hanshotfirst1138

Holy shit, I'm mad that I can't see that!

devilshalo

It went by so quick, I know they could have gone longer with discussing his individual movies (especially Hellboy). Probably why his next installment with Tarantino looks to be a 2 part interview.

And that was the first time I had seen The Dragon Missile. And wow, old school dubbed voices and tits. Nice.

rocket1312

I don't think the Weinsteins have the rights. Even if they did, Dragon Dynasty doesn't exist anymore, so don't expect them to do anything with them. Region 1/A Shaw releases were a pretty big flop for just about every company that got their hands on them. There's a myriad of reasons why that was the case, but the bottom line is, don't expect any new physical releases any time soon. Celestial is putting all of their efforts into satellite/cable/streaming. For those looking for subtitled versions, itunes has a few dozen titles available in HD, many of which never even got a regular dvd release in the US. I generally don't do streaming, but it is possible to burn these to disc and the results are far superior to most of the official releases out there.

Ash Ketchum

There are still a lot of Dragon Dynasty DVDs of Shaw titles at my local FYE. Some are reasonably priced, some not. Granted, my neighborhood, like a lot of Bronx neighborhoods, still has a lot of Baby Boomer (and slightly younger) old school kung fu fanatics in it who still buy physical media. And the DD DVDs are quite a step up from the VHS bootlegs everybody had once upon a time. But it's doubtful that younger Hong Kong movie fans are eagerly snatching up these DVDs.

rocket1312

A bunch of the Dragon Dynasty dvds had issues that turned off some of the more hardcore fans. In particular, most of the films they released which should have had Cantonese tracks (8 Diagram Pole Fighter to name one) had Mandarin instead. Also, some of the later releases from when they just started dumping them with little to no effort suffered from incorrect pal to ntsc conversions. This was a problem for many of the r1 releases, but up until the very end, Dragon Dynasty had been one of the companies handling that aspect correctly. Still better than VHS bootlegs, but the more savvy fans often chose to spend their money on superior Australian/French/German releases.

devilshalo

I'm happy with the R3 collection I started (there's a handful not pictured here). I wasn't going to wait on the DD dvds and hadn't heard good things from them besides their catalog being rather limited. Has Celestial started releasing to the US thru iTunes yet? I know you can get it in the Asian markets.

Ky-Fi

I have over 150 R3 Celestial Shaws. Some of the early ones were non-anamorphic, but the vast bulk of them were decent quality, IMO. I don't care about dubs, and I don't really care if they didn't have Cantonese instead of Mandarin. There were some issues here and there (terrible new added audio on a couple titles ), but for the most part they did a very good job of restoring the films and putting out good quality discs. ESPECIALLY if you were a long-suffering Shaw Brothers fan, where for many years, the ONLY way to see a lot of these films were terrible quality, full-screen, 5th generation, dubbed VHS tapes, or versions of such transferred to DVD---the Celestial releases were a revelation and brought many great movies to the light of day that even serious Shaw fans were not familiar with.

And one other thing I give IVL/Celestial credit for---for all the DVDs I bought, I never had even one single case of a defective disc.

LorenzoL

The R3 releases are not perfect neither since Celestial only used the remix soundtrack instead of the original mono.

iTunes US does have some of the Shaw Brothers movies, some which never were released on a physical format here in NA.

rocket1312

Yes. There's a few dozen titles available. They haven't added added any new ones in a while though. They also don't make it easy to find the page in the itunes store. I've got it bookmarked somewhere.

I'm not sure when the cut-off was, but Celestial eventually abandoned the crappy remixes. They were pretty offensive. All of the itunes titles that I have seen have the mono.

LorenzoL

The following titles are available on iTunes some with English dub options:
Heroes of the East
36th Chamber
Return to the 36th Chamber
Disciples of the 36th Chamber
Vengeance
Executioners of Shaolin
Martial Arts of Shaolin
The Savage 5
Avenging Eagle
Five Shaolin Masters
Shaolin Martial Arts
Disciples of Shaolin
The New Shaolin Boxers
Heroes Two
Invincible Shaolin
The Flying Guillotine
Shaolin Prince
King Boxer
Come Drink with Me
Hero
Out of the Dark
Justice My Foot
Behind The Yellow Line

devilshalo

I might have to pick some of those up for the dub options. Thanks!

