Friday, October 31, 2008


Seattle Times higher-education reporter

Bruce Lee, who attended the UW for 3 years but didn't graduate, died in '73 at age 32.


Bruce Lee admirers want to build an Eastern-style memorial garden at the University of Washington to commemorate their icon — but whether or not the UW will agree remains in doubt.

A group called The Bruce Lee Project at UW on Monday announced it wants to build a reflective garden in front of the Husky Union Building. The group plans to put the idea before UW Regents at their next meeting, Nov. 20.

At this point, the group's proposal lacks specifics — such as a design, timeline or cost analysis. But the group says it has built a network of hundreds of supporters, including the Bruce Lee family and local business owners.

However, the university has remained ambivalent to the idea of memorializing Lee, one of its most famous former students.

Lee, a martial-arts and movie icon, was born in San Francisco and grew up in Hong Kong. He attended the UW for three years but did not graduate. He died in 1973 at age 32.

"Somebody needs to make a compelling case as to why here and why now," said UW spokesman Norm Arkans. "Why here, as opposed to someplace else in the community?"

Jamil Suleman, a former UW student who last year taught a two-credit course at the UW through the Comparative History of Ideas Department called "CHID 496: Bruce Lee Dedication" argues that UW statues and monuments don't adequately represent contributions from minorities.

"He went to the UW for three years, he met his wife there, and he started teaching," Suleman said. "He kind of dropped out to become Bruce Lee."

Suleman said Lee had a big impact at the UW and in Seattle. He said the university has no problem recognizing other people who didn't graduate or even attend — not the least of whom include George Washington and Bill Gates.

A garden would reflect Lee's Eastern spiritual perspective, Suleman said. It would have an advantage over a statue because people could use the garden to contemplate and experience peacefulness rather than just viewing an object.

"What we are trying to do with this peace garden is have a space that anyone on campus can feel they belong in," he said.

Suleman said he believes the first step is to get the administration to agree to the idea before developing more details. He said he can't imagine the garden would be costly to construct or interfere much with campus life.But the UW may want to know more details first.

"We can't get a read until we see something and vet it," Arkans said. "We need to see what's involved and see what the impact would be to a treasured space."

Monday, October 27, 2008

Celebrity Ducks - Bruce Lee new model.


The original creator of the first-ever celebrity rubber ducks of the greatest icons of film, music, athletics and history, is doing their part to bring a little happiness to a tough economy. Thus they are releasing their new Marilyn Monroe and Bruce Lee limited edition rubber ducks just in time for the holidays.
Wearing a pink dress with white gloves, the new Marilyn duck embodies the epitome of elegance in the tub. After all, in any economy, diamonds are still a duck's best friend. Bruce Lee, complete with weaponry, is guaranteed to protect one's tub from any financial turbulence with his classic pose from "Enter the Dragon." CelebriDucks president Craig Wolfe remarked, "In hard times, we need some real heavy-hitters in our bath to lighten things up. To have two such classic icons added to our line really gives people some very cool gifts that anyone can afford."

The company is best known for their line of celebrity ducks including The Wizard of Oz, Elvis Presley, Bill Clinton, Larry the Cable Guy, and KISS, among hundreds of others. The company created a Tropical Parrot, complete with Hawaiian shirt and shades, for The Jimmy Buffet Margaritaville Cafes, and successfully sells their Blues Brothers ducks at all House of Blues venues nationwide. They also recently broke new ground by creating the world's first-ever floating Pink Flamingo, which debuted at The Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

CelebriDucks has produced ducks for the NBA, Major League Baseball, the NHL, Collegiate Mascots, and NASCAR. The company has pioneered a whole new collectible and to date their ducks have appeared on numerous TV shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS Evening Magazine, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. CelebriDucks were voted one of the top 100 gifts by Entertainment Weekly.

Contact:
Craig Wolfe
415-456-3452
info@celebriducks.com
Get them here

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Bruce Lee's Daughter Applauds Chinese TV Series




Bruce Lee's daughter said Friday she's happy that China has embraced her father with a 50-part prime-time TV series on his life - even though the late action star was no fan of communism.

The series currently airing on state broadcaster China Central Television, which portrays the late action star as a nationalist hero, is China's first movie or TV drama on the late actor. When Lee made his name playing characters who defended the Chinese against oppressors in the early 1970s, China was still a closed country.

"Obviously, my father doesn't have a lot of love for communist ideology and believed in a different outlook on life," Shannon Lee told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

"But what I do think is great is that China is embracing him as a role model. It may not be exactly in the way he would necessarily have viewed it, but at the same time, I think they recognize him as an influence in the world, which I think is great," said Lee, who authorized the TV series.

Lee, who died in 1973, was born in San Francisco but grew up in Hong Kong.

The younger Lee also said she is working with Hong Kong officials to convert her father's former home into an museum.

