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Was that new Police Story: Lockdown worth a watch at all? Just noticed that on Netflix and it took me a minute to realize it was that Police Story series. Also I'm probably super late on this but I noticed Lady Snowblood has a Criterion Collection release coming on January 6th.
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Dec 19, 2015 05:03
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Was that new Police Story: Lockdown worth a watch at all? Just noticed that on Netflix and it took me a minute to realize it was that Police Story series. I'd say avoid Police Story: Lockdown. It's like Jackie Chan got imported into a generic modern action movie. Instead of wide fixed shots and amazing choreography you get close up shaky cam fights with no impact. I found the experience to be very disappointing and I decided it would be better just to go back and watch Police Story 1-3.
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Dec 19, 2015 16:39
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To be fair, Police Story 1 and 2 are, for my money, Chan's best work. They're absolutely loving amazing. That playground fight in 2 should be beamed into space, so aliens know what the score is.
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Dec 28, 2015 19:22
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Snowman_McK posted:To be fair, Police Story 1 and 2 are, for my money, Chan's best work. They're absolutely loving amazing. That playground fight in 2 should be beamed into space, so aliens know what the score is. But Project A I and II, Drunken Master I and II, Miracles, Young Master...they're so good too.
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Dec 29, 2015 02:18
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:But Project A I and II, Drunken Master I and II, Miracles, Young Master...they're so good too. They are. Picking a top 5, or even 10 from Chan is really loving hard. But, for me, Police Story 1 and 2 indicate why he is brilliant and unique.
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Dec 29, 2015 21:37
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JuanGoat posted:Yes. Add God of Cookery to that list as well. God, I wish this would get an HD release and decent subtitles. It is my absolute favorite Stephen Chow movie.
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Dec 29, 2015 21:57
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What a pleasant surprise; I forgot Lady Snowblood is out on Criteroin this week!!! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016R7C3AE?gwSec=1&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00
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Jan 3, 2016 14:50
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Watched a whole lot of martial arts flicks this weekend, here was the take away: Come Drink With Me - 9/10 - Wasn't really sure what to expect going into this one, but I really enjoyed it. As mentioned, the fight scenes are pretty roughly edited, in many places it seems like sound is just missing. But there's still a lot of fun to the fights, characters and story, and Pei-Pei Cheng does a great job in the lead roll. Among the rest of the cast, Smiling Tiger was another big favorite, but most of the main characters are pretty great. I wish the end of the movie had more time to spend with Cheng, but the story really shifts over to Fan Ta-p'i to wrap things up. God of Cookery - 6/10 - I have a tough time rating this one. The parts of this movie that were funny were extremely funny, but a bunch of jokes didn't land for me or were perhaps just a little too absurd or random for my tastes. Worth a watch, but definitely could have been a lot tighter. The Streetfighter - 7/10 - Could probably have been better titled as "The Scumbag". Sonny Chiba stars as a giant pile of poo poo who beats people up for money and sells women into sex slavery. He then sexually harasses another women to coerce a Karate dojo into letting him beat them up, but just loses to a middle aged man. This somehow gets him a job protecting a woman, which he completely fucks up. In the end, he doesn't really beat any of the bad guys and the movie just ends with nothing resolved. Pretty special! Lots of fun, some decent fights and pretty entertaining all around. Lady Snowblood - 10/10 - Yeah the big winner of the weekend, watched the Criterion release of the first movie. Don't need to say much else that the thread hasn't covered, it's a fantastic revenge flick, gorgeous and with great characters. Pick it up if you haven't seen it yet. Way of the Dragon - 6/10 - Bruce Lee beats up a bunch of jobbers including Chuck Norris (who is disturbingly harry and without shirt), also spends large portions of the movie exuding charisma all over the screen in his usual manor. Pretty decent, some great fights here and there, but not something I would say is particularly great as a whole. Also cats. Wing Chun - 9/10 - Another surprise hit, I followed Netflix's suggestion and gave this a spin. Tons of great fighting and humor, loved the cast all around. Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Jan 18, 2016 |
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Jan 18, 2016 05:32
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Stephen Chow is the master of the jump-cut gag. He does them extremely well in God of Cookery and in Kung-Fu Hustle. The scene where the guy creeping up on them with a knife when they're watching the dough bounce then cutting to him sitting down and watching it too had me laughing for a good long while. It was so perfect.
