Zhou Xingchi was born in Hong Kong. After his parents divorced, he lived with his mother and spent a very difficult childhood. In order to reduce the burden on his mother when he was a child, Zhou Xingchi used to sell nail clippers on the street, once worked as a running hall in a tea house, and worked as a summer worker in an electronics factory in middle school.
It is precisely because of his personal childhood life experience and long-term contact with the bottom of society, Zhou Xingchi has personally experienced the voices of the citizens of Star Dou, and has accumulated a lot of jokes for future film creations, but also made him pay more attention to the living conditions of the general public in Hong Kong. . After graduating from high school, Zhou Xingchi entered the night training class of TVB, and became a wireless artist after finishing his studies in the same year. In the same year, he was appointed as the host of the children's program "Shuttle."
When he was young, Stephen Chow was recognized by director Li Xiuxian as one of the leading actor in "Pioneer of the Thunder". He won the Taiwan Golden Horse Award and the Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his excellent performance in the play.
Zhou Xingchi has never been able to deal with it since then. Since the beginning of the year, Zhou Xingchi has starred in many films. He has developed his unique "nonsensical" comedy mode in an illogical and slightly neurotic way of acting, and "nonsensical" The impact and significance are enough to make it an important part of Hong Kong's general culture.
The movies he starred in have been welcomed by the audience. The movies he starred in have become a strong support for the Hong Kong movie box office. Many of them were among the best-selling movies of the year. "Kung Fu" has successively broken Hong Kong. The highest box office record for a Hong Kong film in film history. According to statistics, the Hong Kong box office of the movie starring Stephen Chow has exceeded 100 million Hong Kong dollars, ranking first among all Hong Kong movie stars, creating a movie myth. The popularity of Stephen Chow's films on the mainland is obvious to all.
According to the statistics of "A Hundred Years of Chinese Films", a single film of "Kung Fu" has already smashed the box office in the Mainland by the end of the year. "The God of Cookery", "Shaolin Football", "Kung Fu" and other films are also very popular in Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States. The famous Hollywood comedian Kim Carrey deliberately cooperated with Stephen Chow to film the American version of "The God of Cookery"
The main reason for saying "Zhou Xingchi's movies" is that Zhou Xingchi has gradually established his own style in his as many as 48 movies, such as "nonsensical", "parody", "deconstruction" in language, etc. which are recognized by us. Features.
This is just as Wang Wei said, "After Zhou Xingchi is in the movie, the audience forgets everything. No matter what role he plays, and no matter who the collaborator is, they are all green leaves, just to set the red flowers and make them more beautiful on the screen. Some directors, screenwriters, photography...no matter how big or small they don’t appear, they seem to be of little importance.”
and since participating in the directing of "Domestic Lingling Paint", Stephen Chow began to intervene more in the film's director and post-production. He began to integrate his ideas into the movie. In "Domestic Lingling Paint", he played the banner of "Zhou Xingchi's Works" for the first time, and then he directed and acted in the movie "The God of Cookery".
Zhou has appeared as a director, screenwriter, and actor in his films such as "Domestic Zero Zero Paint", "God of Cookery", "The King of Comedy", "Shaolin Football", "Kung Fu", etc., and he is also "Shaolin Football" The producer and producer of "Kung Fu", it can be said that Stephen Chow has completely dominated the style of his films. Therefore, we regard most of the movies starring Stephen Chow as "Zhou's movies"
. It can be said that this period The movie has been deeply carved with the brand of "Xingchi Zhou". At the same time, starting from "The God of Cookery", his films increasingly pursue deeper comedy expressions, pursue deeper cultural connotations, and strive to show Zhou Xingchi's understanding of society, life, and love.
said at the premiere of "Shaolin Football" Zhou Xingchi once said, "I don't regard my work as a comedy. I hope it is a work that touches people's hearts. It may make you laugh or make you. Moved, it may also make you cry-if I can make the audience cry, I will be very happy.
"
Zhou Xingchi is welcomed by the public with his wonderful interpretation skills, nonsensical unique style and attention to the fate of little people. He starred The movies can often create box office myths one after another.
It can be said that Zhou Xingchi's film has become a cultural phenomenon that cannot be ignored due to its huge social influence and controversial nonsensical performance style.
However, what is not commensurate with the influence of Stephen Chow’s film is the indifference of the critics.There are few systematic discourses in movies. In addition, Zhou Xingchi’s films have repeatedly achieved box office results but rarely won awards, which reflects the same disapproval of Zhou and his films in the film industry. Even some reviews have mixed praises and criticisms about Zhou and his films. Some critics think that Zhou Xingchi has developed a different style of comedy, and his evaluation is quite high. Some critics think that Zhou's movies are vulgar and inferior, just purely funny.
Of course, It is unavoidable that Stephen Chow's movies are not perfect works of art. There are still many flaws in his movies. For example, in Zhou's movies, there are often exaggerated descriptions of human vomit and excrement, which is also called "excretion plot" by some commentators. Such scenes in
movies often cause discomfort in people's perception, which is one of the reasons why Stephen Chow's movies are called vulgar and inferior. The drunk Apple and Cheng Sheng who drank in "Love Sage" vomited all the vomit into Cheng Sheng's mouth during the kissing process. The whole viewing process is not what we can describe as uncomfortable. This is undoubtedly the reason why Stephen Chow's movies are so ridiculous.
Some people also associate the "fecal plot" and various "downward" descriptions in Stephen Chow's movies with the carnival scene involved in Bakhtin's carnival theory, and they think that this is the embodiment of the carnival nature of Stephen Chow's movies.
However, there is no doubt that these flaws in Xingchi movies have indeed caused all kinds of discomfort in our viewing process, and Zhou Xingchi's movies are therefore regarded as low-level and vulgar works.
The postmodern features such as nonsense and parody in Zhou Xingchi's films have positive significance through the impact and dissolution of tradition, authority and center, but they are also very easy to slip to the slick side. We can see that in Zhou Xingchi's movies, there is often a phenomenon where idle gag is everything, and the protagonist in the movie is often glib and unrighteous. The
movie "East as the West" vividly shows us the slippery side of nonsense movies. Although this movie has no direct relationship with Stephen Chow's movies, it is a model of learning from Stephen Chow's nonsense movies.
At that time, as Stephen Chow and his nonsensical films continued to sell out, many movies began to follow Stephen Chow's nonsensical style, and "East and West" was one of them. The film brought together a group of Hong Kong celebrities who starred at the time, but because of their poor grasp of Wulitou's style, it turned to the slick side, which also made the film seem empty and ultimately ended in a bad film.
