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DarkSol posted:Someone had mentioned that Dragon Dynasty releases are good. I have to disagree. I have issues with Dragon Dynasty because they're willing to release movies with sub-standard dubs, missing audio tracks or pointless cuts with no justification to why they are doing this at all. I think the more precise thing to say is that Bey Logan is almost literally one of the only people on the planet who's on the production side of things that has ever given a poo poo about releasing these movies uncut and unedited whenever possible. He was basically the key architect behind those UK Region 2 Hong Kong Legends DVD releases, then the initial Dragon Dynasty releases up until five years ago, so whatever they've released since is probably just typical Weinstein hatchet jobs. Last I heard he's involved with a new UK Region 2 label named Cine Asia, but I haven't seen any of their stuff. These days, Well Go USA is probably the only "good" label for Asian cinema. The releases that the anime companies like FUNimation or Media Blasters do are usually also fine (fans of anime get way more pissed over edits than martial arts cinema fans do), though the films themselves are usually less good. And speaking of which: smashthedean posted:One of my favorite kung-fu films is Bastard Swordsman (1983) I don't know if I could call that a GOOD movie, but it's definitely something bizarre. One of the most dangerous of men (and I don't just say this because of his penchant for decorating his place with vintage James Bond movie furnishings), Keith Allison over at Teleport City, did fascinating writeups of both Bastard Swordsman and its sequel Return of the Bastard Swordsman which effectively cover the rise and fall of Shaw Brothers. In true Keith Allison fashion, he compares their path to Hammer Studios AND Elvis.
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Mar 21, 2014 15:35
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Snowman_McK posted:Just a quick question, is there any particular reason no new, stable stars have emerged out of Hong Kong/China? I may be completely wrong about this, but it seems that all the martial arts stars that are leading men now were already big when I was a kid. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen. Have there been big stars that just haven't made it to the West? Cynical as my response is going to be, it's basically the same reason no new, stable martial arts action stars have emerged out of Hollywood such that even "new" action heroes like The Rock, Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Hugh Jackman, Terry Crews, Michael Jai White, and so on are actually all in their mid-40s (I dig Scott Adkins but he isn't a "big name" celebrity): Visual effects. In the era of the pre-90s action stars one was cast based on physical ability first, looks and acting ability second. Due to technological advancements in film making, it's now the other way around. A new up-and-comer with Sammo Hung's body type or Arnold/Stallone's line delivery would never be permitted to take the lead role in a modern production because "it's easier to teach actors/pop musicians how to fight on camera after having them work out/take HGH for a year than teach fighters/dancers how to act on camera." The available pool for modern action heroes (AND action directors!) is thus no longer "people who've trained all their lives in martial arts." You cast someone like that, it's now a novelty. That's why for the last 20+ years Asian action cinema leads have been pop singers first and foremost, and Hollywood action stars are increasingly pulled from people who cut their teeth on theater and/or romantic comedies. The heights of success for this method are unprecedented, and it's been this way for so long that you can't even present an alternative approach to a modern movie-going audience without running it through a heavy irony filter. Only a semi-vocal Internet minority cares to make the distinction, the small bunch that took notice of these Thailand/Indonesia productions in the first place: these were clearly operations that hadn't "gotten with the times" that still had people with martial arts backgrounds carrying a lot of the weight in front of and behind the camera such that acting and plot beats were generally regarded as "derivative" in the best case.