The two-story house is owned by developer Yu Pang-lin, who has said he is willing to donate the property but wants the Hong Kong government to lead efforts to raise funds for the museum.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Great MP3 of Enter the Dragon


This track is dedicated to the legendary icon and the first International Chinese movie star Bruce Lee. This track came about when I stumbled upon some vocal samples of Bruce Lee a while ago. When I heard these samples, I was immediately inspired to create a track around Bruce Lee's voices. After experimenting with the samples, I was finally able to connect the pieces all together, well in my opinion at least. :) anyway, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did making it. maybe I'll come up with new versions of this track in the near future!

Download from here

01. POMATIC ft. Bruce Lee - Like Water (Enter The Dragon)


02. POMATIC ft. Bruce Lee - Like Water (Enter The Dragon) [Radio Edit]

all tracks are composed, arranged and produced by POMATIC. contains samples from Bruce Lee's 1973 break through film "Enter The Dragon" and his 1971 "The Lost Interview" footage!
© 2007 POMA Productions. All rights reserved. POMATIC!

New Fans for the Master - Bruce Lee


BRUCE LEE'S compact body is coated with sweat and ripples with muscles; he seems impervious to the razor slashes across his midriff. Glaring from beneath fierce eyebrows at the fool who has chosen to cross him, he tenses those legendary fists before striking out. Scores of villains are no match for him. Lee always prevails.

A sign outside Huangpu park in Shanghai saying "No Dogs or Chinese" causes unbearable anger. His lip curls and the man born in the Hour of the Dragon in the Year of the Dragon tears down the sign and smashes the offending warning into pieces with an overhead kick.

"I am Chinese," he yells as he defeats another would-be oppressor, very often a Japanese or Russian villain.

The Way of the Dragon has never been so popular in China. Bruce Lee is a national hero in kung fu crazy China for the way he embodied Chinese pride and nationalism in his movies, but many in mainland China missed him the first time around in the early 1970s because films like Enter the Dragon and Fists of Fury were banned by Mao as spiritual pollution and rightist sentimentality.

China's state broadcaster China Central Television is setting the record straight this week with the start of a 50-part prime-time series on him, The Legend of Bruce Lee.

It was shot in Lee's ancestral home in Shunde, in southern China's Guangdong province, as well as Macau, the US, Italy and Thailand, and took nine months to make at a cost of 50 million yuan (€5.35 million). It has pride of place in the evening schedule, with two hour-long episodes shown consecutively every night.

Bruce Lee is largely credited with reviving interest in the ancient art of kung fu in Hong Kong, and subsequently China, and the whole country is crazy about martial arts. China wanted to include kung fu in the Olympics in August but was turned down, instead staging a separate kung fu competition.

The quickfire kung fu moves and often surreally dubbed dialogue, combined with Lee's incredible athleticism, transformed the martial arts movie and his films quickly achieved cult status.

In his films he is always called Little Dragon and his association with the powerful dragon symbol is central to his philosophy.

What Lee himself would have thought of his fame in China is hard to say. He was certainly a nationalist, but he was also a Hong Konger. During his heyday the Cultural Revolution was at its height and there were a lot of tensions across the border with Hong Kong. Until Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, many in the colony had an uneasy relationship with the People's Republic, the antithesis of its free-wheeling capitalism.

His death is a source of some mystery and there were all kinds of rumours. The discovery of cannabis in his blood led to speculation of a drug overdose. Triad crime gangs were rumoured to have poisoned him; another popular theory was that he was simply too fit and his veins burst under the sheer strain. The official version is he died of a brain haemorrhage.

Mainland Chinese only started watching Bruce Lee films in the 1980s, when videos of classic movies like The Chinese Connection became available, but his legend has not ebbed. A theme park, complete with a statue, a memorial hall, conference centre and martial arts academy, is being built in Shunde.

Lee is a resonant figure for the Chinese because he always emphasised power and resolve in the face of adversity, particularly from foreign oppressors. He reserved much of his wrath for the Japanese - post-second World War humiliation was felt even more strongly in the 1970s.

The television series is attracting keen worldwide interest, both in places with a large Chinese diaspora like Malaysia and Singapore, and further afield in the US and Korea. The producers are confident they can sell the series abroad at $100,000 per episode. The website for the show has already received two million hits.

"The previous versions made in Hong Kong and Taiwan were too commercial. We hoped to make a good version," said Zhang Hua, general manager of China Film Television Production Corporation. Lee's daughter, the actress Shannon Lee, has approved the script and is credited as an executive producer.

The series was originally scheduled to be aired before the Olympics, but was postponed because of the mourning period following the Sichuan earthquake.

Expect the Bruce Lee love affair to run and run. The latest news is that China's top director Zhang Yimou, who made Hero and directed the Olympic opening ceremony, has said he is keen to shoot a film version.

© 2008 The Irish Times

SHUNDE, CHINA: The connection....


SHUNDE, CHINA: Shunde’s most famous ‘export’ expat is Bruce Lee, who was born in the hour of the dragon, in the year of the dragon. Although born in the USA and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee is still connected to Shunde. How?

Bruce Lee’s father was born in the village of Jun’An, in the county of Shunde in the Guangdong Province.

