IBJoel

Caught Jigoku on YouTube last night. The Hell scenes were equal parts disturbing and comedic. I felt that the most effective aspects were the lighting and some of the body-tearing, but towards the end it was a little confusing as to what exactly the punishment was. The depictions I felt were likely highly influential on the afterlife in Beetlejuice, but I don't know if Burton had seen the film.

Overall, it just felt tremendously nihilistic, so maybe it was a good time to watch it, given my own feelings about the current world. I will admit that I'm a tad confused as to what was meant by the final shots. The promise of entering Heaven after purging yourself of sin in Hell? A false hope to mock the protagonist? Was the afterlife a dream that the protagonist hallucinated as he died? That self-sacrifice out of love can truly help? (Also understand that while I am using the English Abrahamic religious terms, I understand that the spirituality is Japanese-Buddhist-based in the film)

Ash Ketchum

Yeah, I used to eat there after shopping at P-Tunes. That was always a nice way to end the trip before getting back on the subway. I once stopped in at the shop that took over the P-Tunes storefront. I don't even remember what they sold.

Once I took a friend who was looking for a copy of ROUGE down to P-Tunes and I just happened to have an invite for two to a Chinese New Year event hosted by the Manhattan Borough President in Chinatown that evening. I showed the invite to the proprietor and asked her where the place was and she said, "Right across the street." So I took my friend and when we got there, all the speeches had ended and the food line was just starting. What great timing!

IBJoel

I watched Hausu last week and it was the greatest thing I've ever seen. Especially watching John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness a few days later, which I felt was fantastic at building tension, but then the supernatural elements simply feel unimaginative when compared to the former film. In being unbound by reason and human logic, Hausu unintentionally captures religious/Lovecraftian horror in a way few Western films are capable of.

asianxcore

Memories of Murder (2003) is getting a limited theatrical release the week of 10/19/20.

I believe the film will be remastered and handled through Fathom Events.

LorenzoL

I finally watched Train to Busan: Peninsula and what a disappointment it was. I agree with everything that L. Everett Scott stated in his short review as the mix of Fast and the Furious and Road Fury was not something that I asked or wanted. I actually liked the first 20 minutes of this movie while they were on the ship but it goes downhill from there.

asianxcore

I was fortunate to catch the special two-night screening of Memories of Murder (2003) in an actual theater tonight.

Neon & Fathom Events did a great job with the Digitally Remastered screening, though I obviously wish more people were able to pack theaters for this.

Loved the Trivia & Interview snippets shown before the film in lieu of local advertisements & trailers. I also enjoyed the Q&A with Director Edgar Wright following the film.

Absolutely love this film. No matter how many times I watch it, I never stop enjoying each screening. Being able to see it on a large screen was pretty great.

DJariya

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/w...bi-1234809849/

Tubi, which is a free ad supported streaming service, picked up the rights to some movies from China's Wanda pictures

LorenzoL

I wonder if you guys can help me clarify this name change. Kara Hui is now going with the name Kara Wai. She’s the star of many Shaw Brothers films.

Is there a reason as to why she made this change?

asianxcore

If I'm not mistaken, Wai is just the variant form of the Hui surname.

Brian T

Another one for the discussion a few weeks back about the craziness of English transliterations of Chinese and Asian names in movies!

True enough about the variant spelling/pronunciation, though. I've seen her name billed both ways, in English, in various old movies, but most commonly as "Hui". Yet in most Cantonese-language interviews I've seen with her, the pronunciations has almost always sounded more "Wai" than "Hui". Personally, I've often – though certainly not exclusively – associated 'Hui' with transliterations of Mainland/Mandarin versions of names, rather than Cantonese/Hong Kong, where she's from. Her late brother, martial arts actor Austin Wai, was probably most known by that transliteration (Wai), yet you can still find his name in onscreen titles as Hui Tien-Sze, Hui Tien-Chi, etc. – very Mandarin-sounding if you sound them out, compared with the very Canto sounding 'Wai Tin-Chi' – and he was living in Beijing when he died several years ago. I wonder if Kara's 'switch', assuming it was one at all, was a subtle return to her Hong Kong roots?

