Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow

Just call it Kung Fu Monday here, and if there's a better way to start off the week, I haven't found it.

I had not previously heard that Jet Li and Jackie Chan were teaming up for a flick, but Aint It Cool this morning had some details about what sounds like a crazy enough project it just might work.

Tentatively titled "The Handsome Monkey King" (though surely that silly title will change), it will be directed by American director Rob Minkoff, who directed the two "Stuart Little" movies and some other even lesser works. An odd choice to be sure, but this does appear to be a kids movie, so we'll see what comes of it.

According to Chinese newspaper The Beijing News, the story is inspired by both the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West" and Chinese folk legends about the Eight Immortals.

The story begins with Monkey King (Jet Li, apparently) pillaging the heaven and being imprisoned by Jade Emperor, lord of the heaven. Thousands of years later, in present-day New York, a rather scrawny teen boy who is obsessed with Hong Kong kung fu movies walks into a pawnshop, where he discovers a cudgel.

The shopkeeper warns him that the cudgel contains magic power and no one shall touch it, but he of course does anyway and is immediately transported through time to ancient China. The cudgel is in fact the personal weapon of Monkey King, and only Monkey King can help him to get back.

Thus our young hero sets out fo find the imprisoned Monkey King and, with help from Lan Caihe (Jackie Chan), one of the Eight Immortals, free him from captivity. Monkey King decides to accompany Tripitaka (the Tang Monk) for a journey to the west and before departing, he sends the boy back home. After the adventure, the boy has become a real fighter and has learned the true meaning of kung fu.

Whew! Sorry for the long plot summary, but I wanted to share with you what, at least to me, sounds like tons of fun.

Jet Li has another movie coming up that also looks promising, though just as silly.

In what's described as his last martial arts epic, Li plays real-life martial arts legend Huo Yuanjia in "Fearless," which surely must be coming to a multiplex near you and me soon. It sounds like a Van Damme movie with an epic Chinese backdrop, with Jet fighting the world's greatest combatants in a tournament to somehow defend the honor of his country. In my mind, I'm already there.

Stephen Chow goes sci fi?

Few movies in recent years have managed to make me both laugh and smile as much of Stephen Chow's "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung Fu Hustle," so I'll follow him just about anywhere. Even to this rather odd destination.

In a recent press conference, Chow let fly that he has delayed work on a KFH sequel to make a sci fi movie tentatively titled "Long River 7." Details are extremely sketchy, but it seems the title refers to a satellite, and the movie will involve an alien and a dinosaur.

Stephen Chow vs. a T-Rex? I say bring it on, no matter how strange it turns out to be.