Decent extras on the BULLET IN THE HEAD three-disc set. I’m glad we’re seeing more effort finally being put into getting more original participants involved in the special features for reissues of Hong Kong films lately. They’ve been generally absent from western editions for far too long (outside of occasional vintage interviews). The usual ‘experts’ are appreciated, of course, but a little goes a long way when the people who were there are still around and not always busy as they were in their heyday.

Even Gruv is showing Hard Boiled as sold out. I suspect something must have happened with the disc manufacturer, but that's total speculation.

To my surprise I just got a shipping notification email from Amazon. Lucky me I guess.

I've good experiences buying from GRUV before so this is good news.

I ended up getting Forced Vengeance and the new The Killer 4K from the new GRUV store and the 20% off signup20 code still works.

Ok, help me out, guys. Did I just make a huge mistake by ordering directly from their website? Did you all order your Hard-Boiled copies from Amazon instead?

Yes I ordered Hard Boiled from Amazon and it already shipped. Scheduled to come tomorrow.

Okay, so is there anybody here who ordered anything directly from Shout during that last sale? I did get a purchase-confirmation email on the day of order, but that's it. Nothing else. I just seriously need to know if Shout just can't ship anything at all right now. Sorry for the panic, but like I said, I've never in over 20 years of online movie-buying, have had to wait this long just for a shipping confirmation.

Hmmm thinking about the 4Ks of Labyrinth (regular edition), The Dark Crystal and Fargo.

I might be in the same boat as Mondo, no shipping notice and now the link in my order confirmation goes to the new store front and logging in on new (Gruv) site says I have placed 0 orders.

Shout/shopify charged my card. Will need to contact Shout customer service email and hope I get a response because otherwise this might force me into doing a chargeback, which for me is an incredibly rare action to take.

ETA: found the email from Shout in my Gmail promotions folder that says any orders placed before 11/03 will be fulfilled by previous ecommerce infrastructure, so I am a bit less stressed and feel I will eventually get my order.

I placed two orders. The first was placed 10/19, shipped 10/21, and arrived 10/23. The second was placed 10/20, and no movement yet.

It’s only been 2 weeks (which, from a boutique, is kinda nothing during a big sale), so I’m not sweating it.

Even though order history pages aren’t working, you can still track your order on Shopify’s Shop app.

I placed three or four orders and got the first so far. I’m trying to be patient as I’m sure they got hammered with orders. It does kinda suck you can’t check your order status anymore.

Since Shout’s store was powered by Shopify, you can still check your status with the Shop app.

Hmm thanks. I wonder if I can do that. I always check that box to not open a shop account.

You could also check your browser history to see if you have a URL that begins with https://shopify.com/55159554182/account/

That'll load your initial order confirmation page (which should have unique keys and stuff in the URL to sidestep a Shopify account) and will show the current status.

That worked! Thanks man.

My order still hasn't shipped from them.

Maybe this wasn't even possible, but I had hopes that maybe they'd be able to assemble a more comprehensive selection of different cuts of the film. Especially in light of the discovery of the A Better Tomorrow II workprint. As it is, I wonder what sort of quality we can expect for the so called "festival cut".

I placed 2 orders on the Shout website on the Monday that the sale started and received them on Thursday the same week. But I expect that as the days went on and more people found out about the sale they got hammered with orders which caused slow downs.

Also Amazon just delivered my copy of Hard Boiled. Surprisingly they packaged it in a box. Seems nice and no discs came scratched, so that is a win.

Since signup20 still worked, ordered the 3 I previously mentioned and saved $15.

Late reply but I put in a +/- $450 order at Shout (plus exorbitant shipping to Canada) and don’t really expect to see it anytime soon. As other folks here have noted, they probably got slammed with orders because of the confusion they sowed (I suspect on purpose, in retrospect). A year or so back, I Google street-viewed the return address on a couple of Shout packages and they both brought up a nondescript logistics company in a nondescript business park in some southern U.S. state, and not a company that dealt strictly with discs but rather a whole array of stuff. I’ve received orders from many boutiques that actually came from places like that, so I assume these latest Shout orders aren’t actually coming from Shout anyway and the recent layoffs aren’t an issue so much as the sheer volume of orders they probably got.

Like others, I ordered HARD BOILED from Amazon (arriving tomorrow) entirely because it was cheaper than getting it from Shout prior to Shout’s version going out of stock.

That would’ve been really cool. The fact that so many HK films were altered for so many markets back in the day is one of the great frustrations of the hobby, and film history, really, but BITH takes the cake for alterations. It would’ve been interesting to see some of these various hacked-up versions presented ‘as is’ on a separate disc just to offer a historical glimpse into how different societies treated the material, but at the same time I guess those are ultimately kind of an affront to the original work.

The difference with Bullet in the Head is that we've never actually seen the original work. It was cut down drastically days before the release date because exhibitors scoffed at the runtime. Multiple versions played theatrically, but I don't believe that the current default home video version ever did. And the home video version is also not the version that Woo completed before the movie was cut down. That version was supposedly like 2hr45min long. Woo has said in the past that the original version no longer exists, but I had hoped a copy might turn up.

I got my copy of Hard Boiled in today. It actually came in a box from Amazon. Looking forward to seeing it again soon.

The Criterion Channel currently has the John Woo collection and I recently started watching Bullet in the Head again. Haven't seen it in many years, probably since the old Media Asia DVD that I rented. It looks really good.

Understood. My last post originally referenced that first cut being lost to the ages, but I replaced that with the reference to the sheer number of times it’s been cut in general. I probably should’ve kept in the mention of the huge hack-down right up front, but I’ve never held any hope of that being found. To fans of the film, the festival version and the alternate ending are known quantities, of course, but at least they included those in this package, and both are decent contextual material for the uninitiated. Hopefully the ‘experts’ (or Woo in his interview?) will at least discuss the rather tumultuous fate the film faced right out of the gate, and/or give us a feel for what was lost. My thoughts on an extra disc of alternates cuts (aside from the two we’re getting) was really just wishful thinking because frankly there are just too many of them and they’re curiosities at best (like the Singapore version). Would love to see Woo’s original, but it just seems so improbable at this point.

This prompted me to see if these were still on Tubi and they are indeed (in both subbed and dubbed versions) but checking in there I also realized that the entire SWORDSMAN TRILOGY is now posted there with Shout’s ‘HK Cinema Classics’ tag at the beginning. I’m stoked to see that, although the fact that they dumped them on streaming – free streaming no less – instead of giving us Blu or 4K exclusives first kinda tells me where their priorities are with the Golden Princess catalog. ETA: looks like they’re also rentable on YouTube so maybe they’re on Criterion Channel as well?

Really, really hoping there’s a disc set coming for those. They’re beyond deserving.