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156-571: Dick Tracy is a 1990 American action crime film based on the 1930s comic strip created by Chester Gould . Warren Beatty produced, directed and starred in the film, whose supporting cast includes Al Pacino , Madonna , Glenne Headly and Charlie Korsmo , with appearances by Dustin Hoffman , James Keane , Charles Durning , William Forsythe , Seymour Cassel , Mandy Patinkin , Catherine O'Hara , Ed O'Ross , James Caan , James Tolkan , R. G. Armstrong and Dick Van Dyke . Dick Tracy depicts

312-510: A Global release status of Chinese-language martial arts films, most notably Zhang Yimou 's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Stephen Chow 's Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and Chen Kaige 's The Promise (2005). Most Hong Kong action films in the first quarter of the 21st century, such as those in Cold War (2012), Cold War 2 (2016) and The White Storm film series have their violence toned down, especially compared to

468-553: A Warren Beatty interview conducted by Barbara Walters on 20/20 . "I find the media's obsession with promotion and demographics upsetting," Beatty said. "I find all this anti-cultural." Buena Vista Television aired a half-hour syndicated special beginning June 13, 1990, titled Dick Tracy: Behind the Badge...Behind the Scenes , with details about the making of the film. In attempting to increase awareness for Dick Tracy , Disney added

624-522: A change of heart, but before she can tell Tracy, she is kidnapped by The Blank, with the help of Big Boy's club piano player, 88 Keys. Tracy is drugged and rendered unconscious by The Blank, then framed for murdering the corrupt District Attorney John Fletcher, whereupon he is detained by the police. The Kid, meanwhile, adopts the name "Dick Tracy, Jr." Big Boy's business thrives until The Blank frames him for Tess' kidnapping. Released by his colleagues on New Year's Eve, Tracy interrogates Mumbles and arrives at

780-414: A deep plunge when Dolby stereo hit. Stereo has the capacity to make orchestral music sound big and beautiful and more expansive, but it also can make sound effects sound four times as big. That began the era of sound effects over music." Disney modeled its marketing campaign after the 1989 success of Batman , which was based on high-concept promotion. This included a McDonald's promotional tie-in, and

936-603: A duet with Mandy Patinkin. Mel Tormé sang "Live Alone and Like It," and "Back in Business" was performed by Janis Siegel, Cheryl Bentyne and Lorraine Feather. "Back in Business" and "Live Alone and Like It" were both used as background music during montage sequences. "Sooner or Later" and "Back in Business" were featured in the original 1992 production of the Sondheim revue, Putting It Together , in Oxford , England, and four of

1092-436: A fight sequence. In the 1980s, American martial arts films reflected the national move towards conservatism, reflected in films of Chuck Norris and other actors such as Sho Kosugi . The genre would shift from theatrical releases towards the end of the decade with the rise of home video, the lower box-office of American martial arts productions, and a significant portion of direct-to-video action films that first were made in

1248-500: A global audience of these films in the United States and Europe, but was cut short on Lee's death in 1973 leading the phases popularity to decline. Following a period of stagnation, Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung revitalized the genre with shaolin kung fu films and Chor Yuen 's series of darker swordplay films based on the novels of Gu Long . Kung Fu comedies appeared featuring Jackie Chan as martial arts films flourished into

1404-411: A goon of Big Boy Caprice who poses as an arresting officer to ensnare Lips. Allen Garfield , John Schuck and Charles Fleischer make cameos as reporters. Walker Edmiston , John Moschitta Jr. and Neil Ross provide the voices of each radio announcer. Colm Meaney appears as a police officer at Tess Trueheart's home. Mike Mazurki (who played Splitface in the original Dick Tracy film) appears in

1560-477: A group of mobsters at the hands of Flattop and Itchy, two of the hoods on the payroll of Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice. Big Boy's crime syndicate is aggressively taking over small businesses in the city. Detective Dick Tracy catches the urchin (who calls himself "Kid") in an act of petty theft. After rescuing him from a ruthless host, Tracy temporarily adopts him with the help of his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart. Meanwhile, Big Boy coerces club owner Lips Manlis into signing

1716-460: A gun battle outside the Club Ritz, where Big Boy's men are killed or captured by Tracy and the police. Abandoning his crew, Big Boy escapes to a drawbridge and ties Tess to its gears before he is confronted by Tracy. Their fight is halted when The Blank appears and holds both men at gunpoint, offering to share the city with Tracy after Big Boy is dead. When Junior arrives, Big Boy takes advantage of

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1872-401: A musical level was getting us nowhere because it is all so interpretive. We started having much more success when we started talking on a strictly gut level." — Danny Elfman Beatty hired Danny Elfman to compose the film score based on his previous success with Batman . Elfman enlisted the help of Oingo Boingo bandmate Steve Bartek and Shirley Walker to arrange compositions for

2028-551: A new Roger Rabbit cartoon short ("Roller Coaster Rabbit"), and made two specific television advertisements centered on The Kid ( Charlie Korsmo ). In total, Disney commissioned 28 TV advertisements. Playmates Toys manufactured a line of 14 Dick Tracy figures. It was Madonna's idea to include the film as part of her Blond Ambition World Tour . Prior to the June 1990 theatrical release, Disney had already featured Dick Tracy in musical theatre stage shows in both Disneyland and

2184-525: A perfectionist, often filmed dozens of takes of every scene. As filming continued, Disney and Max Allan Collins conflicted over the novelization . The studio rejected his manuscript : "I wound up doing an eleventh hour rewrite that was more faithful to the screenplay, even while I made it much more consistent with the strip," Collins continued, "and fixed as many plot holes as I could." Disney did not like this version either, but accepted based on Beatty's insistence to incorporate some of Collins's writing into

2340-554: A propensity for violent action, identified with the films of Chang Cheh . Violent female characters have been part of cinema since its early inception, with characters such as Kate Kelly brandishing a shotgun in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Women traditionally appear in action films as romantic interests, tomboys , or sidekicks to male protagonists. Violent white women would appear in other genres as well such as

2496-452: A psychological depth that gives the audience a stake in the characters. Tracy sticks to its eye-poppingly brilliant surface. Though the film is a visual knockout, it's emotionally impoverished." Although Max Allan Collins (then a Dick Tracy comic-strip writer) had conflicts with Disney concerning the novelization , he gave the finished film a positive review. He praised Beatty for hiring an elaborate design team, and his decision to mimic

2652-403: A seemingly unsuccessful raid on Club Ritz, but it is actually a diversion so that Officer "Bug" Bailey can enter the building to operate a secretly installed listening device to listen in on Big Boy's criminal activities. The resultant raids all but wipe out Big Boy's criminal organization. However, Big Boy discovers Bug and captures him for a trap planned by Influence and Pruneface to kill Tracy in

2808-745: A significant portion. These films include Taxi 2 (2000), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), District 13 (2004) and Unleashed (2005). Whan asked about the Americanization of these French films, Christophe Gans , director of Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) stated that "Hollywood ownership of certain elements [...] must be challenged, in order to show that these elements have also long been present in European culture." The most significant producers of French action films with international ambitions

2964-658: A similar level of popularity to that of the Western in the United States. The most internationally known films of this era were the films Kurosawa with Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). By at least the 1950s, Japanese films were looked upon as a model to be emulated by Hong Kong film production, and Hong Kong film companies began actively enlisting professionals from Japan, such as cinematographer Tadashi Nishimoto to contribute to color and widescreen cinematography. New literary sources also developed in martial arts films of this period, with

