Zhang Jin, Chang Chen, Tony Leung and Ziyi assisted to a few interviews after the premiere of The Grandmaster yesterday. Fist, they were interviewed in a TV Show for Sina Entertainment. After, they went to a group interview for Entertainment QQ.
Today, Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster” premieres in Beijing.
The film spans several decades of Chinese history to tell the story of legendary martial artist Yip Man, who went on to train Bruce Lee, and features lengthy battles between rival kung fu masters.
In his first press appearance to promote the film, Wong was also confident that “The Grandmaster”, which runs for over two hours in its current edit and is steeped in traditional martial arts culture, would be well received abroad.
The film, set to hit Chinese cinemas on Tuesday, follows its lead character through some of China’s most tumultuous recent history including the Japanese invasion in the 1930s.
Leung, 50, who plays the eponymous “Grandmaster” and has also starred in several of Wong’s most acclaimed films, praised his co-star Zhang, 33, for her persistence while filming long fight scenes, which they enacted themselves.
“I fought with her a lot of times,” he said. “She was injured several times, and I knew it was tough for her, but it wasn’t possible for me to fight less intensely.”
He (Wong Kar Wai) also defended the length of his final edit, which contains extended stretches of dialogue between the main characters.
“The film could have lasted four hours, but I deleted a lot of scenes… a one hundred and thirty minute film is normal these days,” he said.
You can enjoy some pictures of the press conference into our gallery. Stay tunned for more informations and photos !
The cast of The Grandmaster were interviewed today by Sina Entertainment. We have some pictures of Ziyi during the interview. Apparently, the film was still in post-production in Thailand yesterday, which is not really surprising with a Wong Kar Wai movie. It was delivered to the Chinese censors this morning and the first press screening was scheduled for this afternoon.
A video of the entire interview with Ziyi also surfaced online. Unfortunately, there’s no translation or subtitles…
Stay tuned, the promotion for The Grandmaster has just begun. There’s much more coming soon!
Ziyi is currently on the cover of the January edition of Time Out Hong Kong Magazine. Here’s a little preview of the interview where Edmund Lee compare her career with the icon Ruan Lingyu.
“China hasn’t seen an actress as equally treasured and disliked as Zhang Ziyi for a very long time. Edmund Lee visits The Grandmaster star in Beijing to hear about her musings on Wong Kar-wai, the essence of acting and all those clueless haters out there.
At one point during our interview in a photo studio in Sanlitun, Beijing, with the first December snow descending on the capital, Zhang Ziyi describes herself as an ‘old school’ actress who ‘thinks in the traditional way’. “There are many people who take the less proper paths to look for their own sense of being,” she adds. “That’s how the environment [of show business] is – it’s not a very clean environment.” The truth is, as one of her country’s greatest current movie icons, Zhang must also live with the same time-honoured traditions of superstardom that hark back to the time of Ruan Lingyu nearly a century ago: putting up a defiant face on screen, confronting uber-sensational scandals off it, and juggling not gentle admiration and polite indifference but love and hatred by even the most casual observers day in and day out, year after year.”
2 pictures we’re added yesterday from this issue! The cover and 1 picture from the photoshoot.
Enjoy some lovely pictures of Marie Claire’s shooting featuring Ziyi and Chang Chen !
Back in 2008, Ziyi was a spokesperson for the Sanya Real Estates Phoenix Waterside Tour. She will be in the new promotional campaign for next year and the promotional advertisements have surfaced on the web. We also added 2 pictures from the photoshoot.
I’ve added some scans from the last edition of the Chinese magazine Famous and 1 picture from the photoshoot. Ziyi is beautiful as always!