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May 6, 2014 05:17
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:Could you guys recommend any films with female leads? I certainly can, but you have to be okay with the fact that most of what I can name are older films from the 1980s. Prior to that, in the glory days of Shaw Brothers, the producer was Mona Fong. Mona in her youth was a big movie star, and she decided that she wanted to ensure everyone remembered HER as the greatest female Asian movie star of all time. As such, very few Shaw Brothers era movies featured women in prominent roles and she gave work to guys like Chang Cheh/John Woo whose work was typically more focused on men. The trend largely stuck. But there was a brief period in the 1980s where this was relaxed, as Shaw Brothers was on the decline and they were willing to try anything in an effort to seem more in keeping with the then-modern era. Both My Young Auntie as well as Lady Is the Boss are silly comedies starring Kara Hui that feature some really impressive fight choreography courtesy of my favorite martial arts movie director ever, Lau Kar-Leung. But you probably want to check out Yes, Madam! from the D&B Films studio: a buddy cop picture featuring the debuts of both Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock. The success of Yes Madam! gave rise to a series of similarly-minded fare, such as The Inspector Wears Skirts from Golden Harvest Productions. The first one was pretty silly fun, but as the sequels went on they became less about talented action and more about...well, let's just say "the gaze" to use the trendy Internet lingo. Rothrock would make a career out of this sort of work, but most of her leading roles were in much lesser quality American productions. One pretty decent one that she was the lead in is called The Blonde Fury, which was sort of a spinoff/sequel to the exceptional Righting Wrongs in which she was the costar along with Yuen Biao. Michelle Yeoh is probably the most famous female lead Asian action star by virtue of her roles in English-language movies as well as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but I'll recommend Wing Chun (with Donnie Yen) for a good showcase performance by her. She wasn't really the lead in Supercop (with Jackie Chan), but they did give her character the lead role in a spinoff film, Once a Cop (sometimes called "Project S" or "Supercop 2"), that was decent. Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima made a slew of lower-budget yet interesting movies in which they'd typically face off against one another. The films of Teresa Woo, particularly Iron Angels, may be the most infamous of these since the level of violence they perpetuate upon one another would be normal if guys did it but is pretty shocking to Western audiences since *gasp* these are women! Three of those films got made and zero of them were released legally in the US. Perhaps very recently an anonymous individual saw fit to put them online; you can look into that on your own. That was an interesting time for Asian entertainment, since it coincided nicely with another interest of mine: professional wrestling. That late-70s to mid-90s period was the apex of Japanese women's pro wrestling as well. I have overlapping hypotheses as to why both martial arts cinema and lady's wrestling declined around the same time, but they're mostly just conjecture. Anyway, those are a lot of good movies I just recommended. Pick one or two and check them out. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 21:01 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 17:58
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moller posted:In addition to the answers offered by others, I'd also point to the Hong Kong handover that took place in 1997. Whatever the actual political effects were, an entire generation of veteran directors and actors bailed on HK for Hollywood which gave us The Matrix, Hard Target, Double Team, Shanghai Noon, Sammo's TV show, etc. The trouble with using that as a reason is that every single one of those actors/directors who left for Hollywood in the late 1990s ended up going back to China once it became clear by the mid-2000s that things weren't quite going to pan out. Then they all continued making movies. I think they had two problems in the US: they didn't speak the language and thus couldn't play roles that showed off the full range of their charisma, and their approach to assembling an action scene just wasn't compatible with the modern film-making production process. For instance, it's common practice in the classic martial arts cinema days to have an entirely separate "action director" in charge of not just filming but editing the fights. That doesn't fly here, so you often end up with people doing really cool choreography stuff that you can't see due to the choices made in the editing room regarding cutting, photography, effects work etc by people who may not necessarily "get" what works and what doesn't. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Go on... For some other good classic martial arts movie picks with female leads, check out Broken Oath starring Angela Mao (choreography by Sammo Hung) and Royal Warriors starring Michelle Yeoh. Please be aware before watching Royal Warriors that the movie is cinematic proof of the effects of cocaine in the way only a 1980s action movie can be. Some say Yeoh may be a precursor to Ellen Ripley in Aliens or Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, but tone-wise it's probably closer to something like Commando or Tango & Cash. Many of Michelle Yeoh's big movies got renamed "In the Line of Duty" for international release, so you might have to search for that to find it. I also recommend The Heroic Trio, which is an even more insane Asian martial arts superhero movie from before anyone made these movies with real money. It teaches valuable life