3120-634: A singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961. During the 1960s, Parsons established her career on Broadway before progressing to film. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and was also nominated for her work in Rachel, Rachel (1968). Parsons worked extensively in film and theatre during

3276-554: A singer with a band before settling on an acting career in the early 1950s. In 1983, when co-starring with fellow Academy Award-winning actor Jack Lemmon in a new Ernest Thompson stage play in Los Angeles, Parsons appeared on the November 1 episode of The Tonight Show , telling Johnny Carson that Lemmon had been her first boyfriend, when they were both teenagers in the 1940s. Parsons moved to New York City, and worked as

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3432-406: A single genre and that streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix similarly dilutes what is marketed and received as action. In transnational cinema, there are two major trends in action films: Hollywood action films and their style being imitated around the globe and the other being Chinese-language martial arts films. The roots of action films extend into the beginning of film but it

3588-422: A small cameo, as Old Man at Hotel. Ninety-three-year-old veteran character actor Ian Wolfe plays his last film role as "Munger". Beatty had a concept for a Dick Tracy film in 1975. At the time, the film rights were owned by Michael Laughlin , who gave up his option from Tribune Media Services after he was unsuccessful in pitching Dick Tracy to Hollywood studios. Floyd Mutrux and Art Linson purchased

3744-451: A three-act structure centered on survival, resistance and revenge with narratives where the physical body of the hero is tested, traumatized and ultimately triumphant. The third shift in action cinema, the postclassical, was defined by the predominance of Eastern cinema and its aesthetics, primarily the wire-work of Hong Kong action cinema from the classical era, through the convention of the increasingly computer generated effects. This saw

3900-405: A total of $ 101 million spent overall. The financing for Dick Tracy came from Disney and Silver Screen Partners IV , as well as Beatty's own production company , Mulholland Productions. Disney was initially going to release the film under the traditional Walt Disney Pictures banner, but instead chose to release and market the film under the adult-oriented Touchstone Pictures label leading up to

4056-594: A tough police officer protects society by upholding the law against systematic corruption. This extended into films which O'Brien described as "knee-jerk responses" to perceived threats with rogue cop and vigilante films such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) where the restoration of order is only possible by force and antisocial characters prepared to act when society does not. The vigilantism reappears in other films that were exploitative of southern society such as Billy Jack (1971) and White Lightning (1973) and "good ol' boy" comedies like Smokey and

4212-416: A wider historical and cultural field. In their book Action Cinema Since 2000 (2024), Tasker, Lisa Purse, and Chris Holmlund stated that thinking of action as a mode is more helpful than thinking of it as a genre. The three authors suggested that action frames a certain manner of filmmaking and viewing exceed genre without eclipsing it stating that websites such as IMDb and Misplaced Pages rarely label films by

4368-585: A writer, producer and commentator for The Today Show . She made her Broadway debut in 1956 in the ensemble of the Ethel Merman musical Happy Hunting . Her Off-Broadway debut was in 1961, and she received a Theatre World Award in 1963 for her performance in Whisper into My Good Ear/Mrs. Dally Has a Lover (1962). In 1964, Parsons won an Obie Award for Best Actress for her performance in two Off-Broadway plays, Next Time I'll Sing to You and In

4524-463: Is Luc Besson 's France-based EuropaCorp , who released films like Taxi (1998) and From Paris with Love (2010). EuropaCorp produced Transporter franchise starred British actor Jason Statham and made him an action film star, which led him to feature in The Expendables series by the end of the 2010s. The action film genre has been a staple of Bollywood cinema . In the 1970s,

4680-526: Is a former player for the Chicago Bears and Jacksonville Jaguars as a guard / tackle , and who was named for his great-grandfather, Estelle's father. In January 1983, she married her partner of 10 years, Peter Zimroth , who has served as Assistant U.S. Attorney , Assistant District Attorney and court-appointed monitor of the NYPD 's policies and practices regarding stop-and-frisk . They adopted

4836-574: Is a generic term to refer to several types of films containing martial arts. The wuxia film is the oldest genre in Chinese cinema. Stephen Teo wrote in his book on Wuxia that there is no satisfactory English translation of the term, with it often being identified as "the swordplay film" in critical studies. It is derived from the Chinese words wu denoting militarist or martial qualities and xia denoting chivalry, gallantry, and qualities of knighthood. The term wuxia entered into popular culture in

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4992-729: Is based on Twin Dragons (1992). Other films such as the martial arts film Bhadrachlam (2001), borrows from American cinema with the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Kickboxer (1989). SS Rajamouli 's RRR (2022) was among the highest budgeted films made in India, and became a rare hit film outside of Indian diaspora, where it broke box office records in Japan and performed exceptionally well in American box office. Japan

5148-442: Is itself empowering and, if not, whether a hypersexualized female character can still represent strength and autonomy. Hypersexualized female action leads had tight fitting or revealing costumes that Tasker identified as "exaggerated statements of sexuality" and in the tradition of "fetishistic figure of fantasy" derives from comic books and soft pornography . This originated in television with characters like Buffy Summers ( Buffy

5304-461: Is released from jail. Big Boy's next move is to try bringing other criminals, including Spud Spaldoni, Pruneface, Influence, Texie Garcia, Ribs Mocca, and Numbers, together under his leadership. Spaldoni refuses and is killed with a carbomb , leaving Dick Tracy, who discovered the meeting and was attempting to spy on it, wondering what is going on. The next day, Big Boy and his henchmen capture Tracy and attempt to bribe him; Tracy rebuffs them, prompting

5460-578: The femme fatales in film noir and horror films of the 1970s. Violent women were common in action films since the 1960s. These films featured working-class women exacting revenge. Films of the 1970s featured black women such as Pam Grier in films like Foxy Brown (1974). In the 1980s, a new symbolically transgressive character emerged in the form of Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986) and Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and

5616-550: The Bollywood action film consolidated with two films starring Amitabh Bachchan : Prakash Mehra 's Zanjeer (1973) and Yash Chopra 's Deewaar (1975). The box office success of these films made Bachchan a star and spawned the "angry young man" film in Bollywood cinema. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the action genre film declined considerably with new films predominantly featuring former bodybuilders failing to reach

5772-719: The DC Extended Universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe do not. The film was released on VHS December 18, 1990. It was first released on DVD in Europe in 2000, but domestic release in the U.S. was delayed until April 2, 2002, and without any special features. Shortly after the U.S. DVD release, rumors circulated on the Internet that Warren Beatty had planned to release a director's cut under Disney's "Vista Series" label; including at least ten extra minutes of footage. As of 1992, Dick Tracy sold 1 million copies in

5928-517: The Hong Kong action cinema , such melodramatic male bonding and marginalized women characters, while the Korean films also have greater elements of tragedy and romance emphasized. Most martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantonese-language productions. In comparison, Mandarin-language films were an integral part of Hong Kong cinema due to the influx of Shanghai film talent in

