The first word on Wong Kar-wai’s “The Grandmaster” was largely positive after it debuted in Hong Kong and China last week. The film, which stars Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang and Chen Chang, tells the story of the famed martial arts master Ip Man who trained Bruce Lee, and is set to play at the Berlin Film Festival next month.
Before the rest of us get to see the film, Twitch (who brought us that first positive review) have now also scored some behind-the-scenes featurettes from the film which feature interviews with the cast and crew, and show some of the locations and sets used in the movie. There’s also a third video that gives some insight into how Tony Leung (who plays Ip Man) trained and got to grips with the Wing Chun technique that Ip Man pioneered.
Hopefully these will whet the appetite for the film, and although it doesn’t have a domestic distributor in place yet, we imagine that it probably will coming out of Berlin. We think there’s enough on show here to get excited about, but saying that, Wong Kar-wai’s hardly a director we need to be convinced to get excited about in the first place. Hopefully we won’t be waiting too long for it to start rolling out across the Western territories.
