultural borrowing itself should not make reasons enough to stigmatize the Hong Kong film as a rip-off. Therefore, it seems that some rash prejudices against the cultural hierarchy of different regions is operating in the assessment of the two similar films. As for this ironic double standard regarding cultural authenticity, Esther C. M. Yau provides a useful insight: [W]hen Europe s artists reference the non- West, this gesture adds value to their work and their originality; but when non-western artists reference Europe and the United States, their work is deemed derivative and inauthentic. 6 This certainly appears true, especially when we assume the relationship between the global and local cultures is usually a top-down hierarchical one. Even so, the practice of Hong Kong film industry as well as the filmmakers of may not completely be free from some responsibility. In fact, the Hong Kong film industry has been notorious for its wide spread plagiarism. As Patricia Aufderheide notes, Some of the most popular Hong Kong films have been remakes, takeoffs or simply steals of popular American movies. In addition, the Hong Kong film industry is notorious for seizing upon a working formula (for instance, John Woo s high-violence gangster drama A Better Tomorrow [1986]) and then working it to death. (A Better Tomorrow generated two sequels and many imitators.) Its own movie traditions instantly become grist for remakes, parodies, and transformations FALL 2007

3 Successful foreign and domestic films have each been exploited this way. Considering this notorious aspect of the Hong Kong film industry, could be just thought of as yet another example of such a shameless practice. As the various allusions discussed earlier almost point directly to Charlie s Angels, the makers of do not even seem to mind the potential suspicion about their film s originality. In this sense, is a rip-off. Or is it? In the case of s, the accusation of plagiarism is not settled all that easily. There are more factors that complicate the issue. As mentioned above, this film was co-produced with the Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia. The company is one of the local operations for the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, which is under the auspices of Sony Pictures Entertainment in the US. Several branch companies of Sony Pictures Entertainment have held and/or currently hold distribution rights for the original Charlie s Angels TV series as well as the recent film version of it. Sony showed its global ambition in media business earlier than other US media corporations, and one of its corporate branches, Columbia TriStar, became the first US film production company to finance foreign-language film productions when it opened its overseas offices in Germany in In the same year, Columbia TriStar founded its Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia in Hong Kong, primarily focusing on Chinese language film productions. The company subsequently cofinanced Chinese director Zhang Yimou s The Road Home (1999) and Not One Less (1999), Lee Ang s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Feng Xiaogang s Big Shot s Funeral (2001), and Chen Kuo-Fu s Double Vision (2002), in addition to So Close in Seen in this light, the global enterprise of Sony Pictures Entertainment and its relation to the TV and film versions of Charlie s Angels reveal that So Close is not simply a case of a local film industry s regrettable efforts to copy a globally successful film. From the inception, the owners of the original acknowledged that would look just like Charlie s Angels, and they did not mind that. Nevertheless, the company relations between the two films were never given any publicity. Interestingly, is not the only Asian media work that resembles Charlie s Angels supported by Lee the Sony Corporation. In the late 1990s, after Sony Pictures Entertainment became the owner of Super TV, the Mandarin language channel in Taiwan, the company produced the insightfully titled made- for-tv movie, Asian Charlie s Angels (2001). 10 Therefore, this whole line of global Charlie s Angels corpus reveals the US company s persistent intention to profit from popular titles. About this recycling practice of American studios, Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos offer such insights: Hollywood has always had recourse to canned projects that promised to ensure stable audience attendance more than new and riskier projects. Equally important was the major studios investment in story properties and the desire to maximize their returns. Studios owning the options for dramatization rights to a novel or play often remade a film several times. 11 However, as we uncover the financial and copyright relations behind these East and West versions of Charlie s Angels, it becomes more and more questionable why did not receive the publicity that confers upon it the legitimate status of a remake while others did. Does indeed belong to the Sony s intended line of recycled productions of Charlie s Angels? Or, are there any possibilities to understand the similarities between the two films in a different way? So far, audiences seem to focus only on the resemblance of the two titles, but what are their differences? Although the film version of Charlie s Angels draws its narrative structure from the original TV series, 12 its major departure from the earlier forms is the vigorous engagement of martial arts actions in it. Also unlike the TV series where all Angels are Caucasian beauties, the film version attempts ethnic diversification by casting an Asian American, Lucy Liu, as one of the Angels. 