hanshotfirst1138

Fuck, why can't U-Verse carry this?!

LorenzoL

More Shaw Brothers titles have been released on iTunes and some of them are $4.99 right now. I doubt that we will get the whole library but is better than nothing since most of the ones below were never released on DVD or Blu-ray in North America.

- Clan of the White Lotus
- Dirty Ho
- Legendary Weapons of China
- Golden Swallow
- One-Armed Swordman
- New One-Armed Swordman
- Return of the One-Armed Swordman
- Boxer from Shantung
- Shaolin Abbot
- Crippled Avengers
- The Five Venoms
- Masked Avengers
- The Kid with the Golden Arm
- 5 Elements Ninjas
- Mad Monkey Kung-Fu
- The Kung-Fu Instructor
- Monkey Kung-Fu
- The Delightful Forest
- The Master of Kung-Fu
- The Bare-Footed Kid
- The 14 Amazons
- The Black Magic
- Mighty Peking Man
- Four Riders
- The Duel
- The Deadly Duo
- The Assassin
- Blood Brothers
- Challenge of the Masters
- The Chinese Boxer
- 7-Man Army
- Super Inframan
- The Web of Death
- Man of Iron
- The Anonymous Heroes

hanshotfirst1138

Where are they getting the masters? Fortune Star? I thought that Dragon Dynasty folded.

LorenzoL

The Shaws are from Celestial themselves not Fortune Star.

Ash Ketchum

Just for the record, these are all good, but some of them are masterpieces (bolded).

rocket1312

Thanks for the heads up Lorenzo. At $4.99 I couldn't resist picking up a couple. I grabbed Clan of the White Lotus and The Duel. Since I don't have Apple TV, I've actually come up with a method to convert these to the proper 24 fps (like all the Celestial Shaw masters, these are 25fps) and create an AVCHD disc that is playable in my BD player.

Fortune Star holds the Golden Harvest catalog. Celestial holds the Shaw Bros. catalog. Celestial has been pretty upfront about the fact that their biggest priority with these films at this point is streaming and tv distribution. Some territories are getting a slow trickle of new BDs, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any of them to come to the US. However, just last week, IVL released a new 36th Chamber trilogy boxset in HK. By all accounts it has original mono in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. It also includes English subs. Also, HK is region A, so no problems there. I want the set badly, but the lowest price I can find right now is ~$70.

Mondo Kane

No bolding on Shaolin Abbot? Any Shaw movie with Lo Lieh as Pei Mei is always gold to me!

Ash Ketchum

You just made me look that up. The last time I saw it was on an English-dubbed VHS tape called A SLICE OF DEATH back in 2001. I bought the Celestial R3 DVD under the SHAOLIN ABBOT title in 2007 but still haven't watched it. Time to give that film another look.

LorenzoL

I bought Clan of the White Lotus, Boxer from Shantung and Dirty Ho for $4.99. I will be purchasing some more titles too.

I watched Clan of the White Lotus and Dirty Ho. The quality of both movies are good considering that is streaming. However, there's two instances in Clan that the picture quality becomes "fuzzy" in the center while the outside image is good. Plus both of the movies have English dubbed track. I don't know if they are the old school track, but I wasn't impressed with them.

At this point I just want iTunes to release all of the Shaw Brothers movies since any physical DVD or Blu-ray release in North America is just wishful thinking.

DJariya

I freaking love this channel. Just hate that it's in SD on Directv. Love having old school Kung Fu movies air on a semi-regular basis. But then again it's not like those movies have so much to offer in re-mastered HD. The gritty old school look in SD sort of works.

Just a fun channel overall. My Dad also loves this channel as well. He's retired now and just sits back and watches all those Shaw Bros. movies every Thursday.


Sorry that you guys in Canada are left out in the cold.

I believe Sling TV also gets this channel if any of you subscribe to it.

Mondo Kane

^Agree. I'm lovin' the hell out of this channel.

I still got that on my DVR, but haven't watched it yet. It's good to know that it's subtitled.

King Eagle is currently playing as I type (Subtitled too) so it's good to see that Mandarin-tracks occasionally play on this channel. Certainly could've used that for House of Traps which had THE most horrid dubbing I've ever heard for Shaw flick.

