There’s going to be a Saturday night beat-down in Austin, Texas. At 11:55pm, Keanu Reeves will get into the ring with Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League for Fantastic Fest’s now legendary annual debate event. Reeves will be in town to celebrating the U.S. premiere of his directorial debut Man of Tai Chi and he’ll verbally defend himself against League’s pre-fight stance: “Resolved: Tai Chi is a martial art relegated to elderly Chinese women and is inferior in every way to Tae Kwon Do.”
source: insidemovies.ew.com
Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut Man of Tai Chi premiered for North America at the Toronto International Film Festival, but you will get to see it on VOD later this month and theaters in November.
New trailer to the Man of Tai Chi
A young martial artist’s unparalleled Tai Chi skills land him in a highly lucrative underworld fight club.
New posters to the Man of Tai Chi
First trailer to the Man of Tai Chi
First poster to the Man of Tai Chi
Variety have broken word that Iko Uwais, the star of The Raid and Merantau, has joined the cast of Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut the martial arts movie named Man Of Tai Chi, currently shooting in Hong Kong. Uwais is on board for what should be a featured role in the film, one that will see him fight star Tiger Chen.
Keanu Reeves told the next about the project: “It’s called ‘Man of Tai Chi, We want to do it in Chinese and English, do it as kind of a co-production with CFG perhaps, which is a Chinese film group, kind of a studio. It’s tricky. I would play the villain. There’s 18 fights. We’ve timed it out. It’s about 40 minutes of fighting, I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie. Good story, good plot — but let’s get some good kung fu going!”
Iko Uwais became a very promising action star thanks to his roles in Gareth Evans’ Merantau and The Raid movies, the last one is one of those rare action movies that reinvigorates a genre that tends to thrive on repeating the same formula over and over again.
PS: The next promising action movie of 2013 will be the Berandal which will unite Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian and a very talented fighting choreographer Larnell Stovall under supervision of Gareth Evans. Why? They are all raising martial arts professionals and moreover Larnell visited Indonesia in the end of this June to train with a local stunt team.
source: twitchfilm.com, joblo.com, mtv.com