The Extras - A Brief History of Hong Kong Cinema plus Blu-ray and 4K Reviews

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Hong Kong Cinema expert Jeff Briggs joins the podcast to discuss recent Blu-ray and 4K releases. We start with discussing the surprising Oscar nominations for Michelle Yeoh and the cast of "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once." Then we briefly review Jeff's personal experiences with Hong Kong Cinema and the release history on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray in the US. Then we dive into a deep review of recent Arrow releases of the Shaw library on the terrific Shawscope Vol. 1 & Vol 2. Next, we review the excellent Criterion boxset of "Once Upon a Time In China" and Jeff explains why these films are a must-own for HK cinema fans. Then we discuss the 2022 Blu-ray releases of "8 Diagram Pole Fighter," "Come Drink With Me," and the January 2023 releases of "Dragons Forever" on 4K. We end with a look at some upcoming titles including "Iron Monkey" Blu-ray and "Police Story 3: Supercop" 4K starring Michelle Yeoh and Jackie Chan.Purchase:Shawscope Vol. 1 Blu-rayShawscope Vol. 2 Blu-rayOnce Upon a Time In China Blu-ray8 Diagram Pole Fighter Blu-rayCome Drink With Me Blu-rayEverything, Everywhere All at Once 4KDragons Forever 4KPolice Story 3: Supercop 4KThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify Warner Archive Store on Amazon Support the podcast by shopping with our Amazon Affiliate linkDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Well, it's been a year since our guest today was on the podcast to talk about Hong Kong cinema and Golden Harvest. And during that year, unfortunately, we haven't had the releases we were hoping for.

However, there have been a number of fantastic releases from Criterion, Arrow, Eureka, and 88 Films during that time. And there are a number of big releases expected in 2023, such as the highly anticipated Bruce Lee classic, Enter the Dragon on 4K. such as the highly anticipated Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon on 4K, which I want to be clear, there's no release date on that, but that has been discussed and people are very excited about that. So Jeff Briggs was kind enough to join us again today for a podcast, kind of celebrating the Chinese New Year and Asian cinema, and specifically to talk about Hong Kong cinema. So Jeff, it's good to have you back on The Extras.

Hi, Tim. I'm so happy to be back. I had a lot of fun last time. I'm looking forward to this discussion today. Well, happy Chinese New Year as well. I know you probably celebrate that in your home. Yes, gong hei fa chui. I decided I wasn't going to try to actually say it. I should have kept going. Sorry. Yes. Well, it's interesting because usually around this time of year, there are Chinese New Year movies coming out.

And, you know, that's my usually my go to starting in the 90s. I was able to see a lot of the Chinese, the Hong Kong Chinese New Year movies in the theater when they played in the San Gabriel Valley. And it kind of went away for a while, but probably about seven or eight years ago, they came back and there's some playing right now. So I'm hoping I can catch them while they're still in theaters. Well, there's that. And the other thing that I wanted to kind of mention, you know, other than those movies that come out for that celebration is this is a, like a blow up year for Asian actors for the Academy Awards. It's historic. I don't think there's ever been more nominated in any given year. And three of them, you know, come from one movie. So it's not a, it's not a breadth of movies and, and, uh, actors necessarily, but

one movie has really hit the critics there and that's Everything Everywhere All at Once. I did want to ask you what your thoughts were on that movie since it's kind of right now in front of us. Well, it's just amazing. I mean, when I saw it last summer, I think I saw it at home actually on via 4K disc and I never would have dreamed that it would become

just an Oscar nominee to begin with, let alone the leader with 11 nominations, including four acting nominations. And I mean, if you would have told me 30 years ago that Michelle Yeoh, who I first saw in Police Story 3 at the Quahog Theater in San Gabriel, if she would one day become an Oscar nominee, I never would have believed that it's, it's just amazing how her career has gone and made so many smart moves and the sheer diversity of what she can do. I mean, she can handle any genre. She's just unbelievably talented and it's, you know, quite amazing, you know, coming from someone who started out as a beauty queen. Great for her. It really is. And I can't say I love the movie personally, but I found it fascinating. And part of it, I think, was just the way it uses Michelle. And it taps into actually a lot of, I thought, Asian stereotypes. And then it's got a ton of film references.

