MINH TRI JOHNNY NGUYEN - Nguyen left Vietnam at age 9 and became one of those kids who loved the heyday of Hong Kong action cinema while making short home movies mimicking onscreen talents that would later inspire him to pursue that dream. He's trained in traditional kung fu styles, Japanese Aikido, Wu Shu and Tai Chi
TONY CHING SIU-TUNG - Thanks to his longtime partnership with Hong Kong action director Tony Ching Siu-Tung, Zhang Yimou's films often showcase jaw-dropping airborne stunt choreography. Using a combination of kung fu and wire work, known as "wire fu," in 2003's "Hero," actors sailed over Chinese landscapes in fluttering robes; in 2004's "House of Flying Daggers," police and military threw mid-air punches and kicks high above open fields and bamboo groves. Until now (this film), a typical scene using wire fu included a maximum of 10 to
15 martial artists dangling from wires hoisted on cranes up to 70 feet off the ground. But for a fight scene in "Curse," featuring masked swordsmen battling an escaping family on horses in a narrow, remote valley in the Szechwan province, Yimou and Siu-Tung doubled prior wire-fu records, hoisting 30 martial artists on wires more than 600 feet long.