Hong Kong Cinema

[Cold Bishop]

Let's not forget that Sammo Hung was instrumental, as producer, in bringing us the awesome low-key, neon-noirish Heroic Bloodshed film, On the Run. It's too bad he didn't continue that level of quality, as his career in the early 90s is one of the most baffling, steep declines this side of Buster Keaton at MGM.

[YnEoS]

Is it really so baffling? Maybe I haven't seen enough of his 90s output to properly judge, but it seems like he probably just didn't transition into the new style of action films post Swordsman as well as some of the other big names. Seems like his career as an action choreographer as well as an actor seemed to stay pretty strong.

[YnEoS]

My favorite Sammo films are his two Wing Chun films in Warriors Two and Prodigal Son. I saw some extras of Once Upon a Time in China and America (1997) last night and in my opinion that is one of his weaker films. Random info: Billy from that film (Jeff Wolfe) is the guy who gets his head stomped in Drive.

Haven't seen Warriors Two or Prodigal Son in a long time, but I remember them being great. Probably time to re-visit them.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

Is it really so baffling? Maybe I haven't seen enough of his 90s output to properly judge, but it seems like he probably just didn't transition into the new style of action films post Swordsman as well as some of the other big names. Seems like his career as an action choreographer as well as an actor seemed to stay pretty strong.

Other things to think about during the 90s for Sammo: his marriage and divorce and marriage again. His split with Golden Harvest. The negative reaction on Pantyhose Hero (I still need to see this). The second season of Martial Law -- I would love to see this on DVD (I think I still have a few episodes taped).

It was a tough decade for him and certainly one marked by a decrease in quality. I actually like Mr. Nice Guy though I don't compare it to his golden era in the 1980s.

[YnEoS]

Since the discussion on HK films isn't too big here, I thought I'd bring up the current state of Hong Kong movies on DVD in here rather than create a separate thread in the DVD forums.

Just curious what are everyone's thoughts on the state of the availability of HK films on DVD right now is. What are some of your favorite releases, or titles without a good release that are highest on your wanted list?

Obviously with HK films we're quite fortunate that most HK DVDs have English subtitles so there are a huge number of films available, even if special features are sometimes rather thin. I'm sure as most of you know, while it seems tons of HK films have had DVD releases at one point or another, a lot have gone out of print. Of course Blu-Ray is causing a lot of them to get re-issued which is always great, a good recent example is I believe most of the Hui Brothers films getting put out on Blu. Anyone know how strong Blu-Ray is doing in Hong Kong and we're likely to see more obscure titles start getting the BR treatment soon?

As for US release of HK Films it seems with Bey Logan leaving Dragon Dynasty, they've just resulted to pushing out bare bones but subtitled and restored versions of films at a quicker rate. I've also a bunch of other DVD labels have started releasing the new restorations with subs like Funimation Hong Kong Connection DVDs or the Sword Masters Collection from Well Go USA.

I find these particularly intriguing because they seem to be releasing some lesser known but still great titles. For example stuff like Opium and the Kung Fu Master and Bastard Swordsman. Haven't checked out a lot of these films partially because I'm used to mistrusting US DVDs of Hong Kong films from years of generic English dubbed stuff thrown together in big movie packs. They can also be particularly useful when Hong Kong DVDs are out of print, such as the Dragon Dynasty release of Killer Clans which I'd been wanting for quite some time. Wondering if anyone else knows anything about some of these other titles and if they're worth getting.

I don't know too much about the UK end of the spectrum, but I know that Cine-Asia has been putting back into print a lot of the old Hong Kong Legends DVDs, which is pretty wonderful since they usually have lots of supplements. I had thought their original plan was to put them all back into print, but so far it seems they've done nothing put out sellable titles with big names attached to them like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. I still have high hopes they'll work their way over to the rest of the catalog.

[Cold Bishop]

The whole Dragon Dynasty, Well Go, Funimation and Image released glut of Shaw Bros. is definitely a treasure trove in getting these films out there, but the releases can definitely be problematic: the HK masters, in many cases, were awful PAL-to-NTSC conversions (unfortunately, still pretty standard for DVDs from the region) and that did them in. With that said, Funimation, at least, after the first batch of titles, started requesting new masters, and many of their releases are Progressive.

Likewise, in many cases, the US companies threw out the awful "remastered" soundtracks for the original stereo/mono. As such, lot of the R1 titles are definitely superior to their Celestial/IVL counterparts.

