manicsounds

Lots of Dragon Dynasty titles have been priced down very low recently, and I finally got the 2 double feature sets, "Golden Swallow"/"Killer Clans" and "Avenging Eagle"/"Blood Brothers".

Sad to say, none of them come with any extras... I haven't bought any DD titles for a while, and I was disappointed especially that Bey Logan's commentary for "Killer Clans" was NOT included...

flansered

I recently found the 4 pack with Executioners of Shaolin, Martial Arts of Shaolin, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, and 5 Shaolin Masters for $12. I need to try and track down the rest of the Shaw films they have released. When I saw this thread was updated I honestly expected to see something about the company closing.

wm lopez

Did LADY KUNG FU ever get released?

manicsounds

Apparently, DVDaf says "release cancelled" for "Lady Kung Fu".

Lastdaysofrain

I was pretty dissapointed with the lack of extras and commentaries for some of the newer releases. Most of them can be picked up for less than $5, but I really love the Bey Logan commentaries.

I will say that Flying Guillotine does look pretty good though.

LorenzoL

I just need to pick up Flying Guillotine 1 and 2 in order to complete my collection.

Is Arc Entertainment releasing any more of the Shaw movies? Anyone know?

comanche_doyle

They released 10 between August and November last year, but I don't see anything listed for the immediate future. Hopefully someone steps up to the plate and releases more.

dex14

Is this line officially dead? I have an email from them from like 5 years ago telling me that A Better Tomorrow trilogy and Bullet in the head would be released. I guess thats never going to happen

flansered

I just gave up and ordered the Chinese bluray of BitH, and will probably do the same with the ABT trilogy. If they do decide to release them they'll probably be dvd only and have incorrect subtitles or something.

comanche_doyle

A Chinese Odyssey 1 & 2 10/9/12
Outlaw Brothers 10/30/12


Never heard of these, but good to know that the line isn't dead.

asianxcore

The line was putting out 2 & 4 packs of Martial Arts (Shaw Bros.) films up to about Spring of this year.

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Dynasty...dragon+dynasty

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Dynasty...dragon+dynasty

http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Dynasty...dragon+dynasty

manicsounds

"A Chinese Odyssey" stars Stephen Chow as the iconic Son Goku character. I have the Hong Kong DVD of this, which was my last ever purchase from HKFlix. There is a Hong Kong BD, it would be a waste if Dragon Dynasty doesn't release it on BD...

mdnitoil

Nice to see a couple of new titles but I was only really in it for the Shaw stuff. Maybe next year.

dex14

Yea I picked those up. I have most of the collection. I wish they would update their website or something.

flansered

After 3 years, there has been an announcement for another Dragon Dynasty release, a 5 movie release featuring Born to Defense, The Defender, The Legend II(a.k.a The Legend of Fon Sai Yuk II), From Beijing With Love l, and Once Upon a Time in China & America. The Amazon listing only lists English, but that could either be incorrect or par of the course when it comes to DD releases. Release date is October 6.

Here's where I saw the news:
http://www.cityonfire.com/dragon-dyn...vd-anchor-bay/

Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...LSB5B4MVXGCUVY

coyoteblue

Holy sh*t. They're actually releasing From Beijing With Love? Yowsa. Fong Sai Yuk II isn't too shabby either. Assuming they don't screw us by going English dub only or screw up the English subs, this is a must get box.

Preterite

I haven't seen From Beijing since I rented a Chinatown VHS copy. Really hoping those "English-only" specs are wrong!

flansered

Some of the movies are available on Netflix in Chinese, but knowing the Dragon Dynasty track record the set will be flawed in some way, so it will probably be dubbed only. I think this is what will probably get me to finally pick up the 4 or 5 DD discs that I am still lacking.

flansered

I forgot about this until I saw it in Best Buy this morning. I was surprised to see it in store. It was $9.99. 3 discs in a single case, stacked on one spindle. Legend 2 is on a disc by itself, and according to the packaging all movies have original languages and subtitles.

I figured it was worth $10 for From Beijing with Love. Other than that it is a bunch of Jet Li movies and I'm a bit surprised that they didn't drop that movie and just bill it as a Jet Li collection.

There is a picture of Jet Li from Fist of Legend on the cover rather than the same picture of him from the Legend DVD that was on the promo art, that's the biggest screw up that I have noticed so far.

L Everett Scott

That is odd...maybe they were going for an action motif? It's a shame DD didn't package Beijing with other Stephen Chow titles...I definitely would've bought it had they done so.

DD never released Love On Delivery, did they? (I know there are online lists of DD's complete catalogue...just can't be buggered to pull it up right now because my lunch break is over.)

DJariya

After Bey Logan left, this line went down the toilet. Too bad. I collected the first 20 or so DVDs and thought Logan and the Weinstein company did a good job with this. The extras that they made were always solid. Logan's commentaries were always great. Once Logan left, they stopped putting any effort in these and released a bunch of barebones titles. I think they also stopped releasing more modern day HK action movies. The website no longer exists. And I know The Weinstein company has gone through some financial troubles.

Maybe HK and Asian action movies was just too niche for American audiences to start an entire DVD line for it. Logan used to have a pretty active online presence, especially with his blogs. Now he's been very quiet.

flansered

The set is down to $7.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. I'll either do a price adjustment or rebuy/exchange. But still that's a great price.