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Jan 18, 2016 05:54
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Watched a whole lot of martial arts flicks this weekend, here was the take away: Wing Chun, Lady Snowblood, and Come Drink With Me are all loving amazing movies. Way of the Dragon is my favorite Lee movie because of Norris as the big bad at the end.
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Jan 18, 2016 07:29
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Now you'll have to track down and watch Golden Swallow, the sequel to Come Drink With Me
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Jan 18, 2016 13:59
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Boinks posted:Now you'll have to track down and watch Golden Swallow, the sequel to Come Drink With Me The Golden Swallow is one of Chang Cheh's most brutal flicks with respect to body count and really stands up there along side "The Duel" and "Delightful Forest" Additionally, watching any of shaw brothers movies starring Pei Pei Cheng is never a bad idea. I definitely recommend flicks like "The Jade Raksha," "The Shadow Whip," and "The Lady Hermit."
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Jan 18, 2016 17:09
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Wing Chun is awesome, it's nice to go back and watch Donnie Yen play a dumbass dickhead after so many years of Stoic Badass Donnie Yen.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:53
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RichterIX posted:Wing Chun is awesome, it's nice to go back and watch Donnie Yen play a dumbass dickhead after so many years of Stoic Badass Donnie Yen. Self-directed Donnie Yen is the worst Donnie Yen. And yeah, Wing Chun is super great. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 18:02
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To steal from Teleport City, the cool thing about Way of the Dragon is the juxtaposition of Lee feeling powerless and lost in social situations because of his bumpkin ways, but when poo poo goes down and he has to fight, he's a cool customer, because he's fluent in Beat the Crap Outta You-ese.
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Jan 21, 2016 00:52
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G-III posted:The Golden Swallow is one of Chang Cheh's most brutal flicks with respect to body count and really stands up there along side "The Duel" and "Delightful Forest" I'll keep my eyes out for any of these. For now we're mostly working through what's available on Netflix, as most of their stuff seems to have pretty decent transfers. Hadn't mentioned but we watched The Streetfighter on Amazon Prime and the transfer was terrible, looked like a wide-screen VHS rip, not even scaled to fit the screen properly. Regarding Way of the Dragon, I feel like I might have rated it a little low, but I also don't feel like I really loved the movie. Most of the fight scenes were pretty great, but something about everything else just felt like it really dragged hard for me. I liked The Big Boss better and I couldn't really tell you why.  Speaking of, does anyone have any idea if there's a decent un-censored version of The Big Boss available anywhere? I'm curious to see it because I hear the version we have here is butchered pretty badly. Here's this weekend's haul, it was really solid: Supercop - 10/10 - AKA Police Story 3. Wowza. Jackie Chan doing his usual thing with Michelle Yeoh as his partner. This movie really moves, it doesn't waste any time explaining things and just expects you to follow as things continue to ramp up. And boy do they. Explosions on the level of Commando, ridiculous chase scenes, insane stunts, the works. Someone's head gets spiked with a Durian. Some good martial arts scenes in there as well, many tied in with the rest of the insanity that's going on. As usual, the end credits show 'making of' bloopers and accidents and they give you a real serious appreciation for just how completely insane Jackie Chan is. Seriously how is he still alive. The 5 Deadly Venoms - 9/10 - Really solid entry from the Venom Mob. This movie is much more subdued than I was expecting, much of the runtime is spent as a sort of crime mystery (trying to figure out who all the 5 are) and investigation. Lots of police and courtroom corruption, torture, murder. It's a fair bit different from a lot of the other movies I've seen from these guys, we really enjoyed it. 5 Element Ninjas - 9/10 (Rewatch) - I've seen this one before but my wife hadn't, still