Stephen Chow
Personal Information
- Born: 22 June 1962 Hong Kong
- Birth Name: Sing-Chi Chow
- Height: 5' 8½" (1.74 m)
Early Years
Stephen Chow began his career with the children's program "430 Space Shuttle" where he worked for 5 years. When the show completed in 1988 Chow found a number of dramatic roles on television. His first feature film was the film "Final Justice" for which he earned a Best Supporting Actor Award at the 25th Annual Taiwanese Film Awards.
His first comedy was the 1990 film "All For The Winner," a spoof of the Chow Yun-Fat movie "God Of Gamblers." The film was so successful that Chow Yun-Fat and Stephen Chow went on to co-star in "God of Gamblers 2."
Through out the 1990s as his career grew so did his creative control. Chow excelled in the comedy genre and mixed into it his love of Kung-Fu. Nearly all of his films from 1990 on were "Kung-Fu Comedies."
Selected Filmography
'Actor'
1988 Faithfully Yours
1988 The Last Conflict
1989 The Justice of Life
1989 Dragon Fight
1989 Tragic Heroes
1990 Love Is Love
1990 My Hero
1990 The Unmatchable Match
1990 Curry and Pepper
1990 Sleazy Dizzy
1990 Look Out, Officer!
1990 All for the Winner
1990 Legend of the Dragon
1991 God of Gamblers II
1991 Fist of Fury 1991
1991 Fight Back to School
1991 God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai
1991 The Magnificent Scoundrels
1991 Tricky Brains
1992 Fist of Fury 1991 II
1992 The Thief of Time
1992 All's Well, Ends Well
1992 Fight Back to School II
1992 Justice, My Foot!
1992 Royal Tramp
1992 Royal Tramp II
1992 King of Beggars
1993 Fight Back to School III
1993 Flirting Scholar
1993 The Mad Monk
1994 Love on Delivery
1994 Hail the Judge
1994 From Beijing with Love
1994 A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box
1994 A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella
1995 Out of the Dark
1995 Sixty Million Dollar Man
1996 Forbidden City Cop
1996 The God of Cookery
1997 All's Well, Ends Well 1997
1997 Lawyer Lawyer
1998 The Lucky Guy
1999 King of Comedy
1999 The Tricky Master
2001 Shaolin Soccer
2004 Kung Fu Hustle
2008 CJ7
2010 CJ7: The Cartoon
'Director'
1994 From Beijing with Love
1996 Forbidden City Cop
1996 The God of Cookery
1999 King of Comedy
2001 Shaolin Soccer
2004 Kung Fu Hustle
2008 CJ7
My Thoughts on Movies
Random Facts
- Most of Chow's films he can be seen starring alongside Ng Man Tat.
Quotations about Chow
Among the new martial arts films, there is a maverick, namely, Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which is by far the highest-grossing chinese film in China. It opened on April 22, 2005, in the United States to rave reviews. It is a maverick film because Stephen Chow mocks everything that includes the culturally authentic and the cinematically authentic. His irreverence toward both traditional high culture and contemporary popular culture earns him the reputation as the king of mo lei tou, or nonsense that comes from nowhere and is seemingly irrelevant to the film's story. As A. O. Scott writes in his review of Kung Fu Hustle for the New York Times on April 8, 2005: "The movie snatches tasty morsels of international pop culture, ranging from Looney Tunes to Sergio Leone to Airplane!, and tosses them into a fast moving blender." American critics and audiences consider Chow "lowbrow" because of this dizzying mixture of pop culture. However, Stephen Chow's fundamental stance of laughing at himself as a social underdog in order to expose social injustices afflicting the underprivileged turns his mo lei tou upside down and often reveals his most serious, "highbrow," and tragic sides reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin. --Xu, Gary G
References
- Xu, Gary G. Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print. Pg. 90-94