I'm still surprised at which titles make it vs. those that don't. How a Chang Cheh oddity like Heaven and Hell, whose audience will ultimately be very limited, makes it to R1 DVD, while one of his most well-known and beloved classics like Vengeance! doesn't, is staggering.

Of course, once you step away from Shaw Bros. and fairly recent films, catalog titles become very tricky.

[feihong]

On the Shaw Bros front, there are some general rules for finding better releases. The discs released by Image are generally just the PAL-to-NTSC conversions Cold Bishop was talking about. They are really not fun discs to watch. The Dragon Dynasty Shaw releases were much better...on DVD. The classic title they released on blu-ray--The 36th Chamber of Shaolin--was a debacle. It looked weak and murky. It was a real shame, because their dvd of the same title had been very well-done.

IVL, the company that released the Shaw Bros films in Hong Kong, started out very poorly, but their later releases were of far better quality. I remember pictures like The Angry Guest, Four Riders and An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty appearing in pretty good quality. Those discs are all region-locked to region 3, to my knowledge.

Many of the Image titles, including favorites of mine such as Have Sword, Will Travel, have been available in Germany through a company called MB. They are mostly progressive discs, and most of them have English subtitles. My copy of Have Sword Will Travel and my copy of Vengeance come from Germany. These are the best-looking discs of the films I know of.

Funimation does well with their titles, and Media Blasters did pretty great with a smaller batch. Their Heroes Two and Deadly Duo are on blu-ray. Their Challenge of the Masters and Martial Club on dvd look great. The tragedy with Media Blasters (and for fans of kung fu films in general) is the loss of their expert advisor, Bobby "Linn" Hayes, immediately after the release of their first Shaw Bros dvd. Hayes was an exceptionally friendly and insightful commentator on their first disc, and he had an encyclopedic knowledge of 70s martial arts pictures. He helped Media Blasters put together a library of Shaw films when it looked at first as if the Weinstein company had taken the cream of the crop for themselves. The Media Blasters discs were very high quality picture-wise.

Well Go is less impressive. Most of their titles look interlaced, even on blu-ray, and they've failed to release a lot of promised titles, including Mighty Peking Man.

If Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan is your bag, Siren Visual in Australia issued a lovely, progressive disc--though it does have a flaw somewhere near the end, where one has to fast-forward, I believe, to skip over a little bump.

Nearly all of the Celestial discs have problems for audiophiles, as it appears Celestial added a lot of "ambient" sound to the movies, like tweeting birds and things for exterior scenes. Having come to these films for the first time on dvd, this wasn't really a deal-breaker for me, but many, many fans go nuts over this particular problem, and I'm sure they are justified in complaining.

In terms of the release schedule, the films that suffer most from poor quality are the Chor Yuen adaptations of Gu Long novels, including the classic pictures like The Magic Blade, Clans of Intrigue and the Sentimental Swordsman. These movies were released early on at Celestial, and purchased by the Weinsteins, and released through Image. They're beautiful movies (the Magic Blade even had a 35mm print struck, I believe), but the interlacing really lessens the impact of these pictures. Killer Clans, one of Celestial's initial releases, got a re-done treatment by Dragon Dynasty, and it looks pretty awesome on that disc. I still have the original Celestial, though, because Bey Logan did a fun audio commentary on it. Early Dragon Dynasty discs had some strange subtitle translations, if I remember right. Come Drink With Me had some weird translations going on; I haven't watched it in a couple years now, but I remember the translations were wonky enough to be pretty disturbing.

As to Vengeance not being released, I kind of remember it being a question of who got the release rights. There was also a feeling when the films were first arriving on IVL that Chang Cheh's stuff was turning out to be kind of square and dull, especially in the light of discovering Chor Yuen to be a kind of "Hong Kong Mario Bava." I remember articles and capsule reviews back at the time praising Chor as an important find and saying that the Chang Cheh pictures were disappointing. I think that most people have readjusted their appraisal as more films were released. As more Chor Yuen pictures were available, the repetitive generic limits of his subgenre became clear (as if Mario Bava had decided to direct interminable remakes of Black Sunday throughout his career, eventually adding color and changing the color scheme each time), whereas the breadth and range of Chang Cheh pictures became clearer at the same time.


