Peter Bergting wrote:
 
>Any other material on Woo would also be appreciated. Particulary material
concerning eastern religion and its influences on asian cinema.
Any comments or info can be mailed directly to me or to the list.
 
Careful about mystifying Asian filmmakers like Woo with stuff on
non-Western religion.  It's not terribly productive.
 
Mickey Mouse and Dumbo were poor substitutes by the translator for obscene
names.
 
Woo was at USC for a class on international film history.  Here are a few
things that come to mind:
 
He had family members that were heavily into Christianity, which might
explain that perverse morality in his films.
 
His favorite films have always been Hollywood musicals.
 
His experience in Hollywood has been frustrating.  he had something like 6
producers for Hard Target and they all kept telling him to cut down the
body count.  More interesting, he and the American producers did not see
eye to eye about narrative structure.  The Americans wanted the violent
action scenes paced by scenes of relatively calm narrative movement.  Woo
was more interested in constant, incessent action.
 
He was shocked, understandably, by the percentage of the budget eaten up by
the star, as well as by the advertising budget.
 
A good place for info on Hong Kong cinema, especially filmographies and the
like, is alt.asian.film on usenet (this might be incorrect, but you should
be able to find it).  The name is misleading;  it would be more appropriate
to call it alt.fan.J.Woo.
 
----Markus