It's got Michelle and all of these kind of different forms of her own characters and mixed with real life. Like there she is as the glamorous movie star. And there she is as the kung fu artist. And there she is as just a, you know, plain worker there at the laundromat. And it was really interesting from that perspective for me and the Daniels or Daniels, I should say, which is the team, the writing team and directing team of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. I saw an interview that they did and they said right in it, their biggest influences for the movie, The Matrix, Kill Bill, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day. I mean, what an eclectic mixture, right? But then also anime and all the Hong Kong action

movies that we grew up with, including Once Upon a Time in China, Jackie Chan movies, and every movie Michelle has been in. And I thought, wow, that's a really interesting perspective. And something about that and him talking about that made me think back to your time at Giant Robot and that documentary you sent to me, right? Right. And I was listening to it and the guys there were talking about how it was so uncool to be Asian American in like the 80s and 90s. It was not a cool thing. It was not a cool thing. And yet looking back, like everything, everywhere when I, when I got into the Hong Kong movies in the nineties, I thought they were the coolest thing on earth. And, um, my, you know, my friend

Martin, Martin Wong, who was one of the co-founders and co-editors of giant robot. We used to go to the San Gabriel Valley to see those movies together all the time, you know, a giant fat, uh, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Steven Chow, Andy Lau. We saw, you know, dozens of their movies back then. And at that time for me, and I'm sure for him as well, and anyone who was into these movies, they were the coolest things on earth. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, Giant Robot, I think, was, you know, I'm happy to have been a small part of its early years. And they were part of starting that wave that made everything Asian cool. And it's always been cool as far as I'm concerned, and it continues to be cool. And with the success of everything

everywhere, I think that's just, you know, pushing it more and more to the forefront. Yeah. And you thought it was cool, but I don't, as somebody who is part Asian, I mean, I definitely could feel what Martin was feeling that it wasn't that cool. I mean, it really wasn't. There was just a few of us. And, you know, I don't think I even other than Bruce Lee, I don't think that there were that many films that were hitting the mainstream. They were just like subgroups of people who thought it was cool or who got into it. people who thought it was cool or who got into it. And of course, the growth of martial arts,

you know, studios for those people who wanted to study karate or Kung Fu really exploded during the 70s and 80s and everything. But outside of like Karate Kid, you know, until Chuck Norris came along and some of the others, it was a long time coming. But having said that, I think it's kind of fun to look back at a little bit of the growth of the Hong Kong movies. And I know you know a lot about that. Maybe you could take us back to a little bit of how you first got into it and how you saw that industry and interest growing here up to, you know, up to present time. Sure. Yeah. Well, these are, you know, my personal experiences as someone, you know, who was, I don't want to say an outsider, but someone who was a movie lover and, uh, discovering this in the early nineties, I think I said on the previous podcast,

uh, what basically was the gateway was seeing John was the killer in early 1991 at the new art in West LA. And I've always been a movie fan, fan of all genres, but that, you know, that just changed my life. I had never seen all genres, but that, you know, that just changed my life. I had never seen anything like it. It, you know, I said this last time I could say it over and over again. And then went back a couple of weeks later to see another double feature of swordsman and a Chinese ghost story too.

And it's like, okay, we're really onto something here. And then slowly discovering later that year, Hey, there's a, there's a theater in Pasadena showing Hong Kong movies and they have subtitles. So started going there. And then for some reason, I didn't quite discover the San Gabriel Valley until nearly a year later. And the theater is there. The Garfield, the Kuo Hua. And started going there on a regular basis.