holds up very well. It's not very interesting in terms of characters or plot, but it more than makes up for that with some great fight scenes and plenty of classic ninja nonsense, including what can only be described as the most versatile martial arts weapon ever created. Also something about titty ninjas or whatever. Also features what is likely the best THE END I've ever seen. For completeness sake, these are some one I watched last year-ish in no particular order, with a vague rating as best I can: 36th Chamber of Shaolin - 9/10 Disciples of the 36th Chamber - 5/10 Crippled Avengers - 8/10 Kid with the Golden Arm - 8/10 Invincible Armour - 8/10 Police Story 1 - 10/10 Project A - 8/10 Drunken Master 1 - I'm certain I watched this but all I remember is the last fight. It's on my 'rewatch soon' list. Once Upon a Time in China - 10/10 Once Upon a Time in China 2 - 9/10 Also I watched that movie on Luridak's stream I think it was, it was badly dubbed and had a black Shaolin monk I think. It was really weird. Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 05:26
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Anybody see Ip Man 3 yet?
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Jan 25, 2016 05:42
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G-III posted:The Golden Swallow is one of Chang Cheh's most brutal flicks with respect to body count loving sold Speaking of, is there anything like the Raid series out there? It seems like the bulk of martial arts movies are much slower-paced and have much more stagey fights; I don't have a problem with this (hell, Master of the Flying Guillotine is probably one of my favorite movies period nowadays) but it doesn't really scratch the same itch. Are there any other movies that are just the bare minimum of setup and then pretty much constant shitwrecking until the credits roll, or at the very least have the kind of crazy-brutal fights those movies have? WeedlordGoku69 fucked around with this message at 08:06 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 07:58
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LORD OF BUTT posted:loving sold There's a couple of Korean movies with a broadly equitable style, like A Bittersweet Life and A City of Violence.
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Jan 25, 2016 09:05
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I watched Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame on Netflix this weekend and loved every minute of it.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:32
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Snowman_McK posted:There's a couple of Korean movies with a broadly equitable style, like A Bittersweet Life and A City of Violence. Agreed. A Bittersweet Life is one of my favourite Korean movies of all time! In terms of hectic tempo similar to the Raid films, check out the newest Judge Dredd movie (titled "Dredd"), and a french zombie film called "The Horde". Going back a bit further, I'd recommend some 70's/80's action stuff like: "Enemy Territory", "Vigilante", "Assault on Precinct 13" and "The Warriors". Should be noted however, that none of these aforementioned movies fall into the Martial Arts category, but instead reside in the generic Action genre. There Will Be Guns. Starscream fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 01:32
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Starscream posted:Agreed. A Bittersweet Life is one of my favourite Korean movies of all time! In terms of hectic tempo similar to the Raid films, check out the newest Judge Dredd movie (titled "Dredd"), and a french zombie film called "The Horde". Going back a bit further, I'd recommend some 70's/80's action stuff like: "Enemy Territory", "Vigilante", "Assault on Precinct 13" and "The Warriors". Trespass with Bill Paxton and William Sadler is close in theme too.
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Feb 11, 2016 05:03
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 RIP Vanity
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Feb 17, 2016 00:46
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Hey, thread. I'm looking for Netflix/Amazon streaming classic kung fu! There's a lot of movies I'm interested in seeing - Police Story, One Armed Swordsman, Dragons Forever - but I can't find any of them streaming online. I just saw and adored The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk, so anything else along similar lines is a plus - erring a bit older and a bit goofier, but still with great fight scenes.
