Cool! :cool: :toast:

BLACK MAGIC
RELEASE DATE: 09/12/06
LANGUAGE: MANDARIN
ENGLISH DUBBED: YES

SUPER INFRAMAN
RELEASE DATE: 10/03/06
LANGUAGE: CANTONESE
ENGLISH DUBBED: YES

WATER MARGIN
RELEASE DATE: 10/17/06
LANGUAGE: MANDARIN

THE MAGIC BLADE
RELEASE DATE: 11/07/06
LANGUAGE: CANTONESE
ENGLISH DUBBED: YES

BOXER'S OMEN
RELEASE DATE: 11/21/06
LANGUAGE: MANDARIN

INTIMATE CONFESSIONS OF A CHINESE COURTESAN
RELEASE DATE: 12/05/06

All of these will have some pretty cool extras. I just got done with the liner notes to Black Magic and the Inframan set should be SWEET!

^Thanks!

Inframan should be a big seller.

I also want to add how much I loved Fearless Fighters!

awesome, thanks for the updates

Bwa-hahaha! I used to work for the company that posted that news release - whoever edited didn't do that great a job... several errors there...

a bump....

any other titles on the horizon

Alright, I checked out Black Magic via Netflix and.....Well, I had fun with the movie, but....What was up with the transfer? The PAL to NTSC conversion---OUCH!!! It's pretty bad. Even the main menu was cropped! Surely not all of the current releases are this bad (Right?)

Ok - let me try to understand what these are. Shaw Bros movies have been released many times, by many companies, but it is the terrific Celestial releases in R3 that are most desirable. Initially it appeared that R1 would get the restored Celestial products, but those are all NTSC - so if what you're looking at is a PAL conversion to NTSC, then it's not Celestial.

Are there any R1 editions of the Celestial products?

(These titles were one of the reasons I went region-free over 3 years ago, but they <i>still</i> should be available in R1.)

The R3 Celestials might have been released in HK in NTSC, but even those are PAL to NTSC transfers. After Celestial did all the restorations on the films, they created the masters in PAL for TV purposes. These Image discs are most definitely created from materials provided them by Celestial. In some instances, I believe Image is redoing some stuff that they didn't feel Celestial did a great job on, but that's not the majority.

Just to clear something up,
 

rocket is largely correct about Celestial and the PAL issue. Please note, though HK releases NTSC discs, Asia is native PAL. Until recently, most HK films you've seen on DVD were PAL to NTSC transfers. They restored all the films for PAL broadcast in PAL. What I mean is, they were not restored and then PAL versions were made, there's no way to have NTSC remastered versions at all outside of doing it over again. The materials they worked with were pretty bad to begin with, and in most cases, they won't stand up to another mastering process. The ones that will, Image are going to get new, pure NTSC masters of. The Black Magic disc was a mistake though on a different level with the producer of the dvds themselves, as is clear when compared to Image's Super Inframan disc. They have said they'll be announcing a way that fans can trade in the Black Magic release for a corrected one soon.

Does anybody have any idea if 'To Kill A Mastermind' might become available? Its not available in any format, really. Kind of a long shot, but one can hope!

The only version currently...
 

is a Taiwanese camcorder tape, but it should come out from IVL in 2007. But there's no way to pin that down for sure. But they will be releasing it between 07-08.

Would anybody be kind enough to provide me with a list all of the previously released R1 Image DVDs titles and other announced releases in the near future?

Also how are they in regards to image, audio and extras?

The reason is that I finally have the time and money and would like to purchase all of the R1 Image titles.

Thanks in advance.

what became of this

I was wondering this too. I've been holding off on buying the disc until I hear what's happening with a corrected one.

They have passed the new disc,
 

and the person in charge of the program was fired from the company. But now it's back on track and they placed an order for the corrected disc. Most likely they'll have a system set up in the new year.

Is anyone a big enough Shaw Brothers fan, to create some sort of Buyers guide, with the best versions available. I know there are hundreds of titles, but maybe a list of 50-75 of the "best" I have only seen about 15 Shaw flicks and am interested in more, but there seems to be tons of releases of alot of them, in a wide variety of quality.

i'd love that as well.

Bought Legendary Weapons/China yesterday. Good presentation. Although there was often kind of a weird "fish-lens" look whenever the camera would pan across the actors. I'm no expert on the techincal aspects for converting PAL/NTSC, but is this normal?

Another nitpick I have is that the bonus trailers don't have any english subtitles. Will this be handled soon?

I haven't seen the disc yet,
 

but it depends on what you mean. If you mean the edges of the frame looks strange, this is due to the lenses used on the film. It's quite common in many Shaw Brothers productions. If you mean the film is blury and when you pause it there's digital "bits," then it's a PAL problem. But everyone I've talked to with this disc said it was fine.

Kid with the Gold arms?

Iron Monkey?

I recently purchased some of the Shaw titles from Image. I can't wait to check them out pretty soon.

However, looking at their website, I see that there are some Shaw Bros. titles slated for release:
- Vengeance Is a Golden Blade 03/20/2007
- The Shadow Whip 04/03/2007
- Heaven and Hell: Special Edition 05/08/2007
- The Bells of Death 07/03/2007

I watched this movie last night and I noticed the "fish-lens" look that you are indicating in a couple of scenes (the restaurant scenes to be more specific) and I had an obvious pause/freeze during the layer change.
But overall, I'm very happy with the presentation and the sound.

I bought Wandering Swordsman and that was a horrendous PAL-NTSC transfer stretched to NTSC speed. It looked disgusting. I'm wary of buying the rest until we can confirm what's what