Sweet International Trailer…'Journey to the West'

AKA A Chinese Odyssey. AKA one of the Four Great Classical Novels. Full disclosure: I watched the trailer for Journey to the West at least a half a dozen times this morning and I’m still not totally sure what I saw with every repeat viewing. Somehow, Stephen Chow and timeless, massively influential Chinese literature seems like a really odd mix, but that’s exactly why I pay the price of admission to see his films  in the first place. I’m sure this will make slightly more sense once I’ve actually seen the whole film, though I’m willing to pick up some supplemental reading if it’ll help me attain understanding of the story. But have a look for yourself:

This looks like Kung Fu Hustle 2 With More Pig Men and Monkey Gods, Plus Sea Monsters For Good Measure. (That’s only the working title.) Given that I’m an undying fan of Chow and a huge advocate of Kung Fu Hustle— or any film that does the live-action Looney Tunes thing– this looks to be right up my alley. It is a bit of a shame that Chow himself won’t be appearing in the film, but truth to tell I watch his pictures for his writing and direction first and his acting second, though he is kind of amazing in Kung Fu Hustle.

Anyways. I’m completely on-board for this baby. The regrettable news here is that Journey to the West doesn’t have US distribution and therefore no US release date, so we’re just going to have to pray some American company nabs the rights and gives it a theatrical run States-side this year. According to the trailer, the movie is being released in China on the 2013 Chinese New Year, which is February 10th– which happens to be a Sunday. That strikes me as being slightly odd, but I won’t pretend I know anything about China’s movie industry.

(Source: CHUD)