6084-1186: The PBS production of June Moon . She played the part of Babe in three episodes of the second and fifth seasons of Grace and Frankie . She was honored with a Woman of Achievement Award from the Women's Project Theater in 2009. In 2010, she appeared in London , playing psychic Helga ten Dorp in Deathtrap at the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End . Parsons' most recent Broadway appearances include Good People (2011) and Nice Work If You Can Get It (2012). In April 2018, Parsons returned to television reprising her role as Beverly Harris , mother of Roseanne Barr 's title character, in season 10, episode 5 of Roseanne . Parsons married author Richard Gehman in 1953. They had twin daughters, reporter Abbie and actress Martha Gehman , before divorcing in 1958. Her grandson Eben Britton , Abbie's son,

6240-564: The September 11 attacks in 2001, which suggested an end to fantastical elements that defined the action hero and genre. Following the release of Quentin Tarantino 's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) revisited the tropes of 1970s action films leading a renaissance of vengeance narratives in films like The Brave One (2007) and Taken (2008). O'Brien found that Tarantino's films were post-modern takes on

6396-559: The September 11 attacks , a return to the early forms of the genre appeared in the wake of Kill Bill and The Expendables films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that

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6552-641: The Walt Disney Studios , Dick Tracy resurfaced, with Beatty as director, producer and leading man . Katzenberg considered hiring Martin Scorsese to direct the film, but changed his mind. "It never occurred to me to direct the movie," Beatty admitted, "but finally, like most of the movies that I direct, when the time comes to do it, I just do it because it's easier than going through what I'd have to go through to get somebody else to do it." Beatty's reputation for directorial profligacy, notably with

6708-553: The Walt Disney World Resort , using Stephen Sondheim and Danny Elfman 's music. The New York Times wrote in June 1990 of Disney Stores "selling nothing but Tracy -related merchandise". Max Allan Collins lobbied to write the film's novelization long before Disney had even greenlighted Dick Tracy in 1988. "I hated the idea that anyone else would write a Tracy novel," Collins explained. After much conflict with Disney, leading to seven different printings of

6864-423: The matte paintings , art direction and prosthetic makeup design. " Dick Tracy is one of the most original and visionary fantasies I've seen on a screen," he wrote. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, " Dick Tracy has just about everything required of an extravaganza: a smashing cast, some great Stephen Sondheim songs, all of the technical wizardry that money can buy, and a screenplay that observes

7020-458: The shooting script , which solved the plot hole concerns. Through post-production dubbing , some of Collins's dialogue was also incorporated into the film. Principal photography for Dick Tracy ended in May 1989. The film's production also marks the last known use of the sodium vapor process (occasionally referred to as yellowscreen). Early in the development of Dick Tracy , Beatty decided to make

7176-510: The xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo (or "new school martial arts fiction") coming into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng 's Longhu Dou Jinghua (1954) and Jin Yong 's Shujian enchou lu (1956) which showed influence of the Shanghai martial arts films but also circulated from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Chinese communities overseas. This led to a growing demand in both local and regional markets in

7332-428: The 1960s with films like The Born Losers (1967) which was predominantly a drama, interspersed with martial arts scenes. American martial arts films predominantly came into production following the release of Enter the Dragon (1973), with the only higher-budgeted American film to follow in its wake being The Yakuza (1974). Lott noted the two films would lead to the two subsequent styles of martial arts films in

7488-575: The 1970s and later directed several Broadway productions. Later work included perhaps her best known role, as Beverly Harris , mother of the title character, on the sitcom Roseanne , and, later, on its spinoff The Conners . She has been nominated five times for the Tony Award (four times for Lead Actress of a Play and once for Featured Actress ). In 2004, Parsons was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame . Parsons

7644-609: The 1970s. James Monaco wrote in 1979 in American Film Now: The People, The Power, The Money, the Movies that "the lines that separate on genre from another have continued to disintegrate." Tasker said that most post-classical action films are hybrids, drawing from genres as varied as war films, science fiction , horror , crime, martial arts , and comedy films . In Chinese-language films, both wuxia and kung fu are genre-specific terms, while martial arts

7800-784: The 1980s. Other films again modernized the form with gangster films of John Woo ( A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989)) and the Wong Fei Hung saga returning in Tsui Hark 's Once Upon a Time in China featuring Jet Li which again revitalized the swordplay styled films. By the turn of the century Hollywood action films would look towards Hong Kong cinema and bringing some of their major actors and directors over to apply their style to their films, such as Chan, Woo, Li, Michelle Yeoh and Yuen Woo-Ping . The release of Ang Lee 's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) led to

7956-706: The 21st century have been comic book adaptations, which commenced with the X-Men and is seen in other series such as Spider-Man , and Iron Man series. Tasker wrote that despite the central characters in superhero cinema being extraordinary, occasionally even God-like, they often followed the traces of the central character becoming powerful of which is fundamental to action films, often dealt with origin stories in superhero films. Action films often interface with other genres. Tasker wrote that films are often labelled action thrillers, action-fantasy and action-adventure films with different nuances. Tasker later discussed that

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8112-751: The American premiere of the Weill – Brecht opera, Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny (1970), and performed as Mrs. Peachum to Lotte Lenya 's Jenny in Threepenny Opera on tour and in New York City. In 1978 she played Lady Macbeth in the Kauai Community Players production. She also played Ruth in Gilbert & Sullivan 's The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway in 1981. From June 17, 2008, through May 17, 2009, she played

8268-522: The Bandit (1977). This era also emphasizes the car chase scenes as moments of spectacle in films like Bullitt and The French Connection (1971). O'Brien described these films as emphasizing "the fusion of man and machine" with the drivers and vehicles acting as one, concluding with what he described as "the ultimate in apocalyptic modernity and social erasure" in Mad Max 2 (1981). O'Brien described

8424-754: The Bollywood press who reported on him in the headlines of Bollywood magazines for his public brawls and affairs with leading actresses. In Dabangg (2010), Khan continued with this public persona, which was repeated in several of his later films such as Ready (2011), Bodyguard (2011), Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Dabangg 2 (2012). From the 1980s, generations of actors in Telugu cinema have invoked Hong Kong action films, such as Srihari who stated he wanted to become an actor after watching his first Bruce Lee film. Several films in Telugu cinema were remakes of Hong Kong films, such as Hello Brother (1994) which

8580-598: The Dragon briefly allowed an influx of Hong Kong films to Japan, but the trend did not last, with 28 Hong Kong films, mostly kung fu films, being released in 1974, and the number decreasing to five in 1975, four in 1977 and only two in 1978. Ryuhei Kitamura , director of Versus (2000), said in 2004 that he grew frustrated with the Japanese film industry as producers felt they couldn't make action films in competition with Hong Kong or American productions. Versus grew to become popular outside of Japan, and Kitamura said he

8736-602: The Hong Kong film industry after the handover in 1997. Anglophone action film scholarship has tended to emphasize bigger budget American action films, with academics tending to find films that fall out of Hollywood productions as not quite fitting definitions of the genre. By 2024, many national and regional industries were known for action films. These include international films such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam , South Korean, Japanese, Thai , Brazilian , Chinese , South African , French and Italian action titles. At

8892-807: The Red Lotus (1965) and King Hu 's Come Drink with Me (1966). In the 1970s, the Hong Kong martial arts films began to grow under the format of yanggang ("staunch masculinity") mostly through the films of Chang Cheh which were popular. This transition led to the kung fu film sub-genre at beginning of the decade and moved beyond the swordplay films with contemporary settings of late Qing or early Republican periods and had more hand-to-hand combat over supernatural swordplay and special effects. A new studio, Golden Harvest quickly became one of independent filmmakers to grant creative freedom and pay and attracted new directors and actors, including Bruce Lee . The popularity of kung fu films and Bruce Lee led to attract

