2001
In late August, there was an R&B festival in Colne (a town in East Lancashire). On August 26, a local radio host claimed that Aaliyah would’ve performed at the festival had she not died. The significance is that she was in Romeo Must Die. 2001 was a breakthrough year for the star of that movie, Jet Li, as it marked the release of two English language movies - Kiss of the Dragon and The One. Surprisingly, the latter was more profitable than the former. Then again, it was more original despite being underwritten. It marked the turning point when Jason Statham was to eclipse Jet Li.
Because Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was released in the previous year, Miramax cashed in on its success by re-releasing a 1993 movie called Iron Monkey. It had no real star power other than the fact that Donnie Yen completed his duties as fight choreographer and actor in Blade 2 circa the spring of 2001, although the vampire movie hadn’t been released yet. Regardless, the popularity of martial arts movies was in full swing due to the aforementioned Jet Li movies and a French film called Brotherhood of the Wolf, which Philip Kwok choreographed. Elsewhere, there was The Musketeer (choreographed by Hung Yan-Yan), Steven Seagal’s Exit Wounds and Jackie Chan’s Rush Hour 2. As such, more students enrolled in the Keighley Kung Fu class (Keighley is a town in West Yorkshire).
In 2001, I disliked the cancellation of a Channel Four programme called Vids. It was about cult movies. The advent of DVD and internet reviews meant that the medium of video was like music cassettes. The show was cancelled in March, presumably because Channel 5’s outTHERE took over in February. This made sense because this was when Channel 5 made it a habit of showing softcore films at late night, including a `90s TV series called Red Shoe Diaries. outTHERE was weird because it had two hosts playing the same character: Eden. Anneka Svenska hosted the first two seasons. Living up to the scientific definition of the word, the second host had taken over from the first one and went on to become more famous. Ironically, she only hosted one season. Her name is Emily Booth, and she later became synonymous with England’s Horror channel. As for Channel 5, outTHERE, was Chinese-friendly like Vids was.
On outTHERE, there was a number of quirky H.K. movies that they advertised, particularly the train fight from Wong Jing’s God of Gamblers: The Early Stage and the gym assassination in Jing’s Naked Killer. Of course, the programme wasn’t entirely altruistic. It wasn’t done out of love for cinema’s sake. It was just a way to appease the DVD retailers situated in England. Regardless, TV shows like Vids and outTHERE were the closest thing to a YouTube that people in England had in terms of a portal to screened foreign culture. By which, I mean screened as in films and television. Hell, there used to be a programme on Channel 4 about foreign adverts. Since most people in the England back then were limited by what was available on TV, these programmes were welcomed for being different. Once Sky TV had broadened its palette, and with the advent of NetFlix, a show like outTHERE has no place in televisual society.
I would go so far as to say that 2001 was a better year for film fans in England than 2011 and 2021 because there were only so many American and English films that got shown on TV. There were more gems in your local video or DVD store. As such, boredom had forced so many people to get into films which consisted of either white people speaking foreign languages or dark-skinned people speaking foreign languages. With YouTube and NetFlix rivalling each other now, it’s too easy for dark skin cinema to be ignored (especially when you have people uploading video transfers of obscure B movies starring a bunch of no-name white Americans).
In November of 2001, there was an attempt by Channel 4 to override the popularity of foreign cinema with a documentary called 100 Greatest Films. The list was supposedly based on a poll, but there was enough U.K. films to give the impression of a self-serving agenda. Ironically, most Brits would rather watch U.S. films than U.K. ones. So much for patriotic pride. To understand the motive of the Channel 4 doc, foreign cinema was all the rage. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had won four Academy awards, including best foreign film. Amélie made French cinema trendy again. Spirited Away saw Japanese cinema making waves that were previously high in the nineties when there was the Manga craze. Finally, My Sassy Girl was a Korean romance that broke box office records all over Asia in a way that would result in a belated Hollywood remake.