13 What could have caused such variations? Countless cultures claim their own traditions of martial arts. In terms of cinematic representations, however, most fans of popular films would readily associate martial arts with Hong Kong cinema, simply because the Hong Kong film industry produces an indefinite number of martial arts films. Such popular imagination is evidenced by Hybrid media, ambivalent feelings 81

4 Hollywood s rigorous invitations offered to experts in martial arts filmmaking from the Hong Kong film industry. In fact, the martial arts choreography of Charlie s Angels was done by Hong Kong filmmaker and actor Yuen Cheung-Yan. 14 Also, the director of, Cory Yuen himself established his name as one of such expert in action filmmaking in Hong Kong, and later was passionately pursued by the Hollywood film industry. 15 Considering this, Charlie s Angels the film can be understood as an updated version of the original TV series, reflecting the ever-growing influence and popularity of the Chinese martial arts films on global audiences. In this respect, the casting of Lucy Liu may not be coincidental. Adding an ethnically Chinese face to the two Caucasian female stars might also have been intended to correspond to the current penchant for multiculturalism in global culture industriesies and cultural discourses. More importantly, it can also be understood as a Hollywood style justification for the use of aspects of Chinese martial arts in their own film. Using Liu, who is ethnically befitting to the particular local culture, can compensate the local audiences resistance against such exploitation of their own culture in Hollywood s money-making. Whether her ethnic face impresses both local and global audiences, successfully hiding her cultural and linguistic American identity, remains as a question, though. It is an attempt at multiculturalism, yet in Hollywood s own way. The representation of multiculturalism in Charlie s Angels, especially by the use of Chinese martial arts, in fact, provides us an interesting deflection from the opinion that Charlie s Angels is the primary inspiration for. Frankly, when I saw, the film first remindeded me of Hong Kong s Heroic Trio I and II (1993) 16 rather than Charlie s Angels. Featuring three major Hong Kong female stars, Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh, as modern day warriors with super power, the two films have a cult following, both in the East and the West. The occasional extreme sentimentality indulged in the storyline and the soundtrack of So Close 17 link it more closely to the Heroic Trio series than to Charlie s Angels, since the latter maintains a comic tone throughout. The absence of an alloverseeing boss or Charlie figure in the Heroic Trio I and II also connects them more closely to in terms of structural similarity. It might be argued that the Heroic Trio series itself was modeled on Charlie s Angels, as the earlier TV series aired in Hong Kong around the same time that they were popular in the US. However, given that both and the Heroic Trio series have multiple sources and inspirations, why do we insist on Charlie s Angels being the only prototype for such similar creation? In their analysis of the Heroic Trio, Anne T. Ciecko and Sheldon H. Lu find the insight for the pervasive triadic structure of the film from both pre-modern and modern Chinese narratives, one of the most famous of which is the classic novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. 18 While this novel depicts the loyalty among three sworn brothers, later Chinese filmmakers have since the 1930s adapted the triadic structure to female narratives. 19 Ciecko and Lu also add, The Heroic Trio and The Executioners... beg somewhat allegorical readings of the three women warriors as representations of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China an enactment of identity and genre hybridity via a fable of reunification. 20 In this respect, the fact that the three female leads of, Shu Qi (Taiwan), Zhao Wei (China), and Karen Mok (Hong Kong), are recruited from the so-called three Chinese film industries also can add such political implication to the character structure of, and make this film culturally closer to the Heroic Trio than Charlie s Angels. In addition, both of these films inherit the long tradition of female action genre in the Chinese film history. As Minh-Ha T. Pham says: There is, in fact, a long tradition of nüxia (female knight-errant) films dating back as early as the 1900s, which have their cultural basis in Chinese legends, such as the story of Fa Mu Lan. 21 Cory Yuen himself is in fact well-known for making several female action films in Hong Kong including such famous titles as Yes, Madam (1985), Michelle Yeoh s debut film. In a press interview in Hong Kong, Yuen says that he had the idea to make long before Charlie s Angels was made, and that the similarity is coincidental. 22 Thus, the more extensive understanding one has about the diverse cultural resources to which shows significant intertextual relation, the harder it is to indicate any single origin or prototype on which this film is based. 82 FALL 2007

