^bump^ anyone awake enough to comment or respond or answer my above?

Once you watch Shiri you're gonna wish you had bought the 2 disc Shiri instead....the Shiri at DDDhouse is only a one disc R3 DTS version...this movie is definitely worth shelling out some extra bucks....just think of The Blade...this movie is that good.....

What a coincidence bob... I was going to post about Shiri cuz I watched it tonight. It was a decent flick, but not nearly as good as The Blade. It had some outstanding bloody gunfights, but the story was so contrived and the fact that they kept letting the bad guys go and couldn't hit the broadside of a barn for s*** just got to be quite frustrating. I thought that while Shiri had a better production value than Running Out of Time, I still found ROoT a better film. I know ROoT was just as unbelievable in spots, but it had such a great style to it and I liked the relationship between the two main characters alot better.

I'm not trying to diss on Shiri, but it wasn't the best film ever. If this film came out in the US, all the DVDTalkers would just dismiss it as contrived hollywood action mainstream garbage and it would probably star George Clooney or Morgan Freeman or something. Anyway - I did like it - it had alot of cool stuff in it and I liked the relationships between all the characters (even though it was too obvious who the "you know who" was). I thought the acting was all really good and I was very surprised at how well produced it was. There were quite a few holes in it, but nothing too major for an action flick. Overall, it was pretty good.

I thought I'd be upset at first about getting the one disc edition, but I'm ok with it. It looked beautiful and the DTS soundtrack was amazing. I may upgrade to the 2 disc version and half.com my copy, but I'll have to watch it again to make sure I liked it enough... we'll see. I can't wait for Bchunmo or whatever. I also made the mistake of buying Time and Tide region 3 and found out it was Full Screen. Argh. If it's good, I'll buy it again. DDDHouse forgot to pack Gen-X Cops in my package - the outside of the box said 20 DVDs, but there were only 19 inside. I'm sure it was just a mistake. They remembered to send Gen-Y Cops though. Should I watch that or wait until I get the first one?

I also watched God of Cookery tonight. I can't remember a film where I laughed so hard. This is one of the funniest films ever. If you haven't seen it, you must. My girlfriend loved it too. We had tears in our eyes from laughing so hard.

Also - earlier today I watched a bit of The Duel and Last Hero in China... The Duel looks to be pretty decent I guess. I can't tell if there's gonna be "whoa" moments or if those moments are going to be "haha" ones. I'll have to see it all the way through first. Last Hero in China looks pretty damn funny. I don't know why people diss on it so much. It seems to have some pretty decent fighting in it - even though the fighting is tuned towards humor a bit. I'll have to watch the whole thing before saying for sure.

I think one of the main problems w/ LHIC is that most people don't realize it is supposed to be a campy movie. I watched it the first time thinking it was another "serious" kung-fu flick and in that frame of mind it sucks. Later I watched it again thinking it was tongue-in-cheek and it's not bad.

Yeah - maybe that's it. Cuz from what I saw, it looked pretty damn good. Isn't the director known for directing campy comedies?

Also - I'm watching City Hunter right now and it's pretty funny. Is there a language track in existence that Jackie actually does his own dub for? Neither the Cantonese nor Mandarin tracks have his voice. Only those who are into Anime will be able to appreciate City Hunter I think. ^_^

edit: Ok - just finished City Hunter... what a bizarre frickin movie. I enjoyed it very much. Very funny. There isn't much kung-fu to speak of, but being able to see Jackie Chan and others re-create the Street Fighter II video game was more than worth the price of admission. I've dropped enough quarters in that stupid game to pay for this DVD 3 times over (which isn't alot of quarters - I was more of a Mortal Kombat guy myself). Have any of you seen this one? It's crazy. The Street Fighter 2 thing was outrageous. It's a very silly film overall. Jackie breakdances in this as well.

edit 2: Ok - I just finished watching Gen-Y Cops. Boy, what a crap movie. Yuck. I'm embarrassed to own it. Maybe if I was ten years old or something and grew up in Hong Kong. And fricken Paul Rudd from Clueless, 200 Cigarettes, Romeo + Juliette, Overnight Delivery, Halloween 6, and Cider House Rules was in this as well. And at the end, he spoke Cantonese! And he sucked! And oh my god... I just don't know what to say about this flick - I am now dumber for having watched it. My english is poor now, man! ack.

[Edited by Trigger on 05-26-01 at 09:15 AM]

I've always liked Last Hero in China, at least for the sole reason thats its the only film that you can see Gordon Lui and Jet Li fight. Plus, it gives new meaning to the term "cock-fighting".

