R.I.P. Tartan Films

I'm not much into the Asian cinema but as the folks who gave me the Vengeance trilogy this saddens me all the same.

That really blows.

that's awful news. I've enjoyed many of their releases. In fact I own like 8 or 9 of their DVDs.

Glad I bought my OLDBOY Blu-Ray when I did. Terrible news.

Debbi Berlin and the Tartan folks were awesome. How they die and others survive sucks a baby's cock.

I was going to say the same thing in regards to my three-disc set. This is pretty depressing news to be sure.

Oh, don't worry. In terms of releasing Asian movies the Weinsteins have you covered. You won't miss a thing.

Their customer service is amazing.* This blows.

*Anecdote! I won the Oldboy UMD from this fine website but it didn't have any cover art. I called up the Tartan office and explained the situation, offering to pay. They sent me a copy at no charge, shipped it in a padded envelope with a cardboard insert so it wouldn't get damaged. And included a poster.

Sucks. The first thing I ever bought from Tartan was Trouble Everyday, and I've been a consistent customer ever since, I'm gonna miss these guys.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that it may have had something to do with spending money to buy the rights to an incalculable number of seemingly interchangeable Asian horror films when said money could have been spent on a slightly more diverse product line, or even on better marketing for a smaller number of interchangeable Asian horror films... though it is well worth mentioning that Tartan's art department was usually leaps and bounds above their competition. Maybe they should have spent less money on being EXTREME and more money on buying interesting and/or good movies to release. Most of the distinctive stuff in their catalog got lost in the shuffle, trampled under the feet of a million EXTREME ghosts with long, dark hair covering their faces. It bears mentioning that, if my info is correct, their best selling title is OLDBOY, and not one of their million horror titles. Don't get me wrong, some of the horror titles were good calls to release, but it seemed like they'd release anything at all containing girls with long black hair acting creepy.

As for Dragon Dynasty maybe not being in good shape - well, it's the Weinsteins who poisoned the well when it comes to releasing Asian films in the US, so don't look to me for sympathy for anyone associated with those fucking scumbags. They took a cue from New Line's medium-sized success with RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, dubbed, rescored, and edited, and never quite understood the much larger success of the uncut, subtitled CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, no matter how often they tried to duplicate it. To be fair, neither did the people who released CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, though they get credit for coming a little closer.

The Weinsteins created what appears to be a now-permanent association in American minds (both audiences and studios) between Asian cinema and direct-to-video shit, by actually turning Hong Kong's golden years into direct-to-video shit, with shit titles, shit dubbing, and some of the worst, most utterly shit artwork ever to emerge from a company of that size. This started a trend of Asian films tending to get the most godawful packaging this side of the DAY OF THE DEAD remake. I'll never forgive them for this, no matter how hard they try and undo the damage by pillaging the core people from Britain's now-defunct Hong Kong Legends label to create Dragon Dynasty, and hiring artists with a bit more taste, if not exactly talent, for a portion of their cover art lately. They remain capable, however, of depicting Jackie Chan with cars coming out of his dick for no reason even loosely related to the (retitled) film depicted - which, though you'd never guess it from the art, is a comedy. The comedy version of the art is equally bad if not even worse. Who wants to watch something that looks like that?

And speaking of that, why didn't they start by using Dragon Dynasty to undo the damage they've done? That would have generated a lot more goodwill than going immediately back to the bad old ways with the butchered, rescored, retitled THE PROTECTOR... or TOM YUM GOONG, to people who aren't fucking idiots. All that did was prove to the core audience for these films that they might talk a good game, but they can't be trusted to do right. They still haven't re-released a single Dimension title they kept the rights to - though TAI CHI MASTER (TWIN WARRIORS in Dimension-speak) is at least coming soon, for a grand total of ONE restored re-issue of a movie they ruined before. And where the fucking shit is FIST OF LEGEND? For all the yapping they've done about it, I suspect that when it's finally re-released it'll come in a tri-pack with KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR and DUKE NUKEM FOREVER: THE MOVIE. We'll see a cure for AIDS first.

I hate to say it, because I don't want to see these companies fail (for purely selfish reasons)... but you reap what you sow. And now, on an incongruous note, I'm off to buy Dragon Dynasty's HEROES OF THE EAST and COME DRINK WITH ME.

What a shame! Tartan and Dragon Dynasty have both been great working with CHUD (contests/review material). We have a Dragon Dynasty contest going on now.

Although I only did a small amount of reviews for Tartan releases I appreciated the fact that they promoted low budget films that otherwise would have never seen the light of day.

Well, this is some crappy news. I would like Dragon Dynasty to stick around only to get the Shaw Bros released from IVL. My shit luck is that the ones that they are releasing I already bought R3 from IVL. I've had Heroes of the East and Come Drink with Me for awhile now, but I am damned tempted to get them again for the extras on these discs.

Heroes of the East has been my fav Shaw film since I saw it as a kid called Challenge of the Ninja and Shaolin vs. Ninja. That fucker is that good that I may have to get it again.

I can't open the BD site from work. Did they mention that Dragon Dynasty is also in trouble? Sucks. I was hoping for a non-dubbed FIST OF LEGEND finally before they folded.

I actually e-mailed Debbi a month or two back and asked her what was going on. It didn't sound good, and now it sounds worse.

True story about how great Debbi is:
She had access to my home phone number for an interview I conducted with actress Anapola Mushkadiz (which I botched quite badly), and called me personally to tell me she was moved by my review of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which isn't particularly well written, but is particularly personal. That is the one and only time such a thing happened.

I'm probably going to import the Tartan UK BR releases, I hear they're region free, and I've got to see Lady Vengeance, Tale of Two Sisters, and I'm a Cyborg in HD.

Since overseas Tartan came up I figured this was as good a place as any to ask. Tartan UK released Paranoid Park in Region 2, did Tartan have the rights in America or is it some other company that just hasn't announced the release yet?

Really sad that Tartan is going out. I've got quite a few of their releases, and was looking forward to what else they put out.

Debbi really is cool people, and was nothing but good to me at helping me out when I was starting out with CC. Got so much stuff for the site from her, and without Tartan we wouldn't have had many of the great dvds people have already mentioned. I'll always appreciate them for that.

But I also have to say that that their output wasn't exactly that great as of late. There's only so many long-haired child ghost story movies that people will buy.

Sad news, though.

Not only this, but there were major technical problems with the releases too. Divergence was a mess, Cave of the Yellow Dog had a DTS track that was missing dialogue, Everything was interlaced rather then progressively scanned, etc, and so forth. They usually brought it home on the really important releases though.

I doubt I'd repurchase them for the extras; I'm repurchasing because the IVL discs were converted to interlaced 30fps NTSC from PAL 25fps masters, so they run at the wrong speed and have PAL to NTSC conversion artifacts all over the place, and only have really awful 5.1 remixes. Fuck that shit - Dragon Dynasty Shaw titles are 24fps direct from HD masters and mono. Cheaper too, I think.

The extras are merely gravy.

You're just trying to cost me money.

I didn't notice the picture issues, as I was coming from a Crash Cinema/Ground Zero/VHS rip, so anything was better than that.

I'll probably spend the cash, probably two copies of HotE, my old man is a fan and father's day is coming up.

Later this year (if they survive) along with a new edition of The Killer.

Are the new shaws any good.

Ended up getting FLASHPOINT instead of COME DRINK WITH ME, but HEROES OF THE EAST is fine as far as I can tell from the special features. Haven't actually watched the movie yet as I've seen it too many times to count and I want to see the bonus stuff first.

Thank you.