From: (No Email available)

Date: 2001-10-10 16:10:50

Comment:

Tarantino lining up Asian action greats for film

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Quentin Tarantino said Monday that his next film, ``Kill Bill,'' about an organization of assassins, was likely to unite two action giants of Asian cinema, Hong Kong's Yuen Woo Ping and Japan's Sonny Chiba.
``It's not official and money hasn't changed any hands,'' Tarantino told Reuters, ``but Yuen Woo Ping will choreograph the Chinese kung fu action and Sonny Chiba will choreograph the samurai action.''
``Kill Bill'' is about a female assassin who tries to leave a group of professional killers. Her fellow hit men show up at her wedding and kill everyone in the church, leaving her and her unborn child for dead.
As it turns out, she takes a bullet in her brain that leaves her in a coma for five years. When she awakes, she is out for revenge and hops around the world killing gang members. She leaves the leader, Bill, for last.
``I've written this character for Uma (Thurman), and they (Yuen and Chiba) are going to put her through training, where she will have to learn the kung fu animal styles,'' Tarantino said. ``And I'll also have Yuen and Sonny play parts in it.''
Chiba is known in America for his 1970s ``Street Fighter'' karate films. Yuen raised his profile as fight director for ''The Matrix'' (1999) and ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'' (2000).
Having written the film over the past year, Tarantino describes ``Kill Bill'' as a ``duck press'' amalgamating his 35 years of watching kung fu flicks, samurai movies, spaghetti Westerns, 1960s spy thrillers and tough-as-nails-women revenge films.
Tarantino stormed into Hollywood with the gangland thriller ''Reservoir Dogs'' in 1992 and has since directed such films as ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994) and ``Jackie Brown'' (1997). REUTER
--