The Kung-Fu and Martial Arts Thread - Page 2

Don't worry, we wouldn't dare to overlook HEROES OF THE EAST.

Honestly, I'd rate it higher than Warriors Two, the last fight between Leung Ka Yan and Chang Yi is just so utterly amazing, Chang Yi is an evil motherfucker, he wears an eyepatch, that's how evil he is.

Be warned though, WB owns the US rights to the film (like everything else), so it's kinda hard to get ahold of, a decent copy at least.

As far as LKL goes, Mad Monkey Kung-Fu is my perrenial favorite, just amazing work from the master and his student Hsiao Ho and a wicked end fight with Lo Lieh. I'd also recommend My Young Auntie, another fantastic boss fight between Lau and Wang Lung-Wei plus Hsaio Ho and amazing Ms. Kara Hui.

Yes, THE VICTIM is really that good.

I've got no idea how Warner Bros. wound up with it - Golden Harvest probably bought the rights to it between selling their catalog to Fortune Star in 1993 and selling their catalog to Warner Bros in 1999. The list of WB-owned Golden Harvest titles has some films on it that wouldn't seem like they should be there - independently produced 1980s titles that would have gone to Fortune Star if Golden Harvest had owned them at that time.

question for you guys. I know not all of you are state side, but what website/store do you guys use to get your Martial Arts DVDs?

I used to get alot of mine from DDDHouse.

yesasia.com and dddhouse.com. Occasionally, amazon.com is better for "out of print" stuff and the occasional American release of a Hong Kong film that turns out being worth a damn.

The information and discussion in this thread has been fantastic so far. Thank you all for pointing out films that I MUST seek out as well as good websites to get them from.

Carry on

Great recommendations so far. Didn't know Reggie was a connoisseur. Can't really top 36th Chamber and Heroes of the East.

Was 5 Deadly Venoms named yet? (Judas?)

And it's more Wuxia, but Tsui Hark's at the top of his game with his remake of One Armed Swordsman, The Blade. It's dark as hell, but the final fight is amazing.

Yep, I mentioned it on the first page. I recently rewatched both it and '36th Chamber of Shaolin' and you guys were right: 36CoS is the superior film. 5DV is a hell of a lot of fun, though.

If THE BLADE is not one of the ten best films ever made in Hong Kong, then I'm not really sure what films would qualify. With Milkyway Image's TOO MANY WAYS TO BE NO. 1, it's the most bewildering and inexcusable of the Golden Harvest films Warner Bros. has buried. The fact that they've allowed it to be rampantly bootlegged for the better part of a decade without lifting a finger to stop it, let alone countering with a legit release, ought to cost some people their jobs and/or earn them a night vision-enabled ass beating in a dark alley. I can get all manner of stuff nobody wants from the Warner Archive... but not this. A future Personal Criterion submission.

I rewatched both as part of the Fantasia festival , and yeah, 36th Chamber is superior, and more important, but 5 Deadly Venoms is mad. Heroes of the East was probably the most fun film I had the chance to see in a theater ever.

Sadly, this year will have no classic KF movies... but we'll have Ip Man. Shit, last year we had Gordon Liu presenting DISCIPLES OF THE 36TH CHAMBER...

I'd also like to recommend Chang Cheh's Vengeance, I'm not a huge fan of Cheh but this one is pretty damn great. Plenty of blood is shed, the finale was such an obvious influence on The Killer and David Chiang is pretty convincing as a psychotic young man on a quest for revenge.

VENGEANCE got namechecked in the excellent 2002 film JUST ONE LOOK by Eric Kot's martial-arts-movie-hating martial arts instructor, so I have to assume it's great.

This thread would be incomplete without the TRUE LEGEND teaser; Yuen Woo-Ping directs for the first time since 1996's awful IRON MONKEY II, and Vincent Zhao of THE BLADE returns from an extended exile to Mainland TV to play a young Beggar So, the role made famous by Yuen Woo-Ping's father Simon Yuen in Yuen and Jackie Chan's breakthrough hit DRUNKEN MASTER and somewhat more recently portrayed by Stephen Chow in KING OF BEGGARS. Also starring Michelle Yeoh, Andy On, and David Carradine. IMDB says that Focus Features (i.e. Universal Pictures) is co-producing with Edko Films and China Film Group, but take that with a huge grain of salt - I've heard nothing other than that IMDB entry about Universal being involved with the film.

Hey guys! Holy fucking shit!

http://chud.com/articles/articles/20...DAY/Page1.html

Man, Jackie's career is in worse shape than both DeNiro's and Pacino's combined.

Ive given up on Jackie. He has been phoning it in since Rush Hour 2. I know he has been saying for years that he would like to eventually start taking his career in a different direction when his body started to give out, but the crap he has been putting out warrants retirement.

Just to sort of organize our thoughts here.

Ill start with three questions.

Best Sammo hung (non jackie) movie: I'd go with Magnificent Butcher

Best Jackie movie: Drunken Master II

Best Donnie Yen: Tiger Cage 2

Well, I'd basically agree except that post RUSH HOUR 2, there's SHANGHAI KNIGHTS and AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, his two best American films. Other than that though...