Brian T

Asian cinema still enjoys international appeal -- and sales -- long after Logan's career tanked. Westerners can still get a decent fix through various outlets (even cinemas, depending on how big your city is). Hong Kong cinema less so, perhaps, but that's only because China eventually became too big an elephant to ignore.

If anything made Hong Kong cinema in particular seem like a "niche" to a then-growing western fanbase, it was Bey Logan, who effectively pigeon-holed the city's highly-varied film industry as little more than a maker of "chopsocky" (shudder) martial arts films -- both period and contemporary -- when it was so much more than that. He also had a gift for making people think they were getting more out of a commentary track than was actually the case because, in essence, he made sure he got all the gigs.

Hong Kong's unique cinema in particular was always destined to morph into something different after the handover, and while it will never be what it once was (to the chagrin of many, no doubt), that doesn't mean there aren't still filmmakers there telling relevant localized stories, with or without bold action sequences, just as they've always done. They just don't seem to stir interest from they kinds of folks who were "inspired" by Logan over the years. Thankfully, they do receive coverage nonetheless, albeit from different quarters.

The industries on both sides of the pond essentially dumped him, though, and his solo endeavours since then haven't really gone anywhere (which should seem suspicious to just about anyone considering how "connected" he appeared to be back in the day): mostly trying to milk what little he could out of the fringes of the Hong Kong industry where bridges weren't burnt (like his short-lived reeleast.com), and appearing in (and making) B-movies nobody sees and/or which rarely if ever seem to make completion. It's not surprising that he keeps a low profile.

I do agree that when Logan "left" Weinstein/Dragon Dynasty, the treatment of the films went bare-bones, but perhaps that's what happens when a company with a dubious track record on its Asian acquisitions hitches itself to a one-trick pony whose game was as much about his own ego as it was about the movies he inspired others to enjoy. I think he'll always he a contentious figure.

DJariya

^^^ Well Go USA actually does a very good job with their recent BD releases of HK, China and Korean cinema. So they have sort of made up for Dragon Dynasty's collapse.

I'm well aware of Bey Logan's failed career as a movie producer. But I did notice he has a co-producer credit in the upcoming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel.

Michael Biehn made his directorial debut on a HK movie that Logan produced called "Shadowguard" and he mentioned in an interview I read about what an awful experience it is. He doesn't even acknowledge the movie.

What I miss about him was his wealth of knowledge. I really enjoyed the commentary tracks that I did listen to with him. I wish Well Go would hire him to do tracks on their releases.

Brian T

Good point. And there are other companies that pickup Asian shows for theatrical distribution, disc or streaming releases, so the taps will never be turned off at this point.


When I first noticed that myself, it gave me pause, but then I remembered Donnie Yen's in the picture. Pretty much the only unburned bridge he has left over there . . .


I may have posted a link or made reference to that interview elsewhere on these boards many moons ago! Clearly it was an awful experience, and while Biehn didn't mention Logan by name, it was pretty obvious who his venom was directed at. I tend to extrapolate backward when I read stuff like that.

Logan's industry work since then has either been extremely low-budget (mostly with other ex-pat or wannabe-ex-pat white dudes hanging around HK, from what I've seen) or wholly aborted, as in the case of Lady Snowblade or whatever it was called. I do give him credit for trying.


I can understand people who were more or less raised on him appearing to be the "voice" of Asian cinema in the west missing him or his seemingly vast knowledge, but in all seriousness there were and are far more scholarly and interesting "voices" out there who've long proven they're all about the cinema and not so much about themselves. It's unfortunate that none of them have been asked to do commentaries over the years (which could've made all the difference in de-ghettoizing Hong Kong cinema), presumably because Logan positioned himself as "the" expert when that really wasn't the case. His annointing of himself as a "Hong Kong Cinema Expert" was definitely overselling it; I'd have been willing to grant him "Martial Arts Movie Expert" (with some exceptions), but he really wanted the top crown and in the long run it only further marginalized the very films he was helping to peddle in the west because all we ever saw his name attached to were martial arts/action movies, and I think by extension that's all most distributors ever thought would be worth releasing over here.

He may have left a sizable body of work in his wake (only his book still stands as the most worthy part of it), but the cinema would've benefited so much more had the gigs been shared among other "experts" and authors, as it is with nearly all other cinemas on earth once they start making inroads to the west. For example, I've always loved reading and listening to (the late) Donald Richie, but I definitely wouldn't have wanted him to be the ONLY guy who ever recorded commentaries for Japanese films released over here, even on films outside of his purview. When it came to Hong Kong cinema, and even some Korean films (wha??), Logan was all we were given time and again (let's just leave Ric Meyers out of it, shall we?), and that certainly wasn't because he was the only guy with the requisite knowledge.

Still, I gotta agree that something is missing when it comes to DVD/Blu-ray presentations of Asian and in particular Hong Kong cinema these days. I just can't agree that it's Logan.



ADDENDUM, Dec. 8/2015:

Now that I've seen the new trailer for the CROUCHING TIGER sequel, and even though I'm fairly certain Logan only got credit because his old pal Donnie Yen threw him a bone, it's appears to be precisely the kind of derivative, painfully westernized (and derivative) "chopsocky" fare that he would associate himself with. Short of one actress and a sword, it might as well be any other mainlander costume "epic" released in the past decade, and probably should've been, since Yuen Wo-ping -- much as I worship his work -- is no Ang Lee or James Schamus. I mean, Harry Shum Jr.? Seriously? And what's with that grating Creedence cover-by-zombies? Sigh.