DVD in Hong Kong was poor but copious in the beginning, but companies like Mei Ah went back once people started buying flat-screen TVs and did HD transfers of many of their great films, and then re-released them on DVD in superior versions. Films as diverse as Green Snake, Victim and Angel got rereleased in rather nice anamorphic widescreen. Still, for years many great classics remained in inexplicable limbo, with either no release or discs so bad they prevented viewing the picture. Tsui Hark's The Blade has never been released on dvd in Hong Kong, nor has his Shanghai Blues. Both came out eventually without English subtitles, The Blade in France from HK Video and Shanghai Blues in Japan, and non-anamorphic. Virtually all of the low-budget HK titles from the 90s had no dvd release at all, and crazy pictures like Dreaming the Reality and Powerful Four had no chance. Johnnie To's The Mission was released twice by Mei Ah, and both discs are contender for worst dvd of all time, ever, anywhere. They are entirely unwatchable. TF1 released a very watchable disc of The Mission in France, but the disc had no English subtitles.

One of the bigger tragedies is the fate of classic films of the 60s and 70s that came from companies besides Shaw Bros. Cathay had a short-lived dvd run, but their releases were far inferior in quality to IVL's Shaw discs, and later discs had no English subtitles. The Cathay discs were often cropped, as well. Classics that toured with the Shaw Bros travelling retrospective, including Escort Over Tiger Hills and From the Highway never appeared on dvd. From my own point of view the saddest of all is the fate of King Hu's films. Only a tiny few are available in any acceptable quality. Raining in the Mountain has an excellent French dvd, with English subtitles, and has faired the best of the bunch, along with Come Drink With Me and Sons and Daughters of the Good Earth. Dragon Gate Inn has a non-anamorphic disc from Japan, which has no English subtitles. There are German releases of The Fate of Lee Khan, A Touch of Zen and The Valiant Ones. Fate of Lee Khan fares the best, with an anamorphic transfer--and while the image has vivid color, it looks a little soft. Still, it looked exciting, and it made The Valiant Ones an even bigger disappointment--a washed-out transfer, cropped in a bit much, and generally ugly to look at. There are multiple releases of A Touch of Zen, and each disk has awful problems. Optimum released a strange disc of TOZ--their first dvd, I believe--and it was contrast-boosted to nearly unwatchable proportions. But it did illuminate action in the night-time scenes that is not clear in the extant film prints. When I saw the film at a screening at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the UCLA programmer mentioned the film badly needed restoration. Most of the King Hu films need restoration, but because of the thorny morass of ownership complications it's not likely the King Hu films will receive any restoration anytime soon.

Blu-ray has for the most part been a disaster in Hong Kong. The majority of archival films released are given copious noise-reduction. Kam & Ronson, which has been releasing the Fortune Star catalog on Blu-ray in Hong Kong, has been generally extreme in this regard, though odd releases here and there seem to be without excessive DNR, such as Peking Opera Blues. Once Upon a Time in China, however, is a total failure on Blu-ray. You can see some shots on DVDBeaver, but their screencaps don't manage to capture how awful the film looks in motion. Mei Ah started in on blu-ray, and released a beautiful transfer of PTU (only marred by Mei Ah's own logo appearing in the corner every 20 minutes or so), but they appear to have tanked. Universe has highly variable blu-ray quality, and they seem to be mostly releasing contemporary movies.

Johnnie To, one of the few directors in Hong Kong today making absorbing, auteurist-style pictures, has had better representation than most on blu-ray, but even his recent films have been released in subpar quality. Vengeance and Mad Detective have good releases in the UK (I have resolved to put up with the weird, after-the-fact changes To and Wai Ka-Fai made to the international edition of Mad Detective, which are represented on the MOC blu-ray--the Mei Ah blu is of inferior quality, but it does retain the footage and coloration from the original Hong Kong cut) and inferior releases in Hong Kong (Mad Detective is cropped on the HK disc, and Vengeance has lots of uncomfortable DNR). The discs of the Election films are decent, but still surprisingly soft and full of scratches for a pair of recent, very popular films. The Hong Kong blu-ray of Sparrow is a pretty soft and Breaking News has lots of DNR. Exiled is a good, sharp disc. Life Without Principle good to me a lot of the time, but parts of the film look like they suffer from the excess DNR that has become symptomatic of Hong Kong blu-rays in general. I think on the whole Hong Kong film has really been unprepared for the world of Hi-definition. Few films have existing HD transfers, and those that do are mostly in 2k rather than 4k. My own experience with fans of HK cinema in the Chinese-speaking world is that the technical merits of a movie matter very little, as long as the disc fits the screen they have at home. The Hi-def transfers Mei Ah did for their later dvds were to meet customer demand--people were sick of trying to play their non-anamorphic Mei Ah discs on widescreen equipment. But picture quality itself wasn't really an issue of consumer concern in Hong Kong or Taiwan, and fidelity to film source isn't very important a concern in those markets, either. Thus, excessive DNR--not present on the initial blu-rays coming out of Hong Kong--has become the norm.

