Similar to previous years, 2011 will begin with a glut of films which will please serious cinephiles and the occasional movie-goer alike. January will see bombastic mainland productions opening during the New Year holidays, a group represented this year by Jiang Wen's allegorical tale Let the Bullets Fly and Feng Xiaogang's romantic comedy If You Are the One 2. Next up will be the festive family entertainment released to coincide with the Lunar New Year holidays, with films such as Mr and Mrs Incredible, All's Well Ends Well 2011, The Green Hornet and Tangled. A fortnight later, it will be the turn of Academy Award frontrunners to emerge on local screens, as local distributors roll out 127 Hours, The King's Speech, Black Swan and True Grit as Oscar frenzy begins to build in the media.
But much more is at stake in 2011. This will be the year in which local viewers will be treated to more martial arts thrillers, revisionist historical dramas and delightful returns of long-disappeared masters.
High kicks and wire work
Love them or hate them, martial arts epics are here to stay - and Chinese-language filmmakers' own blend of heritage cinema will again be well represented in 2011. Kicking off the year will be Benny Chan Muk-sing's Shaolin, which showcases China's most well-known kung fu institution through a story set in the early 20th century about how a blood-thirsty warlord (Andy Lau Tak-wah) rediscovers his humanity when he joins the Shaolin Temple, which he once tried to suppress.
On the back of the success of his high-octane thriller Bodyguards and Assassins, Peter Chan Ho-sun has upped the ante with two action-packed projects this year. First out will be Wuxia, his remake of the Shaw Brothers classic The One-Armed Swordsman, starring Bodyguards star Donnie Yen Ji-dan, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Jimmy Wang Yu, the star of the original film. Chan will then produce Teddy Chen Tak-sum's remake of another Shaw Brothers film, The Bloody Guillotine. Yen will then appear as Three Kingdoms-era general Guan Yunchang in Alan Mak Siu-fai and Felix Chong Man-keung's The Lost Bladesman.
Having regained some lost momentum with the warmly received Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Tsui Hark will unleash The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Starring Jet Li Lianjie and Zhou Xun, the film - which was shot in 3-D - is a reworking of the 1992 Dragon Gate Inn, but Tsui has gone on record as saying his film will have an original story.