Now, to be fair I haven't seen SHINJUKU INCIDENT yet, which is reported to be a change of pace, and a film with an actual director in Derek Yee instead of your typical weak sauce Benny Chan type of director. As a producer I'd say Jackie was doing fine - he's not squandering that Hollywood money, he's flipping it into worthy projects like HOUSE OF FURY and grooming new directors and new action stars.

My favorite Sammo Hung movie remains PRODIGAL SON. Donnie Yen... I'll cheat with some ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA II.

I'm hoping Shinjuku allows Jackie to stretch his dramatic muscles, it looks pretty good.

Best Sammo movie: The Victim. Hands down.
Best Jackie movie: Project A
Best Donnie Yen: Flashpoint

Shinjuku looks very similar to One Night In Mongkok, which is a good thing, but I'm not sure what kind of form Derek Yee is on these days. I missed Protege, but its reception was fairly lukewarm.

And...
Best Sammo Hung movie: Eastern Condors
Best Jackie Chan movie: Police Story
Best Donnie Yen movie: Mismatched Couples (seriously!)

Obligatory MISMATCHED COUPLES clip.

I hope Raging Phoenix can live up to that.

I think its safe to say that Raging Phoenix is going to be a little more hardcore than "Mismatched Couples"

Here is the full trailer recently released...WOW. The Thai are UNSTOPPABLE.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejM7ZCEzs5A

Does anybody know the status of the restoration of A Touch Of Zen? It was mentioned a few years back, but I've not heard anything for a while. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I also seem to recall Butterfly Murders was going to be given similar treatment?

Fazer, WOW! A Phoenix...Rages from the ashes of martial arts film studios that have fallen by the wayside. I love the trailer to...Raging Phoenix. Thank you for posting it.

Just wanted to mention that I had totally botched the dates, but I am getting to see Ip Man downtown at the closing night of the Dallas Asian Film Festival Thursday night. I love me some Donnie Yen, and am really looking forward to it!

Ugh, I can't believe how poorly handled most of Jackie Chan's Hong Kong movies are. I've been searching for copies of Project A, Armour of God, Drunken Master II, and Dragons Forever for ages. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good DVD release. I would have loved to see Dragon Dynasty pick those titles up, but after Supercop, no dice.

For Project A, Armour of God, and Dragons Forever there's always the region 2 Hong Kong Legends releases. As for Drunken Master 2, the closest you can get is the Thakral release. The image may be cropped, but at least it's uncut.
I'm not really sure if any of these are still in print, but happy hunting anyway.

Jeeja really reminds me of Yukari Oshima, especially with that short haircut she's got in RP.

I'd also recommend 'A Book of Heroes' starring none other than Yukari, she has a terrific fight against a group of thugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aN1vHRiIiA

great post dragon. I have actually never heard of Yukari until now!

Wasnt that set really really similar to one Jackie used in Project A (or A2? i forget) when he goes after the crime boss against orders?

I wouldn't be surprised if they re-used it.

Also, this scene is from the same film and it's awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKE2x...eature=related

HKL discs were generally good and occasionally excellent - but at the time, the only points of comparison were butchered Dimension/Miramax editions and really shitty early Hong Kong discs. It's important to note that HKL did stupid things like cropping DRUNKEN MASTER and SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW from scope to 16x9, cropping and then stretching POLICE STORY II, and they used "dubtitles" on occasion rather than a literal translation. Issue was taken with their releases having an overly red hue to them. The lack of mono sound on many of their discs was unfortunate, though not always their fault, and their 5.1 remixes were certainly less offensive than the earrape going on in the Hong Kong DVD industry at the time.

Saw Ip Man in a packed house downtown, it was crazy bananas. I've never seen a kung-fu movie in that sort of setting, and it was fantastic. Donnie Yen is fantastic. The action and character work in the movie were excellent, but to be honest, some of the political and social subtext made me a little uneasy. I know the Japanese were evil dudes in World War II, and General Meiru seemed like a noble, if power-made, kind of guy, but I cringed a little when the audience applauded the karateka getting brutalized and the evil Japanese officer taking a bullet to the dome. This is par for the course in action movies, I suppose, but given that the political and social tensions between those two countries remains an on-going issue . . .

But damn that was some good kungfu.

Hard to see this as anything but good news for the perpetually troubled (but amazingly hard to kill) Hong Kong film industry: Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest are both moving back into film production.

With money, talent, and material all in ample supply thanks to prudent management and their connections with television giant TVB, Shaw Brothers has long been in a position of simply being able to say "OK, we're gonna make some movies now." On and off, they've done just that - besides operating under the Cosmopolitan Film Production Co. Ltd. name for much of the 1990s, Shaw Brothers used their own name on 1996's THE KING OF MASKS, 1997's HERO (not the Zhang Yimou film), and 2002's DRUNKEN MONKEY. This, however, is the first time I've heard about them having what's looking like an actual slate of films - Herman Yau's TURNING POINT is imminent, and a sequel to the 1973 hit HOUSE OF 72 TENANTS and a romantic comedy with the working title LOVE EXPERT are both forthcoming.