So the picture in Hong Kong looks fairly bleak for home viewers, I would say. For most of the Fortune Star films in my collection, I've been sticking with my dvds rather than upgrading--many of the titles look almost comparable in either format, and the upgrade doesn't seem merited (not that Fortune Star's dvds were so perfect or free of their own controversies). With the slight fever for HK films burning off in the US, it doesn't seem as if many American companies plan on taking chances on HK features any time soon. Criterion and Kino have their Wong Kar-wai pictures, but the main exponents of quality HK releases in the US--Media Blasters and Dragon Dynasty--have basically folded up shop. Honestly, quality was terrible, but I could see so many Hong Kong movies in the VHS era--and many of those films haven't made the leap to better formats. I can't see a beautiful blu-ray of The Blade or The Fate of Lee Khan coming any time in the near future, with English subtitles and minus excessive DNR.

Still, if I were to list the prizes of my HK film collection, I might list these:

Kino's Happy Together Blu-ray -- it has a very intense, filmic look that actually comes off far better than the film did when I saw it at a revival house a couple of years ago.

Deltamac's Seven Swords Blu-ray -- transferred from the digital intermediary, this is maybe the crispest, sharpest image of any Hong Kong film I have. The movie itself is also one I love, and that I feel was done an extreme critical disservice when it came out (Tsui Hark's The Blade was also raked over the coals back in '95, and now the same people that hated it then call it a classic, so whatever).

Optimum's Vengeance Blu-ray -- with far more moderate DNR than the HK release, this disc looks filmic and fairly crisp-important qualities for a movie that takes place in torrential rainstorms and moonlit thickets. The movie is Johnnie To's inspired sequel to Melville's Le Samourai, with an aging hit man named Costello struggling to recall and reconstruct his salad days of cinema glory; though most people who had got on board with The Longest Nite or Election felt that Vengeance was one too many triad pictures for To. I watch it all the time and never get tired of it.

FSF's Raining in the Mountain and WSF's The Fate of Lee Khan DVDs -- King Hu's best films, as far as I'm concerned. Both manage to play games both mirthful and serious, staged with profuse visual invention. The Fate of Lee Khan's bifurcated plot demonstrates how willing the director was to play games with his narrative as well. Both of these editions preserve the films in their original aspect ratio, and restore to them the brilliant color that makes King Hu's films roar so explosively.

Media Blasters' Martial Club DVD -- I think Lau Kar-leung gets dismissed a bit as a director, but to me he was the most fluent auteur at Shaw Bros., with his own set of intensely-felt, abiding themes. Lau is primarily interested in family ties, and how the ties can be tangled, twisted and cinched by Kung Fu. Other, darker themes appear in pictures like Mad Monkey Kung Fu and Eight-Diagram Pole Fighter, but the complex pressure and support of a family is the theme Lau attacks with an earthy zest and humor, and without resorting to melodrama. In Martial Club it is a delight to see Wong Fei Hong mature into seriousness without losing his energetic spirit. he fights against the restrictions of his family and ultimately masters and subdues his own brash ignorance. The same theme is explored in the 36th Chamber films, and equally well-wrought, but because those films have come before, it's as if Lau feels he can leap over the expository aspects of Wong Fei Hong's education and show him in conflict with the people around him. The duel in the alley at the end of this picture is still mind-boggling, even after I've seen in so many times. I wish this one had made it onto blu-ray.

Mei Ah's It's Now Or Never VCD -- This movie was never well-known or very successful with an English-language audience, but it's extremely funny--a kind of John Waters comedy about Hong Kong Teddy Girls and gigolos trying to get rich by judicious marriage. It starred Cheung Man, Ng Man-Tat and Cynthia Khan (doing an over-the-top parody of herself, always threatening people with her "deadly eagle-claw" and getting beaten up every time), and it had a lush, stylized and colorful look reminiscent of Almodavar. Full of crackling, tough talk and 60s-era gang rumbles, the picture has an uncommonly bawdy view of sex for a Hong Kong picture. Rather than being coy, its favored tone is overheated. Because of the film company's financial problems, none of its films saw dvd release, and It's Now or Never was one of the great losses in that deal. It was released on VHS and on VCD, and the VCD contains a somewhat different cut of the film, with additional scenes of the Teddy Girls man-chasing and a slightly different scene order.