lessons, such as "if you want to make a dramatic entrance into a bank using a flying spinning motorcycle in order to distract the man with the flying guillotine from executing the hostages, that is a valid option." The story is about Wonder Woman (who is not the DC character, as she wears a mask and uses throwing knives), Thief Catcher (whose superhero ability is that she has a Hong Kong shotgun, which as other Hong Kong movies demonstrate is the kind of shotgun that blows up cars when fired), and Invisible Girl (played by Michelle Yeoh who I should note is NOT INVISIBLE) on their quest to find out who is kidnapping the babies. At least one baby is killed due to being dropped on a nail. It had a sequel called Executioners which is less memorable. That both of these movies were things that used to just randomly be on TBS proves that Ted Turner was a genius. As for my similarity conjecture...I don't have everything properly codified since I'm uh, making these posts from work. For instance, if you wanted to go back further from the 1980s you could certainly see King Hu's films starring Cheng Pei Pei (1966's Come Drink With Me being the most famous example, per MechaFunkGodzilla), but I don't really think of those as "martial arts" films and the dude only made a few movies at Shaw Brothers (see above). Cheng Pei Pei never really did much of note on the US side, but people might know her for playing Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. If you check out that Wing Chun movie, she's the Buddhist nun instructor lady. She's still making movies when she's not teaching ballet in Los Angeles. But like so many things the gist of the similarities boils down to "supply and demand" though interpretation of each term in this case is a little different from the norm. On the wrestling side of things, you had some acts that made it so big that they crossed over into "mainstream pop culture," with the result being that you had hundreds upon hundreds of people auditioning for the opportunity just to train. Of those hundreds, they'd accept single digit numbers for the training. Of those in the training, only single digits would pass. Of those who passed, only single digit numbers would become top stars...and they would be the greatest at their craft history had ever seen. An incredibly cruel system, but it worked provided you had the "supply" of aspiring talent. To use goonier language, it was like becoming a Warhammer 40K Space Marine only using teenage girls. In less specific terms: "demand" for the product is what generates the "supply." If you create entertainment that presents a given demographic in positions of power AND then proceed to present it to said demographic as your primary target audience, then several will conclude "that could be me up there!" The closest equivalent in the modern age is the various talent competition shows: the ones where they have the audition episodes or the dark horse contestant that blows everybody away with their talent, the winners of whom then go on to momentary bouts of fame and fortune. "Momentary" is important, since you have to make room for the next wave of stars in order to keep the dream alive, and the applications coming in. There's only one "top." What was the martial arts movie equivalent to this? Peking Opera, the same thing where Jackie Chan saw the kids doing the flips at and decided "that's what I want to do!" Traditional Chinese theater did allow women to train, which is how you got female martial arts stars like Angela Mao. (Per what I noted before, Shaw Brothers wouldn't really permit her to break out as a star, so Mao got famous through Golden Harvest. She famously had a real small part as Bruce Lee's sister in Enter the Dragon. They paid her $100.) So what causes these movies/wrestling/TV shows to catch on is that it strikes a chord among a generation of younger people. Thing is, when that group of people being targeted is predominantly female, there's always that other group of people watching too: older men who are into looking at younger ladies. (Turns out there are quite a few such people!) The thing about those guys is that they are numerically far fewer than all those younger ladies...but individually, they have a LOT more spending money. And what always inevitably happens is that producers try to ask themselves "how do we keep both audiences happy?" The answer, basically always, is sexualization. Mickey Mouse Club alumni, pro wrestlers, or action movie stars it's the same deal: show more skin, make the dialogue more suggestive, and then it's not quite as important if they can actually go because you can cover for it in post-production. What originally starts as "if she can already kick, we can teach her how to fight" (a quote attributed to Sammo Hung regarding how they decided to cast Michelle Yeoh, who prior to Yes, Madam! was a ballerina that had never done any martial arts) becomes "who cares if she can kick as long as she looks hot" (that's not a quote from anyone, but if you want to falsely attribute it you can credit Wong Jing). You started to see more beauty pageant contestants in the roles or girlfriends of the producers. Sammo was guilty of that one a few times. The most important text on the subject of martial arts cinema remains Hong Kong Action Cinema by Bey Logan, who has since moved on to become God of Asian action cinema commentary tracks. He wrote it about 20 years ago though, prior to the Hong Kong handover, but for the purposes of what I'm talking about that doesn't matter: Chapter 9's "Fighting Females: The Far East's Favourite Females of Fury" (alliterative bastard...) focuses specifically on this sub-genre of the 1980s through early 1990s. The book's a decade or so out of date, but there was a chapter or two in the book Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies also dedicated squarely to martial arts cinema which uses Logan's writing as a jumping off point.