5 Here, what is important is that the cultural identity of looks so obvious and is yet highly elusive at the same time. The lack of publicity that defines the origin of the film in turn invites various possible readings in relation to the film s intertextual linkage. In fact, from the director s suggestion that his intended target audiences for this film were European, American, and Asian audiences, 23 we can suspect that such layered significationss of the film text were in fact intentionally planned by the filmmaker. From what we have seen so far, it seems that both Chinese and American audiences can respectively claim that resembles a certain popular cultural forms of their own. This could mean that favored elements of popular culture, such as stories featuring three heroines, are actually not much different in the East and the West. Or as David Wills says, it could simply be the nature of film creation: The film was never an intact and coherent whole offered up for my consumption. It was always, one might say, in the process of writing itself. Quoting, one might say always already....thus...thus what is being commonly and communally referred to here as the remake, the possibility that exists for a film to be repeated in a different form, should rather be read as the necessary structure of iterability that exists for and within every film. 24 If quoting or repetition of other resources is a common practice of filmmaking, what is interesting in the case of is that such a universal quality is especially exaggerated both textually and contextually. Textually, this film almost intentionally alludes to Charlie s Angels at times. Contextually, the film was made almost immediately following the release of the American film, without any publicity shield to protect it from the derogatory accusation of being a shameless repetition and imitation. It was put on the market seemingly as a Hong Kong s usual rip-off piece of a Hollywood blockbuster. In the production of, the widely held perception of the Hong Kong commercial film industry s notoriety as a copycat is incorporated as a part of the essential attributes of the film. It is an imitation cinema made in Hong Kong. Here, audiences outside of Hong Kong are expected to Lee see not a single individual film, but one example of the quintessential Hong Kong imitation cinema. They are looking at one of the authentic practices that have defined the local film industry. is not only merchandizing the cinematic quality of the film, but also the unfortunate part of the global reputation of the Hong Kong commercial film industry itself. This structure of self-deprecatory promotion of Hong Kong commercial cinema is similar to the tactics of autoethnography, the concept with which Rey Chow deploys to explain the Chinese fifth generation cinema. According to Rey Chow, the films of Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige, by ethnocizing their own culture, intend to confront the Orientalistic, ic, ethnocizing gaze of the West. 25 Their films show China as imagined by outsiders, rather than as it is experienced by Chinese people themselves. By doing so, they are indicating the Orientalistic prejudice of outsiders themselves. So Close also alludes to such imagination about Hong Kong cinema created and maintained by foreigners. However, this time, instead of resisting against such a prejudice, the filmmakers take advantage of it. So Close is familiar to global audiences because it does not betray their existing knowledge about Hong Kong commercial cinema: that it is an imitation cinema. And this familiarity is directly linked to the marketability of the film. Then, is this self-ethnocizing brand the only familiarity with which this film approaches its diverse audiences? In this way, does the film communicate with its multiple audience groups on an equal level? Not likely. The film is familiar to everybody, but not in the same way. Besides the fact that the characters tripartite structure is very familiar in the tradition of Chinese cinema and literature, there are other intertextual and intercultural references that are distinctly recognizable only to fans of Asian popular culture. One of the moments in which the film requires audiences specific cultural experience to maximize the viewing pleasure is the sequence where Lynn and Sue play in a shower room. Showing the childlike frolicking between Lynn and Sue, this scene starts with Lynn s bath scene interrupted by the entrance of Sue with a portable digital camera. The scenes show Sue trying to capture Lynn s naked body on camera while Lynn defends herself from the embarrassment with expert martial art moves. In Hybrid media, ambivalent feelings 83