Some honorable mentions might go to the TF1 dvd of The Mission, Fortune Star's release of Center Stage, An Autumn's Tale, Final Victory, Bullet in the Head (branching for the director's cut vs. the theatrical cut) and their acceptable but much-appreciated dvd of School on Fire. I have a good dvd of The Bride With White Hair from HK Video, and a lovely dvd of The Blade from them as well. IVL gets a hand for releasing The Angry Guest. They didn't do it as well as they could, perhaps; but the quality is okay, and I loved discovering that crazy, crazy movie. That and discovering the work of Sun Chung makes me respect IVL, even though they didn't ever really strive to do too great a job with the Shaw Bros collection.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Tsui Hark's The Blade has never been released on dvd in Hong Kong, nor has his Shanghai Blues. Both came out eventually without English subtitles, The Blade in France from HK Video and Shanghai Blues in Japan, and non-anamorphic.

HK Video did Shanghai Blues as well. Anamorphic, roughly the same PQ as their Blade disc (despite the age difference), no English subs, nice-looking booklet, a 30-minute interview with Tsui (in English) and a documentary on his career (in French). The French subs can't be turned off with Cantonese audio selected, unless your player overrides such restrictions or you do some minor re-authoring.

[feihong]

Oh, I've seen that! I totally forgot that had happened. It took me forever to finally see Shanghai Blues, so it's a very recent discovery for me. It really clarified a great deal about Tsui Hark and that whole era of HK filmmaking, though. And it became one of my favorite of his movies.

I always wondered if The Blade was supposed to look like it did on the HK Video disc? I never saw it theatrically. The VHS tapes that were my first experience made the image look much sharper, with more vivid blocks of color--though those tapes were horrendously bad quality. But the HK Video version makes the film look like it was shot in a kind of soft-focus, a little like most of Peking Opera Blues and Shanghai Blues. Is that the way The Blade looked in a theater? It seems like such a harsh movie, so verite-oriented that it doesn't really seem like the soft focus would be a shrewd move. It doesn't distract from the film per se, but it looks like a good deal of the HK Video discs I've seen look, and I wonder if that's the way the film is really meant to look. I do remember seeing some minor soft-focus effect in HK movies I have seen theatrically, like Fallen Angels, Hard Boiled, Pedicab Driver, Sex and Zen 2 and The Longest Nite. I guess it just might be something with the equipment HK cinematographers favor? I first became aware of it with The Blade when I saw the HK Video disc. Before that I thought the movie was shot in a very harsh, raw way through and through.


Besides the difficulty obtaining quality hi-definition masters of HK films, a problem that has stymied their release in the U.S. in recent years is Gore Verbinski's remake of The Ring. Following the success of that movie, every damn Asian movie got optioned by some Hollywood company, and prices for the films went through the roof. I used to work with a non-profit that screened HK films, and we had trouble affording the screening rights after the U.S. version of The Ring was a hit. The companies in Hong Kong, who had been fairly solicitous before and who had been willing to strike great bargains for their archival product, suddenly raised the prices and refused screenings in order to up the potential remake value of their films. Even esoterica like The Mission got optioned (for a while Robert De Niro seemed interested in remaking The Mission--too bad he was never interested in distributing the original!), and it became very hard to get the kind of financial deal that would enable you to reach the domestic niche market that was even interested in this kind of film. So in a way, the infiltration of Hong Kong films into the U.S. on home video was hamstrung by the backhanded success of the films as remake fodder. That craze has been dying away, but I would be surprised if prices for distribution rights had gone down to previous levels. I remember when DVD was making a big splash here initially, I walked into a video mastering place in my home town and saw the guys there reviewing dvd transfers of Beauty Investigator and Kickboxer's Tears. Nowadays even these kind of movies appear beyond the reach of most niche dvd companies who might have an interest in them.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

Shaw Brothers

All the IVL Shaws are R3/NTSC. Unfortunately many are OOP.

I own all of the R1 Shaw Brothers DVD releases and have seen all but one. If you are interested I have a list here of all of them.

