The Monk and The Samurai
The lives of two men, a monk and a samurai suffer unbearable loss. Heroic to the end their tales intertwine as they battle with the chaos, redemption, justice and vengeance within.
Recently, I was approached with a review offer from Troy’s Team group located in Beijing. From what I know, they are a team of martial artists who worked on several big Chinese productions, such as Kung Fu Yoga (2017) or Ip Man 4 (2019), but they focus on movie production as well.
The latest result of their efforts is a short film called The Monk and The Samurai (2022). A 10 minutes long tale about two individuals influenced and moulded by a traumatic event. The film is primarily a collection of animated images intertwined with live-action clips. I am not an expert in editing, but the seamless transition between the effects made me think whether the filmmakers had use the popular rotoscoping technique to achieve the desired effect. All in all, the visuals are indeed pleasant for the eye. With regard to the storyline, it is straightforward and easy to follow; this is mainly thanks to a skilful narration by John M. Shang. In fact, director Troy Sandford stated that the film was inspired by an idea to create a book “of short bed time martial art stories ideal for kids and adults” (source: presskit). Indeed, The Monk and The Samurai short feels very much like a bedtime tale to be enjoyed by parents and their children. The film perfectly encapsulates in a nutshell the spirit of ancient Asian myths about gallant warriors trying to do justice in the times of hardship. All things considered, The Monk and The Samurai is a well-made short film, and I sincerely hope that more “episodic tales” like that will be made in the future by Troy’s Team. My respect goes to the creators and all the actors involved in the project. «Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us»
Okay after spending an embarrassing amount of time to get my side working for comments... The title certainly got my attention, I thought for sure it would be a Japanese production. Looking into your post, I think this looks incredibly neat and I really want to check it out when I can get my hands on it!
ReplyDelete(Also please ignore my test comment. I didn't think it through!)
Hello Rise! It's so great to hear from you. I'm sorry that you had to devote your time to be able to make a comment. Blogger definitely has its fair share of issues and I apologize for that even though I'm not a Google developer. lol!
DeleteMost importantly, thank you for your comment. Yes, the short film is certainly interesting. I wish the production could have made a short trailer for it or something like that. I've been informed that they are going to try showcase it on film festivals. I sincerely hope that afterwards, they will upload it to either Youtube or Vimeo so that wider audience could enjoy it as well :)
No problem! It's a small bump in the road of blogging. It doesn't help I'm a bit slow to figuring out what the problem might have been on my end.
DeleteYou're most welcome! A trailer would be excellent! I'm a bit surprised they don't have one yet. But I'll keep my eyes out for it (hopefully an online film festival!), otherwise fingers crossed it shows up online somewhere legally soon!