6 The poster created exclusively for the Korean market (left) and the internationally circulated poster design (right). Courtesy of 2002 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. 28 the process, Lynn s bare body is partly displayed on screen several times but is never fully revealed. The audience is only teased with her partial nudity, but not so far as to satisfy their voyeuristic curiosity. This scene, appearing to be one of those customary semi-exploitive moments of baring female bodies in cinema, in fact, creates a very interesting intertextual relationship to the actress Shu Qi s earlier career. Although now secured in her status as a talented and respectful actress in both mainstream and art house Hong Kong and Taiwanese cinemas, Shu initially made her name as the notorious Category III actress in Hong Kong, with films such as Sex and Zen II (1996). 26 To audiences who know her past career, the tantalizing bath scene remind them of the gap between her earlier Category III films in which they did not have problems in seeing her full nudity on screen, and now her reformed status that prevent them from visually access her naked body. This sequence creates a self-reflexive comment on the actress personal history as well as makes an intertextual reference to her earlier Category III films. 27 All this information, however, will be unpacked only by those who are familiar with Shu s earlier days in the Hong Kong film industry, and thus most likely by the local and regional audiences. Similarly, the use of Korean actor Song Sŭng- Hŏn also requires a specific knowledge about the Asian pop culture to understand its intercultural significance. During the screening of in the aforementioned class at USC, I found that one of the most interesting responses from the American students was the absolute no-response to the presence of Song Sŭng-Hŏn. What a disappointment for fans of Asian pop culture. Song is one of the leading stars of the Korean Wave (Hallyu). The Korean Wave refers to the huge popularity of Korean pop culture in Asia, since the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is almost the reverse cultural phenomenon of the 1980s and the 1990s, when Hong Kong pop culture and its idols 84 FALL 2007

7 brought about similar sensation in Korea, setting the goals that the Korean pop cultural industry should aspire to. Considering this history of popular culture in the region, the casting of Song in a high profile Hong Kong popular film is regarded as an index to the recent achievements of Korean pop culture in Asia, as well as a recognition of his own popularity in the region. And it was duly celebrated by the Korean industry. Song s role as Lynn s boyfriend, Yen, is actually quite limited, not having much screen time. In addition, aurally, he is not even present at all in the film, as his dialogues were completely dubbed into Cantonese. Nevertheless, in one of the Korean version posterss of, Song s image looms larger than the three Chinese female leads. This is quite different from the posters circulated in Hong Kong or America, where Song is completely absent or featured in a much smaller proportion than the main characters. From this, it is clear that the inclusion of a Korean pop cultural icon in is intended to impress not everyone, but only specific Asian audiences. As for the aforementioned triadic structure frequently seen in the tradition of Chinese culture, audiences do not necessarily need to know about the specific local cultural heritage to understand the similar form in. The structure of three female characters already approaches global audiences with a degree of familiarity through their earlier experience of internationally popular Charlie s Angels. However, the intertextual and intercultural implications exemplified through Shu s bath sequence or Song s appearance in cannot be translated to audiences unless they have a certain knowledge about the local or regional popular culture in Asia. Therefore, the latter two intertextual elements in this film have the effect of dividing the audiences into those who recognize the implied meanings of these cultural cues and those who do not. Eventually, it creates a sense of solidarity among Asian audiences with their shared cultural knowledge. Therefore, although appears to be evenly familiar to everybody, the film actually communicates with its audiences on different levels depending on their amount of information and knowledge about Asian and Hong Kong film cultures. Thus far, it is obvious that is not simply a case of Hong Kong cinema s ripping-offping-off of Charlie s Angels, but was made to look like a rip-off, with Lee different translatability to different groups of audiences. The final question, then, becomes what are the possible gains both for the local and for the Hollywood film producers through this selflabeling of a local cinema? More than anything, the US studio can maximize its profits by recycling commercially-proven products. Hong Kong filmmakers, on the other hand, can take advantage of the already established global hype of earlier similar US films as well as branching out into the global market with the systematic aid of the US global corporate media company. The important aspect in such a process is that the local filmmakers do not have to exclude its local or regional audiences so as to fit into the taste of the world outside. Instead, they can assure their films bond with the audiences in the neighboring communities by plotting cultural signals in the texts that are communicable only to the specific audience groups. Like this, the tactics used in intend to easily approach both the global and local/regional audiences at the same time. As for the two contexts of international filmmaking, Stephen Prince notes: The relationship between these two contexts the global and the local can be fraught with tension. Hollywood s marketing imperative is to extend its model of cinema throughout the world, so that audiences in Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Germany, Ireland, and everywhere else will develop a taste for American movies. 