LorenzoL

Thanks for the explanation. It would make sense as her latest projects have been Hong Kong projects, I believe.

Brian T

They've also been some of her best work, and some of the better purely (or mostly purely) Hong Kong movies in ages: RIGOR MORTIS, MIDNIGHT AFTER, HAPPINESS, 77 HEARTBREAKS, TRACEY. She does mainland pictures, too, of course, but they're all largely forgettable for the usual reasons. I've spotted her in some Malaysian movies lately as well (thank goodness for the local library system), so she gets around. And she still looks phenomenal at 60, and wisely maintains a diversified career decades after so many of her fellow 70's and 80's female martial arts stars called it a day.

L Everett Scott

I suspect the latter possibility is true. As you've noted, this is a case of Cantonese versus Mandarin pronunciation. For anyone who's interested, check out the ways in which the surname is pronounced in various Chinese dialects:

https://forvo.com/word/%E6%83%A0/

What's really unfortunate here is that 'Hui' is a transliteration of a different name in Cantonese than in Mandarin--the Hui brothers are the most famous example. The brothers' last name is not the same as the actress we're talking about. The Cantonese Hui is this character:




Kara's surname is this:



Obviously different, yes? The problem as @Brian T points out is that 'Hui' is the transliteration for Mandarin speakers saying Kara's last name while 'Hui' is also the transliteration for Cantonese speakers pronouncing the brothers' family name. By changing the transliteration to the Cantonese Wai, Kara is indeed making a stand (whether knowingly or not) against Mainland bias.

In case anyone is wondering how the Hui brothers' name sounds in Mandarin or other Chinese dialects, check out this page:

https://forvo.com/word/%E8%A8%B1/

I guess I should point out that the above characters are Traditional Chinese forms. If you come across a variant of the Hui brothers' name, it's probably because you've uncovered the Simplified form. I don't really want to get into that whole thing because the variations in pronunciation are hard enough to follow without delving into the separate character systems.

DJariya

Teaser trailer for Benny Chan's final film coming in 2021. Raging Fire starring Donnie Yen. Nicolas Tse is apparently playing the villain.

IMDB says that Chan was able to complete production of this despite his terminal condition.

Here's the synopsis from City on Fire.com





Looks like it's an actual Cantonese spoken HK production.

Brian T

Disappointing to hear that trailer with such out-of-place Mandarin dubbing, but at least the visuals are more coherent than that bit of weirdness I posted back in February! I'm not surprised that they released a Mandarin trailer first since that's undoubtedly the primary market given that the film is a China co-production and considering that both Yen and Tse are less loved in Hong Kong these days, and considering this will almost certainly be a 'police are the real patriots' piece as befits the new thought processes being forced upon Hong Kongers. (In fairness Yen and Tse both both made plenty of reasonably pro-cop movies even in the pre-suppression decades). I was stoked to read that Ray Lui and, especially, Ben Lam are in the supporting cast on this one. Neither has been crazy active in recent years – especially Lam – and both will hopefully bring some gravitas to a picture like this, since they're familiar faces from the good ol' days. Anyone looking for fun prior collaborations between Ben and Donnie would be well-served by the crazy HOLY VIRGIN VS THE EVIL DEAD from 1991 and Yen's own LEGEND OF THE WOLF, where the two duke it out in a solid finale. Lam was also in FLASH POINT with Yen, but I don't recall any action scenes between them, which will probably be the case with RAGING FIRE, too. None of 'em are getting any younger.

LorenzoL

I watched Big Brother starring Donnie Yen last night through Hoopla. What an uneven movie! This movie wants to be an “inspirational” teacher helps poor students melodrama but since it has Yen in the cast, it incorporates some fighting scenes along with a war flashback. The locker room fight was great but it definitely did not belong in this movie. The emotional pieces felt forced and heavy handed.

