Post by SamIAm on May 24, 2005 8:14:52 GMT -5
Article : Dashing Blade
Original Source : timesonline
Author : Ian Johns
Date : 23 Dec. 2004
URL : entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2100-14410-1413154,00.html
From boyband singer to Prada pretty boy to martial-arts hero, Takeshi Kaneshiro, the Asian Johnny Depp, is nothing if not versatile
IT ONLY takes Takeshi Kaneshiro to stand with his coat just off his shoulders for one of his entourage to leap up to remove it. It’s superstar behaviour, but then the 31-year-old actor has parlayed his brooding good looks into becoming a pin-up, Prada model, pop idol and film star whose career straddles action and art house.
He’s already been dubbed the Asian Johnny Depp. Now the Taiwanese-Japanese actor’s profile in the West is about to be raised with Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers, which continues the director’s shift from neorealist rural portraits (Red Sorghum) and acclaimed period dramas (Raise the Red Lantern) to the recent martial-arts epic Hero .That film was a bouquet of elaborate aquamarine costumes, emerald-misted forests and golden-russet foliage. Daggers is another feast of blood, passion, lighter-than-air martial arts, silk brocade and leading players as eye-catching as the film’s vistas.
Kaneshiro and the Hong Kong star Andy Lau play Tang Dynasty government officers, Jin and Leo, whose loyalties come into question when their pursuit of a beautiful rebel spy, Mei (the rising Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang, who now prefers this Westernised order of her name) turns into a love triangle.
“I knew I could play the love story, but I was daunted by the fight scenes,” admits Kaneshiro, a polite but guarded presence. “A month before shooting in China and the Ukraine we began basic training in knives and swords without being told what the story was about. I found that strange and was afraid I was going to make mistakes, but Zhang Yimou is like a storyteller — he acts everything out so I knew exactly what he wanted.”
Dagger’s casting reflects a growing trend to bring together Asia’s biggest names to maximise a film’s market (and so boost its budget) without relying on the American box office. The film became the second highest grossing movie in China, behind Hero, which itself has now taken $175 million worldwide.
Kaneshiro is well placed to enjoy this burgeoning “pan-Asian” approach to film production. Born and raised in Taiwan, one of three sons of a Japanese businessman and Taiwanese mother, he speaks Japanese, English and three Chinese dialects. He had no clear ambitions as a child (“I just played a lot”), but at 17 he starred in a soft-drinks commercial, which led him to being in a Taiwanese boyband called the Little Four Heavenly Kings.
The titles of his subsequent solo albums — Just You and Me, Ideal Lover, Tender Superman — reflected his growing persona as a pretty but virile lonelyheart that teenagers could fantasise about. The Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wei then cast him as a lovesick undercover cop in Chungking Express (1994). The film not only established Wong as the pop poet of night-time Hong Kong but also made it clear that Kaneshiro w as an actor to watch.
He consolidated that breakthrough role in Wong’s Fallen Angels (1995), a garishly soulful gangster film with Kane-shiro as a mute who falls for a woman bent on revenge for spurned love. Since then he’s played everything from a Taiwanese violinist unaware his soulmate is a neighbour (Turn Left, Turn Right) to a Japanese assassin who’s all guns and poses (Returner). His screen persona was even mocked in the coming-of-age movie Tempting Heart as a 1970s rocker so reticent that the film’s schoolgirl heroines speculate as to whether he can speak.
Kaneshiro is equally reticent in real life about his childhood, family and tastes but warms up when talking about his work. “I’ve never had any formal training as an actor so I’ve tried to play every type of role and explore many aspects of entertainment,” he says. That includes lots of celebrity endorsements and even playing a 16th-century swordsman for a PlayStation game.
Since he was baptised in Wong’s free-form style of direction (“He never tells you anything — I’d ask our cinematographer, Chris Doyle, what was going on and he’d just shrug his shoulders”), Kaneshiro never prepares for a role until he’s on set. That suited Zhang’s way of working.
“He is entirely in the world of his films,” Kaneshiro says. “On House of Flying Daggers he was always up at 4am looking at the weather and liked to choreograph the action accordingly. He’d originally envisaged the film’s climax (an extended clash between Jin and Leo) in autumnal colours, but then it began to snow and he rewrote the sequence. He was always in tune with the mood of the moment.”
For the film’s spectacular ambush scene in a bamboo forest, less pliable green poles were planted among the real stalks, allowing the stuntmen to leap from tree to tree with minimal computer enhancement. “Computer effects can be useful,” Kaneshiro says, “but ultimately it’s the imagination that counts in how you use them.”
If Daggers proves as successful in America as Hero, will Kaneshiro be packing his bags for Los Angeles? “If the role was right, sure, but I’m in no rush,” says the actor, whose 1998 American debut, Too Tired to Die, opposite Mira Sorvino, was little seen. “You tend to get typecast in America. I’m happy where I am.”