29 The process of producing and marketing is a clear example that evidences such a tension between global and local cinemas. However, the tension in this case is created not necessarily by the invasion of Hollywood, homogenizing the taste of all local and regional cinemas in the world. It is rather of a case a local cinema widening its global markets, subsequently diversifying the cinematic tastes in the world. The process involves cooperation between global and local cinemas, but does not seem to be on equal weight, at first sight.the local cinema eventually tends to collaborate with global forces by creating and/or exploiting an imagined identity of its culture that is familiar to outsiders. This seems to be another example of unequal relation between Hybrid media, ambivalent feelings 85

8 the global and the local, where eventually the local sphere has to submit itself to the control of the global hegemony in terms of finances and ideas. The case of, however, shows how the local cinema, even in such a collaboration, can still maintain its contact with local/regional audiences with characteristics that are not imagined by outsiders, but are experienced by the people inside.therefore, the film is not consumed by, but is actually taking advantage of, the globally imagined identity of Hong Kong local cinema to efficiently enter global as well as regional markets. By packaging the image of the Hong Kong film industry as its signature, by incorporating the global corporate finance, and also by impressing diverse groups of audiences at the same time, yet on distinguished levels, proposes a new tactics of competition for Hong Kong local cinema in the global cultural arena. 86 FALL 2007 Notes 1. Reviews:, E!Online, Joe Mader, Reviews:, The Hollywood Reporter.Com, 8 May 2003, jsp?vnu_content_id= ; Megan Lehmann, Not Even Close to Good, New York Post, 12 September 2003, nypost.com/movies/5556.htm (All accessed 1 July 2005). 2. The film was widely promoted to be a Hong Kong film in overseas markets such as in the US or in South Korea. The Internet Movie Database ( also lists the film s nationality as Hong Kong. 3. See Kenneth Turan, to the Real Action, Los Angeles Times, 12 Sept 2003; Wendy Kan, Yuen Visualizes Future of Actioners, Angels, Variety, 2 Sept 2002; Andy Klein, The Glory of Cory, LA City Beat, 4-10 September See Derek Elley, Film Reviews: (Xiyang Tianshi), Variety, 11 November 2002; Elvis Mitchell,, New York Times, 12 September The Chinese title of is 夕陽天使. 6. Esther C. M. Yau, Introduction: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C. M. Yau (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Patricia Aufderheide, Made in Hong Kong: Translation and Transmutation, Playing It Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes eds. Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1998), As for the issue of plagiarism in Hong Kong cinema, see also Paul Fonoroff, Orientation, Film Comment ( June 1988): 52-6; Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema (London and New York: Verso, 1999), 17-37; and Jeff Yang, Once Upon a Time in China: A Guide to Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Mainland Chinese Cinema (New York: Atria Books, 2003), (the piece on piracy is contributed by Andrew Grossman). 8. Frank Rose, Think Globally Script Locally, Fortune, 8 November 1999, For information about Columbia TriStar s involvement in Chinese language films, I refer to the press screening document for by Strand Releasing, the local distributor of the film in Los Angeles area, and the Internet Movie Database. The Strand Releasing document was made available by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library. 10. Rose, 158. The Chinese title for the TV movie is 神探俏嬌娃, roughly translatable as Sexy Smart Detectives. 11. Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos, Reviewing Remakes: An Introduction, Dead Ringers:The Remake in Theory and Practice eds. Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), For example, the scenario in which Charlie s life is threatened,and and the Angels fight to protect him derives from the storyline of the episode Target: Angels, of the first season of the TV series in Also, the scene in which one of the Angels, Alex Munday (Lucy Liu), gives a back massage to Roger Corwin (Tim Curry) is an exact replication of a similar scene in the episode Hellride of the TV series; in this episode, Charlie also gets a back rub from a female attendant. 13. I owe this insight on Lucy Liu s casting to Prof. David James.