As for other programming they've shown, Kudos to them for allowing New York Ripper to pop up (One of those movie that I thought could NEVER air on television for this new century) and it's interesting that Coppola is lined up for the next "Director's Chair" segment on March 2nd.

Tabletopjoe

Hadn't watched New York Ripper, in a long time. Only watched on a cut VHS. What a nasty, nasty film.

LorenzoL

Sorry, but I'm kind of making this thread about Shaw Brothers movies instead of El Rey Network...

I just found out that Hulu+ (not sure if Hulu has the same movies) has the following Shaw Brothers movies. Just finished watching Executioners from Shaolin, the PQ is very good but it's only available on English Dub. No subtitles. I believe the rest of them below are English Dubbed.

List of Shaws available as of today:

Inhumans99

Thanks to this thread, I pulled the trigger on buying The Boxer From Shantung in HD on iTunes. I still only get the El Rey network in standard def, so I am thrilled that iTunes is not charging the full HD price for this batch of films.

Ky-Fi

That is one kickass film. Chen Kuan Tai rules. Aside from being a serious real-life martial artist, I think he was one of Shaw's best actors, with a great range. In this film, his character is just a little bit smarter than pretty much everyone else--great contrast with Blood Brothers, where his character is a little more dim-witted than everyone else.

LorenzoL

I'm waiting for the Action/Adventure/Crime/Mystery Challenge to watch this one so I'm glad that this one is a favourite for many.

I really like Dirty Ho. It was my first time seeing it but I'll definitely rewatch it again during the challenge. It starts out like a slapstick comedy movie but it gets serious around the last quarter of the movie. Not a big role for Kara Hui but I was at least glad to see her in it.
Great final fighting sequence

I rewatched the dubbed version of 36th Chamber of Shaolin on Hulu Plus and the quality was great. The fighting scenes are not very long or elaborate but this movie shines on the training and challenges sequences. I have yet to see another Kung-Fu movie that outclasses 36th Chamber in regards to the above.

LorenzoL

Something that hasn't been mentioned in regards to the iTunes Shaw releases is that the subtitles are small compared to a DVD release while watching it on a TV. Maybe they were taken into consideration about people watching it on their mobile devices.

RichC2

Are the subtitles hardcoded or softcoded?

rocket1312

Soft.

hanshotfirst1138

Figures that I don't have an Apple TV. Are they getting the HD masters from Fortune Star as well? With Dragon Dynasty gone, which US distributor has all of this stuff now?

rocket1312

One more time for clarity, it's Celestial that owns the Shaw Brothers catalog, not Fortune Star. The movies on itunes are being distributed directly by Celestial. I don't believe any American company currently has local rights for home video. Celestial has indicated that getting their movies out via tv and streaming is their focus at this time. No one wants to put them out on disc anymore because they all sold horribly (at least in the US).

Also, you don't need apple tv to watch these if you know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing, then an hour on the Google machine should fix that.

devilshalo

Aren't the Weinstein's to blame? I would happily re-buy all the R3 discs I have, if they went to Blu and included the english dubs. My Cyber Home player still gets a lot of use from those DVDs.

rocket1312

Not really. I think Celestial actually did more to harm the brand than the Weinsteins ever did. When they first started shopping the catalog, they wouldn't allow distributors to just cherry pick certain titles and would only sell the rights in large bundles. Let's be honest, of the 800+ films, how many of them would actually have a market in the US? A handful of the martial arts titles and not much else. By the time Celestial did start allowing companies select titles, dvd was already on the downturn. Throw in the rampant bootlegging (and I don't mean sold on the sidewalks of Chinatown bootlegging, I'm talking about walking into an FYE and finding an entire martial arts section of unlicensed releases) and Celestial's inexplicable stubbornness when it came to supplying audio tracks in the correct dialect and original mix and it's no wonder they didn't sell. Dragon Dynasty made a legitimate go of it with their first few releases, as did Media Blasters and few other companies, but the sales just weren't there.

shadokitty

I only found out about this channel when Sling TV was released. I've since discovered that Dish Network carries the channel in my package.

Mondo Kane

Watched the new Director's Chair-episode with Coppola earlier. Extended blu-ray of Cotton Club is coming soon.