Jackie Chan plays a simple soldier who forages through the calamity of the Warring States period in search of a way back to his farm. We’re joined by novelist, journalist, author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, co-founder of New York’s Asian Film Festival, and Jackie Chan super fan Grady Hendrix, as well as scholar and translator of Warring States texts Jennifer Dodgson for this week’s episode on 2010’s Little Big Soldier.

Jackie Chan plays a spy who has no trouble overthrowing dictators, but struggles with suburban children. We’re joined by director Brian Levant and Oscar-nominated composer David Newman to discuss their work on 2010’s The Spy Next Door.

We’re joined by Street Fighter star Kenya Sawada, who walks us through his cinematic rematch with Jackie Chan as Nakajima in Shinjuku Incident, as well as returning guest journalist Lauren Teixeira who helps us break down Jackie’s model immigrant-turned-yakuza boss story in 2009’s Shinjuku Incident.

We kick off The Jackie Chan: Post-Rush Hour 3 season with 2008’s The Forbidden Kingdom. To start, we have former Jackie Chan stunt team member Allen Keng, followed by a discussion of the religious and historical iconography in the movie with ‪returning guest and Assistant Professor at Brown University’s Department of Religious Studies, Larson DiFiori. Finally, we talk with one of the movie’s bad guys (who almost takes out Jackie’s Miyagi-in-Southie character) Morgan Benoit. ‬

Uproar in the Studio Season 2: Jackie Chan Post-Rush Hour 3.

On the season finale, we talk with Carl Zha, host of the podcast Silk and Steel, about the joys and wonders of Wolf Warrior 2. Then, we have two interviews that probably constitute the most comprehensive source in English on the making of the film. First, we talk about the making of the film’s score with composer, Joseph Trapanese, whose work has previously appeared in Tron: Legacy, Oblivion, and The Greatest Showman. After, we talk with action director Sam Hargrave, whose stunt coordinating can also be seen in the Avengers films and Atomic Blonde, about working with Wu Jing and flipping a tank.

First, we talk about the state of Chinese Sci-fi before Wandering Earth with writer Anna Wu, whose work has appeared in English translation in the Chinese sci-fi anthology Broken Stars. Then, Lauren Teixeira, a Chengdu based journalist whose work has appeared in Vice, Foreign Policy and the Economist, joins our conversation about the variety of Wandering Earth viewing experiences. Finally, we’re joined by Mike Sui, one of the stars of The Wandering Earth. He told us more than we ever imagined there was to know about the mechanics of celebrity in China and about the massive machine that director Frant Gwo mobilized to get the movie made.

We talk about Operation Red Sea and learn about China’s foreign policy in the Middle East from James Dorsey, senior fellow at Singapore’s Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Middle East Institute.

We talk about Detective Chinatown 2 with our first returning guest, poet Yi Wu, and speak with Larson Di Fiori, a visiting assistant professor in the religious studies department at Brown University, about the philosophical, religious, and folk traditions that play into the plot of the film.

We talk about Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid and interview Bill Borden, a producer on The Mermaid, and a long time Chow collaborator, going back to their work on Kung Fu Hustle. He’s also the producer of the High School Musical series.