Posted 2:49 PM by Blah blah

Ang Lee Breaks Rules With The Hulk (Entertainment)

I highly look forward to seeing another of my favorite Marvel comic book heroes from childhood, the Hulk, brought to film. Director Ang Lee's The Hulk comes out this Friday.

Since the Taiwan-born director always makes intelligent, deep pictures for adults, despite the genre, I can't wait! (I've seen three of his films: Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) He says he made The Hulk more as a Greek tragedy than as a mindless summer action flick.

It's funny that the article below talks about how Lee isn't afraid to shoot slow scenes in an action movie. I remember watching Eat Drink Man Woman on the plane back from Taiwan. A woman next to me, from Hong Kong, complained it was too slow. Hogwash, I thought. Its rhythms were more like life. It's the stupid Hong Kong fast food flicks she's used to watching that were too fast.

Just don't get as slow as Wong Kar-Wai, and I'm happy!

Here's Lurking At You (NY Post):
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Oscar-nominated director Ang Lee doesn't make no-brainers.

Instead, the director of such quiet art-house masterpieces as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Ice Storm" set out to make a blockbuster for brainiacs.

"I'm trying to make a delicacy out of American fast food," Lee told a reporter last month.

Love it or hate it, one of the summer's most anticipated popcorn flicks is in fact anything but, thanks to a director who's breaking all the usual rules.

Rule No. 1: Hire a big-name star.
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Lee picked an unknown for Bruce Banner, the mild-mannered geneticist who morphs into the raving green Hulk, because he didn't want to detract from the movie's real star - the computer-generated Hulk character, which he developed over two years with 150 animators from George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic.

Rule No. 2: The more explosions, the better.

"The Hulk" has more than its share of helicopters and tanks, but don't expect any of them to burst into flames.

"We figured that people are bored with a bunch of crap blowing up," says Schamus. "Plus, Ang and I don't believe in gratuitous violence."...

Rule No. 3: Keep the fighting clean.

When Lee did get ready to rumble, he wanted the fighting as realistic as possible - which meant not every punch hit its target...."Ang wanted it raw and messy - just like real fights," says Colin Brady, Lee's animation director. "In the 'Matrix Reloaded,' the fights are choreographed, like 1-2-3-duck-punch. It gets monotonous."

The Hulk's fights are based on pit bulls, pro wrestlers and bloody, bare-knuckled ultimate fighters - all of which Lee and the animators studied on film and in person.

Rule No. 4: Keep it moving - fast.

Parts of the "The Hulk" move as slowly as the laid-back martial art of tai chi, which Lee practices each morning.

Action scenes are broken up with lingering shots of lichen-covered rocks and bleached driftwood - which really do have a point, Schamus insists.

It's a message about life-forms that can survive the sort of gamma radiation that transforms Banner into the Hulk.

"Ang and I once spent an hour talking about a rock," Brady recalls....

Rule No. 5: Keep it simple.

That's the last thing Lee wants to do.

His "Hulk" flouts dozens of technical rules film-school students learn in Directing 101. He splits the screen into comic-book style panels and plays with editing, continuity and camera angles in every way possible.

"This movie just doesn't feel like a Hollywood movie," Brady says. "It's Ang's 'fuck you' to all those formulas."