The New Asian Films Thread - Page 3

FLASHPOINT. Fuck yes.

Sure, the plot is your typical undercover cop story for the most part, but the fighting.. oh man. As a huge MMA fan, the fights in this were just an absolute delight to watch - Donnie did some amazing work on the choreography for this and it makes for some of the most unique fight scenes I've ever seen in a film. The depth of MMA on display here is incredible: Lots of Muay Thai clinches w/devastating knees, suplexes, sick armbar/triangle choke transitions, heel-hooks, kneebars, open & closed guards, rear naked chokes, judo throws - Donnie even beats a guy to death from full mount. Just fan-fucking-tastic stuff going on; I was really impressed with Collin Chou in this as well, having only seen him a few times in things like The Matrix sequels before.

Very glad I checked this one out.

Yeah, that was pretty good. Yen did some good work there. He is really starting to mix some different styles of martial arts to develop his own choreography style.

Twenty-five unreleased Japanese, Hong Kong, and South Korean films from the Miramax vaults will be released by BCI.

My feelings on this are as follows: Thank God Dragon Dynasty didn't get DRAGONS FOREVER or PEKING OPERA BLUES or WHEELS ON MEALS. Thank God.

No kidding. I mean, it doesn't matter that much to me, since I have the original versions from Hong Kong, but they deserve bigger audiences. I just hope they can get the assprints off these things after the Weinsteins sat on them that long.

Dragon Dynasty in early September. Pray to your god of choice that they didn't fuck it up.

That's looking good. These are the films the Weinsteins never bothered to mess up, the stuff that never even came close to seeing the light of day. After the Weinsteins left Miramax, Miramax had HD transfers made of all but the Korean MY WIFE IS A GANGSTER films, and started running them on Kung Fu HD and Spanish-dubbed on Univision. Miramax's HD-mastered TIGER ON BEAT was on Univision yesterday, and I missed it by like an hour because it's called MISION TIGRE in Spanish . PEKING OPERA BLUES has completely re-translated subtitles and the end title cards missing from all current versions are intact in the Kung Fu HD showings, and this will defintely warrant a triple-dip if it's actually one of the titles to get the BCI treatment - PEKING OPERA BLUES isn't confirmed yet. Confirmed to not be one of the titles going to BCI is ZATOICHI'S PILGRIMAGE - the one Zatoichi film not out on DVD, bought by the Weinsteins when Tarantino was apparently flirting with remaking it, which never happened.

I've hated a lot of American dubs of Hong Kong films, but that one took the cake. Leaving aside that it's probably one of my five favorite HK films of all time, what they did to it was unforgivable. They took out the great use of music, altered the dialogue so much as to completely alter its meaning, and ruined the characters. I hate that thing so very much.

I've never seen a dub on that one. I'm grateful.

The classic Bruce Lee films are a completely different animal in their original forms, by the way. The fact that those movies have been so widely seen in their dubbed and mistitled versions just makes me sad.

Long story short - all titles will be sourced from HD masters. All will have special features. All will be the most complete versions possible - possibly with alternate versions present where applicable. The fans are already being consulted to make sure that fuck-ups like Dragon Dynasty releasing MY YOUNG AUNTIE in the wrong language can be averted. All in all, it's shaping up, at least from initial appearances, to be what Dragon Dynasty was supposed to be, but wasn't actually.

He says "Wong", the OUATIC music comes up, and then he says "Jing" and the music stops. That joke requires knowledge of OUATIC/Wong Fei-Hung, Wong Jing, and Jet Li's post Tsui Hark career that involved Jet frequently working for Wong Jing. The US dub changed it so that he just says Jet Li... I think, anyway.

I know they took the Wong Fei-Hung music out of their shitty version of IRON MONKEY, when we first meet Wong Fei-hung and Wong Kei-Ying.

It's been the Wong Fei Hung theme for decades, I think. It goes way back. I think the song is actually called something like "On the General's Orders".

Correct. Or alternately, correct.

I think I learned that from this book. It was full of little knowledge nuggets like that. If you've already read that book, I have no idea where I learned it.

Wow. Cool to see somebody actually play that. Looks like something I don't have enough life left to learn.

I think either I read it in "Hong Kong Cinema - The Extra Dimensions", or I learned it on the Internet.

It's pretty essential for any HK film fan.

I've only read the Planet Hong Kong one and loved it.

There's also City On Fire, but it tends to focus too much on the HK handover. It also has interviews towards the end of the book with guys like Francis Ng and Roy Cheung.

This month on Sundance On Demand they have several Asian flicks available as part of their ASIA EXTREME series. Here are the films:

6IXTYNIN9 (i.e. Ruang talok 69, Thailand 1999)
Bright Future (i.e. Akarui mirai, Japan 2003)
Cavite (USA/Philippines, 2005)
Ghost of Mae Nak (Thailand, 2005)
The Maid (i.e. Kimyo na sakasu, Singapore, 2005)
Oldboy (South Korea, 2003)
The President's Last Bang (i.e. Geuddae geusaramdeul, South Korea 2005)
Re-Cycle (i.e. Gwai wik, Thailand/Hong Kong, 2006)
The Red Shoes (i.e. Bunhongsin, South Korea 2005)

Which movies are worth seeing? Before you ask, of course I'll watch Oldboy, a movie that I've shamefully never seen before, but I know it's highly rated in many places (yet there's a backlash to it in other places) and from what I've read elsewhere, there's some rather disturbing stuff present, to put it as mildly as possible. If anyone has seen those movies aside from Oldboy, it has to be one of the regulars in this thread.