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May 6, 2014 20:59
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El Gallinero Gros posted:What would you guys recommend for a kung fu fan who loves kung fu flicks set in cop/triad/yakuza and ancient mainland China (i.e. Drunken Master I and II)? I've seen a bunch of Sammo, Donnie Yen, and every one of the Jackie movies considered classic. I love Tony Jaa, and the Raid was a total thrill. I also liked Master of the Flying Guillotine, Fist of Legend, all of Bruce's movies,and then Ip Man series. Any suggestions? No idea how much of his work you've seen, but the works of Ringo Lam are usually good "next steps" after you see what are commonly considered the "classics." Full Contact isn't quite a "martial arts" movie, but it's primo-grade "Chow Yun-Fat with guns doming gangsters and looking like the coolest dude on the block" stuff. City on Fire is often just a thing known to people as the answer to a trivia question: "where'd Quentin Tarantino get the idea for Reservoir Dogs?" But what makes Reservoir Dogs memorable isn't the storyline or the fact that they're wearing those black suits with thin ties. It's the dialogue. And in that regard, City on Fire's a different beast entirely. It's Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee again (so a good next pick after you've already seen The Killer), only this time Danny's the crook and Yun-Fat's the cop. Johnnie To's another guy worth checking out, but his movies are so numerous and vary so much that you'd be hard pressed to narrow down a set style to him. As far as some of his great gangster films, Running Out of Time and The Mission (don't laugh just because it starts with people playing DDR!) are must-see. People are really split on Fulltime Killer since it's very "genre aware" on account that the leading lady has seen all the classic action movies that English-speaking nerds who'd track down such a movie would go see, and so she'll be first in line to say "hey, this reminds me a lot of that Luc Besson movie, Leon" or whatever. PTU (Police Tactical Unit), Election (does not involve running for Student Council), and Drug War are more contemporary yakuza pieces by him which are far more serious. You'd never think this same dude would also be the guy who directed Heroic Trio and helped give Stephen Chow his big break. Not a single one of those is a martial arts movie! Since you mentioned Donnie Yen, I'm going to note that until 2005's SPL (aka Kill Zone), I thought movies in which Donnie was the star SUCKED. Turns out the dude just really shouldn't direct and probably shouldn't choreograph fights. But you pair him with Wilson Yip and Sammo Hung, and he's gold. Between SPL and Flash Point (not the firefighter porno...though I also regard that in high esteem *ahem*) that really helped modernize martial arts film fight choreography by successfully integrating the UFC MMA grappling maneuvers (which audiences now recognize as "real") with the visually engaging, background interaction-heavy martial arts action. Screw it, I'm committed to being off-topic: HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Very true. There was a whole generation of girls that wanted to be Jaguar Yokota. I take it you've seen GAEA Girls? For sure. For the better part of a year, I've been running at least one of those classic-era Japanese women's wrestling matches a week on Punchsport Pagoda's sync-viewing site. I was finally starting to run a bit low from my personal collection, so I bought about 24 DVDs worth of Crush Gals and Jumping Bomb Angels content to keep me going. The thing about GAEA Girls is that it seems incredibly cruel--and it is--but it's also exactly what Chigusa Nagayo went through as part of her training in the late 70s/early 80s. The difference is just that by the late 90s on there have been exponentially fewer potential applicants compared to her heyday, when her mega-popularity inspired thousands to try out. I've been told that what was shown in GAEA Girls pales in comparison to what Japan's national women's volleyball team was subject to in the 1960s and 1970s in order to win against their eternal rivals in the Soviet Union, but that is something I know nothing about at all. I know very little about the traditional Chinese opera troupes, but I think the analogy holds up. The influence of guys like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Chow Yun-Fat, and so on is long gone as far as inspiring today's generation to try following in their footsteps. It's too old fashioned, takes over a decade, and it basically costs you your childhood. Painted Faces is the only movie I can think of that is devoted to the experience of that training, and given that Jackie, Sammo, et al are in there playing instructors as such while child actors play themselves, I'm sure they all took lengths to accurately portray the crap they went through/inflicted upon one another. I get the feeling that people weren't rushing out to sign up after seeing it. