Youth Without Youth Youth Without Youth
Oct
11
2008

Twitch-O-Meter: Stephen Chow is ready for his extreme close-up, Mr deMille!

Posted by Ard Vijn at 6:46am.

Posted in Twitch-O-Meter .

As a Twitch-O-Meter, this post will remain up on top of the page for one day. There might be newer posts below this, so don’t forget to take a look!

In 2001 / 2002 the first mutterings and rumblings around “Shaolin Soccer” arrived on Western movienews websites, and I was very surprised when the articles mentioned an actor who was MORE popular in Hong Kong than Jackie Chan.

Huh? Was that even possible?

That actor was Stephen Chow, and although the type of comedy he excells in doesn’t always travel well beyond Chinese borders, on occasion he shines with utter brilliance. He is not the best actor out there, not the best fighter and not the best acrobat, but he has a vision for gags which combine his talents splendidly.
Even bad jokes can be a lot of fun when the timing is right, but Stephen Chow adds an unbelievable amount of effort and special effects to that, always pushing it slightly farther than you would expect at first. None of his movies will be in my personal top ten, but I cannot deny that they all contain sequences that are near-perfect.

Case in point: one of the reasons why this article is so late is because I couldn’t stop watching the films I took the screenshots from. I had to go to a certain scene to score a close-up, but before I knew it twenty minutes would have passed.

Anyway, in the end I managed to tear myself away from the screen. So once again I’m going to use a turn in the Twitch-O-Meter to do a gallery of 5 close-ups of one of my favorite thespians. Guess which 5 movies they’re from.

No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDB.
And I’ll post the answers on Wednesday (earlier if someone has all 5 of them right).

Good luck!

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Reader Comments

  1. Simon Abrams 10/11/2008 @ 7:24am

    1-Kung Fu Hustle
    2-A Chinese Odyssey
    3-CJ7
    4-Shaolin Soccer
    5-Tricky Brains

  2. pochiW 10/11/2008 @ 7:35am

    Tricky Brains was modern day dress w/ andy lau tho...tiger costume looks like Royal Tramp getup.

  3. Ard Vijn 10/11/2008 @ 9:38am

    Well, that didn’t take long! The both of you together have it right:

    1-Kung Fu Hustle
    2-A Chinese Odyssey (part 1)
    3-CJ7
    4-Shaolin Soccer
    5-Royal Tramp (part 1)

    Well done! And now it’s guessed, I’ll un-sticky the article.

  4. Peter K. 10/11/2008 @ 11:06am

    One of the best Chow close ups is clearly from Love on Delivery when after getting shit on his hands, he ducks a punch that hits his love interest, and the camera zooms in on a close up of his face as he nervously puts his shit covered hands in his mouth and shudders in embarrassment.

  5. Rhythm-X 10/11/2008 @ 11:02pm

    On the contrary, he’s among the best actors going, though people are often too busy laughing to notice.  Actors who specialise or have been typecast in comedy tend to get a bum rap, so I’m hardly surprised to see him shrugged off like that.  This dismissal of his acting skills is made all the more inexplicable since one of your screenshots is from CHINESE ODYSSEY, one of his best performances. 

    The bathroom confrontation between Chow and Karen Mok in GOD OF COOKERY ought to be shown to students in acting classes - both of them absolutely nail a really tricky scene that veers from comic to tragic to absurd in a matter of seconds.

  6. Ard Vijn 10/12/2008 @ 2:34am

    Oi!

    I didn’t say he could not act. And he might be able to pull off a serious role, Tony Leung- or Anthony Wong- style.
    But at the moment, I think he has not proven to be in that league quite yet.

    But certainly, when compared to, say, Jackie Chan there is no contest: Stephen can run rings around him actingwise.

  7. momodotcom 10/12/2008 @ 2:40am

    I thought Jackie did a wonderful job performance-wise in New Police Story

  8. quadshock 10/13/2008 @ 12:51am

    Jacky Chan did an incredible job overacting in NPS

    Stephen Chow, on the other hand, does a good job capturing the nuances and subtle details of his character. He may be the “rags to riches” character a lot of the time, but they are always different in background, in personality, and he always does a great job.

    I guess understanding Cantonese helps

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