Philosophy Films

"In 1975, before Clouse’s Game of Death or any of the Bruceploitation Game of Death movies came out, a book titled “Game of Death” was published in Japan. It told the story of a former martial arts champion whose sister and brother were kidnapped, and who was blackmailed into raiding a martial artist-filled pagoda to retrieve a priceless artifact. This book claimed to be based on Bruce’s original story, and John Little’s discovery of Bruce’s outline, twenty years later, pretty much confirms this. So how did the Japanese publishers know Bruce’s story? They even got minor details correct, like Kareem having lizard eyes. Bruce used a Japanese cameraman, Tadashi Nishimoto, for the Game of Death footage. Could he have had anything to do with the leaking of Bruce’s story to the book’s publishers?"

"In 1972, Bruce Lee began working on his second directorial project, Game of Death. The Plot involved Lee playing the role of Hai Tien, a retired martial arts champion who is confronted by a Korean crime syndicate that Kidnaps his sister and younger brother and force him to partecipate in a raid on a five-story pagoda located in South Korea."

"Guns are prohibited on the grounds, and the pagoda, known as the Temple of the leopard, is guarded by highly skilled martial artists who are protecting an unidentified object of value held on the top level of the tower. Hai Tien, along with four companions, must fight his way up the temple, facing a guardian of a different martial art style on each floor. Two of his companions are killed prior to the group reaching the third floor."

"Complete scenes were filmed for the final three floors of the pagoda: the Hall of the tiger, featuring Dan Inosanto as the Escrima master; the Hall of the Dragon, featuring Ji Han-jae as the Hapkido expert; and the Hall of the Unknown - the final level, featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the practitioner of an unorthodox and formiess style of combat."

"American Fighter: Legend has that man's greatest beard dwells and temple. The Game of Death is as old as time itself ... many attempt to challenge you survived. [Some assumed that it was a trailer narrator, but it’s really the American mercenary who befriends Bruce’s character prior to the mission.] This role was going to be played by Bob Baker. The V.O. is Kincaid speaking to Hai Tien the night before they leave for the temple [...] exclusively for the trailer."

"Five years after his passing, excerpta from the film Lee had worked so feverishly on during the final months and hours of his Life, are edited into a film featuring Lee's title, The Game of Death. But the film bears no comparison to Lee's original multi-level vision. Without Lee's choreograghy notes, script-outline and motif the producers are uncertain what to do with the 100 minutes of footage they have in their possession. Moreover, they discovery that Lee was such a perfectionist that of the 100 minutes of footage they have in hand, two-thirds turn out to be outtakes and retakes, shot that Lee himself had discarded for sequences in the film that he felt were beneath his standard of quality. They deem only 11 minutes and 7 seconds of the footage to be worthy of inclusion in their film. The rest, approximately 21 minutes worth, they discard. Intercutting actual footage of Lee into fight sequences involving lookalikes and even using cardboard cutouts of Lee's head, the end result Is viewed by many as an exploitive and grotesque joke played on the great artist's legacy. By now, even Lee's most zealous fans are beginning to believe that the original footage Is gone. And that It will never be possible to see the footage Lee shot in its entirety nor to ever learn what his original storyline for the film was. In the fall of 1994, during research conducted for a multi-volume book series based on Lee's surviving writings, Lee's original script and choreograghy writings for The Game of Death are recovered. The writings confirm what had long been suspected thath Lee had shot considerably more footage for The Game of Death than had been seen to date. Another unexpected surprise Is discovered among his choreography writings. His hand-written storyline, 12 pages in length and containing all scene breakdowns and select dialogue passages the original storyline stands in sharp contrast to the one presented in the film released under the same name. After the discovery of Lee's script notes a search to find the missing footage Is launched. It will last some six years, but then the miraculous happens. The original 35mm film footage Is located. After having been separated for over a quarter of a century Bruce Lee's original footage and script notes are finally reunited. Over the course of this film, you'll see this footage as Bruce Lee had intended for It to be shown, and you'll also come to understand the struggle he had to undergo in order to bring It to the big screen. And perhaps along the way, you'll come to know the real Bruce Lee the man behind the legend, a little better as well."

"In the battle of the third floor, Lee's character makes use of a green bamboo whip. The whip represents flexibility, an attribute which Lee felt a martial artist must possess if he was to be successful in combat. Since combat, like Life, Is not predictable, Lee held that one must possess a pliable adaptability in order to change with change. Lee has his charactery dressed in a one-piece yellow track suit to symbolize no affiliation with any known martial arts style."

"[Lee had chosen his real-life senior-most student, Taky Kimura to play the guardian of the second floor. According to Kimura, Lee wanted him to utilize praying mantis gung fu as well as some elements of wing chun, both arts that emphasize infighting use of hands predominately, with kicks limited to below the waist] I think It was in October of '71-'72, in that era. He called me and said he wanted me to be in that movie. I said, Look, Bruce, I've got two left front feet. You know it and I know it. There's probably 1,000 people in Hong Kong that can do It better. Just let me sit here and enjoy the fruits of your success. You know me, I don't need to be in that. He said, No, I want you in it. I'm the technical director and the co-producer. Don't worry about it. So, I reluctantly, for fear that he'd kick my butt if I said no, at that point, I said okay. He'd already sent me an airline ticket. And really, I think at this point in his life. I think he had transcended the gimmicks that are usually in these movies. And I think that he had gotten to that plateau where you could just simply do the simple, you know, normal things and yet create that excitement within that simplicity."