Ok - just watched my R3 FULLSCREEN of Time and Tide. Wow. If you haven't seen it, you should. You might as well wait until it comes out in widescreen and with DTS perhaps. Outstanding transfer (even though it was fullscreen) and the sound was amazing. Lots of heavy bass and great surround separation. The film itself starts out like it's going to be a bit more cerebral than it ends up... Tsui Hark makes excellent action films and this is no exception. Plenty of little camera tricks and going inside gun chambers and whatever else you can think of. The plot is somewhat hard to follow at first, for me anyway... I caught on by the end though. The trouble was that the film decided to dispose of any exposition or showing what type of people the characters are normally - the film doesn't spend much time explaining what's going on. I don't know - maybe it's just me. Even by the end, the characters are never fully explored, but just enough so that you can care what's going on. The action is very tight and I only caught sight of the wires a few times and it didn't bother me. I think if the story and characters had been fleshed out just a little bit more, then I would feel comfortable calling this a masterpiece. But as it is - I have to say that it's merely "great". I did like it a bit more than Shiri which was also pretty good.

Maybe if he had used real actors instead of pop stars in this movie, Tsui Hark might have been more prone to let them actually act.

I'm making do with my fullscreen VCD for now.

Yeah - but they weren't all that bad... I know what you mean though.

Just visited DDDHouse...has anybody seen Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do? Is it a documentary? Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Its basically Bruce Lee talking about his techniques and his combat principles. Should be interesting if you're interested in the philosophies of martial arts. Supposedly, it also includes his notes, some home videos and other stuff like that to show off his techniques. But I've never actually seen it before so . . .

On a similar note - I just watched Jackie Chan: My Stunts. It was moderately interesting, but not anything I have to watch again. It seemed kinda masturbatory on Jackie's part... talking about how great he is and how awesome his stunt team is. A few clips from his films and some demonstrations by his stunt team which look like something cheap that Universal Studios would produce to play on televisions at their theme park.

Anybody else excited about Kiss of the Dragon? Jet Li's new film. Here's a link to the trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/kiss_of_the_dragon/

Luc Besson co-wrote and produced it and it's "in the can" so expect to see it perhaps this summer. Corey Yuen was the fight coreographer. I'm excited! Here's some pics.

If you thought that one was bad you shouldn't waste time w/ the My Story one then. Personally I thought both of them weren't too bad (for documentaries). I'll probably watch the My Stunts again at some point, but I'm not sure the My Story is really worth repeated viewing.

[Edited by nemein on 05-29-01 at 03:26 AM]

Well then I won't buy it... I was tempted because it sounded a bit more interesting than My Stunts. Thanks for the warning.

Tonight I watched Tokyo Raiders and A Man Called Hero... Tokyo Raiders was pretty good I thought. It was a contemporary spy vs. spy of sorts with a good amount of kung-fu with very little gunplay or blood. Well paced and quite entertaining. I liked the little twists in the characters. The disc was phenominal. It had a DTS track which stated it was DTS 2.0, but it was definitely 5.1 and sounded amazing - much better than the DD5.1 that was also included. The picture quality was outstanding as well - perhaps a bit washed out though. The disc contained the Making Of documentary which was Subtitled (for once) and pretty decent compared to other Making Of's I've seen from HK. The subtitles were clear and easy to read and mostly went below the picture inside the black bars where they should be... I have a feeling though that they didn't translate alot of the dialogue as they kept talking and yet the same 4 or 5 words would appear as if it was supposed to cover all that dialogue. I think it was the cliff's notes subtitles or something. I still got the whole story though.

A Man Called Hero wasn't that great... the CGI was ok, but not all that spectacular. It was by the same team that did Storm Riders. Not nearly as much action though. It was set in the early 1900's and was about this flying swordsman guy and his sad sad life during his time in America as slave labor. The fight scenes were few and far between and weren't all that great either. On the plus side, it had Qi Shu (chick from Jackie Chan's Gorgeous) in it - yummy... This film was more of a drama than a swordplay movie and the drama wasn't all that interesting. It is apparently an adaptation from a comic book or possibly a Manga. I'd never heard of it. Much like the story in Storm Riders - they leave alot of loose ends untied and also don't fully explore the characters. Most of the film is told as a story in the past tense so it reads and plays out like a history book - yawn. It's for sure a rental title. This DVD also included a subtitled "Making Of" which was actually more interesting than the movie itself. It focused on the special effects and how they made them and how they were "better than the best CGI effects in Hollywood today" (yeah right). It also included a decent (but not great) DD5.1 soundtrack and a pretty clean print... given that the film is only a few years old, the image quality could've been just a bit better - although it was good compared to other DVDs released from HK at that time.