And then a few months later, discovered the video stores. Now, I'll say I was a Laserdisc snob at the time. So my go-to place for renting Hong Kong movies was a store called Laser Wave in San Gabriel. I did not rent that many VHSs, relatively speaking. I'd say 80, 90% of what I went for was the Laserdisc. And if I couldn't find it there, you know, with a few exceptions, I wouldn't try. There's still some things I never saw because I didn't want to rent a VHS and kind of regret those, but that's okay. So when I first started renting the LaserDisc, it was expensive too. I mean, they were, and I was living, when I first went there, where was I living? I was living in West LA. So it was a heck of a drive over to San Gabriel

and Alhambra, but I would go there several times a week and eventually it became kind of a pattern. I'd go there a few times a week to either see a movie, go get some food. If a movie wasn't playing or something that I hadn't seen of something that was still playing, I'd already seen, I would go to the theater to see what was coming and then rent the movies. And they were, I want to say they were about three or $4 a piece. But the thing about ladies, Hong Kong laser disc, that's interesting is back in the day, it started out when the laser disc first came out.

And this is before I got into them. If they would always be on one disc and they would be kind of, you know, shoddy transfers rate straight from a film print, but some, some companies would actually put them out and they'd actually go back probably to the, to, I don't want to say the original negative, but at least a first generation print without subtitles. So there are a lot of early, these are just released, that didn't have any English subtitles.

They had electronically generated Chinese subtitles only. And that's most of the early Jackie Chan films. You know, I remember Armor of God, Armor of God 2, Project A 2, Police Story 2. Actually, Police Story 1 and 2, my place, the rental place, had the Japanese versions, which are longer than the Hong Kong versions. We can get into that a little bit later if you want. So, and I remember once upon a time in China, 1 and 2 didn't, at least the first one, maybe the second one too, did not have English subtitles on them. They look good. How did you, I mean, did you know Chinese?

I mean, how did you enjoy them? Well, at that point, it was more like this was all I could get. And I probably could have rented the VHS, but I didn't want to. That was, you know, as odd as I was. Thankfully, around 93, 94, that stopped happening and everything started coming out with English subtitles. Like Drugger Master 2, the Laserdisc of that from, I believe, yeah, was it Mail or Universe? I can't remember. That actually had English.

It was from a print and had English subtitles burnt in. But what was really annoying at the time was probably around 92, 93, Hong Kong disc distributors, and they did this with VHS too, they would actually take a movie that was, you know, 90, 100 minutes or so, and they would split it across two laser discs and two tapes just so they could charge double the price to buy them. Now, I didn't buy much back then, but they were prohibitively expensive. A laser disc, a two disc laser disc set would cost something like $150. And back in the early nineties, that was just ridiculous. I don't think I ever bought any LaserDiscs until I was in Hong Kong

and I found used rental copies. And it was really annoying. I mean, I remember at least Police Story 3 came out on four sides, two discs, four sides, but it was in CAV, which was the format where you could actually do really nice freeze frames and go frame by frame. But then the one I remember vividly is the Heroic Trio, which is a great movie. That movie is about 88 minutes long.

They'd spread it to four sides in CLV, which means there's no great reason to do it just to bilk the consumer. So you'd have, you know, be watching this 88 minute movie. You have to switch the disc, you know, flip the disc or switch the disc three times. And you'd have about 20 know, be watching this 88 minute movie, you have to switch the disc, you know, flip, flip the disc or switch the disc three times. And you'd have about 20 ish minutes on each side. So, so very annoying. Annoying, but I mean, how big was the audience? I mean, were they really, were they doing it in part because the audience was so small and they just really needed the income just to make it.

Maybe, you know, I've never, that's it's someone, you know, you'd have to go to someone in Hong Kong and ask them. I mean, it just was, it just made no sense. And again, that, that stopped around, I want to say like 95, 96, they stopped doing that and just put things on single discs again. Just curious, where were you going to get your laser disc rentals? I think I just, I mentioned it. Yeah.