"The hero of this movie The Game of Death learns everything in martial arts he also invented his own style he has purpose to the 5 level pagoda there is a martial arts master at each level 5 level older the goal of the hero is to reach the highest level and the martial arts of Chester at each level is higher than the other a life-death gate at each level and finally he beats the martial art master at the highest level and reaches the boundary of being invincible where the gods the pakoda it's the best martial art master such as karate, Taekwondo, praying mantis, HapKido wing turn and many others"

"Bruce Lee — Hai Tien (In The Story the character was also Hak-kyu Kim)"

"James Tien — Tien Da (In The Story the character was Byung-joo Kim)"

"Chieh Yuan — (In The Story the character was Sung-woo Park)"

"Dan Inosanto — (3rd Floor Guardian)"

"Ji Han-jae — (4rd Floor Guardian)"

"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — Mantis (5rd Floor Guardian)"

"Hwang In-shik — (1rd Floor Guardian: only a 1972 short footage outdoors without dialogue. Candidate also Wah Yuen)"

"Taky Kimura — (Candidate as 2rd Floor Guardian)"

"Bob Baker — (Candidate as American Fighter. Candidate also Bob Wall and George Lazenby. In The Story the character was Bill Katz)"

"Nora Miao — (Candidate as Hai Tien's sister. In The Story the character was Hee-soo Hwang)"

"George Lazenby — (Candidate as Guru)"

"That's it. Perfect. Oh. I see."

"What we know about frequency is wrong. Otherwise, you and I would never have met."

"Nature needs constant nurturing."

"Greeting or serious question?"

"I don't feel. No one wants to understand. I know what they call me—"the Machine"—and they're right. I do not love my family. I experience no joy. If you ever see me smile, frown, laugh, or cry, I'm pretending, waiting for it to become real; but it never will. It's the side-effect."

"I feel…connected…to myself."

"I have a 210 I.Q. I never needed to take notes. I just didn't want to always have to look at people or have them looking at me. It's the eyes."

"I've never waited for a train before."

"You have to have choice."

"It's okay, they've used up their minute for this year already; we couldn't get them together now if we tried."

"Frequency does not change."

"What I am interested in is the universal…symphony."

"I changed my frequency."

"Various: Knowledge determines destiny."

"Mrs. Fortune: [to Isaac-Newton "Zak" Midgeley] You steal people's frequencies."

"Mr. Strauss: When Mozart plays, we are all the same frequency."

"The world's first Scientific-Philosophical romance."

"Like youth itself, the opening of Frequencies—an uncommonly ambitious science-fiction romance—is sparkling and unsettling at once."

"Better still, it's elegant and moving. It generates its own resonance."

"Fisher never subordinates his big ideas to the usual chase scenes or manufactured love conflicts less confident filmmakers use to candy up such material. That's great—too bad that, in the final third, the movie also doesn't subordinate those ideas to its own story, or to its earlier elegance of construction. Instead the ideas swell up, multiply like Tribbles, and finally encompass mind control, ancient conspiracies, questions of free will versus determinism, and what your brain is doing when it somehow knows a melody it's never heard before."

"The promise of Surrealism is that there is no explanation. But the gentle mysteries of such imagery gives way to gushing précis of everything much later on, the connections between Mozart and a government cover-up and the science-fair projects the leads conducted a decade before all laid out in monologues."

"While the detached, deadpan tone and occasionally stilted acting might leave some viewers flat, there’s no doubting the fierce intelligence behind this admirable puzzle box of a movie."

"Are you hungry for true ideas-fueled science fiction? Do you lament that we so rarely see such things in movies? Then here is a film to warm the cockles of your geeky heart. For here we have a low-budget—I'm gonna guess ultra-low-budget—little British tale from a slightly parallel universe where everyone has a "frequency.""

"Frequencies ends up, electrifyingly, in an insanely bonkers and kind of amazing place where words have literally power and free will and creativity are up in the air. This is incredibly ambitious and profoundly provocative science fiction drama that you must see if you value thought as much as you do action in your cinema."

"Frequencies is a detached film, with a tone that takes some warming up to. The narrative takes place at a deliberate distance from the audience, leaving us silent observers even more than most films."

"The film touches on a lot of themes—class inequality, determinism and free will—but it most speaks to the part of us that wants to believe that we can live outside of our potential. This is a story of a boy who's told again and again that he can't be who he wants to be, can't do what he wants to do, can't love who he wants to love—and he devotes himself, body, mind and soul, to the pursuit of dissolving those barriers. In doing so, Zak not only belies the debate of nature versus nurture, he proves that sheer will can overcome the mightiest of obstacles."

"It's a romance and a philosophical experiment, and it's also a science fiction film of the best kind: one that favors ideas over special effects. Fisher creates a fully-realized new world in Frequencies, and he does it with words and concepts instead of computer graphics and creatures."

"Fisher's intelligent and imaginative narrative revisits key scenes from different, ever wider perspectives—and will leave viewers mentally revisiting them for days afterwards as they try to disentangle what is at once a star-crossed romance, an allegory of (class) discord and (musical) harmony, and a theological investigation into nature and nurture, free will and determinism."

"Daniel Fraser — Isaac-Newton "Zak" Midgeley"

"Owen Pugh — Theodor-Adorno "Theo" Strauss"