TGIF FEATURE: Jackie Chan to receive an Oscar

Lionsgate

Jackie Chan in last year's "Dragon Blade."

JACKIE CHAN, the martial artist and bonafide movie star, will be getting an Oscar after scores of films in a career that spans five decades.

It will be an honorary Oscar for the Hong Kong-born actor and he will receive the golden statuette at the Governors Awards on Nov. 12 instead of the regular Oscar telecast in early 2017, but it is an Oscar, nevertheless.

The international film star will receive an honorary Academy Award for his body of work, which is extensive with more than 100 movies in Asia and the U.S., including Rush Hour, Police Story, Shanghai Noon, The Karate Kid remake and more. 

The 62-year-old master of stunts and martial arts has often written, directed and produced the titles that he's starred in, and also lent his voice to the animated Kung Fu Panda movies. Chan, a former stunt man, was known for doing all his extraordinary stunts in complicated fight scenes.

Chan will accept his award alongside fellow honorees film editor Anne Coates, casting director Lynn Stalmaster and documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

"The Honorary Award was created for artists like Jackie Chan, Anne Coates, Lynn Stalmaster and Frederick Wiseman -- true pioneers and legends in their crafts," Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement. "The Board is proud to honor their extraordinary achievements, and we look forward to celebrating with them at the Governors Awards in November."

The Hong Kong-born Chan, 62, made his motion picture debut at eight years old, and segued into Hollywood films with 1996's Rumble in the Bronx. None of his films have been what you might call prestige films and Chan was doubly penalized for doing most of his work in a genre  not generally respected by "film makers" -- martial arts, or more derisively, "chopsocky," movies.

He believed he should have been nominated for his role as Mr. Miyagi in a remake of The Karate Kid, 10 years ago. When Chan didn't get nominated, he called out the Academy's selection process unfair. It has been 31 years since an Oscar was given to an Asian actor. The last Asian actor to win an Oscar was Haing S. Ngor, a Cambodian refugee who won the Academy Award in 1985 for his supporting role in The Killing Fields.
Chan is following in the footsteps of Robert Redford, who won an honorary Oscar in 2001, and Steve Martin, who got his in 2013. The 2015 honourees were Debbie Reynolds, Spike Lee and Gena Rowlands.

The Oscars' Honorary Award is given "to honor extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy." 

Sunny & Glenn: Asian/American heroic characters dominate Sunday TV,

TONIGHT (Nov. 22) will be the second episode of Into the Badlands, a tale in a dystopian America where the country is divided into 7 fiefdoms ruled by powerful barons.

The opening fight sequence starring Asian/American Daniel Wu is one of the best I've seen as a fan of martial arts films and a follower of the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. It is just so cool.

If that doesn't make you want to watch AMC's 6-episode series first season, I don't know what will.

Wu 's character, Sunny, may have started out as the stereotypical strong, silent type, a staple of these types of stories, but as the first episode demonstrates, the writers are making an attempt to tell his back-story to explain why he is the way he is.

I realize that this type of show is not for everyone. It's just for fun and we need a little bit of escape from the real world, full of violence, wars, ignorance and terrorism.

Meanwhile, back to the Walking Dead ...

WARNING: Spoilers ahead ...

WHAT THE HECK? The producers of the Walking Dead continue to tease us about fan favorite Glenn Rhee, played by Stephen Yeun.

The last time we see Glenn, we see him trying to avoid being lunch for a herd of zombies. Since that time, fans have been going crazy speculating about his fate. This is another strong prediction.

The general consensus from a variety of sources seems to indicate that he somehow survives (don't ask me how!), 

The question becomes, when will the producers reveal that he's still alive? And if he's alive, is it only a brief respite before his life is in danger again. That depends on whether or not the producers deviate from the comic book storyline, which they have done several times. #SaveGlenn, #KeepGlennAlive

Stephen Yeun plays fan favorite Glenn Rhee.