Laser wave in San Gabriel. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. There were a couple of other places. There were some bookstores that carried laser discs to rent as well. Like smaller selections. Laser Wave had a huge selection. Was it like a one week rental then or what? No, no. I think it was just a one night rental. So I'd usually rent them for two nights. Yeah. No. Oh, that was for the new releases. The new releases were one night. I think the older releases you can keep for two or three days, if I'm not mistaken. So you're driving all the way from West LA all the way. I mean, that's no, I mean, it takes you a while to do that.

It's kind of a pain. Well, it was a lot easier back then. There was less traffic. But I started, I moved a little bit more eastward in 94. So it got a little bit easier. But there were some stores in the West side that had a handful of them, you know, the US, I mean, not specifically Chinese stores, you'd find them every now and then. But, you know, Laserwave, and there were a couple, there was a place in Chinatown, too, I didn't go very often. And again, there were some bookstores that had karaoke discs, I used

to rent karaoke discs of just to see some of the music videos of some of the Canto Pop stars. So yeah, little there will be little stores that have a smaller selection, and I'd rent from there as well. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast, and I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page

or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Well, a lot of the great titles that came out of that era, the police stories and everything, I mean, they've continued to be popular over the years, but how have you seen kind of since the LaserDisc to DVD and Blu-ray, the growth of kind of the industry and the changes? On the home video end?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll say the LaserDisc started to die out around the time of DVD, obviously. And it's funny, I was thinking about and preparing for this, just thinking about, I'm trying to remember the timeline of how the DVD started to come out. I got my first DVD player in May of 1998. And I think it took a while for Hong Kong Laser just to show up, at least out here. Maybe towards the end of that year. I remember the very first ones were just really bad quality.

They didn't have any menus. You pop them in. were just really bad quality. They didn't have any menus. You'd pop them in, you'd have the usually unskippable copyright warning and logos that lasted about a minute and a half. They probably still have some of those. Yeah. And the transfers would just be awful.

Just really, really bad. I mean, some better than others. Usually watchable. But I have one, an old one for a movie called No Joke, Once Upon a Time, a Hero in China, which is kind of a parody of the Wong Fei-Hung movies, decent little movie. And it is, it's just awful. You pop it in, I think the movie starts, and then it plays half of the movie, and then it stops. And then you have to go back and start it again and go to the second chapter to finish the movie just horrible stuff

thankfully that that um that didn't last too long uh and of course there were non-anamorphic transfers um you know i don't it was a while until we got anamorphic transfers i think a big jump forward was a company called megastar licensed the fortune star catalog the fortune star was pretty much all the Golden Harvest stuff that Warner Brothers didn't purchase. They had sold the stuff to Fortune Star. Golden Harvest had sold the stuff

to Fortune Star in 93. And that's really the cream of the Golden Harvest library, pretty much going up to 1993. You know, the classic Jackie stuff, like the classic comedies, you know, I could go on and on. It's just great stuff. Once upon a time in China, one, two, and three are in there.

So they released Megastar released, um, a series of discs and somewhere I have the catalog. I couldn't find it. Um, I know it was please story one, two, and three, uh, project a one and two once upon a time in china one two and three movies like rouge um a lot of the the better tomorrow one two and three now those all came out and they had menu they had nice menus they had um they had extra features they had trailers they had trailers for other movies they had trailers for the movie that was you know on the disc the problem was they were all non-animer for transfers and they looked really, really weird, like had like odd digital filtering. I mean, at the time they were, you know, and we didn't have widescreen TV, so they weren't as bad looking back on them.