Hoopla also has Enter the Fat Dragon which I will be watching soon.

BTW, do you guys know if there’s an English friendly streaming service that I can watch HK based movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s? or do I have to resort to illegal streams to watch it if not on discs?

DJariya

Does Hi-Yah work in Canada?

https://www.hiyahtv.com/


This page is a good reference where all the old Celestial Pictures Shaw Brothers movies are at.

Celestial Pictures | Shaw Brothers Classic Film Collection

LorenzoL

Thanks for the recommendations! I been watching the Shaw Brothers films through Prime Video Canada but will watch the rest through iTunes. In regards to Hi-Yah, it seems that it's also available in Canada although is not clearly indicated on their website. Most of the movies though, is available to watch for me elsewhere with the exception of a few.

Brian T

Bummer that there's only 117 films apparently available for streaming, and virtually all martial arts films. And that's out of around 1,000 the company produced, including so many more martial arts films but also pictures in every other genre. According to this list, 521 of them were released on Celestial DVDs, though I'm to sure how accurate that is. I bought a lot of those over the years, but never got close to that count. I actually bought one of the hard-to-find-even-then Ziieagle Movie Box players (originally released in 2010) a few years back just to have as many Shaw titles as I could in one place, 668 in total with a 400-page book (video here at their defunct Facebook page). The drawback was that these boxes were only released in conservative Singapore, so a lot of the titles were edited for nudity, sex, some violence, though none in their entirety (i.e. naughty bits can still be seen). Many films are uncut, others barely cut, others insanely cut, but in some cases (especially with the HK DVDs out-of-print now) this is one of the few ways to see a lot of the rarer stuff.

DJariya

IP Man: Kung Fu Master (not related to the Donnie Yen series) is currently out on VOD


It's currently an $8 rental on Vudu

It's also distributed by Magnolia, not Well Go USA.


It looks alright, but after seeing the Donnie Yen series, I don't think I have any major sense of urgency to see this one.

asianxcore

It has its own thread but felt it should be posted in here as well.

Director Kim Ki-duk passed away due to COVID-19 at the age of 59.

https://deadline.com/2020/12/kim-ki-...in-1234654893/

DJariya

I watched Chasing the Dragon (2017) on Hi-Yah last week.

Overall, a pretty good Hong Kong gangster movie. Yen plays a poor fisherman from China who comes to HK with his buddies and eventually works his way into becoming one of the most notorious drug kingpins in Hong Kong Lau plays a HK cop who befriends him and the two eventually end up working together.

I know they made a sequel to it, but it appears to be a standalone movie with a new cast. Anyways, I quite enjoyed it. It's tense with lots of action and gun play. They do make the Caucasian actors look like over the top mustache twirling villains.

DJariya

I also watched Skyfire (2019) last night that I rented from Vudu. It's a big budget disaster movie from China. I posted most of my thoughts in the Sjyfire thread that was made. It was fun and a nice throwback to the old school disaster movies of the 70s and 80s.

It's about a major volcanic eruption that occurs of a remote island in Asia and the people who are caught up in it. Simon West directed this and Jason Isaacs has a small part.

It's a worthy watch if you like disaster movies. And no, there is no subliminal Chinese propaganda. It's a straight up escapism movie.

DJariya

New Korean science fiction adventure added to Netflix a few days ago called Space Sweepers. I don't think this would draw much interest separately, so posting it here.

IBJoel

I've been going through a lot of older Japanese cinema, lately. I finally saw:
Lady Snowblood (1973)
Tokyo Story (I actually felt that while better shot, this was not as good as Ozu's The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice)
Samurai I
Throne of Blood
Battles Without Honor and Humanity
Ghost in the Shell
I also completed Miyazaki's filmography in January with Howl's Moving Castle (not great) and The Wind Rises (good)