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 05:20 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 01:46
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Wandle Cax posted:Also I haven't seen many Donnie Yen films pre-SPL but the one I have seen is Iron Monkey from 1993 and I thought that was wonderful. Flash Point is ok but it's really only the last 20 or so minutes with any action and up till then is fairly boring run-of-the-mill crime stuff. The end fight is really good though. Oh, make no mistake: I do dig me some Iron Monkey and Wing Chun. But the key here is that Donnie Yen was not the star of those movies. He was just a guy present in them opposite the real star who he could have a swank fight with. I dug him in that capacity, like say in Butterfly and Sword (also opposite Michelle Yeoh, though that's Tony Ching-esque wirework-heavy action, which is polarizing for many) or as an opponent for Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China II and Hero (on the subject of Tony Ching-style action). But the pre-2005 movies where he was THE main guy in it? Those were some mad letdowns. Just compare Iron Monkey 2 to Iron Monkey and you'll see what I mean. At the time (drat, it's been over 15 years), I was really down on the movies he directed and also starred in...and also co-wrote...and also did the fight choreography. After stuff like Ballistic Kiss (trailer), Legend of the Wolf (trailer), and Shanghai Affairs (trailer, can I just note that the full movie always comes up before the trailer in search results and that in the case of this one, the bit with the suspenders bow is RAD?) I spent years thinking "man, gently caress this guy." He was the Steven Seagal of Asian action cinema. If you watch those trailers, you may notice some recurring elements throughout ("in this scene, I beat up everyone without a scratch, okay now in THIS scene I'm gonna rail this babe big time so MAKE SURE the camera focuses on my rear end because that's going in the trailer"). But as I check IMDB's user reviews, everyone seems to really like those movies now. Maybe the things I was hating on him for in the 1990s have since become the de facto way to film action scenes in the 2010s. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 14:56
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Iron Monkey is good, but I've never understood why it's held in such crazy high esteem. Is it just because it was given a US release? El Gallinero Gros posted:I think it's a product of being one of the first wire-fu movies. It helps that it's fairly light hearted, the fights are excellent, and Tarantino put his name on it as a "executive producer". All of that is correct except for the part where you'd call it "one of the first" wire-fu movies. Iron Monkey came out a full decade after "Tony" Ching released the super awesome Duel to the Death in 1983, which I generally consider the first to go full-bore with heavy-duty wirework that kicked off the trend. Ching is basically The Man when it comes to the insane wire-fu fests intending to capture the comicbook spirit of wuxia novels that defy all logic, having also done Swordsman 2, Dragon Inn, and Chinese Ghost Story. Those all came out before Iron Monkey, which as you said is so known because it's the one that got a US theatrical release with "Quentin Tarantino Presents" on it. Check out his IMDB. Dude's worked as a director or action director/2nd unit director on a ton of good stuff. In recent years he's also done some total junk (The Emperor and the White Snake, I'm looking at YOU), though in his defense the problem with Dr. Uwe Boll's In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale wasn't the fight choreography he was tasked with handling.