They're pretty awful. And even then, you know, that they were not as good as they could look. But, you know, they were certainly, you know, even though they were probably I want to say the discs at that time were around 40 bucks or so. They were certainly more affordable than the laser disc, which would set you back at least $100. Right. And weird things would happen with them. The original release of A Better Tomorrow from Megastar, for some, I never knew, found out why, but for some inexplicable reason, music cues in the film had been changed and replaced with music from forest gump and speed and maybe terminator yeah really weird i had no idea and then they it was so bad and there was so much

complaining that they actually had to go back and reissue the disc with the real music and i remember there was a sticker on the reissues that said like 100 original music or something like that wow and um and of course all these were, you know, with a few exceptions were all released in mono. So they would, they would put 5.1 remixes on them, you know, and those have never bothered me that much personally, but when you start to think about them and you realize they're there, they get really annoying. Um, that's the one thing with some recent releases. They've in some cases, they've gone back to the original mono tracks, which are much, much more preferable. Right. Right. Well, it's an interesting kind of development of, of the DVD market there, but I, you reminded me that most of us didn't have widescreens anyway. So if you like, if you were to get one of those old DVDs now, yeah, it looks

like not great. Um, right. Cause you're seeing it on a much bigger screen. Exactly. And I remember the, oh yeah, those Megastar discs also had optional, I mean, they had selectable, removable subtitles. You know, they had multiple subtitle streams, which was a huge deal. The early Hong Kong DVDs did not have those. I remember the first time I saw them, and this is digging really deep. There was the company Mayaw released the first two I ever remember having a room removable subs.

I didn't buy them, but I remember seeing the back of the packaging and saying, oh, good. Finally, they figured it out. The movie's full alert and killing me tenderly for you. For you, trivia buffs. Those are the two that I remember first having even before the megastar. Subtitles and stuff. Yeah. The multi multiple subtitles.

Well, I know you were writing for Giant Robot during that time. And once in a while, you'd go over to Hong Kong. Was that pretty much you were writing on new movies? Or were you also writing a little bit on the home entertainment market? I don't know if I... I don't think I really wrote that much on home video releases. My early articles wrote about movies in general. I think I did a best of 1994.

That was one of my first articles. And then I started getting into the interviews. So most of my writings, aside from maybe an odd little blip here and there, and one of the section that had like little tiny, you know, a few sentences or something. I didn't do that much of that. But mostly it was interviews. I, from 96 to about 2000, I was, I was doing interviews that I'd done here in Hong Kong as well. That's pretty much, that was almost everything I did for giant robot at the time. So like, how did people find out about the home entertainment market back then?

Or was there other just kind of smaller zines that. Well, there were a lot of Hong Kong movie fanzines, but I think by the time that the, you know, the DVD, the time the DVDs took off, you know, the Internet was up and running. So that's true. I found a lot of information there before that. Like in the Laserdisc era and the VHS era, definitely it was fanzines. There were some fanzines that I bought on a regular basis. But yeah, the Internet, I remember, you know, by the time DVDs came around, it was pretty much internet because that you're talking 99 ish when they really started to take off. It's funny, I remember I went to Hong Kong in 97, 98 and 99 to do

interviews. And I went to the Hong Kong Film Awards each of those years. And of course, going around buying stuff. And I think it was 98 when they were really blowing out the Laserdisc. So I bought a bunch of used Laserdisc. I shouldn't say a bunch, you know, maybe a dozen or, you know, 15, 20. I still have a few of them. And I don't remember seeing, even in 99, I don't remember buying DVDs over there. It's like they hadn't quite, you know, jumped in. I might be wrong about that, but they hadn't really saturated. And I was more interested in picking up disc and it's funny vinyl was on its way out. So I picked up, I picked up some pieces of vintage Hong Kong vinyl that I know now is extremely rare. I picked up like the soundtrack for the movie zoo warriors for like four us dollars. And now I know that

thing is unbelievably rare. Um a soundtrack for the the hoy brothers i'm the michael hoy movie the uh the contract which has like a couple posters in it and everything and i got that for four dollars too so it was fun back there it's nice when that when a when a media format dies out because you can get them really really cheap right right yeah i mean i well it's a long time ago that i was in hong k but, you know, you go and you're shopping and you just you just have these discoveries that are so cheap compared to what they would be in the U.S. If they're even available in the U.S. Exactly. Even now, when I go, I was there in 2019, the last time I was there. And, you know, of course, I go to scour the U shops and it's it's it's not quite the way it used to be.