9048-705: The Side (1995). On television, Parsons played the recurring role of Beverly Harris , the mother of the title character on Roseanne ; her Beverly character is the daughter of character Nana Mary , played by fellow Academy Award winner Shelley Winters . Other television credits include appearances in The Patty Duke Show , Love, American Style , All In The Family , Archie Bunker's Place , Open Admissions , Frasier , Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , and The Good Wife , as well as The UFO Incident: The Story of Betty and Barney Hill and

9204-702: The Summer House . In 1967, she starred with Stacy Keach in the premiere of Joseph Heller 's play We Bombed in New Haven at the Yale Repertory Theatre . Parsons has received Tony Award nominations for her work in The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968), And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (1971), Miss Margarida's Way (1978), Morning's at Seven (2002), and The Velocity of Autumn (2014). She played Leokadia Begbick in

9360-410: The U.S., according to The Hollywood Reporter . The Blu-ray was released in the U.S. and Canada December 11, 2012. This release lacked special features, save for a digital copy. Action crime film While the term "action film" or "action adventure film" has been used as early as the 1910s, the contemporary definition usually refers to a film that came with the arrival of New Hollywood and

9516-484: The United States, Europe and Japan had during this period. Yip described Japanese cinema as the most advanced in Asia at the time. This was showcased by the international breakthrough of Akira Kurosawa 's films like Rashomon (1950). The film genre known as the chanbara was at its height in Japan. The style was a sub-genre to the jidai-geki , or period drama with an emphasis on sword fighting and action. It had

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9672-406: The United States, with films like Enter the Dragon about people who reveled in combat, often in a tournament setting, and The Yakuza which had several genres attached to it, but featured several martial arts sequences. By the end of the 1970s, the style was an established genre in American cinema, often featuring tough heroic characters who would fight and not think about their actions until after

9828-591: The Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)) and Xena ( Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001)). These series popularity demonstrated a growing market for female action film heroes, in films of the 2000s like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Charlie's Angels (2000), Ultraviolet (2006), Salt (2010) and series like Underworld and Resident Evil . These series like their television series earlier, had their leads eroticized as active and physically capable while also being scantily-clad, hyper-feminized similar to

9984-553: The action heroine's dual status of an active subject and sexual object was overturning the traditional gender binary because the films "assume that women are powerful" without resorting to justify her physical aggression through narratives involving maternal drive, mental instability or trauma. Purse found that female leads in films like Elektra (2005), Kill Bill , Underworld , Charlie's Angels and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) did showcase women having expensive cars, clothing, travel, homes and often high-paying jobs, but that this

10140-646: The arrival of Beatty. It was filmed mainly at Universal Studios . Danny Elfman was hired to compose the score, and the film's music was featured on three separate soundtrack albums. Dick Tracy premiered at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 1990, and was released nationwide five days later. Reviews ranged from favorable to mixed, with positive comments on the performances (particularly Pacino and Madonna), production design, make up effects, music, and Beatty's direction, but negative ones on

10296-521: The backstreets of Cairo. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker expanded on this topic, stating that action films have no clear and constant iconography or settings. In her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), she found that the most broadly consistent themes tend to be a characters quest from freedom from oppression such as a hero overcoming enemies or obstacles and physical conflicts or challenge, usually battling other humans or alien opponents. By late 2010s studies of genre analysis,

10452-435: The book Australian Genre Film , Amanda Howell suggested that this label was used to help distance Australian cinema from Hollywood films as it would be suggesting commerce over culture and that it would be "quite unacceptable to make Australian movies using conventions established in the U.S.A." Howell stated this to be the case with action films of the 1970s and 1980s with Brian Trenchard-Smith 's Turkey Shoot (1982) being

10608-415: The characters Joe Jitsu and Go Go Gomez as offensive stereotypes . A theme park ride for Disneyland , Disney-MGM Studios and Euro Disney Resort called Dick Tracy's Crime Stoppers was planned but ultimately never built. Another tie-in for the movie was an ingenious plan in which 1,500 movie theaters were shipped t-shirts with the film's title art on them, which fans could buy for $ 12 to $ 20 and wear to

10764-550: The classical form of action cinema to be the 1980s. The decade continued the trends of formative period with heroes as avengers ( Lethal Weapon (1987)), rogue police officers ( Die Hard (1988)) and mercenary warriors ( Commando (1985)). Following the continuity of the car and man hybrid of the previous decade, the 1980s featured weaponized men with who were either also carrying weapons such as Sudden Impact (1983), trained to be weapons ( American Ninja (1985)) or imbued with technology ( RoboCop (1987)). O'Brien noted that

10920-521: The condition that Beatty keep the production budget within $ 25 million. Beatty's fee was $ 7 million, against 15% of the gross (once the distributor's gross reached $ 50 million). Costs began to rise when filming started, and quickly jumped to $ 30 million. Its total negative cost ended up being $ 46.5 million ($ 35.6 million of direct expenditure, $ 5.3 million in studio overhead and $ 5.6 million in interest). Disney spent an additional $ 48.1 million on advertising and publicity, and $ 5.8 million on prints, resulting in

11076-436: The criminals to attempt to kill him by causing the boiler to explode. However, Tracy is saved by Kid, who is then bestowed by the police with an honorary detective certificate, which will remain temporary until he decides on a legitimate name for himself. Breathless shows up at Tracy's apartment, once again in an attempt to seduce him. Tracy allows her to kiss him. Tess witnesses this scene and eventually leaves town. Tracy leads

11232-443: The critically acclaimed Reds , did not sit well with Disney. As a result, Beatty and Disney reached a contracted agreement, whereby any budget overruns on Dick Tracy would be deducted from Beatty's fee as producer, director and star. Beatty and regular collaborator Bo Goldman significantly rewrote the dialogue, but lost a Writers Guild arbitration and did not receive screen credit. Disney greenlit Dick Tracy in 1988 under

11388-464: The decline of overt masculinity in the action film which corresponded with the end of the Cold War in 1991, while the rise of self-referential and parodies of this era grew in films like Last Action Hero (1993). O'Brien described this era as being soft where the hard bodies of the classical era were replaced with computer generated imagery such as that of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). This

11544-482: The deed over to Club Ritz. He kills Lips with a cement overcoat (referred to onscreen as "The Bath") and steals his girlfriend, the seductive and sultry singer Breathless Mahoney. When Lips is reported missing, Tracy interrogates his three hired guns, Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles, then goes to the club to arrest Big Boy for Lips's murder. Breathless is the only witness. Instead of providing testimony, she unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Tracy. Big Boy cannot be indicted and

11700-518: The detective's romantic relationships with Breathless Mahoney and Tess Trueheart , as well as his conflicts with crime boss Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice and his henchmen. Tracy also begins fostering a young street urchin named Kid. Development of the film began in the early 1980s with Tom Mankiewicz assigned to write the script. The screenplay was written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. The project also went through directors Steven Spielberg , John Landis , Walter Hill and Richard Benjamin before

11856-601: The difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988), that while both were mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with hero asserting masculinity and overcoming obstacles to a personal and social solution, John McClane in Die Hard repeatedly firing his automatic pistol while swinging from a high rise was not congruent with the image of Indiana Jones in Raiders swinging his whip to fend off villains in

