The Forbidden Kingdom ~ Product Shop Listing

Actors: Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Michael Angarano, Yifei Liu, Juana Collignon.
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC.
Language: English. Subtitles: English, Spanish.
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
Rated PG-13. Run Time: 104 minutes.

Blending historical chronicle, fiction, and commentary, The Forbidden Kingdom brings together the seemingly unrelated lives of a twentieth-century ship's radio operator and the sixteenth-century Portuguese poet-in-exile Luis Camoes.
Jacob Slauerhoff draws his reader into a dazzling world of exoticism, betrayal, and exile, where past and present merge and the possibility of death is never far away.

Born in The Netherlands in 1898, upon graduating from university Jacob Slauerhoff signed up as a ship's surgeon with the Dutch East India Company. H! e was at sea throughout his life, voyaging to the Far East, Latin America, and Africa.

Closed to foreigners for more than 30 years, Mustang, a tiny feudal kingdom in the Himalayas, has existed in virtual isolation from the rest of the world. Although politically part of Nepal, Mustang is linked by religion, culture and history to Tibet, and stands alone as one of the last pure Tibetan cultures existing today. In 1992 restrictions were eased. Clara Marullo and Vanessa Boeye were among the few foreigners who made the journey to Mustang. This book is an account of their journey, and a view of the society that exists there. With its photographs, it also acts as a visual record of the landscape in this country. However, this is an environment under threat. Now open to the West, the landsape and all that is contained in it is open to change, and the survival of Mustang's ancient traditions is questionable. The final part of the book examines the potential problems of! modernization and highlights the need to protect Mustang from! the inf luences of tourism.As the adventures of the lovable charlatan, gluttonous blackguard, and lecherous philanderer continue, Lieutenant Travers is off to the Philippines where he finds a treasure map that leads him on a series of predictably hilarious adventures.Fenny's off to the Philippines to help bring the rebellious natives to heel in a new tangle of decidedly unmilitary adventures.Jackie Chan and Jet Li star in this $25 million-grossing movie about two archivals who unite to challenge a warlord. Bonuses: commentary, featurettes, blooper reel, deleted scenes. Getting martial-arts superstars Jet Li and Jackie Chan together in the same action film is like a fantasy come true, even if The Forbidden Kingdom is more of a children's movie than an instant kung-fu classic. Yes, Li and Chan square off in a lengthy, acrobatic fight scene that is a lot of fun, though it can't be what such a scene might have been even a decade ago: careful editing now compensates for the 54-ye! ar-old Chan's slower moves and reflexes. Still, Chan doesn't disappoint as Lu Yan, a drunken immortal in ancient China who mentors a modern-day American kid, Jason (Michael Angarano), the latter having slipped into the past while in possession of a magical staff that belongs to the imprisoned Monkey King (Li). In order to get back to his own time and help an old friend (also Chan) wounded by thugs, Jason accompanies Lu Yan and a lovely warrior, Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei), on a journey to return the staff. Along the way, a (mostly) silent monk (Li, again), who has spent his life in search of the staff, joins their mission. He helps Lu Yan train Jason in fighting and adding more muscle to the party as it comes under siege from a violent witch (Li Bing Bing) and pathological warlord (Collin Chou). Screenwriter John Fusco (Hidalgo) and director Rob Minkoff (The Haunted Mansion) have made a slightly chintzy, Western version of a Chinese swords-and-sorcery tale. T! he gravity-defying, flying-through-the-air-while-fighting chor! eography looks pretty choppy and graceless compared to, say, the martial arts films of Zhang Yimou. But The Forbidden Kingdom is really aimed at kids, not aficionados of epic fight movies. On that score, the movie aims to please and does so for the right audience. -- Tom Keogh

Beyond The Forbidden Kingdom on DVD