While the Image releases are overall mediocre and suffer from PAL to NTSC, the worst two releases were from Funimation in The 14 Amazons and Shaolin Hand Lock, though Funimation got much better after those. Tokyo Shock put out The Master as non-anamorphic. Also there were glitches (weird pauses, skipping of scenes, pixalization) with The Brave Archer (and some after) that delayed a lot of the releases.

The Bey Logan Dragon Dynasty Come Drink With Me commentary is actually the second one he has done for the film. Most importantly he is joined by Cheng Pei Pei. The interviews and extras on the earlier Dragon Dynasty releases are quite a plus.

I believe here are all the R1 Shaw Brothers commentaries:

Heroes Two (TS1): Linn Haynes
The Brave Archer (TS5): Brian Camp
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (DD11): RZA of Wu-Tang Clan and film critic Andy Klein
King Boxer (DD12): Quentin Taratino and film scholars David Chute and Elvis Mitchell
The One-Armed Swordsman (DD13): film scholars David Chute and Andy Klein. Notes
My Young Auntie (DD14): film critics Andy Klein and Elvis Mitchell
Come Drink With Me (DD27): Cheng Pei Pei and Bey Logan. Notes
Heroes Of The East (DD28): Bey Logan
The 5 Deadly Venoms (DD38): Bey Logan

--------------------

feihong: I think it depends on where you are if you think Lau Kar-leung gets dismissed. He is considered almost a deity on kungfucinema.com. I am certainly a fan of his (well except for his codirected Breakout from Oppression where he was doing a quickie and Drunken Master III).

[Cold Bishop]

Yeah, in general, Lau Kar-Leung seems to incredibly popular. 36th Chamber of the Shaolin is probably the most revered kung-fu film not starring Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan.

[feihong]

But is Lau revered at these sites for his themes? For the content of his films? It seems to me most people I hear talking of it consider Lau a great choreographer but a lightweight director compared to Chang Cheh. I don't often hear people praising Lau for his thematic originality; but I'm not a member of kungfucinema.com.


Bey and Cheng Pei Pei's commentary on the Dragon Dynasty dvd is considerably more professional than the commentary they did on the IVL disc, but they are a little more open and interesting on the IVL disc. Cheng Pei Pei in particular shares a lot of stories on the IVL disc that she edits or curtails on the DD disc. But the commentary on the IVL disc is not leveled well, and Cheng's daughter Marsha sits in on the commentary, and is closest to the microphone. Whenever she laughs at anything the soundtrack leaps to heady decibel levels, but when you turn it down you can't hear Cheng or Bey. Both commentaries are pretty interesting, though.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

But is Lau revered at these sites for his themes? For the content of his films? It seems to me most people I hear talking of it consider Lau a great choreographer but a lightweight director compared to Chang Cheh. I don't often hear people praising Lau for his thematic originality; but I'm not a member of kungfucinema.com.
...

kungfucinema is one of the most popular martial art film websites and so I peruse that site quite often. Since some practice MA, their opinion on Lau Kar-leung sometimes delves to "authenticity" of the fighting styles, but thematic elements are certainly not missing there as well as. I like the site quite a bit, but sometimes you do have to go through quite a bit to find what you are looking for.

I like this comment from David Bordwell on Lau: "...in film after film, that revenge
debases the martial arts and that perfecting one’s skill while extinguishing worldly vanity is the
mark of the master."

Just curious what are everyone's thoughts on the state of the availability of HK films on DVD right now is. What are some of your favorite releases, or titles without a good release that are highest on your wanted list?

on R1: It's good if it is a newer Mainland co-productions but bad for older releases. Its great that the Ip Man films came out on R1, and some of the Johnnie To produced and directed movies like Life Without Principle and Punished (both Indomnia). But you do get an occasional Blade of Kings from Well Go, though I'm happy they put out Shaolin.

I have so many DVDs that I'm glad to have. I love my IVL/Fortune Star box set of Aces Go Places. The Fortune Star releases of the Hui Brothers films. The Tartan Asian Extreme releases of Election and Triad Election, the Rarescope release of Drunken Dragon. Every Criterion HK release (and Taiwanese ), unfortunately this is not many. The MOC release of Mad Detective. Hell, I love my Mei Ah release of The Odd One Dies.

[YnEoS]

A belated thanks to everyone who contributed information about DVD releases, very informative and helpful.

I recently watched Five Super Fighters directed by Lo Mar and choreographed by Hsu Hsia. Been trying to look for a while to dig up some masterpieces by lesser known directors, and this is definitely one of them. Not sure how well known they are here, but I've found very little information on them thus far. For anyone not too familiar with them, they've gotten a small following for using lesser known actors and stringing together tons of incredibly well choreographed fight scenes over a simple plot.