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Jun 2, 2014 13:15
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Jimbot posted:Are there any really good martial arts films that never got a release in the US or whose international version is considered superior to the US release? I picked up a region-free DVD player recently so I want to make use of it. I plan on picking up Wheels on Meals and Dragons Forever - two films I always wanted to see but never got a US release (as far as I know). I always wanted to see those two Jackie Chan films. Any other recommendations? I would say "the international version is superior to the US release" is a true statement for nearly all martial arts films that weren't part of the initial Dragon Dynasty releases, or now Well Go USA and I guess Media Blasters/FUNimation. See if you can track down the Hong Kong Legends DVD releases, and now the stuff released by Cine Asia. Those are PAL releases so there'll be a framerate discrepancy but everything else--picture/sound, extras, translation, being uncut, etc--is most likely way better than you'd see from any other release out there. When it comes to the older Hong Kong stuff that isn't Shaw Brothers, it's almost as though Bey Logan is literally the only person on the planet who cares about giving those movies good English language releases. edit: Humbug Scoolbus posted:There is a Region 2 Special Edition of Drive out there. Has the original soundtrack and a bunch of extra backstory. Absolutely. This is one I've talked up for years where it's essential you don't get the super edited US release. The special edition also has one of the greatest commentary tracks. I did a podcast on it several years ago. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 03:50
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Heroes of the East, which is a common pick of mine for "favorite martial arts movie of all time," is quite readily available digitally in its Celestial Pictures widescreen restoration format. You can buy it off iTunes/YouTube/Google Play etc. and it's streaming on Amazon Prime, though I think only the English dub is on Prime. That can slightly confuse you a bit since there are bits in the story where people are supposed to be speaking different languages and so they don't understand what the other person is trying to say to them.Empress Brosephine posted:What Sammo Hung movies should I watch? The top Sammo movies for me are generally his 80s works where he could count on Yuen Biao to do some absolutely life-threatening stuntwork: Millionaire's Express (the all-time top one, where he made Yuen do a flip off the top of a building that was on fire, land flat on his back, then get up and deliver a line in one continuous shot), and the assorted "Three Musketeers" stuff like Dragons Forever (my personal favorite of the bunch despite the cornball romance bit in the middle that slows it down; discussed a fair bit on the last page of this thread), My Lucky Stars (and its sequel Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars), Wheels on Meals (aka "Spartan X" in Japan; this is where the late pro wrestler Mitsuharu Misawa got his entrance theme music from and is also the basis for the old arcade game Kung-Fu Master whose original title is "Spartan X") and so on. Prior to those, Sammo made his name on comedies like Enter the Fat Dragon and Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind (the original jiangshi "hopping vampire" action comedy). Note that I say these are all "comedies," and while I normally try not to dwell TOO heavily on the storylines for kung fu movies, I should as a public service point out that "comedies" directed by and starring Sammo Hung tend to have this structure of "wacky hijinks, wacky hijinks, BRUTAL RAPE/MURDER, wacky hijinks, wacky hijinks" like he just doesn't realize the Rubicon has been crossed. Like Wong Jing's comedies, Sammo's humor doesn't always age so well since they're the sorts of movies where the funniest thing in the world is a pretty girl getting punched in the face. Just making sure everyone is aware of this up front. Some other good ones are Magnificent Butcher (which Sammo co-directed with Yuen Woo-Ping and definitely is of the "wacky hijinks->rape/murder->wacky hijinks" mold; RIP Simon Yuen who died during filming) and The Odd Couple directed by the great but perennially overshadowed Lau Kar Wing. Odd Couple definitely has the others beat as far as weapons choreography goes. Once you have some base idea of who Sammo Hung is after seeing these, you can better appreciate his renewed lease on cinematic life playing dastardly old men for Wilson Yip in stuff like SPL: Kill Zone and Ip Man 2. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Oct 14, 2019 |
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Oct 14, 2019 15:05
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The only versions of Hero I have only ever seen have used "all under heaven" in the subtitles, but I've also only ever seen the one hour and fifty minute "Director's Cut" version (aka "the regular movie") which is about 10 minutes longer than the version most commonly sold and streaming in the US. This made my guest appearance on an Asian cinema podcast a little tricky, since the hosts had only ever seen the Weinstein cut and I'd have to explain "oh, in the version I saw there's a whole scene where Moon appeals to Nameless to heed her master's words and attempts to take her own life but he stops her" during the discussions of why Nameless had his change of heart, and they'd say "that scene doesn't exist at all in the version we saw!" That Hero review starts about 45 minutes in, in the event anyone's curious to hear it. At the very least I got to point out the terrible Photoshop job done for the US cover where the Chinese swords so integral to the story were replaced with katana instead held at positions which may exceed the standard range of movement the human wrist is capable of. You can never un-see that once you know it's there.