A few days ago I rewatched one of the most popular Asian cinema flicks out there. Sad to say it's the only Asian film I've seen since my last post in here, but I'll try and be a little more active in my watching of films from that continent.

Hard Boiled (i.e. Lat sau san taam, Woo, Hong Kong, 1992)

Personally, I prefer The Killer to Hard Boiled. Both are well worth seeing and are action classics, but I enjoyed the story in the former more than the latter; that said, there are still many memorable things in the latter, including seeing Chow Yun-Fat play the clarinet, his classic slide down the bannister and mowing down a pair of thugs with his pair of guns, and mowing down so many people in a hospital while holding onto an infant.

I'm so clueless when it came to Dragon Dynasty, I really didn't know about people having problems with their releases, but after reading this thread... what a surprise that the Weinsteins would fuck it up, right?

Dragon Dynasty isn't all bad. Sure, HARD BOILED is dubtitled, and TAI CHI MASTER is apparently a trainwreck with bad sound, bad subtitles, and a lackluster picture (which is why I ain't buying it). But with the exception of MY YOUNG AUNTIE, the Dragon Dynasty Shaw Brothers titles are the best versions of those films you'll find. The HK versions have awful sound remixes and are converted from PAL. Dragon Dynasty mops the floor with 'em. MY YOUNG AUNTIE is the one Shaw film Dragon Dynasty simply released in the wrong language, not that they cared enough to fix it. 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and HEROES OF THE EAST should be in any respectable collection of action films.

Definitely read the reviews before you buy anything from them. Kungfucinema.com is full of people who know what they're talking about. Mainstream reviewers tend to let Dragon Dynasty releases slide every time, no matter how bad they fuck up, and are therefore worthless.

Their refusal to provide good subtitles is truly baffling. You'd think that'd be obvious. But it's not to them.

Yeah, we're the minority there. I fully agree with the majority that Hard Boiled ups the insane action stakes, and if insane action were all that mattered, it would be the clear winner. But I actually cared about what happened in The Killer, far more than I did in Hard Boiled. The grand operatic tragedy of the ending in The Killer just makes it a far more memorable story for me.

I have no doubt this will be crap but just look at that poster.

Trailer can be found here

Well that's an arresting image.

That trailer is a cold dose of reality. I'd rather just watch WILD ZERO for the millionth time.

Anybody see Dragon Tiger Gate? Another fun little collaboration between Donnie Yen and Wilson Yip that features cgi work vageuly reminiscent of Kung Fu Hustle. Fight Scenes are nicely done. Worth watching.

Quality Lau Kar-Leung (Liu Chia-Liang) interview from April 1984, conducted by Olivier Assayas for Cahiers du Cinema magazine.

Dragon Ma, Is there any chance the film Onechanbara Vortex gets a US release? The videogame Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad arrives in the US in early 2009 for the Xbox 360. Apparantly the Nintendo Wii is getting Onechanbara Samurai Zombie Squad gets a US release as well.

That's a great article, thanks for posting that link. I love that guy's work.

As an aside, I bought that Dragon Destiny Tai Chi Master disk. I have an old imported copy, but I thought this might be a better release, but maybe I'll take it back and grab something else if it is really that shitty.

If you are a blue ray DVd collector

Sister Street Fighter I&II is available at 40% off. So its like $13. You just need to type in the coupon code.. MASTER.

Also Kitaro is only $12 using the same code.

it looks like the original language track is preserved, thankfully, because the release will have English subtitles http://www.dragondynasty.com/films/show/109

That's been assumed since the title was announced, well before it was delayed almost a full year. Given the lengthy delay and the total lack of any other acceptable DVD release of FIST OF LEGEND*, there will be no valid excuse for this DVD having poorly translated subtitles, "original" mono audio that's really mono badly remixed to stereo and then re-remixed to mono, weird, stuttering frame jumps, or a nonsensical hybrid of the original export dub and the Dimension dub edited together... all things which have been reported to plague the TAI CHI MASTER disc they released.

FIST OF LEGEND is arguably Dragon Dynasty's crown jewel. They'd be fools to half-ass this release.

*With English subtitles.

i agree. a sub-par release pretty much evaporates whatever favour the company has with people keen to see proper transfers of non-English films.

Squandering goodwill is what the Weinstein Company does best.

I was thinking of buying Disney's Legend of the Drunken Master, just because I really loved Police Story.

Don't. They butchered it.

Fucking finally.

Fist of Legend

Bey Logan has said in his blog that he would be all over Drunken Master 2 if it ever gets out of the vaults.

And how perfect are those extras? Thank god all our prayers haven been answered with another view on Hong Kong film by (he doesn't deserve your hate....) Brett Ratner.

Just saw Flashpoint - what a breath of fresh air. It really was an absolutely fantastic film, and those final 20 minutes, while extraordinary (how badass is Chou?), actually felt organic, rather than just happening. Can't wait to pick up SPL now.

If Knowles at AICN is to be believed, it STILL lacks the original language track. So fuck that.

To a "casual Woo fan", how is Bullet in the Head? I own A Better Tomorrow 1 and 2, The Killer and Hard Boiled, and a couple of his American films. The action in the first A Better Tomorrow was a bit of a let-down, and Woo isn't generally known for awesome stories.

It's good, if abit overlong. There are definite Deer Hunter parallels, it's probably Woo's most gut wrenching story. Simon Yam's a badass.