The fights were wonderful as I'd heard. And despite most reviews I've read dismissing the plot as fairly irrelevant to their films, I found it fairly refreshing to see a lot of common kung fu movie tropes stripped down to clear motivations with enough complications to keep it interesting throughout. I think quite a few other more famous kung fu films do much more to derail the plot for sake of actions scenes, while this films near unending string of fights seemed to fit onto the basic revenge plot pretty organically and built up a really enjoyable and interesting world of characters.

I know this is a broad question but does anyone here have any recommendations in the same vein of great filmmakers who get neglected in comparison to the bigger names in the industry?

[feihong]

I feel like Sun Chung is somewhat neglected, but that might be even too mainstream for what you're talking about. But I think his wuxia and his girl-gang movies are pretty special. He has a feeling for both hardcore action and a sense of the fantastical that rattle together in pleasing dissonance; it seems to me his action movies have a special texture to them that other filmmakers don't achieve. He certainly isn't as sidelined as Lo Mar, though.

Are we talking about retrospective representation, though, or popularity? I would say King Hu is mildly popular, but not well-represented retrospectively. Or maybe it's the other way around. But you could definitely say that a director like Edward Yang gets acclaim--but you could also say he's neglected on home video, because most of his major films are MIA.

I would say Patrick Tam gets pushed to the side in favor of his flashier homeboy, Wong Kar-Wai. But every one of Patrick Tam's movies are unique and interesting. He has integrity that you see in comparison to other filmmakers--a sort of commitment to feelings and emotions that makes you realize how often that commitment is missing in other Hong Kong films.

The Wilson Yip of Bullets Over Summer and Juliet in Love gets sidelined in favor of the Wilson Yip of recent years, who does SPL, Ip Man and Flash Point. It's getting so that he almost seems like two different directors.

[repeat]

every one of Patrick Tam's movies are unique and interesting

This reminds me: there was a Hong Kong feature in Cahiers recently that piqued my curiosity for Patrick Tam, Allen Fong and Ann Hui in particular. Are any of these directors' films available in recommendable English-friendly editions..?

[Cold Bishop]

Depends on what you're looking for. I'm assuming the article was talking about their New Wave films, and their availability varies...

Allen Fong: Of his feature films, nothing. Actually, the only thing of his available is his TV work, Below the Lion Rock, which is surprising considering the TV work of the various New Wavers is usually hard to come by. It might actually be worth looking at - the New Wave made major use of television, and it's essentially a series of social realistic short films - and it comes with English subs.

Ann Hui: of her first five films, only the Shaw-released Love in a Fallen City is available with English subs from Celestial and a label I'm unfamiliar with, Edko, seems to have released Boat People. There's a Chinese edition for The Story of Woo Viet, but lacking subtitles; the best option for English speakers is the Laserdisc floating around. Unfortunately, the only circulating bootleg copies of The Secret and The Spooky Bunch are absolutely atrocious. After those five early films, you'll probably have better luck.

Patrick Tam: The Sword is available, although I believe there's been concerns about what is and isn't uncut. The German Eyecatcher is probably the best package, including subtitles. Mei Ah's Nomads is long out of print. Burning Snow and Love Massacre are only available in bootlegs. The Wong Kar Wai scripted Final Victory (Fortune Star), and My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (Mei Ah), his Heroic Bloodshed riff on Casablanca, are probably the most readily available films. If you want to look at his recent After This, Our Exile, make sure to get the 150 minute Panorama release. Then there's the bizarre sex comedy-cum-vanity project Cherie which, being a Shaw Brothers film, was put out by Celestial.

[repeat]

Many thanks for that, Cold Bishop! Not a good situation then, but I guess I'll start with whatever of these I can get my hands on. In the non-English friendly department I see the French have put out Ann Hui's The Way We Are and Zodiac Killers - might pick up the first one as fansubs seem to be available

[RobertB]

I have two films by Ann Hui - Boat People from Edko is acceptable. Not anomorphic, but it is widescreen. Piqture quality is ok. I can't remember any problems with the subs. They aren't yellow or anything stupid. The Way We Are from My Way is as good as it can get. No extras, but excellent picture, and both stereo and 5.1 sound. Top marks! And I like the film a lot as well. A Simple Life will be out on DVD and bluray in UK in November.