12012-559: The direct-to-video field, or in similarly low-budget theatrical releases such as Bulletproof Monk (2003). While the American styled-films were predominantly made in the United States, productions were also made in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa, and were predominantly shot in the English-language. Heroic Bloodshed is a that originates with English-language Hong Kong action and crime film fan communities in

12168-409: The distraction and shoots The Blank before Tracy knocks him off the bridge, sending him falling to his death in the bridge's gears, while Junior rescues Tess. Mortally wounded, The Blank is unmasked to reveal Breathless Mahoney, who kisses Tracy before dying. All charges against Tracy are dropped. Later, Tracy proposes to Tess but is interrupted by the report of a robbery in progress. He leaves her with

12324-758: The earlier Dick Tracy film, had a cameo appearance . Beatty approached Gene Hackman to do a cameo in the film, but he declined. Principal photography for Dick Tracy began February 2, 1989. The filmmakers considered shooting the film on location in Chicago, but production designer Richard Sylbert believed Dick Tracy would work better using sound stages and backlots at Universal Studios in Universal City, California . Other filming took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank . In total, 53 interior and 25 exterior sets were constructed. Beatty, being

12480-487: The earlier work of directors like Woo and Johnnie To . Antong Chen, in his study on the Hong Kong action film, wrote that the influence of China and the amount of Chinese co-productions made with Hong Kong created a shift in these films, particularly following the release of Infernal Affairs (2002). Harvey O'Brien wrote in 2012 that the contemporary action film emerged through other genres, primarily Westerns , crime and war films and can be separated into four forms:

12636-432: The early 1960s and saw a surge in production of Hong Kong martial arts films that went beyond the stories about Wong Fei-hung which were declining in popularity. These new martial arts films featured magical swordplay and higher production values and more sophisticated special effects than the previous films with Shaw Brothers a campaign of "new school" ( xinpai ) martial arts swordplay films such as Xu Zenghong's Temple of

12792-434: The elements is that the story is usually told in vignette , so what we tried to do is never move the camera at all. Never . Try to make everything work into the frame." For the matte paintings , Ellenshaw and Lloyd executed over 57 paintings on glass, which were then optically combined with the live action . For a brief sequence in which The Kid dashes in front of a speeding locomotive, only 150 feet (46 m) of real track

12948-491: The end of the 1990s. Films such as Chunhang (2000) and Memento Mori (2000) and action films Shiri (1999) and Nowhere to Hide (1999) received commercial releases in North America, Asia, and Europe. The success of the latter two films was unprecedented, and was followed by other South Korean action films in the early 2000s reaching the top of the local box office. These South Korean films mimic some traits of

13104-411: The exception of Al Pacino (Big Boy Caprice), who improvised his own design, ignoring the rather overweight character of the strip. His makeup took 3½ hours to apply. "Directors don't know anything about music really, and if they do, it's not necessarily a help. Warren Beatty is a pianist and knows much more about music than almost any director, but when he and I started on Dick Tracy , communicating on

13260-532: The female leads in implausible elements, such as in Charlie's Angels , Fantastic Four (2005) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). The fighting styles of women also tend towards more traditionally feminine fluid movements of martial arts, over using guns or directly punching. Purse wrote that the contemporary female action film lead's sexualized brand had her in close proximity of post-feminism discourse about choice, power and sexuality. Marc O'Day interprets

13416-493: The film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on a scale of A+ to F. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four in his review, arguing that Warren Beatty succeeded in creating the perfect tone of nostalgia for the film. Ebert praised mostly

13572-484: The film in general. " Dick Tracy is Hollywood's annual celebration of everything that's wrong with Hollywood," he stated. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that Warren Beatty, at 52 years old, was too old for the part. He also found similarities with Batman , in that both films involve "a loner hero, a grotesque villain, a blond bombshell, a marketable pop soundtrack and a no-mercy merchandising campaign", Travers continued. "But Batman possesses something else:

13728-567: The film rights from the Tribune in 1977, and, in 1980, United Artists became interested in financing and distributing Dick Tracy . Tom Mankiewicz was under negotiations to write the script, based on his previous success with Superman and Superman II . The deal fell through when Chester Gould , creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, insisted on strict financial and artistic control . That same year, Mutrux and Linson eventually took

13884-622: The film using a palette limited to just seven colors—primarily red, green, blue and yellow—to evoke the film's comic strip origins. Furthermore, each of the colors was to be exactly the same shade. Beatty's design team included production designer Richard Sylbert, set decorator Rick Simpson , cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (with whom Beatty had worked on his previous film, Ishtar , as producer and lead actor), visual effects supervisors Michael Lloyd and Harrison Ellenshaw , prosthetic makeup designers John Caglione Jr. and Doug Drexler , and costume designer Milena Canonero . Their main intention

14040-400: The film's theatrical debut, because the studio felt it had too many mature themes for a Disney-branded film. Although Al Pacino was Beatty's first choice for the role of Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice, Robert De Niro was under consideration. Michelle Pfeiffer , Kathleen Turner and Kim Basinger were too expensive to cast as Breathless Mahoney. Sharon Stone auditioned for the role, but she

14196-490: The film, which Paramount began developing as a lower-budget project, with Richard Benjamin directing. Cash and Epps continued to rewrite the script, but Universal was unsatisfied. The film rights eventually reverted to Tribune Media Services in 1985. However, Beatty decided to option the Dick Tracy rights for $ 3 million, along with the Cash/Epps script. When Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner moved from Paramount to

14352-459: The fine line separating true comedy from lesser camp ." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave a mixed review, but was impressed by Madonna's performance. " Dick Tracy is an honest effort but finally a bit of a folly. It could have used a little less color and a little more flesh and blood," Gleiberman concluded. In his heavily negative review for The Washington Post , Desson Thomson criticized Disney's hyped marketing campaign and

14508-804: The first woman to do so. As a director, Parsons has a number of Broadway credits, including a production of Romeo and Juliet , Macbeth and As You Like It in 1986. Off-Broadway, she directed Dario Fo 's Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo (1983). She served as the Artistic Director of the Actors Studio for five years, from 1998 to 2003. In 2016, she starred in Israel Horovitz 's new play Out Of The Mouths Of Babes along with Judith Ivey directed by Barnet Kellman at The Cherry Lane Theater in New York City. In 2004, Parsons

14664-528: The five Sondheim songs from Dick Tracy (the exception being "What Can You Lose?") were used in the 1999 Broadway production of Putting It Together . A short opera sequence in the film was composed by Thomas Pasatieri . Dick Tracy is the first film to use digital audio . In a December 1990 interview with The New York Times , Elfman criticized the growing tendency to use digital technology for sound design and dubbing purposes. "I detest contemporary scoring and dubbing in cinema. Film music as an art took

14820-414: The following films were voted the top ten best action films of all time. In Hong Kong, the "new school" of martial arts films that Shaw Brothers brought in 1965 featured what featured what Yip described as "strong, active female characters as protagonists." These female-centered films were challenged with the rise of a new male heroic prototype marked by a strong sense of youthful energy and defiance and by