9 14. He is the brother of Yuen Woo-Ping, the famous Hong Kong martial arts filmmaker who choreographs the action sequences for such Hollywood blockbusters as the Matrix series or the Kill Bill series. 15. A well-known collaborator of Jet Li, Cory Yuen has worked on numerous high-profile Hollywood films such as Lethal Weapon IV (1998), X-Men (2000), Romeo Must Die (2000) and The One (2001), as well as the France-US co-production Kiss of the Dragon (2001) and The Transporter (2002). In these films, he has mostly worked as the action choreographer or action director, but co- directed The Transporter with Louis Leterrier. 16. Heroic Trio II is also called The Executioners in the US market. 17. I owe this insight to Prof. Dana Polan s lecture in the class International Cinema since World War II, in the spring semester of 2004, offered by the Division of Critical Studies at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. His indication of the shameless sentimentality of the film reminded me of my subject position as a long-time audience for Hong Kong and other East Asian films. The sentimentalism of bypassed my attention at the time, as I am well-aquainted with this type of overflowing emotion, a common trait in popular cultures in East Asia. 18. The Romance of Three Kingdoms was a novel written by Lou Guanzhong in the fourteenth century. The story is based on extensive orally transmitted stories about the Three Kingdoms period in the ancient China and historical records such as The Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms by Chen Shou in the third century. 19. Ciecko and Lu take Three Modern Women (1933), Three Beautiful Women (1949), and recently Soong Sisters (1997) as examples. See Anne T. Ciecko and Sheldon H. Lu, The Heroic Trio: Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung, Michelle Yeoh Self-Reflexivity and the Globalization of the Hong Kong Action Heroine, Post Script 19.1 (1999): 83n Ibid., Minh-Ha T. Pham, The Asian Invasion (of Multiculturalism) in Hollywood, Journal of Popular Film and Television 32.3 (2004): 129. For a discussion of nüxia films, see also Zhen Zhang, Bodies in the Air: The Magic of Science and the Fate of the Early Martial Arts Film in China, Post Script (2001): The press screening document for by Strand Releasing. 23. Spotlight for Kicks, New York, 15 September David Wills, The French Remark: Breathless and Cinematic Citationality, in Play It Again, Sam. 25. For more discussion of the Chinese filmmakers and the issue of autoethnography, see Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 26. Equivalent to the US rating system, the Hong Kong film industry adopts Category system. Category I films are declared to be suitable for all ages; Category IIA are not suitable for children; Category IIB are not suitable for young persons and children; Category III films are for persons aged eighteen or above only. Films in the last category usually contain explicit depiction of sex and violence. The famous Sex and Zen series are ones of best known titles in this category. 27. Shu also plays such a self-reflexive character in Viva Erotica directed by Derek Lee (1996), in which she plays a Category III actress. Although the film is not an exploitation film, its subject matter concerns the Category III film industry. It is released as a Category III movie nonetheless. 28. The poster images are obtained through and reproduced by the permission from Sony Pictures Releasing of Korea, Inc. 29. Stephen Prince, Introduction: World Filmmaking and the Hollywood Blockbuster, World Literature Today (October-December 2003), 3. Lee Hybrid media, ambivalent feelings 87