Anyway - if you like these films - the Universe Laser DVDs are the ones to get.

As far as Kiss of the Dragon goes, i really dont trust Europeans (or Americans) when it comes to good kung fu movies. If you want something laughable and cheesy like Bloodsport and Gymkata, then Europe is the place to go. If it isn’t HK, then i put my guard up and i approach cautiously. Yeah, Corey Yuen Kwai as fight choreographer sounds good, until you realize he was also the fight choreographer on Romeo must Die. You take them out of Hong Kong and they get diluted. i read somewhere that they were keeping the fights in Kiss of the Dragon pretty wire free, and more head to head, Fist of Legend like fighting, so there may be hope.

Jet Li, Luc Besson and Corey Yuen? I like all three of them. Can't wait to see how it turns out. Anybody know what studio is holding the rights?

Well, apparently it's a Fox title as you can see by the URL above. This will be in theatres first and Fox puts out some really nice DVDs in case that's why you were wondering... so when the time comes, I'm sure this will be a great DVD. I have high hopes for this film actually. I think Jet Li turned down some really huge films to do this one. Something Matrix or whatever...

Actually I think the going rumor is Jet turned down the Matrix because they tried screwing him over. From what I heard Reeves is getting something like $20M/pic for the next two. They wanted Jet to do both for less than $5M I think it was

That's pretty close to what I heard as far as why he turned down the Matrix 2, but I was referring to him turning down Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to work on another film - Romeo Must Die I think. Nice choice there Jet... He's a wise, wise man. If I'm not right about CTHD, then it's something else that was huge, but I'm pretty sure about Romeo Must Die. I think he turns down these huge films to do these little films in which he can be the big fish in a smaller pond instead of a normal sized fish in a giant pond.

The real reason Jet Li turned down Matrix 2 is evidenced in this quote by Jet Li:


I just watched Green Snake - I'd like to know what you all thought of it. It's worth seeing if you haven't seen it. If you can find it for rent... you should just rent this film. It started out pretty good, but the second act was stupid and the third act just got better and better until it went into self-destruct mode. Maggie was charming and beautiful in this film as Green Snake. Joey is just too much of a dork for me to take seriously - although she was decent in this as White Snake (heh - whitesnake)...

The special effects weren't very special and the cinematography was just average for a Tsui Hark film. The story seemed like a Sex and Zen episode, but there was no porn. I liked the film ok, but it doesn't rank all that high compared to other films from that time (early 90's). I definitely think it's worth seeing once, but to suggest owning it would be criminal on my part.

As far as I know, there's only 2 DVDs available for it and they are both cut from the same Laserdisc print. The Tai Seng version was a crappy transfer with tons of artifacts and blurry burned in subtitles that were too tiny to even see (when they weren't obscured by the fact that they were white on a white background half the time). Aside from those subtitle problems, in the last 10 minutes, they didn't even bother to subtitle a third of what was being said. Really annoying. The sound was mono as well.

Seen on: Tai Seng DVD

Ratings: Movie - 6.2/10

DVD Presentation - 2/10 (one point for at least being out on DVD and another point for being widescreen)

What I recall reading was- Jet's asking price is between 7 and 9 million per film, but he asked for around 12-15 million to be in the Matrix, even though his role wasnt huge, like a secondary, but significant, role. Well, they werent going to pay that. As far as turning down Crouching Tiger, that is true, he was originally considered for the part (even though hes a tad too young looking for it) but Jet doesnt think very highly of period setting films or Ang Lee so he turned it down.

Which is too bad since he might end up just doing a bunch of highly forgettable films if he doesn't get with a good director in Hollywood. A long way from the ideal chinese youth of the old propaganda films he was in as a child. I sort of wish he'd go back to doing Hong Kong films myself.

Shawn

I see Comrades - Almost a Love Story is up for preorder with a 6/19 release. Is this the same old Mei Ah disc or something new?

I watched Purple Storm tonight - it's pretty damn good. The Universe DVD is awesome. They actually subtitled the making-of featurette. It had a good 5.1 sound mix and the image was pretty decent - Laserdisc quality or better. The film was great - lots of suspense and whatnot, but it started to fall apart a bit near the end. There were some great ideas going on here though. I liked the cinematography - reminded me a bit of Sam Raimi. Probably a fan.

I recommend this one.

For those w/ regionless players (or R2 players), the HKL series just released an SE of this one that includes a commentary. Just an FYI...