Jimmy Wang Yu – the one armed files
November 12th, 2014 by Mr. C
(Jimmy Wong Yu pays respects to the audience as we give him an ovation!)
Last night we had the privilege of attending “An evening with Jimmy Wong Yu” held at the Walter Reade Theater on 65th Street which included a screening of The Master of the Flying Guillotine and a Q&A with the man himself after the movie. The event was basically a continuation on a failed punt return from last summer at The New York Asian Film Festival because of Wong Yu’s visa issues. AND I can say this punt return was a total success leading to an unmolested touchdown! The Lifetime Achievement Award was handed over successfully to the guest of honor – thank you! Thanks to the folks at Subway Cinema for being persistent and being radical as always! We weren’t able to make it to the reception but Chocko did manage to elbow check and rope a doped a few nerds to get ahead of the line at the end of the reception to get his Master of the Flying Guillotine DVD signed!
It was fun to revisit the film as it was many many years since I’ve seen it and it was in the english scrub a dub dub phase! I honestly had forgotten that it was directed by our guest of honor. With the balls to the wall fight choreography by the late great Lau Kar Leung and the manhua/manga style presentation of the characters, this was destined to be a midnight, grindhouse movie gem! I appreciated the original language mandarin version in 35mm format for the screening. The print itself was bluish hued and faded but you know what – like they always say, we love the imperfections, sounds, and character that film films create. The upbeat guitar and electro music soundtrack was pretty off the wall too! We caught Fab 5 Freddy in the audience nodding to the beat! We wanted to ask FAB if he had seen Master of the Flying Guillotine at one of the Grindhouse Theaters in Times Square back in the days, but FAB did the Yo! MTV Raps shuffle pretty darn quick after the Q/A!
(Gavin Smith from Lincoln Center introduces the Subway Team)
(Team Subway Cinema – Grady Hendrix starts to cook the Wang Yu entrance to the audience!)
(Don’t drop the award!)
(The one armed bandit picks the winners of the Shout!Factory Jimmy Wang Yu box set!)
(Grady Shouts! out the names of the winners! It’s not me!)
As much as how the film rocked with the crazy kung fu tournament and the blind monk assassin looking for revenge with his flying guillotine contraption, the Q&A session moderated by Grady Hendrix was even more fun! Grady danced and pranced and tried to lure in Wang Yu with questions regarding the Shaw Brothers, triads, the infamous Jackie Chan contract, and the Oliver Reed incident! And oh yeah, Wang Yu even performed a floating ring slight of hand trick to boot. Wait, I didn’t mention that he reminded us that he can still jog at 71 years young even after his stroke in 2011! It was just a privilege to be able to see the man we’ve grown up watching in the wuxia and old school kung fu movies – totally come to life in person with his outrageous and no holds barred personality! Check out some of our videos below of the Q/A from that night. Enjoy!
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