It’s Another Stephen Chow Friday
All right. This may be the very first article about Stephen Chow featured on this site, but it’s not the first time he has been featured IN MY HEART. And by heart I might mean pants, but why start off all creepy and weird? We’ll just agree to leave it at heart and move along as if nothing happened.
Speaking of heart(s drawn around his name on my class folders), Stephen Chow is one of my Top Celebrity Crushes among celebrities still alive. Horribly, it seems that most of my celebrity crushes died before I was born, and if they were still alive during my lifetime, they were withered shells of themselves and I am sorry but I cannot crush on that because my love is fickle and conditional that way. In fact, most of my crushes, ever, require a cunning use of a time machine, even this one on Stephen Chow because I think I particularly like him circa the entire 1990s. Stephen Chow, if you are reading this, understand that my interest in you hasn’t waned because you are aging, but it has more to do with the fact that you are too muscley and shaggy-haired lately and if I wanted to have a crush on someone who reminds me of Bruce Lee, I would just have a crush on Bruce Lee. Oh no am I getting creepy again? Let’s just watch some video clips for a while.
I’m going to suppose that most of you haven’t watched any movies by this guy, unless you happened to see Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer. And if you saw Shaolin Soccer, I really hope you saw it subtitled because I saw about two seconds of it dubbed once and I just couldn’t handle it. For those of you who don’t even know who Stephen Chow is, I’ll let you in on this fact: He is a mostly-comedy actor and director out of Hong Kong. He’s like up there in popularity with Jackie Chan or something but he doesn’t seem like the Nicest Guy on Earth like Jackie Chan does. He isn’t really an action star or anything, or wasn’t I guess. Maybe he’s been getting totally fit and making the movies he’s been making lately because he wants to make it in American films next and of course a Chinese person cannot be in films here unless they can do some kind of martial art looking stuff? Probably. Well, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite scenes from some of his movies from the 90s, if I can find them. If youtube will be kind to me. Please, please do enjoy.
Tricky Brains (1991)
Do you like movies about professional pranksters who get hired to destroy reputations of ordinary people, but then it is revealed that the plot is unbelievably complicated with double-crossings, confusions, and .. and I am still not entirely sure if I really know what happened in this movie. As with all the subtitled films I have from that land of Hong Kong, I am not really convinced that the subtitles are accurate. But Andy Lau stars in this one too as the Duped Brother Character!
In this scene, the classic Chinese Opera style is in all of its traditional glory. They are sort of recapping events, having a discussion, furthering the plot – all while sounding like that! I also have the feeling that there are way more swear words involved, but the translator was being polite. I have little reason to think this, because I don’t really speak Cantonese or anything – BUT I SUSPECT.
From Beijing with Love (1994)
Once again I have set out on youtube, looking for a specific scene, finding instead a scene I had totally forgotten about, and using that one instead. But I saw this scene and laughed audibly, here alone in my house in the morning hours, so I guess you might as well see it too.
So, in this movie, Stephen Chow is a James Bond type of classy international spy. He has a lot of goofy sophisticated spy technology at all times, and I seem to remember that he is also a meat vendor? I really couldn’t tell you any more about it except that there is a scene with all of his spy technology that is electric razors and hairdryers in disguise because spies are supposed to always look their best.
All’s Well Ends Well (1992)
I remember this movie was one of my favorites, but my crummy old VHS tape of it that was taped from a video store’s copy from Madison, WI, is either now lost or mostly unwatchable, so I can only barely remember the plot. It had an all-star cast, however, including the eternally precious Leslie Cheung. I think there was a lot of plot going on in this one. But, in this scene I am going to show you here, Stephen Chow’s crazy possessive girlfriend just left to go somewhere and he instantly is cheating on her with a new girl. You can’t really see the subtitles here very well, but it is more or less easily understood without them. He keeps stalling for time with the new girl by recommending she take showers, then they fall out of the window and he sees that they are about to land right on top of his girlfriend. It’s really all pretty easy to follow, I’m sure.
After all of that harrowing escape from destruction, the bird egg is what breaks his skull. I believe the rest of the movie, his character is insane and recovering and they spoof many American films to humorous effect.
God of Cookery (1996)
This is actually the very first Stephen Chow movie I ever saw and it struck me as incredible. Basically it follows a story of this guy (Chow) who has a culinary empire and is a celebrity chef type who cheats customers and is a truly awful human being. I couldn’t find the exact portion I was looking for when I set out to find a clip from God of Cookery. Instead, I found the entire film in parts, and it turns out that Part 2 can be considered as one of my favorite scenes. The whole thing.
So temperamental. A roller coaster.
All the scenes leading up to and following this part are also really great and I can’t actually recommend a movie to you more than this one. I am pretty sure this is the only film I have seen more than fifty times. Probably a lot more than that, really. I had planned to give you five clips to watch because five is a pretty nice number but I have to go watch this God of Cookery movie RIGHT NOW. I was just reminded that I haven’t watched it in MONTHS now!