I think there's still a few places to go, but I find a few gems every now and then and buy some new stuff too much cheaper here than there. I mean, there than here, sorry. Well, that, I mean, that's kind of interesting to look back on how the whole industry and the home entertainment market developed. And I guess it was DVDs and then Blu-rays eventually just kind of has made all this, you know, more accessible. And then let's see what Tarantino really popularized a lot of, I think, the Hong Kong stuff, too, with with his output. What was his influence, you think, on the popularity of some of this? What's funny, I remember when I went to a screening of Chungking Express at UCLA and it was in June of 1995.

And I had already seen Chungking Express a couple of times. It played at the Garfield Theater in Alhambra in like fall of 1994. And I was a big fan of it. And then they had a screening at UCLA. This was the first, probably non-Chinatown screening, at least in the Los Angeles area. It played at UCLA and Wong Kar Wai was there

to introduce and talk about the film afterwards. And, um, Tarantino showed up as well. He introduced the film and he, that was probably around the time that his, you know, rolling thunder division picked it up for us distribution. Although it didn't come out until 96, I think theatrically, but he was there, introduced the film and now it talked about how much he loved it. And, um, I remember, uh, and that it's funny that time I had a, I had a Hong Kong magazine with me that had a Pulp Fiction spread in it, a two page spread of the, the ad in Chinese in, you know, in Chinese, of course, as a really cool spread. And, um, a friend of mine convinced me cause I don't, I'm not a big celebrity botherer. If it's a Hong Kong celebrity, I'll bother them.

But usually there's someone like a Tarantino, as much as I admire him, I wasn't going to bug him, but my friend convinced me. So we took it over there and he, he loved that spread and he signed it for me. I still have that. And then I bumped into him in front of, I don't want to say bumped into him. Like I knew him, but I remember seeing him in front of the man's Chinese sometime, probably in 95, 96 with a couple of friends. And we just talked for a few minutes and it was just talking about Hong Kong movies and he loves to talk about Hong Kong moviesong movies so right um yeah and i think the release of chunking express by his rolling thunder you know label was very important that that was one car wise first big you know exposure over here aside from the festival circuit and just

his constant you know championing and championing of you know genre films and you know a big part of that is hong kong films you know i mean you go you know it's fantastic and championing of, you know, genre films. And, you know, a big part of that is Hong Kong films, you know, I mean, you go, you know, it's fantastic at the New Beverly, you get, you know, they usually will play, you know, you know, a couple of Hong Kong, at least a couple every year, some obscure ones, some famous ones. So he's keeping that alive. So, you know, I, you know, I credit him, you know, he really, you know, because he has so many fans who will listen to his advice on what to watch so you know yeah he's definitely an important part of the rise of hong kong movies you know back and continuing popularity i think too and just as a reminder to people i mean he bought the new

beverly so he can right have programmed in there whatever he wants and that's fantastic i love to see you know what they are releasing every month and um it's very eclectic obviously they've got his original 35 millimeter prints from his movies which right wow it's like that's that's pretty special to be able to go see those but then they also program tons of other stuff that either he's talked about or talked about in his book or just there's some reason to to display it or whatever so right well did you want to also talk about the celestial pictures? Um, well,

it's funny as you know, in the early two thousands, at least over here, the rental stores started dying out, you know, the piracy, the VCD, you know, the,

the rise of the VCD, which I, a format I never liked, um, and never really paid that much attention to. Um, and then, you know,

