Decree of the Sichuan General Print

The soundtrack to the film Kung Fu Hustle was released in 2004 and 2005 in conjunction with the 2004 Hong Kong-Chinese martial arts film directed by and starring Stephen Chow. The majority of the film's original score was composed by Raymond Wong and performed by the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. The score imitates traditional Chinese music in 1940s swordplay films. Along with Wong's compositions and various traditional Chinese songs, classical compositions are featured in the score, including excerpts from Zigeunerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate and "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian. One of Wong's works, "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained" provides a stark contrast between the villainous Axe Gang and the peaceful neighbourhood of Pig Sty Alley, depicted by a Chinese folk song, "Fisherman’s Song of the East China Sea". A song is sung in the background by Huang Shengyi at the end of the film. The song, "Zhi Yao Wei Ni Huo Yi Tian" (只要為你活一天; Only Want to Live One Day for You) was written by Liu Chia-Chang in the 1970s. It tells of a girl's memories of a loved one, and her desire to live for him again. Kung Fu Hustle was nominated for the Best Original Film Score in the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards.[6] Asian and American versions of the soundtrack have been released. The Asian version of the soundtrack was released on 17 December 2004 by Sony Music and has 33 tracks. The American version of the soundtrack was released on 29 March 2005 by Varèse Sarabande and has 19 tracks. Kung Fu Hustle (Chinese: 功夫, lit. Kung Fu) is a 2004 martial arts action-comedy gangster film directed, produced, co-written by, and starring Stephen Chow. The film tells the story of a murderous neighborhood gang, a poor village with unlikely heroes, and an aspiring gangster's fierce journey to find his true self. Eva Huang, Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiu, Danny Chan Kwok-kwan and Leung Siu-lung co-starred in prominent roles. The martial arts choreography is supervised by Yuen Woo-ping. It was a co-production between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese companies, filmed in Shanghai. After the commercial success of Shaolin Soccer, its production company, Star Overseas, began to develop Kung Fu Hustle with Columbia Pictures Asia in 2002. The film features a number of retired actors famous for 1970s Hong Kong action cinema and has been compared to contemporary and influential wuxia films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. The cartoon special effects in the film accompanied by traditional Chinese music, is often cited as its most striking feature. The film was released on 23 December 2004 in China and on 25 January 2005 in the United States. It received a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 78 out of 100 rating at Metacritic. The film grossed US$17 million in North America and US$84 million in other regions. It was tenth on the list of highest-grossing foreign-language films in the United States as well as the highest-grossing foreign-language film in the country in 2005. Kung Fu Hustle won numerous awards, including six Hong Kong Film Awards and five Golden Horse Awards. The film was re-released in 3D in October 2014 across Asia and America, marking the tenth anniversary of the film. The climate of the film industry and the expectation of a 21st-century action film were different throughout the history of Chinese cinema. However, the difference provides one of the reasons why Kung Fu Hustle was so well received. Kung Fu Hustle responded to and amplified a global demand for the reawakening of martial arts cinema—and one which was fulfilled by a multitude of reiterations of the genre, all of which can be said, without a doubt, to fulfill the criteria for 21st-century action cinema: high budget, stylish, and action-packed. Directors and their contemporaries changed the martial arts cinema together, which containing much universal appeal. The work has built martial arts as a viable mode of behaviour expression in the movie, also displayed how the martial arts could be transformed in the cinema industry to reflect both "contemporary local issues and the increasingly important reality of globalization." Martial arts was a new wave in Chinese cinema, Chow and other directors were responsible for the creation of another subset of martial arts cinema, which including vampire genre. Chow has combined elements such as undead, Taoism, kung fu, as well as comedy into his movies, which helped create a comedy-horror feel that was distinct to Hong Kong. The beginning of the martial arts has paved the future for both local and international directors. They started to learn and adopt martial arts to fulfill and satisfy their own demands, later the trend became a transnational market. Different with traditional Chinese wuxia cinema, Chow's new kung fu movies help with reflecting the extent to force the globalization within the entertainment industry, which later influenced local construction of self-identity. Kung Fu Hustle is a co-production of the Beijing Film Studio and Hong Kong's Star Overseas. After the success of his 2001 film, Shaolin Soccer, Chow was approached in 2002 by Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, offering to collaborate with him on a project. Chow accepted the offer, and the project eventually became Kung Fu Hustle. Kung Fu Hustle was produced with a budget of US$20 million. Chow was inspired to create the film by the martial arts films he watched as a child and by his childhood ambition to become a martial artist. A senior Hollywood executive said Chow was "forced to grind through four successive scripts" and "found it very laborious". Chow's first priority was to design the main location of the film, "Pig Sty Alley". Later in an interview Chow remarked that he had created the location from his childhood, basing the design on the crowded apartment complexes of Hong Kong where he had lived. The 1973 Shaw Brothers Studio film, The House of 72 Tenants, was another inspiration for Pig Sty Alley. Designing the Alley began in January 2003 and took four months to complete. Many of the props and furniture in the apartments were antiques from all over China. Stephen Chiau Sing Chi a.k.a. Stephen Chow (Chinese: 周星馳, born 22 June 1962) is a Hong Kong filmmaker, actor, and producer. Source: Wikipedia