14976-448: The formative trends at this point had become "identifiably generic" as film industries began to reproduced these films during the decade producers like Joel Silver and production companies like The Cannon Group, Inc. began to formulate production of these films with both high and low budgets. The action films of this era have roots in classical story telling, specifically rooted from martial arts films and Westerns, and are built around

15132-610: The formative, the classical, the post-classical and neoclassical phases. Yvonne Tasker reiterated this in her book on action and adventure films , saying that action films became a distinct genre during the New Hollywood period of the 1970s. The formative films would be from the 1960s to the early 1980s where the Anti-hero appears in cinema, featuring characters who act and transcend the law and social conventions. This appears initially in films like Bullitt (1968) where

15288-551: The former was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year in Japan. Following LoveDeath , Kitamura's next directing work was in the United States. The action cinema of South Korea mostly existed on the margins of the film industry in South Korea. The genre was initially called the Hwalkuk ("living theatre") was a term that indicated plays and films driven by action scenes, while this term has not been used regularly since

15444-528: The genre. David Bordwell in The Way Hollywood Tells It wrote that audiences are "told that spectacle overrides narrative" in action cinema while Wheeler Winston Dixon echoed that these films were typified by "excessive spectacle" as a "desperate attempt to mask the lack of content." Geoff King argued that the spectacle can also be a vehicle for narrative, opposed to interfering with it. Soberson stated that Harvey O'Brien had "perhaps

15600-430: The ground. While heroes in kung fu films often display chivalry, they generally hail from different fighting schools, namely wudang and shaolin . American martial arts films feature what author M. Ray Lott described as a more realistic style of violence over the Hong Kong wuxia films with more realism and are often low-budget productions. Martial arts began routinely appearing in fight scenes in American films in

15756-520: The late 1920s. These films were popular during the period, which comprised almost 60% of the total Chinese films. Man-Fung Yip stated that these film were "rather tame" by contemporary standards. He wrote that they lacked the kind of dazzling action choreography as expected today and had crude and rudimentary special effects. These films came under increasing attack by both government officials and cultural elites for their allegedly superstitious and anarchistic tendencies, leading them to be banned in 1932. It

15912-570: The late 1970s, with "action movie" becoming the more familiar term. The Korean action films came from Japanese cinema, James Bond series , and Hong Kong action cinema. As North Korea borders China, it block access to the continent from a South Korean perspective, the Cold War allowed South Koreans to substitute deferred travel beyond the border through films with locations shot in Hong Kong. While melodrama and comedy were staples in South Korean cinema, most action films were sporadic and tied to

16068-508: The late 1980s and early 1990s. In the Chinese language, the term used for these films is jinghungpin , literally meaning "hero films". Academic Laikwan Pang asserts that these gangster films appeared at a time when Hong Kong citizens felt particularly powerless with the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China set for 1997. The key directors of the genre were John Woo and Ringo Lam , and producer Tsui Hark , with

16224-513: The late 1980s and early 1990s. Author Bey Logan stated that the term was coined by Rick Baker, in the British fanzine Eastern Heroes . The term is used broadly. Baker described the style as Hong Kong action films which feature gangsters and gunplay and martial arts that were more violent than kung fu films and academic Kristof Van Den Troost described it a term used to distinguish Hong Kong gun-heavy action films from period martial arts films from

16380-431: The late 1980s in the United States were martial arts films. Towards the end of the 1990s, production of low-budget martial arts films declined as no new stars in the genre developed and older actors such as Cynthia Rothrock and Steven Seagal started showing up in less and less films. Even internationally popular films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) had negligible effects in American productions in either

16536-425: The most convincing understanding of the genre", stating that the action film was "best understood as a fusion of form and content. It represents the idea and ethic of action through a form in which action, agitation and movement are paramount." O'Brien wrote further in his book Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back to suggest action films being unique and not just a series of action sequences, stating that that

16692-624: The most notorious. Smith had previously released films like Deathcheaters (1976) and Stunt Rock (1979) when financial incentives were available for overtly commercial projects. She commented that action films did tell identifiably Australian stories such as the Sandy Harbutt 's biker film Stone (1974) and Miller's post-apocalyptic film Mad Max (1979) derived from Australia's social and cultural realities, as well as how George Miller 's later Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) derived from Australia's long-standing cinematic fascination with

16848-561: The most wins for a comic book or comic strip movie. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: Retrospective reviews called the film exceptionally unique. Writers for Vox and The Atlantic asserted that it was one of the most unique movies ever. Multiple authors contrast it with newer comic book movies . One article calls it a "road not taken" in comic book adaptations. The author praised Popeye , Dick Tracy and Hulk for their use of comic techniques, such as " masking , paneling , and page layout " in ways

17004-560: The movie, in lieu of buying tickets at the box office. According to Jornal do Brasil , more than 100 companies sold merchandise related to the film, with Macy's reporting 1.5 million t-shirts sold, and according to New York magazine, it was perhaps McDonald's largest promotion up to that point, backed by $ 40 million in cash and prizes. Dick Tracy had a benefit premiere at a small 300-seat theater in Woodstock, Illinois (the hometown of Tracy creator Chester Gould), June 13, 1990, while

17160-604: The notion that traditional marks of masculinity are not exclusive to men and that musculature was not natural, but something to be achieved. Accusations of these muscular women of the era were levelled at that them by 1993 were that they were "men in drag" and that the films generally have to "explain" why their female leads displayed physical aggression and why they were "driven to do it." As the 1990s went on, Hollywood films began having more conventional looking women in their action films such as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). A vibrant debate exists about whether hypersexualization

17316-449: The novelization, the book was released in May 1990, published by Bantam Books . It sold almost one million copies prior to the film's release. A graphic novel adaptation of the film was also released, written and illustrated by Kyle Baker . Reruns of The Dick Tracy Show began airing to coincide with the release of the film, but stations in Los Angeles and New York pulled and edited the episodes when Asian and Hispanic groups protested

17472-481: The orchestra. "In a completely different way," Elfman commented, " Dick Tracy has this unique quality that Batman had for me. It gives an incredible sense of non-reality." In addition, Beatty hired acclaimed songwriter Stephen Sondheim to write five original songs: " Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man) ", "More", "Live Alone and Like It", "Back in Business" and "What Can You Lose?". "Sooner or Later" and "More" were performed by Madonna, with "What Can You Lose?" being

17628-435: The physical effort required to completing a task and the abilities and skills acquired over time. Films from the period reflected on the cultural and social climate from the period, as seen in invoking Japanese or Western imperialist forces as foils. The kung fu film came out of the wuxia films. In comparison to the wuxia , film, the focus on the kung fu film is on the martial arts over chivalry, The martial arts films

17784-574: The popularity Bachan had. These films predominantly earned their revenue through longer runs at B-grade theatres. A cycle of action films came from these films in the 1980s and 1990s called the Avenging Woman film, where female protagonists seek justice for a rape victim, where the protagonist seeks revenge through violence. In 2009, the action genre was re-popularized with the box office success of Wanted (2009) starring Salman Khan . Khan reinvented his screen persona with that of his image in

17940-543: The postwar period. These films were targeted at the more educated and more refined middle-class audiences who saw themselves as above the contemporary martial arts films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that Hollywood action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that

18096-552: The production premiere occurred the next day at the Walt Disney World Village 's Pleasure Island in Lake Buena Vista, Florida . The film was released in the United States in 2,332 theaters June 15, 1990, earning $ 22.54 million in its opening weekend, including an estimated $ 1.5 million of t-shirt sales. This was the third-highest opening weekend of 1990, and Disney's biggest ever. The film would hold