The Lee ancestral home is now a museum dedicated to the famous film career of Bruce Lee. There is a street named after Bruce Lee in Shunde. That’s about it.
Lee was born in San Francisco and only ever held US citizenship, even though his parents went to Hong Kong when Lee was three months old. Lee was educated in Hong Kong schools but at the age of 18 Lee was sent back to live in the USA by his father after beating someone up in a fight.

Bruce Lee fans will make the pilgrimage to his ancestral home in Shunde however. And for visitors to the Shunde expo, it would make an interesting sightseeing opportunity.

New advert with Bruce Lee


Using dead stars for commercials is legal, with companies paying royalties to rights holders.

In the past it was considered a taboo to publicly talk about the dead. No more. An increasing number of businesses are turning to deceased icons to help sell their products.

Putting aside questions of political-correctness when using dead people in ads, the so-called ‘deceased (star) marketing’ is proving itself to be a successful marketing strategy.

It is definitely an unusual penchant for Confucianism-originated Korea, where those who have passed away are considered sacred and should be left alone.

Satisfied with the results of using the late comedian, Hungkuk has now ‘cast’ the legendary Bruce Lee in its newest commercials, which started airing September 19.

The new advertisement features Lee from one of his movies. Between fight scenes, editing and subtitles make it seem as if Lee is actually promoting the product and its inexpensiveness.

The advertisements are legal, with the companies paying royalties to rights holders, most of whom are children and family of the deceased.
Timeless popularity and familiarity — which sometimes invokes nostalgia — make late celebrities a popular object for advertising companies, experts said.

By using friendly figures from the past, the nostalgia felt by the viewers often leads to favourable sentiment and raises brand recognition.
Some observers, however, caution that using famous idols in commercials may prompt a negative image of the companies, especially among long-time fans.

What do you think? Is this right or wrong?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

TV show in China Bruce Lee

Was Bruce Lee scared of cockroaches? Did losing a bout frustrate him? How did he die?

The Legend of Bruce Lee (Li Xiaolong Chuanqi), a 50-episode TV series airing on CCTV-1's prime time slot from Oct 12, attempts to show the human face of the iconic kungfu master.


Hong Kong actor Chan Kwok Kwan plays the iconic kungfu master in The Legend of Bruce Lee. File photo

As the first ever film or TV series on Lee by a Chinese mainland crew, the series traces his life from his teenage years to his move to America, his film career and sudden death at the age of 32.

The dazzling kungfu scenes, says director Li Wenqi, are only part of the drama, while the stories of Lee as an ordinary human being are what differentiate the show from numerous other biopics of the martial artist.

It may be hard to believe that Lee was afraid of a cockroach but the series reveals this to be true. To overcome his fear, Lee is believed to have killed some cockroaches and strung them together as a necklace.

The series also tells of the love affair between Lee and his wife Linda. Lee is shown as a funny and tender boyfriend, and later a loving husband and father. Lee's early experiences of washing dishes in restaurants and clearing garbage in a hospital have been retained in the final version, after the exchange of scores of letters between the director and Lee's daughter Shannon.

On Lee's controversial death, the version in the series is that he died of overwork and the abuse of stimulants. This accords with the most enduring rumor since Lee's sudden death in 1973. Some, however, believe excessive physical training triggered Lee's death.

Taiwan actress Betty Ting's house is known as the place where Lee collapsed before he died, but out of consideration for his fans, director Li has changed the location to a pub opened by Ting.

Unlike most other films or TV series on Lee, the show has plenty of scenes showing Lee losing bouts to his opponents.

"Most people only know a Bruce Lee who was a super hero, someone who always won," says Hong Kong actor Chan Kwok Kwan who plays the icon. "But few understand that behind the glorious moments was also a vulnerable man."

Chan's resemblance to Lee is what bagged him this role. His best-known roles to date are as a gang member in Stephen Chow's Kungfu Hustle and as a goalkeeper in Shaolin Soccer. As a huge fan of Lee himself, Chow also chose Chan because of his similarly slender body and thick eyebrows.

Chan says he was attracted not only to Lee's kungfu accomplishments, but his strong desire to create his own kungfu style and his courage in the face of frustrations.

The series was completed over nine months with shooting on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, as well as in the US, Italy, Thailand and Canada. Actors from more than 30 countries were involved.

According to Chan, the shooting went smoothly and on the rare occasion when there was trouble, the name Bruce Lee was enough to rally support from the locals.

Various new films on Lee are also in the pipeline.

Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan is preparing a film on Lee and his son Brandon. Another Hong Kong director Fruit Chan is searching for a teenage Lee for a new project of his own. Even Lee's mentor Yip Man has emerged as a popular subject. Two Hong Kong directors Wong Kar-wai and Wilson Yip had a minor dispute earlier this year because they both wanted to shoot a film about the master's master and even used the same title.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Liverpool Event


A fan in Liverpool is in the process of attempting to organise a screening of Big Boss and Fist of Fury at a venue in Merseyside. I ask all UK fans if they would be willing to support such an event as I would need to sell approx 200 tickets @ £3 ech to cover the cost of venue hire. I am trying to get this for November 29th to coincide with Bruce's birthday (27th). If you GENUINELY would like to attend such an event please email me at shukocarl79@aol.com.

Please contact Carl direct.