Uproar in the Studio

We talk about Tsui Hark's adaptation of a Cultural Revolutionary model play, The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014), with five-time guest, reigning champ, last King of Scotland, conqueror of all the mountains, poet Yi Wu.

We review Jackie Chan’s mid-pandemic release, Vanguard, and talk with the film’s antagonist, returning guest Brahim Chab.

This month, we talked with Professor Liang Luo of the University of Kentucky about the 2020 hit Leap, which tells the storied history of the Olympic champion Chinese women’s national volleyball team led by the legendary Lang Ping.

This month we’re talking about My People, My Country, a 2019 anthology film capturing moments of spectacle and national pride from the founding of the People’s Republic to the present. We’re joined by Michael Berry, Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.

The first episode of Hitchhike, a new podcast by Andrew Fedorov, one of Uproar’s co-hosts, featuring interviews with hitchhiking artists. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow on twitter @HitchhikePod.

We’re back with a bonus episode on Wu Jing’s 2019 should-be blockbuster, The Climbers. We’re joined by Wufei Yu, a writer for Outside and the New York Times, to talk about the movie, growing excitement for adventure sports in China, and the significance of doing an AMA on Everest.

We close season two with 2019’s Russian-Chinese, Jackie Chan-Arnold Schwarzenegger co-production, The Iron Mask. Lead actress Anna Churina remembers Arnold getting punched so hard he bled. Stuntman Mathieu Jaquet says Jackie’s stunt double got plastic surgery to look more like him. And stuntman and actor Paul Allica compares working on Wolf Warrior 2 to working … Continue reading Mask On (The Iron Mask) →

This week we talk about Jackie Chan’s 2019 monster hunter fantasy The Knight of Shadows with Larson DiFiori, Visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University’s Religious Studies department. He helps us decipher the magical reality of this loose adaptation of Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

We’ve got a packed lineup: Three-time guest Lauren Teixeira picks apart the mystery of Roger Rick. The film’s composer Peng Fei tells us about how scoring for new genres in the Chinese film industry compares to playing the Royal Albert Hall. Keir Beck, stunt coordinator and second unit director, shares his insights on the making … Continue reading Ferric Andre (Bleeding Steel) →

This week we talk about 2017’s The Foreigner with returning guest director Sam Hargrave, whose movie Extraction is Netflix’s biggest ever. After that is our conversation with screenwriter of the film David Marconi.

We’re joined by Sina Rahmani, host of The East is a Podcast, for a bonus episode on 2017’s PLA blockbuster Sky Hunter. We talk about Chinese orientalism in fictional Central Asia and what it means for the Chinese film industry to pump out a string of patriotic blockbusters like it’s Reagan’s ’80s.

We talk about Jackie Chan’s 2017 whirlwind through Asia, Kung Fu Yoga. We’re joined by film critic Harris Dang, legendary composer Nathan Wang, the man behind the iconic score for Rumble in the Bronx, and Tomer Oz, an actor and stuntman who’s been in nearly a third of this season’s movies.

We talk about Jackie Chan’s epic runaway train chase in 2016’s Railroad Tigers with four-time guest, reigning champ, last King of Scotland, poet Yi Wu. Then we’re joined by Michael C. Pizzuto, dubber extraordinaire, who tells us about voicing more roles in this movie than he can remember.

We talk with Rob Minkoff, director of Forbidden Kingdom and co-director of The Lion King, about what Rafiki learned from Bruce Lee, working with Jackie Chan and Jet Li, and how Chinese-American co-productions have evolved since 2008. 

We’re talking about 2016’s Jackie Chan-Johnny Knoxville buddy adventure Skiptrace. We delve into the American grifter mindset with John Maringouin, director of Ghostbox Cowboy, hear from Michael Gorevoy about a lifetime playing the bad guy, and learn how Gregory Joseph Allen prepared for the role of “American Prick.”

This week we’re talking about Jackie Chan’s peacekeeping on the Silk Road in 2015’s Dragon Blade, featuring John Cusack and Adrien Brody as The Romans. We hear about the crew’s hellacious time in the desert from the film’s composer Henry Lai and, frequent JC collaborator, actor and stuntman Brahim Chab.