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Feb 17, 2016 03:18
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ProfessorProf posted:Hey, thread. I'm looking for Netflix/Amazon streaming classic kung fu! Amazon Prime has a lot of chop sockie versions of classics while Netflix has the most restored original language versions of some Shaw Brothers movies like the 5 Venoms and 5 Elements Ninjas. What you're really into appears to be pre-reunificaton HK cinema. In which case if you can't find it streaming you'll have to pay for it (I get my fix from renting from a local niche video store here in seattle), or you can find many full-versions of whatever it is you want to watch thanks to rampant piracy on youtube. However with youtube the quality will of course range from so compressed that you can't see anything going on to merely lovely.
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Feb 17, 2016 08:13
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Watch 5 Element Ninjas.
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Feb 17, 2016 08:24
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Boinks posted:
WTF?
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Feb 17, 2016 09:22
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Hat Thoughts posted:WTF? drat
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Feb 17, 2016 09:26
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Hat Thoughts posted:WTF? Died of kidney failure. Apparently caused by being a crackhead in the 90s. https://www.gofundme.com/esiy74
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Feb 17, 2016 13:44
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It makes me really sad that someone has to make a gofundme to try not to die in the US.
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Feb 17, 2016 14:31
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Lurdiak posted:It makes me really sad that someone has to make a gofundme to try not to die in the US. It's lovely that it's expensive but it's not like she was denied treatment and left to die.
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Feb 17, 2016 18:10
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Jesus Christ, what did the Shaw Bros do to the negatives of Master of Flying Guillotine, use em to level their table? This DVD is some beat-up poo poo.
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Feb 23, 2016 06:15
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Lurdiak posted:Jesus Christ, what did the Shaw Bros do to the negatives of Master of Flying Guillotine, use em to level their table? This DVD is some beat-up poo poo. If I'm not mistaken, "Master of Flying Guillotine" despite having Jimmy Wang Yu as its star, is not a Shaw Brothers movie and was actually made in Taiwan under the original title "The One Armed Boxer vs. the Flying Guillotine."
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Feb 23, 2016 16:18
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G-III posted:If I'm not mistaken, "Master of Flying Guillotine" despite having Jimmy Wang Yu as its star, is not a Shaw Brothers movie and was actually made in Taiwan under the original title "The One Armed Boxer vs. the Flying Guillotine." This. My first copy was on a VHS that looked like it arrived from China in the bilge of a garbage scow. It lasted for years though.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:06
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G-III posted:If I'm not mistaken, "Master of Flying Guillotine" despite having Jimmy Wang Yu as its star, is not a Shaw Brothers movie and was actually made in Taiwan under the original title "The One Armed Boxer vs. the Flying Guillotine." Whoops! Guess I got confused by the cast. Still though, it could use some basic restoration work.
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Feb 23, 2016 18:17
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While I agree that MotFG desperately needs a restoration, the completely shameful condition it's in kinda gives it a neat vibe.
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Feb 23, 2016 19:23
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Lurdiak posted:Jesus Christ, what did the Shaw Bros do to the negatives of Master of Flying Guillotine, use em to level their table? This DVD is some beat-up poo poo. My copy has a disclaimer on it. That's the best they got.
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Feb 24, 2016 03:12
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Someone start a restoration kickstarter.
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Feb 24, 2016 03:16
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Lurdiak posted:Jesus Christ, what did the Shaw Bros do to the negatives of Master of Flying Guillotine, use em to level their table? This DVD is some beat-up poo poo. Pathfinder actually got a lot of praise for the restoration work they did for the DVD. You should have seen how bad the old VHS versions looked. I'm by no means an expert on film restoration, but from what I heard, the original prints of Flying Guillotine are damaged beyond repair. So I don't know if we'll ever get a better release than the one we have.
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Feb 24, 2016 15:16
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I guess it's good that the film's still pretty much watchable, then. The damage isn't enough to ruin it, just enough to give it a certain extra chop-socky kitsch value (and paper over some of the effects, honestly- the stretchy arms """"Indian"""" guy would look even more absurd in clear quality)
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Feb 25, 2016 18:59
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