18252-559: The property to Paramount Pictures , which began developing screenplays, offered Steven Spielberg the director's position, and brought in Universal Pictures to co-finance. Universal put John Landis forward as a candidate for director, courted Clint Eastwood for the title role, and commissioned Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. to write the screenplay. "Before we were brought on, there were several failed scripts at Universal," reflected Epps, "then it went dormant, but John Landis

18408-476: The reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." In the Journal of Film and Video , Lennart Soberson stated that the action film genre has been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1980s. Soberson wrote that repeated traits of the genre include chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work while other scholars asserted there were more underlying traits that define

18564-402: The reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." Tasker wrote that when action and adventure films secured awards, it is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Time Out magazine conducted a poll with fifty experts in the field of action cinema, including actors, critics, filmmakers and stuntmen. Out of the 101 films ranked in the poll,

18720-478: The record for having the largest opening weekend for a live-action Disney film for six years until 1996 when The Rock surpassed it. Dick Tracy eventually grossed $ 103.74 million in the United States and Canada, and $ 59 million elsewhere, coming to a worldwide total of $ 162.74 million. Dick Tracy was also the ninth-highest-grossing film in America in 1990, and number twelve in worldwide totals. Although Disney

18876-460: The ring before he and Dick Tracy, Jr., depart to respond to the robbery. Main characters Law enforcement The mob Others Estelle Parsons portrays Tess Trueheart's mother. Tony Epper plays Steve the Tramp. Hamilton Camp appears as a store owner, and Bing Russell plays a Club Ritz patron. Robert Costanzo has a cameo as Lips Manlis's bodyguard, and Marshall Bell briefly appears as

19032-417: The rise of anti-heroes appearing in American films of the late 1960s and 1970s drawing from war films , crime films and Westerns . These genres were followed by what is referred to as the "classical period" in the 1980s. This was followed by the post-classical era where American action films were influenced by Hong Kong action cinema and the growing using of computer generated imagery in film. Following

19188-441: The road and cars and a history of cultural anxiety towards a bleak and forbidding outback landscape opposed to the optimism of American action films. France is a major European country for film production and has made co-production commitments with 44 countries around the world. Around beginning of the 21st century, France began producing a series of films explicitly intended for international markets, with action films representing

19344-700: The role of Violet Weston in August: Osage County . She continued playing the role during the show's national tour beginning July 24, 2009, in Denver . In 1979, Parsons directed a production of Antony and Cleopatra at Interart Theatre in New York in which she incorporated some Spanish into the show, prompting Joseph Papp to invite her to direct at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now The Public Theatre ), and becoming

19500-404: The screenplay and characterization. The film was a success at the box office and with several award committees. It garnered seven Academy Award nominations, winning in three of the categories: Best Original Song , Best Makeup and Best Art Direction . Dick Tracy is remembered today for its visual style . In 1938, at an illegal card game, a 10-year-old street urchin witnesses the massacre of

19656-529: The serialization of Jinaghu qixia zhuan (1922) ( transl.  Legend of the Strange Swordsmen ). In wuxia , the emphasis is on chivalry and righteousness and allows for phantasmagoric actions over the kung fu film 's more ground-based combat. The Kung fu film emerged in the 1970s from the swordplay films. Its name is derived from the Cantonese term gong fu which has two meanings:

19812-485: The starting point of the genre being traced to Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) make a record-breaking HK$ 34.7 million at the Hong Kong box office. The style of these films would influence American productions, such as Michael Bay 's Bad Boys II (2003) and the Wachowskis ' The Matrix (1999). Korean media recognized the more fatalistic and pessimistic tone of these films, leading to Korean journalists to label

19968-480: The strip's limited color palette. Collins also enjoyed Beatty's performance, the prosthetic makeup, and characterization of the rogues gallery , as well as the Stephen Sondheim music. However, he believed the filmmakers still sacrificed the storyline in favor of the visual design. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards (winning three). The film is currently tied with Black Panther for having

20124-433: The style as "Hong Kong noir ". The influence of these films was evident in early Korean films such as Im Kwon-taek 's General's Son (1990) and later films such Song Hae-sung 's A Better Tomorrow (2010), Cold Eyes (2013) and New World (2013). Postcolonial Hong Kong cinema has struggled to maintain its international identity as a provider of these types action films because the talents involved had abandoned

20280-434: The term "genre" itself is often replaced or supplemented with the words "mode" and "narrative form" with all three terms often being used interchangeably. Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet said that the difference between these concepts are elusive, but stated that genre could be defined as belonging to specific historical and cultural moments while "mode" and "form" can refer to a larger pattern that operates across

20436-450: The term action film genre and adventure are often used in hybrid, and are even used interchangeably. Along with Holmund and Purse, Tasker wrote that the action films expansiveness complicates easy categorization and though the genre is often spoken of as singular genre, it is rarely discussed as singular style. Screenwriter and academic Jule Selbo expanded on this, describing a film as " crime /action" or an "action/crime" or other hybrids

20592-445: The themes that rescinded irony to restore " cinephile re-actualization of the genre's conventions." The genre went into full circle resurrecting films from the classical period with Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Rambo (2008) finding the characters navigating a contemporary world while also acknowledging their age, culminating into The Expendables (2010) film. The most commercially successful action films and franchise of

20748-529: The title character in China O'Brien (1990) who were physically muscular and or enacted more extreme violence that was usually reserve for male action leads. In her book Contemporary Action Cinema (2011), Lisa Purse described the media response to female leads in action films reveal a discomfort about their presence and are often described with hesitant terms of women moving into territories that are perceived as masculine. Revealing woman in this form deconstructs

20904-462: The title role. Pre-production had progressed as far as set building, but the film was stalled when artistic control issues arose with Beatty, a fan of the Dick Tracy comic strip. Hill wanted to make the film violent and realistic, while Beatty envisioned a stylized homage to the 1930s comic strip. The actor also reportedly wanted $ 5 million, plus fifteen percent of the box-office gross, a deal that Universal refused to accept. Hill and Beatty left

21060-539: The turn of the millennium, Australian genre films have gained increasing acceptance in the Australian feature film industry, while the action genre represented a small percentage of its output in the 21st century. Scholars of Australian genre film generally used the term "action-adventure" which allows them to apply it to various forms of narratives such as tongue in cheek heroic posturing stories like Crocodile Dundee (1986), road movies or bush/outback films. In

21216-422: The use of locations such as Hong Kong. These films often featured one-legged or otherwise handicapped action characters similar to those of Japanese films ( Zatoichi ) and Hong Kong films ( The One-Armed Swordsmen ). These included Im Kwon-taek's Returned Left-Handed Man (1968), Aekkunun Bak's One-Eyd Park (1970) and Lee Doo-yong's Returned One-Legged Man (1974). In the 1990s, the country's national cinema

21372-497: The warehouse. In the resulting gun battle, a stranger with no face called "The Blank" steps out of the shadows to save Tracy after he is cornered, and kills Pruneface. Influence escapes as Tracy rescues Bug from the fate that befell Lips Manlis, and Big Boy is outraged to hear that The Blank foiled the hit. Tracy again attempts to extract the testimony from Breathless that he needs to put Big Boy away. She agrees to testify only if Tracy agrees to give in to her advances. Tess eventually has

