Just a quick entry to say Hua Mulan is my favourite film from 2009.

I loved Zhao Wei’s acting in The Red Cliff and she gives a memorable performance as Hua Mulan, the woman who dressed as a man and went to war in place of her father, raising in the military to become a brilliant and respected general.

Also a great performance from Hu Jun as the ruthless Mendu. I loved Hu Jun in The Red Cliff as the patriotic and righteous General Zilong so it was a real treat to see him as the antagonist in this film.

Super camera and editing work, spot-on period costumes, engaging character development and excellent production values all round plus some of my favourite Chinese battle scenes, classic and realistic formation style combat.

There are certainly some other good films in 2009, from all around the world, but this was a real stand-out for me. Besides, it was directed by Jingle Ma, easily one of the best director names ever.

Putting the finishing touches on an epic 28 and a half episode script at the moment but it is effectively done. It has taken years to write, not full time writing, but writing and researching at least 7-8 hours a month consistently. I once met a screenwriter who said you will have to throw away your first script and I have rewritten this script several times, throwing away almost all of the original dialogue, changing much about the characters, cutting/adding scenes, etc.

This script was developed in three phases: the first phase was the story treatment, then watching a lot of movies and the last was research.

I haven’t owned or really watched TV for over 20 years but if you are going to make movies you better see what’s out there. This was an education in itself. I discovered that, while I was making a comic book styled movie, the north american comic book action and adventure movies did not move me and were generally disappointing. I did develop a real appreciation for Japanese animation and asian wuxia-styled films - light years ahead of north america in many regards imo. I will embed my favourites for your enjoyment in a subsequent post.

The last phase was doing research for my script. There was a tremendous amount of research done for the script and I am much more familiar with the history, figures, battles and legends of what is present-day Japan, China, Korea & Mongolia. During this research I came across some historical events that are amazingly powerful stories in themselves, providing great potential for other films. This research also brought my characters to life for me even though sometimes it did not change the script and I was dissatisfied with them before. In fact, I am still researching for my own enjoyment and fishing for new stories.

And now, just as I am really ready to move into pre-production for the series I have this amazing idea for a totally different script. If I put on a producer’s hat and look at the two stories objectively on the table, the new idea easily trumps the finished script in terms of broader appeal and viewer connection. I have bounced the concept of the new script off some friends and they respond to the new concept right away. What to do?

I am going to polish up the current script and put it aside for now. Painful to do after years of work but, from a purely production point-of-view, it is a comic book and has a fight scene in every episode - that is a lot of kung fu to film and motion capture would really help to make this properly possible. This technology is not affordably available yet (hopefully soon).

So I am going to start developing the new script, first with research because it generated so much depth for me in the last script and also write up one of the other historical stories and film it as a short. The beauty of the historical stories is that they are already written and so much of the hard work is already done. Besides, I want to film something dammit!