Mondo Kane

Keeping true to their word, El Rey's been showing a shitload of SB films as of late. I think I've watched about 11 of them by now (All first-time viewings) and still got several more on the DVR.

Some of the stand-outs for me:

Life Gamble-It was so cool to finally see Kara Hui and Philip Kwok in the same movie together. I'm not a big Fu Sheng fan, but I thought this was one of his cooler performances.

Savage Five-Actually, I just thought this was okay. But what really got my attention was Ti Lung's dubbed voice. It sounded like a drunken Nick Nolte.

Shaolin Avengers-Might be the only movie in existence where a hero dies by sword up the butthole. Oh, Chang Cheh. You dog, you.

Duel for Gold-Man, I wish Lo Lieh played more good guys. Did he ever play another hero after 1973?

While on the El Rey tip, I'm surprised at the variety of studio-films they've been allowed to show. From the beginning, it looked like they would only have to rely on Disney product (Miramax/Dimension) But we've seen nearly every studio show up:
Electra Glide in Blue (MGM)
Duel (Universal....Which comes on a lot)
Enter The Dragon (WB)
Fright Night (Columbia)
Dolemite (Xenon) (With an introduction by Lars @Alamodrafthouse!)

And I can't be sure, but I wonder if Sony HD got some inspiration by El Rey. They used to never show spaghetti westerns, but a few days ago they aired a few rare ones (Forgotten Pistolero being one) and one of the Sartana films is about to come on. I also saw a preview for Shaolin & Wu Tang set to air on Monday. How did they get a hold of that one!?!

I also wonder who Rodriguez has lined up for future "Director's Chair" episodes. Easily my most favorite original program on the network.

Mondo Kane

Wow. That was a total longshot of calling out Weird Man (It comes on tonight!)

3 down, 2 to go.

Anybody else watch the Kaiju Christmas special?

Ky-Fi

I caught a bit of that at my folks' house (I don't have that channel at home.) I have them all on DVD, but I watched Godzilla Raids Again. That was one I never saw as a kid, and I know it's not a fan favorite, but I kind of like it.

As far as Shaw Brothers, they are showing some subtitled ones. I caught the superb Death Duel, and that was subbed.

Inhumans99

I hope I did not miss the airing of The Shantung Boxer...saw it many years ago on a weekend (forget the Los Angeles channel, maybe channel 5, and I just remember it had the most insane fight scene I have ever seen (including to this day, a guy fights a jillion baddies with an ax blade stuck in his stomach).

Mondo Kane

^Yeah, it came on last week (My first time seeing it. CRAZY climax, as you said)

It'll be back on again soon though. I'll post a reminder.

LorenzoL

Do they show Golden Harvest movies too?

DJariya

Nope, just the Shaw Bros. movies from Celestial Pictures. The deal for the library was signed directly with Celestial.

LorenzoL

That's too bad.

I still wish I had this channel here in Canada.

Mondo Kane

Since the channel's got a whole slew of spaghetti westerns lined up, I wonder how Companeros (Which comes on later in the day) will be presented (Anchor Bay/Blue Underground version?)

BTW, I'm still so not used to seeing the likes of Argento's Opera and Lustig's Maniac appearing on television.

hanshotfirst1138

I'd like to be used to it, why don't I have this blasted channel?!

joe_b

I just got this channel and I think it's great. Seeing a Fulci or Argento movie airing on basic cable in the middle of the afternoon is kind of a trip.

brainee

For those of you who have been watching this channel more, I have a question ... are all of the movies edited for content (down to a TV14 level rating)? I'm watching a bit of Dario Argento's Opera and pretty bummed to notice digital censoring. Though this is around 6 pm EST - maybe things go "uncut" at a later hour? As cool as the idea of a grindhouse channel is, I can't see myself bothering to watch very often if the movies are censored.

Matthew Chmiel

Digital censoring? To the nudity, violence, and/or both?

Mondo Kane

^Yeah, there's a "Grindhouse Bumper" that says versions will be uncut on later showings. The full-frontal shots in Rats:Night of Terror proves that anything goes on later showings.

That ended up being a cut version. In the opening scene, It goes from the Penguin/Vasco standoff right to Penguin arriving into town via flashback. The entire Vasco/Mongo scene was deleted. However, the scalping scene (With Italian audio & english subtitles) is fully presented in Django, Kill. So different versions are all over the place with this channel.