[YnEoS]

Sun Chung's films haven't really struck a chord with me yet, though I've only seen The Avenging Eagle and Human Lanterns so far. I'm eager to watch To Kill A Mastermind, which I've heard good things about.


Here are several lesser known directors who I'm interested in looking into because I've heard their names thrown about, but don't know too much about their films. If anyone is familiar with their filmography and wants to point out some films that are good entries into their work it would be much appreciated.

Inoue Umetsugu - Influential Japanese director who worked in Hong Kong. I'm mostly interested because I want to see more Hong Kong films from the 60s and more non-action movies. I've heard the titles Hong Kong Nocturne and Hong Kong Rhapsody thrown around the most, and I was interested by the descriptions of King Drummer and The Venus Tear Diamond, but otherwise I know very little.

Wong Fung - I really enjoyed his film Hapkido, and heard his name mentioned a lot, so I wanted to check out more of his work. That's really all I know.

Hua Shan - I know nothing about him, only heard the name recommended.

[bigP]

This reminds me: there was a Hong Kong feature in Cahiers recently that piqued my curiosity for Patrick Tam, Allen Fong and Ann Hui in particular. Are any of these directors' films available in recommendable English-friendly editions..?

Tai Seng's DVD of Ann Hui's July Rhapsody is acceptable too. I haven't seen it for a few years but I remember it certainly being watchable. The subtitles were a bit iffy (as was the completely confusing synopsis on the back cover), but I've seen worse (from Tai Seng) all in all and the film is very worth seeing.

[Michael Kerpan]

July Rhapsody _might_ be my favorite Hong Kong film. ;~}

[repeat]

Thanks for the recs, guys - snapped up a second-hand copy of July Rhapsody! (I have to admit, as a long-time lurker mining this forum for film tips, I've come to value the Kerpan seal of approval quite highly!)

[bigP]

Thanks for the recs, guys - snapped up a second-hand copy of July Rhapsody! (I have to admit, as a long-time lurker mining this forum for film tips, I've come to value the Kerpan seal of approval quite highly!)

Ditto this! I'm almost certain it was Michael's mention of July Rhapsody at some point in the past that led me to check it out (it and Ann Hui were otherwise totally unknown to me prior to this film), so a belated thank you!

July Rhapsody _might_ be my favorite Hong Kong film. ;~}

Couldn't agree more, Michael, a pretty firm favourite.

[Cold Bishop]

Sun Chung's films haven't really struck a chord with me yet... I'm eager to watch To Kill A Mastermind, which I've heard good things about.

Only available in the notorious Ziieagle Movie Box, unfortunately. What I wouldn't do to get my hands on it? (Luckily, that print has found its way into the general population of bootlegs... the same can't be said for many of the rarities in there).

I'll throw a recommendation out for The Drug Connection (aka The Sexy Killer), maybe my favorite example of the Shaw Exploitation film... this case bearing the influence of the American Blaxploitation films (the film's a remake of Coffy) and the Japanese Pinky Violence film. I'd also toss out the much more readily available Judgement of an Assassin as one of his best wuxias

Inoue Umetsugu

Hong Kong Nocturne is truly great, and a high-point of Shaw's non-kung fu output. I'd also recommend The Millionaire Chase. I really should get around to watching more of his stuff, as it's surprisingly mostly all available.

With that said, I'm still not convinced that Shaw in the 1960s, outside of the emergence of the kung-fu film, was all that hot. While I've seen only a drop in a bucket of their output - and their are some gems - it all seems to be strangled by the need for formula, which in Shaw's case, prior to the era of "fists and pillows", was very staid and conservative.

Cathay was probably the better studio during the time. Unfortunately, Panorama seems determined to mangle their legacy.

Wong Fung

You'll probably want to check out When Taekwondo Strikes, which was his attempt to make an female-centric riff on the earlier film (which, to be honest, was just a Fist of Fury rip-off.)

Hua Shan

Nothing I've seen from him has knocked me off my feet, but he was a pretty strong director of crime films: his Triad films - Brotherhood, To Kill a Jaguar, The Brothers - are worthwhile, although the completely unavailable Gang of Four is suppose to be the best and most groundbreaking entry in the genre. He was a regular participant in the anthology series The Criminals, and there's some great stuff in there (although it's Shaw Sleaze ground-zero). And Portrait in Crystal is a fun fantasy wuxia in the Zu/Duel to the Death variety.