John Woo

CHICAGO – John Woo changed my life. I was just the right age when I saw “The Killer” and “Hard Boiled” that they blew my mind. Wait, you mean not all foreign films look like Jean-Luc Godard? I was young enough that I thought foreign meant boring. There’s NOTHING boring about the prime of John Woo and one of his best, “Hard Boiled” has now been released on Blu-ray. And it still blows my mind.

CHICAGO – When moviegoers think of John Woo, the first image that comes to mind isn’t legions of ancient armies fighting each other with bows and arrows, but rather two men holding each other at gunpoint (as in his 1992 classic “Hard-Boiled”). His best action set-pieces are the most intimate, with gunplay and bloodshed taking on an almost balletic grandeur.

CHICAGO – The celebrities do come to Chicago, sometimes to sit through the grinding interrogation of HollywoodChicago.com’s Patrick McDonald. The Lucky Seven of 2009 comprise the best of last year, interview-wise.

CHICAGO – John Woo, whose mastery of the action movie was once compared by director Sam Raimi to the suspense mastery of Alfred Hitchcock, premiered his new film, “Red Cliff” at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 9th.