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Jul 24, 2020 19:48
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meefistopheles posted:Does anyone have any recommendations for martial arts films that kind of blend in the supernatural? Supernatural ranging from wirework to laser swords. Anything with fancy camera tricks and interesting practical effects would be a great bonus. I've seen a few already, so if it's something you'd like to check out I would really recommend: What you're interested in is "wuxia" which some argue aren't quite "martial arts" movies so much as a different genre of fantasy entirely. Sort of like how there are "action movies" in general, but "superhero movies" are a specific variant thing within that umbrella. That sort of martial heroes/martial fantasy action is the descriptor for more or less all of the movies you named there, so here are some other examples. Most of these are from the early 90s since that's the stuff I know, but also because once The Storm Riders hit it big in 1998, this style of movie switched away almost entirely from practical effects in favor of mostly using CGI instead. Bastard Swordsman and its sequel The Evil Cult aka Kung Fu Cult Master Swordsman 2 The New Legend of Shaolin Butterfly and Sword (sometimes it's listed as Comet Butterfly and Sword) Duel to the Death (kind of the OG example of this style in my book, even though there are films preceding it by decades) Legend of the Liquid Sword If you're into the puppet mayhem of Legend of the Sacred Stone, the company that made that (their name is "Pili") has actually been doing glove puppet wuxia stories for over 35 years. The most readily accessible by far is Thunderbolt Fantasy which has three seasons (a fourth was just announced) and two movies. All of that is available subtitled in English on Crunchyroll, though their subtitles do this annoying thing where the characters all speak Japanese but the subtitles are transliterations of what that same name would be if spoken in Chinese. For example, the main character's name is spoken as "Sho Fukan" but in the subtitles it's written as "Shāng Bù Huàn." Fortunately, everybody has a moniker they also go by e.g. "Edgeless Blade" or "Screaming Phoenix Killer" which is far easier to remember.
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Aug 28, 2021 06:02
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aperfectcirclefan posted:Worst to best I presume? There were some good recommendations, but I'll also note that Eureka just released a 2K restoration of 1979's Odd Couple, which is a good one as far as weapons fighting (mainly sword vs spear) plus Sammo playing not only an old master, but also a young student in the same movie. If you want more 1980s style action, you can't go wrong with the "Three Dragons" era films: Project A, Wheels on Meals, Dragons Forever. One caveat about most Sammo Hung films: because of his physique, they tend to be very broad comedies for which the humor may not necessarily age well. It's a bit jarring how Magnificent Butcher is mostly wacky hijinks until the brutal rape/murder followed by revenge...then more wacky hijinks. In more recent years, Sammo's been playing more serious antagonist roles effectively now that he's older. Check out SPL (retitled "Kill Zone" in the US) and Ip Man 2 for which Sammo was also the fight choreographer. Daryl Surat fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 03:29
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I'm a big fan of this guy's Twitter and now YouTube since he does a lot of video quality / color grading comparisons such that sometimes, having your TV/player upscale a DVD is actually the best looking option: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_NUC5qz4gE As far as 88 Films goes: while I have some of their releases, I generally only go for them if they're the only place selling the thing (example: Mark Dacascos' Drive on Blu-Ray). There are two reasons for this: first, when multiple labels have releases of a given title such that you can compare, the video quality of 88 Films releases is generally not the best compared to other boutique labels, even if they frequently have the nicest packaging (and every once in a while the best audio mix). Second, the people who run 88 Films do seem to continually make some iffy posts and questionable decisions, and so I'm wary to give them the benefit of the doubt. For instance, it was only until about a week or two ago that they decided they would no longer work with Bey Logan, who despite having a colossal amount of knowledge, access, and exclusive materials is too closely involved with the Harvey Weinstein #MeToo sexual assault stuff for the comfort of many. Those raising objections to that working relationship on their social media generally get blocked/banned/etc. Make of that what you will.
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Nov 3, 2022 18:19
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