21528-475: The woman of exploitation films of the 1970s such as Caged Heat (1974) and Big Bad Mama (1974). While characters like Frank in The Transporter series are permitted to visibly sweat, strain and be bloodied, Purse found a reluctance for filmmakers to have their female leads have any appearance warping injuries to ensure a perfectly made-up face. Comedy is often used in films of this period to place

21684-448: Was "only a semantic exercise" as both genres are important in the construction phase of the narrative. Mark Bould in A Companion to Film Noir (2013) said that categorization of multiple generic genre labels was common in film reviews who are rarely concerned with succinct descriptions that evoke elements of the film's form, content and make no claims beyond on how these elements combine. Film Studies began to engage generic hybridity in

21840-408: Was a difficult market for Hong Kong action cinema to break into. Prompted by the success of Enter the Dragon and the popularity of Bruce Lee, Toei made their own Bruce Lee-style martial arts films, with The Street Fighter and its two sequels starring Sonny Chiba as well as a spin-off with a female lead similar to Hong Kong's Angela Mao called Sister Street Fighter . The success of Enter

21996-466: Was aiming for the foreign audience, as he was disappointed with the current state of Japanese films. Kitamura's characters have been described as "a careful combination of the maverick independence of 1980s Hollywood action heroes and the calmness and acceptance of Japanese samurai, a consistent criticism of Japanese people today." Kitamura followed up Versus with two manga-inspired big-budget action films, Azumi and Sky High . Both released in 2003,

22152-578: Was born in Lynn Hospital, Lynn, Massachusetts , the younger of two children born to Elinor Ingeborg ( née Mattsson), a native of Sweden, and Eben Parsons, who was of English descent. Estelle's older sister, Elaine Parsons Ruggles, was born in 1923 and died in 1996. She attended Oak Grove School for Girls in Maine . After graduating from Connecticut College in 1949, Parsons initially studied law at Boston University School of Law , and then worked as

22308-417: Was displayed in corresponding with corresponded with millennial angst and apocalypticism showcased in films like Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998). Action films of mass destruction began requiring more overtly super heroic characters with further comic book adaptations being made with increased non-realistic settings with films like The Matrix (1999). The fourth phase arrived following

22464-573: Was impressed by the opening weekend gross, studio management was expecting the film's total earnings to match Batman . Prior to its overseas release (and other revenue streams), the film was estimated to have generated a $ 57 million deficit for Disney. Studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg expressed disappointment in a studio memo that noted that Dick Tracy had cost about $ 100 million total to produce, market and promote. "We made demands on our time, talent and treasury that, upon reflection, may not have been worth it," Katzenberg reported. When released, it

22620-469: Was in decline by the mid-1970s in Hong Kong in relation to the stock market crash which went from over 150 films in 1972 to just over 80 in 1975, which led to a downfall in martial arts films produced. When the economy became to rebound, a new trend of martial arts films, the Shaolin kung fu films emerged and sparked a revival of the genre. Unlike the wuxia , the kung fu film primarily focuses on fighting on

22776-509: Was in decline leading to Hong Kong gangster films filled in this void leading to large commercial success at the national box office. Early Korean heirs to Hong Kong action films include Rules of The Game (1994), Beat (1997), and Green Fish (1997) involving men who gain confidence and achieve personal growth as they embark on journeys to protect national state and meet devastating ends. South Korean cinema only received international attention in both art film and blockbuster formats towards

22932-564: Was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame . Her film career includes an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and a nomination for Rachel, Rachel (1968). She received a BAFTA Award nomination for her role in Watermelon Man (1970), and appeared in I Never Sang for My Father (1970), Two People (1973), A Memory of Two Mondays (1974), For Pete's Sake (1974), Dick Tracy (1990) and Boys on

23088-459: Was interested in Dick Tracy , and he brought us in to write it." Cash and Epps' simple orders from Landis were to write the script in a 1930s pulp magazine atmosphere, and center it with Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice as the primary villain. For research, Epps read every Dick Tracy comic strip from 1930 to 1957. The writers wrote two drafts for Landis; Max Allan Collins , then-writer of the Dick Tracy comic strip, remembers reading one of them. "It

23244-440: Was laid; the train was a two-foot (60 cm) scale model , and the surrounding trainyard a matte painting. The film was one of the last major American studio blockbusters to have no computer-generated imagery . Caglione and Drexler were recommended for the prosthetic makeup designs by Canonero, with whom they had worked on The Cotton Club . The rogues gallery makeup designs were taken directly from Gould's drawings, with

23400-599: Was not until the base of Chinese commercial filmmaking was relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s that martial arts cinema was revived. These films contained much of the characteristics of the previous era. During this period, over 100 films were based on the adventures of real life Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung who first appeared in film in 1949. These films primarily on circuited within Hong Kong and Cantonese-speaking areas with Chinese diaspora . Yip continued that these Hong Kong films were still lagging behind in aesthetic and technical standards that films from

23556-504: Was only in the mid-20th century when action films developed into their own recognizable genre instead of being a collection of other types of films such as Westerns, swashbucklers or adventure films. Films have been described "action films" or "action-adventure film" as early as the 1910s. Only by the 1980s was the term action as its own unique genre used routinely in terms of promotion and reviewing practices. The first Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced to Shanghai cinema of

23712-546: Was only shown as being applicable to white middle-class women. Purse found that these women were empowered at the price of women of other ethnicities. This is seen in Aeon Flux (2005) where Sithandra dies protecting Aeon and Rain's death to make way for Alice in Resident Evil (2002). Estelle Parsons Estelle Parsons (born November 20, 1927) is an American actress. After studying law, Parsons became

23868-481: Was preceded by the Roger Rabbit short Roller Coaster Rabbit . On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , the film holds an approval rating of 62%, based on 58 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: " Dick Tracy is stylish, unique, and an undeniable technical triumph, but it ultimately struggles to rise above its two-dimensional artificiality." On Metacritic ,

24024-598: Was terrible. The only positive thing about it was a thirties setting and lots of great villains, but the story was paper-thin and it was uncomfortably campy ." In addition to Beatty and Eastwood, other actors considered for the lead role included Harrison Ford , Richard Gere , Tom Selleck and Mel Gibson . Landis left Dick Tracy following the controversial on-set accident on Twilight Zone: The Movie , in which three actors were killed. Walter Hill came on board to direct, with Joel Silver as producer. Cash and Epps wrote another draft, and Hill approached Warren Beatty for

24180-540: Was to stay close to Chester Gould 's original drawings from the 1930s. Other influences came from the Art Deco movement and German Expressionism . For Storaro, the limited color palette was the most challenging aspect of production. "These are not the kind of colors the audience is used to seeing," he noted. "These are much more dramatic in strength, in saturation. Comic strip art is usually done with very simple and primitive ideas and emotions," Storaro theorized. "One of

24336-457: Was turned down. Madonna pursued the part of Breathless Mahoney, offering to work for scale. Her resulting paycheck for the film was just $ 35,000. Sean Young claims she was forced out of the role of Tess Trueheart (which eventually went to Glenne Headly ) after rebuffing sexual advances from Beatty. In a 1989 statement, Beatty said, "I made a mistake casting Sean Young in the part and I felt very badly about it." Mike Mazurki , who had appeared in

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