Chiu Man-Chuk aka Zhao Wen-Zhou is playing drunken Taoist folk hero Beggar So in Yuen Woo-Ping’s True Legend. Colin at Kung Fu Fridays has more, including some reminiscences about Chiu Man-Chuk and a very cool anti-poaching ad at the bottom.
Slate surveys African-American presidents in tv and film–with clips! Salon looks at “Black Presidents We Have Known,” looking at DW Griffith, the year 2228, Sammy Davis, Jr. and 24 along the way. Meanwhile, Io9 urges you to choose Nixon as your dystopian president. (updated!)
Italian Spiderman: now my new favorite thing ever, too. (Thanks, John!)
Grady Hendrix writes about missing the point in martial arts and action movies, especially Ashes of Time: “Character, dialogue and subtext are important parts of the moviegoing experience, but there’s another more primal language that’s harder to parse and that’s the language of action.”
“I’ve been on the road so long. I want a home.” My favorite trailer for Johnnie To’s stealth Western, Exiled.
Muay Thai and now mixed martial arts machine Tony Jaa is still found and still working on Ong-Bak 2. He also has a sword and a Khmer palace and an interview up at his official site. (via Kaiju Shakedown).
Find t-shirts, mugs, totes and more at our new Guttermart location at Teepublic!
The Cultural Gutter 