Thanks Ayako!
Epaper.jinghua has a piece up on a short interview one of their reporters was lucky to get with Keanu Reeves. I am cherry picking what I consider to be new or interesting pieces of info. You are all free to use a translator to read the whole piece. No copyright infringement is intended.
With the MOTC trailer conference on the 20th, Chinese and foreign movies cooperation forum on the 21st, and a seminar on the development of 3D filming technology and digital cinematography on the 22nd, Keanu Reeves is one of the busiest stars at the film festival.
Yesterday, he sneaked an interview in with the press. For such a busy schedule, Keanu has no complaints. Although he is very tired, as long as he can do publicity for MOTC, he will soon be full of energy – he loves such a life.
When talking about the film, he disclosed that 5 yr. ago he and his martial arts trainer, Chen Hu, discussed making the film. During the preparatory process he became more excited and decided to become more directly involved in the film by directing it. He said: ‘This is purely a Sino-US co-production with the dialog being in Madarin, Cantonese and English. The story is about Chen Hu’s life so it was largely filmed in China and there are a lot of Chinese elements as a result. As for the theme, the film attempts to explore whether a person has the power to make decisions and to achieve self control.”
Reeves stressed that the film is far from being just about kung-fu. “I put a lot of Taoism into it, such as softness, invisible road to inaction. I want to convey to the audience through the film some positive message. We want it to be a movie to entertain audiences that can show beautiful martial arts scenes but also convey some positive information to the audience.”
Reeves said he noticed the rapid development of the Chinese film market so he shot MOTC here. The chinese film market’s performance in the first quarter of the year is enough to entice actors and directors to take part in the emerging market. He hopes to learn more Chinese and more Chinese culture. When asked about his feeling about the BIFF, he regretted to say that because of his busy schedule he did not have as much contact with China film as he would like.