Golden Harvest's revival is a different and somewhat less promising (but still better than nothing) story - where Shaw Brothers is still Shaw Brothers, the revived Golden Harvest is a Mainland company merged with the remains of the once-great Hong Kong studio which produced its last film in 2003. They are relaunching the brand with a few low-to-medium budget productions, and ultimately it has about as much to do with Golden Harvest as the current incarnation of MGM has to do with the company that made SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Like MGM, their library is, for the most part, long gone; unlike today's MGM they don't own several other studio's mammoth-sized libraries to compensate - just the few Golden Harvest films produced between mid-1998 and 2003, and an unknown number of films made by Win's Entertainment (including Stephen Chow/Lee Lik-Chi's FROM BEIJING WITH LOVE) that they bought at some point after selling the remnants of their own library to Warners in 1999.

Actually saw this on the big screen. Terrible comedy.

This, however, I really enjoyed.

I couldn't find it in this thread, but have any of you seen or heard of a film called Chocolate? If so, what do you think of it? I saw a trailer for it and it looked pretty cool...

I'm glad I have all the HKL DVDs I want. They even have their own shelf a long with the Premier Asia releases.

I really like Legend of the Wolf! The fights are hella intense. I just wish there was a decent DVD available.

Great little flick. Jeeja is a superstar in the making. Amazing choreography. And actually a somewhat coherent story too.

Looking forward to Raging Phoenix. But I thought the action in Chocolate was a little repetitive. I guess I am just not impressed by the Muay Thai style.

I watched 'Enter the Fat Dragon' and, aside from some decent fights it's definitely one of Sammo's weaker films, it's kind of a nice tribute to his idol and Sammo does a terrific impersonation. There's really some crazy bizarre humor in this film that could've only come from HK, Lee Hoi San as a Jim Kelly nod comes off as casual racism.

I love the blatantness of the classic HK industry - they really gave that movie the most obvious title possible.

I think you're underrating the film a little bit. Remember that this was the era when Bruceploitation movies were at their height. Sammo's take on Bruce and his legacy is a lot more refreshing and affectionate than anything managed by Bruces Li, Le or Liang. It is quite racist though, even by HK standards.

Those of you who can't be bothered to wait and see if Magnet screws up, delays, or mysteriously misplaces* ONG-BAK 2, but don't want to fatten the pockets of bootleggers who've been selling the film for months while Magnet did nothing but watch potential sales evaporate: YesAsia now has the legitimate Korean DVD, which comes with English subtitles. It's Region 3 of course, but this is a non-issue as it's trivial to find a player that can be easily hacked for all regions these days - if you don't already have one.




*IFC Films style.

I just watched LEGEND OF THE LIQUID SWORD, because Gordon Liu's head is huge on the cover. He's barely in it. I have no idea what I just watched. It does however have:

• A woman who is disguised as a man. An Asian staple! And yet, no one can tell.
• Crazy names like "Metal Flower", "Fragrant Chu", "Sea Weed", and "Jellyfish".
• A villain who shows up after the halfway point who flies, calls himself "Batman", gains a vampiric curse, freezes when he fights, and spits liquid mercury magic missiles.
• People exploding for no explicable reason.
• A character who goes on a pilgrimage to study with a monk, only to come back as Jesus (on a giant cross and wearing a cross) who defeats his enemies with "Jesus Punches" which are actually only thrown bombs.
• Too many female characters who alllooksame.
• Terrible permanent mis-spelled subtitles that are unreadable due to their white color, brevity, and gibberish.
• No dubs, so I can make any sense of the subtitles.
• Too much dialogue that I couldn't make heads or tails of, due to aforementioned bad subs and no dubs.
• No explanation what the "Liquid Sword" actually is.
• A couple ok fights.

My mind's kinda blown. And not in any way I can recommend.

Fuck you for reminding me of that movie.

It's horrible and indecipherable, but just as "Batman" swooped in for the first time, I say to my wife "I'm Batman!" and moments later, the character coincidentally says it as well. We LOLd for a good 5 minutes after that.

I should have watched CHINESE SUPER NINJA (love it) to cleanse my brain afterwards.

Thanks! I think I'll put in an order. I like Yesasia and I've been waiting for this one for awhile now.

Magnet/Magnolia has put out a nice trailer for ONG BAK 2, so the chances of it getting mysteriously misplaced seem pretty minimal - but there's still no word if it'll be UNCUT or not. Last time, Magnolia opted for the fucked up Luc Besson cut of ONG BAK. I don't trust 'em.

Reggie, do you know anything about the quality of the Malaysian DVD of Ong Bak 2? Malaysian DVDs are often a lucky dip. Titles like Chocolate and Tennen Kokekko worked out okay, but then I've had experiences like Miike's Crows Zero, where the subtitles were as illegible as crayola scrawled hieroglyphics.