Most likely, we won't know the answer tonight. The producers need something to draw in fans for the mid-season finale next week. Or, the sneaky creators may decide to withhold the answer until the next February when the series returns.(Curses, on them!)

As the lone Asian survivor of the zombie apocalypse,  we have more than a passing interest in Glenn's story. Not only has he evolved from a pizza delivery guy to a out-and-out badass, his character is one of the very few who has not killed a human being maintaining his own humanity in the show's bleak environment, he is one of the few Asian male to actually get the girl. 

Will the producers throw all that away simply to make a dramatic point? Or, will another one of the characters take Glenn's place when the show introduces villain Negan, the leader of the Wolves, who disposes of Glenn in the comics in a most horrific way? 

Like zombies, fans will continue to tune in to follow the survivors and suffer the highs-and-lows with their favorite characters.

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TGIF FEATURE: Premiering Sunday, 'Into The Badlands' starring an Asian/American badass

Stephen Fung and Daniel Wu provides insight into their action-packed show' Into the Badlands.'

FINALLY, Into The Badlands, is here, premiering Sunday (Nov. 15) starring California-raised Daniel Wu, who may become the next big Asian/American action hero.

No yellow-face here. No eyes taped into a squint. No accents or speaking broken English. No mysterious sayings open to all kinds of misinterpretation. 

Anticipation for this AMC production has been building for a year and reached a crescendo with the previews at ComicCon in San Diego. Wu, who after years of starring in over 60 movies in Hong Kong, has come back home to see if a the tastes of the American television audience is ready for a heroic Asian badass.

Well ... OK, he's skilled in the martial arts. Some stereotypes are tough to kill. But he's a good guy. Or, at least he wants to be a good guy. A bad guy wanting to be a good guy. Something like that.

Be thankful for what he's not. Wu's Sunny is not: a sex-starved buffoon, a second banana (no pun intended), a nerd, a white guy's best friend or the anonymous Asian guy lurking in the background.

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Wu looked up to some of martial arts’ biggest stars. “As a Chinese-American kid growing up here, there was not many role models I could look up to on the big screen,” he said. “The ones that appeared were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Those were the guys that inspired me to want to learn martial arts.”

Wu, along with fellow executive producer Stephen Fung, serves as fight director for the series.

Although best known for his action films - and Badlands does nothing to dispel that - it may be a recently released romantic comedy that will bring him the to the attention of Hollywood producers and writers. Go Away Mr. Tumour, is a gigantic box-office hit in China, and it is also China's entry in the foreign-language Oscar category.

"It's not at all my objective to become an Asian-American star," says Wu. He says it only occurred to him recently that he's now become that rare animal on American television: an Asian lead. "This will only be significant in proving that American tastes are evolving if (Into the Badlands) succeeds," he says.

The six-episode martial-arts series is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the last traces of civilization reside in territories controlled by power-mad feudal barons. Working for one of these is cold-blooded assassin Sunny (Wu), who embarks on a spiritual journey with a teenager, M.K. (Aramis Knight), in tow. (Although the role of M.K. was not intentionally written for an Asian actor, it turns out that Aramis is half-Pakistani.)

We will have to wait and see if Sunny gets the girl. Any white hero eventually ends up with the girl, right? Asian characters don't follow that path in U.S. productions. The danger of martial arts-based characters - especially those played by Asian actors - is that they are one-dimensional fighters and nothing else; essentially emotionally and physically neutered.

Let's hope that Wu, who is the show's executive producer, has enough moxie and pull with the AMC to allow Sunny evolve into a more complex, multifaceted character. That would help the push the show beyond the kung fu genre.

“It can’t be just a martial arts show,” says Wu. “That’s a very narrow niche. 

"Just like what ‘The Walking Dead’ did for the zombie genre, you have to elevate it to another level so an audience can get into it. It’s not zombies chomping on people. We’ve seen that since the ‘60s. It’s the same thing with us. We’re trying to create a really compelling story, around the martial arts.”

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