We talk with Bosco Lam, Hong Konger and political science graduate student at University College London, about Police Story: Lockdown(2013) and Jackie Chan’s abhorrent long standing support for police brutality. All cops are bastards. Black lives matter. Hong Kong protests matter. Abolish the police everywhere.   

Jackie Chan plays a treasure hunter bent on recovering the 12 bronze heads stolen from the Old Summer Palace during the Opium War. We endorse anti-imperial art heists and chat with lead actress Laura Weissbecker and volcanic cinematographer Ben Nott.

In 1911, Jackie Chan’s centennial tribute to the revolution that established China’s first republic, he plays Huang Xing, the general leading the uprising on the ground while Sun Yat-sen jets around the world in search of diplomatic and financial legitimacy. We’re joined by Chinese nationalism expert Edward Friedman and three-time guest, reigning champ, poet Yi … Continue reading General Jackie (1911) →

The 2010 Karate Kid is the inevitable clash of the Jackie and Jaden universes. We’re joined by the film’s production designer, François Séguin, Jaden’s Beijing nerf buddy, Luke Carberry, and young filmmaker Jason Chiang, who passionately vouches for this karate-less remake.

Jackie Chan plays a simple soldier who forages through the calamity of the Warring States period in search of a way back to his farm. We’re joined by novelist, journalist, author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, co-founder of New York’s Asian Film Festival, and Jackie Chan super fan Grady Hendrix, as … Continue reading Unity Candidate (Little Big Soldier) →

Jackie Chan plays a spy who has no trouble overthrowing dictators, but struggles with suburban children. We’re joined by director Brian Levant and Oscar-nominated composer David Newman to discuss their work on 2010’s The Spy Next Door.

We’re joined by Street Fighter star Kenya Sawada, who walks us through his cinematic rematch with Jackie Chan as Nakajima in Shinjuku Incident, as well as returning guest journalist Lauren Teixeira who helps us break down Jackie’s model immigrant-turned-yakuza boss story in 2009’s Shinjuku Incident.

We kick off The Jackie Chan: Post-Rush Hour 3 season with 2008’s The Forbidden Kingdom. To start, we have former Jackie Chan stunt team member Allen Keng, followed by a discussion of the religious and historical iconography in the movie with ‪returning guest and Assistant Professor at Brown University’s Department of Religious Studies, Larson DiFiori. … Continue reading The Monkey King and I (The Forbidden Kingdom) →

Uproar in the Studio Season 2: Jackie Chan Post-Rush Hour 3.

On the season finale, we talk with Carl Zha, host of the podcast Silk and Steel, about the joys and wonders of Wolf Warrior 2. Then, we have two interviews that probably constitute the most comprehensive source in English on the making of the film. First, we talk about the making of the film’s score … Continue reading Silk Brute (Wolf Warrior 2) →

First, we talk about the state of Chinese Sci-fi before Wandering Earth with writer Anna Wu, whose work has appeared in English translation in the Chinese sci-fi anthology Broken Stars. Then, Lauren Teixeira, a Chengdu based journalist whose work has appeared in Vice, Foreign Policy and the Economist, joins our conversation about the variety of … Continue reading Lighting up Jupiter (Wandering Earth) →

We talk about Operation Red Sea and learn about China’s foreign policy in the Middle East from James Dorsey, senior fellow at Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Middle East Institute.

We talk about Detective Chinatown 2 with our first returning guest, poet Yi Wu, and speak with Larson Di Fiori, a visiting assistant professor in the religious studies department at Brown University, about the philosophical, religious, and folk traditions that play into the plot of the film.

We talk about Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid and interview Bill Borden, a producer on The Mermaid, and a long time Chow collaborator, going back to their work on Kung Fu Hustle. He’s also the producer of the High School Musical series.

We’re joined by Mitch Moxley, author of numerous articles on Chinese film in the New York Times and the Atavist, and of Apologies to My Censor, about his six years reporting in China, to talk about Dying to Survive. Then, Hao Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard’s China Health Partnership who’s worked on provider payment … Continue reading Actually Good (Dying to Survive) →