tons of new HK announcements.

The Killer
Shaw Brothers Classics Vol 8 (strangely not listed on Shout's site yet. This is a Gruv link)
Hong Kong New Wave Essentials (w/Painted Faces. Shout factory exclusive)

Does Shout really think that limited edition Hong Kong New Wave poster is supposed to entice buyers? I guess it's serviceable as box artwork, but who would want that as a poster? Not that this is new or anything. I've got a couple of these Shout exclusive posters and they're all pretty much terrible.

I just saw the 4K restoration of The Killer in the theater this past weekend. It definitely looked better than it's ever looked. I'm thankful they didn't smear away all the film grain. The subtitles left something to be desired unfortunately. There was even an obvious grammatical error. Hopefully that will be corrected on the UHD.

That is how I felt about the Golden Harvest Supernatural Shockers and Rising Stars sets. I get it for sets that devoted to 1 movie or franchise, but these are just a bunch of floating heads from unrelated movies.

I don't want to bag on Shout too much because they've put out some very good discs over the years, and liberating the Golden Princess catalog was a cinematic miracle, but sometimes they come off like such a low-end label. It's like they have the template for what constitutes a premium release, but the end product is often the chintziest version of one. They're still a step above Kino, but at least with Kino you can get their stuff pretty cheap.

^ This. While I’m grateful that all of these companies are tackling this catalog now (Shout, Arrow, Imprint) I’m already starting to resent the fact that we’ll probably have to comparison shop for the ideal version – especially between Shout and Arrow, because Imprint is way too expensive – or just cave and get both in some cases. The ‘floating heads’ thing is becoming a bit too common on a lot of their newly commissioned artwork for these, and I likewise don’t see the value in posters of those pieces. Why not make repros of the HK originals? Those aren’t easy to come by nowadays and would least have a feeling of authenticity to them, rather than a bunch of headshots with Photoshop filters overlaid to make them look ‘painterly’. I suppose it’s tricky for artists working with mix-n-match titles in boxed sets, but I still think an exceptional illustrator could create a work that encapsulates all three without being so perfunctory.

Arrow’s new edition of CITY ON FIRE has really dynamic new slip art by Tony Stella, but I doubt they’ll use him for the whole line. Oh well, we get what we get, and at least the older discs can be retired or sold.

For what it’s worth, that NEW WAVE box is essentially another Shaw Brothers collection as all three films are either from Shaw or the related Cosmopolitan Films, similar to how they bundles their STEPHEN CHOW and GAMBLERS & GANGSTERS collections.

- - - - - - - -

Incidentally, for folks who just want to sample, many of the Golden Princess transfers released so are available now on Tubi for free, in subbed and dubbed versions (HARD BOILED, THE KILLER, CITY ON FIRE, BETTER TOMORROW trilogy, PEKING OPERA BLUES, etc). I’ve only skimmed a few for the action scenes and haven’t paid close attention to the subtitle quality, but they look pretty decent at least.

So far I've seen 3 of the John Woo restorations from Shout:
The Killer (in the theater)
Hard Boiled (in the theater)
A Better Tomorrow (on the Criterion Channel)

I don't have the keenest possible eye for visual quality, but they all have looked excellent to me and much better than any previous versions that I've seen. The subtitles on all 3 have a few instances of very stilted dialog though. I'm hoping the Arrow releases will have subtitles with more natural English phrasing.

I can't ever read the title of "The Killer" and "Hard Boiled" without thinking about what a massive, huge deal it was when the Criterion DVDs of them went out of print and became the most sought-after DVDs with people paying astronomical amounts. I think this was around 2000 and the forum here was still shiny new.

I remember lucking up on a copy of both Hard Boiled and The 400 Blows around that time at a Borders Books in Tallahassee, FL and thought I had struck a gold mine.

I still have the CC dvds for both The Killer and Hard Boiler, the Dragon Dynasty dvds for both the the DD blu-ray for The Killer. I am hoping that the SF releases do not end up being problematic like the all of the DD releases, I think that the dvds had dubtitles, the Hard Boiled blu-ray had supbar picture quality and the Killer blu-ray was 1080i.

Scream (Shout) Factory announced on their Facebook page that the Friday the 13th bluray boxed set will be going out of print soon. I'm guessing the rest of the series will get 4k releases eventually.

Yeah it's spiked back up in price recently, I picked up a copy from Walmart.com for $57 back in May cause I had a feeling that this was coming and this was the cheapest that I would ever see it. I have seen posts online that people have started seeing it in Walmart stores recently. Having it in hand makes me regret not getting the big Halloween set since I opted for the cheaper budget set.

The main attraction for that box set was the inclusion of the Blu-ray 3D version of Part 3 which I think is exclusive to that set, but I couldn't justify even the deep discounted sale prices for that set, especially now with 4K releases

I got that set the week it came out. Yeah it was quite expensive, but I don’t regret it and same goes with the Halloween set. I recently got my Halloween set autographed by Nick Castle a few months ago at a horror con.

The F13 set came with some posters as well when it was shipped from Shout.

For those who never had the Criterion editions of The Killer and Hard Boiled, the Criterion Channel has the 4K restorations of both right now and you can choose to watch them with the commentaries from the long out-of-print DVDs, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, both are two of the best looking sets in my collection. Love that they both have a nice slip box as well as all the movies in their own individual cases with original artwork.

There are some good deals right now on Shout's website. I picked up the 2 Golden Harvest sets for $29.99 each, and there are a lot of $5.99 Blu-rays.

I ended up placing a second order cause I saw that the Tiger Cage set is $13, the Weird steelbook is $10, and The Compleat Al DVD is $8.

Reading rumors that Shout is beginning to liquidate it's physical media and moving to .ore of a streaming model going forward.

I just read that as well. Doesn’t surprise me.

so you are saying we should join Shout’s physical forever club?

Big sale on their website, or dumping off in bulk to places like Hamiltonbook?

I've noticed that they've been blowing out a lot of their big collectors versions that come with all the extra crap. I could also see them just needing to clear out warehouse space and realizing that maybe people don't want to drop $150 on a 4K with a poster, extra slip cover, and some dumb merch. (Which I say after buying their Robocop 2 4K/poster/pin/sticker set for $45 during the Shocktober sale)

The source of the rumor is just one dude on blu-ray.com, whose post is being screencapped and shared everywhere.

Which isn’t to say some kind of shift won’t happen, but it seems much more likely that this is an exit from operating their own storefront (or at least this version of one) than an exit from physical media altogether.

Here's to hoping that is more accurate.

Seems it would be more important to labels now to sell directly, with fewer stores carrying their stuff. I‘ve ordered directly from several companies recently since there’s no decent stores left in my area.

I think what deters many from buying from Shout/Scream including here is their prices. They are a pretty expensive boutique label. There is some stuff that I’m interested that is still pretty high. Forced Vegeance, a 43 year old Chuck Norris movie, is still in the high 20s. And there are no extras.