An assistant then leaps up with his master’s coat and I can see why.
Original Source : timesonline
Author : Ian Johns
Date : 23 Dec. 2004
URL : entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2100-14410-1413154,00.html
From boyband singer to Prada pretty boy to martial-arts hero, Takeshi Kaneshiro, the Asian Johnny Depp, is nothing if not versatile
IT ONLY takes Takeshi Kaneshiro to stand with his coat just off his shoulders for one of his entourage to leap up to remove it. It’s superstar behaviour, but then the 31-year-old actor has parlayed his brooding good looks into becoming a pin-up, Prada model, pop idol and film star whose career straddles action and art house.
He’s already been dubbed the Asian Johnny Depp. Now the Taiwanese-Japanese actor’s profile in the West is about to be raised with Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers, which continues the director’s shift from neorealist rural portraits (Red Sorghum) and acclaimed period dramas (Raise the Red Lantern) to the recent martial-arts epic Hero .That film was a bouquet of elaborate aquamarine costumes, emerald-misted forests and golden-russet foliage. Daggers is another feast of blood, passion, lighter-than-air martial arts, silk brocade and leading players as eye-catching as the film’s vistas.
Kaneshiro and the Hong Kong star Andy Lau play Tang Dynasty government officers, Jin and Leo, whose loyalties come into question when their pursuit of a beautiful rebel spy, Mei (the rising Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang, who now prefers this Westernised order of her name) turns into a love triangle.
“I knew I could play the love story, but I was daunted by the fight scenes,” admits Kaneshiro, a polite but guarded presence. “A month before shooting in China and the Ukraine we began basic training in knives and swords without being told what the story was about. I found that strange and was afraid I was going to make mistakes, but Zhang Yimou is like a storyteller — he acts everything out so I knew exactly what he wanted.”
Dagger’s casting reflects a growing trend to bring together Asia’s biggest names to maximise a film’s market (and so boost its budget) without relying on the American box office. The film became the second highest grossing movie in China, behind Hero, which itself has now taken $175 million worldwide.
Kaneshiro is well placed to enjoy this burgeoning “pan-Asian” approach to film production. Born and raised in Taiwan, one of three sons of a Japanese businessman and Taiwanese mother, he speaks Japanese, English and three Chinese dialects. He had no clear ambitions as a child (“I just played a lot”), but at 17 he starred in a soft-drinks commercial, which led him to being in a Taiwanese boyband called the Little Four Heavenly Kings.
The titles of his subsequent solo albums — Just You and Me, Ideal Lover, Tender Superman — reflected his growing persona as a pretty but virile lonelyheart that teenagers could fantasise about. The Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wei then cast him as a lovesick undercover cop in Chungking Express (1994). The film not only established Wong as the pop poet of night-time Hong Kong but also made it clear that Kaneshiro w as an actor to watch.
He consolidated that breakthrough role in Wong’s Fallen Angels (1995), a garishly soulful gangster film with Kane-shiro as a mute who falls for a woman bent on revenge for spurned love. Since then he’s played everything from a Taiwanese violinist unaware his soulmate is a neighbour (Turn Left, Turn Right) to a Japanese assassin who’s all guns and poses (Returner). His screen persona was even mocked in the coming-of-age movie Tempting Heart as a 1970s rocker so reticent that the film’s schoolgirl heroines speculate as to whether he can speak.
Kaneshiro is equally reticent in real life about his childhood, family and tastes but warms up when talking about his work. “I’ve never had any formal training as an actor so I’ve tried to play every type of role and explore many aspects of entertainment,” he says. That includes lots of celebrity endorsements and even playing a 16th-century swordsman for a PlayStation game.
Since he was baptised in Wong’s free-form style of direction (“He never tells you anything — I’d ask our cinematographer, Chris Doyle, what was going on and he’d just shrug his shoulders”), Kaneshiro never prepares for a role until he’s on set. That suited Zhang’s way of working.
“He is entirely in the world of his films,” Kaneshiro says. “On House of Flying Daggers he was always up at 4am looking at the weather and liked to choreograph the action accordingly. He’d originally envisaged the film’s climax (an extended clash between Jin and Leo) in autumnal colours, but then it began to snow and he rewrote the sequence. He was always in tune with the mood of the moment.”
For the film’s spectacular ambush scene in a bamboo forest, less pliable green poles were planted among the real stalks, allowing the stuntmen to leap from tree to tree with minimal computer enhancement. “Computer effects can be useful,” Kaneshiro says, “but ultimately it’s the imagination that counts in how you use them.”
If Daggers proves as successful in America as Hero, will Kaneshiro be packing his bags for Los Angeles? “If the role was right, sure, but I’m in no rush,” says the actor, whose 1998 American debut, Too Tired to Die, opposite Mira Sorvino, was little seen. “You tend to get typecast in America. I’m happy where I am.”
An assistant then leaps up with his master’s coat and I can see why.
