The semi-biographical movie based on Bruce Lee’s kung fu teacher, Ip Man (played by Donnie Yen), rocked the Eastern movie-making world with its box-office success, critical acclaim, and awards. Now, action director Sammo (or Samo) Hung, whom many fans of classic kung fu movies know as Jackie Chan’s tubby co-star in Drunken Master, will be assuming a more active role in front of the camera as one of the characters in the sequel.

With the same teamwork of director Wilson Yip and screenplay writer Edmond Wong, Ip Man 2 from Mandarin Films, is very promising. The movie is now being hyped to be better than the first one, even with the film still in pre production. Hung, who gave cinematic life to the classic 200-year-old Wing Chun style of kung fu is said to be playing a character who belittles the style represented by Ip Man. It’s an extension of the chain of fight challenges experienced by Ip Man during his tine in Foshan in the first movie.

The sequel continues with the story of how Ip Man manages after the war after escaping oppression, to be with his wife, played by beautiful Xiong Dai Lin (aka Lynn Hung). The sequel was originally meant to depict how Ip Man’s most famous student, Bruce Lee was trained, but it’s been decided that this story be reserved for the third installment.

With Ip Man 2, it’s going to be another clash of ideologies and fighting styles amidst public scrutiny and quaint settings with scenes moving around the local culture and Chinese cuisine—yes, classic-style kung fu movies would be missing something if there are no cinematic noodles and dumplings involved! And though we all know who the winner will be in the end, it’s how the story reaches that point that’s entertaining. How will the antagonist learn his lesson against the flying fists of Ip Man? The hard way, of course!

Vampires never seem to lose their appeal. So many have already been made and lots more can be expected, even as a new generation of movie-goers comes of age. One of these movies about blood-suckers is called Daybreakers.

Daybreakers stars Willem Dafoe, whom some of you vampire fans know have already starred as a mean and bald vampire called Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire—a classic story of a vampire posing as an actor playing a vampire. It’s based on an old movie called Nosferatu, and in a sense, a fictionalized documentary of the famous production.

Now, Dafoe (left, as vampire Max Schreck, in Shadow of the Vampire) is in this new vampire movie reminiscent of horror-action movies like Blade and John Carpenter’s Vampires (Los Muertos). But while Carpenter’s movie is Western-inspired, Daybreakers is more science-fiction horror and reminds us of The Omega Man story wherein almost all the people on earth succumb to a disease that turn them into creatures of the night. In Daybreakers, humans are the minority and they are the ones hunted down.

Dafoe plays a vampire hunter with a fancy crossbow and some other weapons that maim and kill vampires. Together with a band of humans and Ethan Hawke’s vampire character, he and others work to save the human race even as the vampires (Sam Neill plays a corporate one) work to keep the flow of fresh blood going—the resource after all, is endangered and real blood has become scarce and expensive.

It’s a tricky situation where it’s hard to trust anyone, and it’s likely a human would likely turn out to be a vampire lackey—which was almost always a guarantee in those classic vampire movies. But this is a movie for new vampire fans and 21st century Goths out there that would definitely get a kick out of seeing ordinary people in everyday situations sporting fangs (left). It's also got some neo-classic supernatural-creature images with bat wings, pointy ears, bald heads, and licking tongues (the top picture looks like a vampire's got his tongue stuck on a freezer door). It’s a fang-fetishist’s paradise after all, and vampire fans would find that hard to resist!

Willem Dafoe also stars in a Lars Von Trier psychological movie called Antichrist. You can watch the trailer by clicking on the title link.

There’s something about boxes that fascinates us. Even as kids, our interest in boxes seem to well deep from our prenatal comfort state—a kind of play that seems an unconscious attempt to relive the security of the womb. It’s a strange feeling that appears to access the deepest and primordial recesses of our mind.

Take for instance our anticipation in opening a gift box. This never fails to excite and thrill us—not knowing what’s inside and hoping for the best. On the other hand, an unmarked box left somewhere creates apprehension and fear from what may be inside. Thus, boxes can be both a source of both well-being and bad news. The effect is never stronger than when there’s of a box that contains something but the knowledge is just beyond your reach.

The mystery/horror movie, The Box, makes good use of the mysterious appeal of boxes. The central object that the plot moves around is, of course, a box—a box given by a middle-aged man whose left face seems to have been eaten by something. It’s a box that can make you rich, but with a price. If you press the button of the box, you get 1 million dollars, but someone you don’t know somewhere in the world will have to die. It’s like a game where you must choose to obey your conscience or not and our protagonists—a family that’s got financial problems—must make a choice in 24 hours.

So, the movie is about what the family, or more specifically the couple—played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz, will do with the box. Of course, it’s expected that they will try to find out about things first, and this is where the action and thrill in the movie starts. As such stories go, they will end up getting into more trouble and may even have to sacrifice something dear in order to make things right again. It’s typical, but the story is still interesting enough even if it’s just for the sake of knowing what “the box” has to offer. The movie itself is like an unopened box.

The first Ice Age movie came as a surprise. The graphics weren't really spectacular, and they weren't meant to be, but the movie was a fresh hit and so was the next one. Those who first followed it were no doubt intrigued by the teaser in which our quirky squirrel pulls a walnut out of the ice only to cause an avalanche. Funny! It intrigued enough to get a good audience and a sequel.

As the year marked as the end of the Mayan calendar nears, 2012, the movie that promises to show what can happen to the world in that year also draws near. It’s based on something that’s highly-anticipated as the end of the world, thus, producers are expecting the special effects movie to be something of a prophetic vision of what can happen when the time comes. Of course, the timing of the movie has to be perfect. If it comes out too soon, it will not be able to ride along with the hype created in anticipation of the year when many people believe the world will end.

The masked Michael Myers of the Halloween horror series is back in Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2, a movie which he had said did not interest him. But apparently he did become interested in directing it and he’s taken it to a different level of horror, now focusing the story on the survivors of Halloween 1.

Kenneth Branagh, our Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter, is directing the new Thor movie, one of the few on a list that’s setting up events for the ultimate Marvel movie, The Avengers, to be released in 2012. It seems a long way off, but Marvel fans have had and will continue to have their good fill of superhero movies leading up to it to whet their appetites. We’ve had our fill of the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man, and now there’s another Iron Man flick and the much-awaited one about the first Avenger, Captain America.

A lot of you already know that Mickey Rourke is the villain Whiplash in Iron Man 2. This character's alter ego is Mark Scarlotti, supposedly Russian and a man perhaps as brilliant as Tony Stark (Iron Man) himself. He works himself up to being popular with a good education and the talent to boot. Seeking big opportunities, he willingly gets involved with the wrong people and starts making advanced weapons for them in a deal that goes bad. Bitter and angry, his situation pushes him to use his ingenuity to fashion his own metal suit. He turns into Whiplash, a criminal with a powerful exoskeleton and an energy whip that does more than just snap in the air.

Please be informed that on June 10, 2009, the FilmTake blog officially takes over Movie Dime and it's domain (http://www.moviedime.com/). All the posts of FilmTake made on or before the date of this post, including this notice, will now be found here along with old ones from previous administrators of Movie Dime.

In the movie In Praise of Shadows, the main character, William Vincent, is thrust into the world of the underground and deals with a criminal organization in New York City. The story is about someone who returns to his old city only to find it unwelcome in the sense that it gives him a big problem to solve. But of course, that's where the entertainment begins.