Francis Ng's CHASING SHADOWS Might Just Be The Cure For Your Wuxia Fatigue.

I must confess that I, like a great many others, have been suffering from wuxia fatigue. In the aftermath of Crouching Tiger it seemed like everyone who was anyone wanted in on the wuxia game and high end, period set martial arts flicks came a'pourin' out of all corners of Asia and, for a while at least, it was fantastic. A-list directors and a-list stars got to indulge their love for the genre and some true gems came out at the beginning of the wave. But quality, sadly, soon began to lag, attention to character dipped and the pandering to international audiences became annoyingly obvious to the point that interest began to wane and box office faded. The end result, the full onset of wuxia fatigue, a syndrome that has led - sadly and bizarrely - to one of the best and most easily marketable of the wave - The Warlords*, with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro - being unable to find a home of any sort in North America, and when the IFC's Magnet's and Dragon Dynasty's of the world can't be bothered to pick up a critically acclaimed blockbuster starring three of the biggest Asian film stars going you know something's up.

All of this to say that while I've been aware of Francis Ng's Chasing Shadows for some time now I've avoided talking about it simply because I wanted to keep my expectations low. There was reason to hope right from the outset, however. Ng has long been one of the very finest actors in all of Asia and is certainly - along with Anthony Wong - the very best Chinese language actor of his generation. He is smart, he is fantastically talented, and he has a sharp eye for quality scripts. So when a guy like Ng decides to make the step into the director's chair you'd do well to pay attention. And when Ng does so with the backing of an outfit like the Huayi Brothers - producers of films such as The Assembly, gifted with very deep pockets and international savvy - you'd really do well to pay attention. And when Ng say he wants to make the film as a tribute to classics such as Dragon Inn? Yeah, he's starting from the right place ...

Anyway, I've been hopeful but keeping quiet about it until there was something substantive to look at and that has arrived in the form of the first teaser for the picture. There is, unfortunately, a narrow band of distortion at the bottom of the picture but this looks absolutely fantastic. Check it out below the break.

*not actually a wuxia, I know, but it was created because of this current movement,