the Hong Kong film industry was in really bad shape by the late 90s and then it started to slowly come back i think in the early 2000s you had movies like well shaolin soccer was a massive hit um director johnny toe made some romantic comedies with andy lau and sammy chang that was uh needing you and love on a diet those were big hits and then of course infernal affairs came out and that was, that was massive as well. But it's funny because when the theaters, all, all the theaters were gone by 1999. So to see new stuff, I kind of had to really, there were, there was a DVD store in the San Gabriel Valley called Five Star Laser. It's not around anymore, but it was a great store. I knew the owners very well. And so I kind of pick and choose what to get. You know, if it was a big

title, I'd just do a blind buy, spend the twenty five, thirty bucks and buy it. And hopefully it's something good. That's how I first saw Shallon Soccer and Infernal Affairs is like, you know, like I mentioned, the Hong Kong DVDs are starting to get better. They started to have anamorphic transfers, you know, around 2001 ish, which was great. But the big missing piece of Hong Kong film lore, or that, you know, there's several missing pieces that never really showed up on home video. But the big missing piece was the Shaw Brothers library. For whatever reason, Shaw Brothers had pretty much locked their library up, you know, since the they stopped major film production in the mid 80s. It was really hard

to see their films, unless they had come out on video overseas. You know, I know like Warner Brothers released some stuff in Europe, some of their big titles that they had limited in time wise distribution rights to. And you can find bootlegs. I'm not a bootleg person, though. So I didn't really I didn't see that many Shaw Brothers films. That was a big, you know, missing piece of, you know, what I what I always wanted to see. big, you know, missing piece of, you know, what I want, what I always wanted to see.

And then 2001, 2002, this company called Celestial Pictures bought the, I think the entire catalog or close to the entire catalog of Shaw Brothers, the library of Shaw Brothers films from, from Ramon Shaw, who was still alive at the time. And they started releasing them on DVD and they were, they eventually it was, they were released. They started in December 2002 and they went to about, I think, December 2007. So it was about a five year plan. I don't know the exact number, but it was around 600 films released. there's like seven or eight hundred so it's the majority of their library they remastered them all they did a beautiful job they're still some of the best standard definition transfers i've ever seen now they have you know they did some odd stuff to them like they cut frames frames were damaged they cut them from the end of like you know uh shots and they do a lot of 5.1 remixes those stopped after a while in the first the first like few waves they were released about five five every two weeks uh two or three weeks and then

the first i want to say 50 or 60 releases were non-anamorphic and then somebody got in the wait got in the the news hey you can do this just flip a switch on the transfer, you know, bay, and then you can make them anamorphic. Um, so these started coming out and I started, I would buy those on a regular basis and they were, I want to say they were only about 15 to 20 bucks a piece. So I probably had at one point about 300 of them, I'd say now that it's been pared down a bit. Um, and especially since a lot of them are getting reissued, which we'll talk about shortly, I'm sure. But that was just a watershed moment. You had finally had these films going back to the late 50s that had never been seen before. You know, honestly, some of them had never been seen since they played in theaters.

And then, you know, some of the legendary titles, the 36 Chamber of Shaolin, you know, all of those those classic martial arts films. the 36 Chamber of Shaolin, you know, all those, those classic martial arts films. But it was great to see some of the other titles like the musicals that had never, you know, probably never seen the light of day since they first came out. The comedies, the, the costume dramas. It was just amazing look into that whole library. And, you know, the Shaw's really, you know, for the lack of, you know, making their library available, they kept their elements in really good shape because this stuff looks really, really nice. And those are all way, way out of print. They go, some of those titles I've seen go on for an eBay for like $200 a piece. Just because you can't get them anywhere else. Yeah. And I know by the end, like the last year or so, I heard they were only pressing like a

thousand copies a piece or something. I mean, there's stuff in my library where I look on eBay, like, Oh my God. Well, if I guess, if I need some extra cash quick, I can get rid of these, but I don't want to get rid of them. I like them too much. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And then you don't know if they'll ever see the light of day in another format or quite some time. So that went to what you said, 2007 or whatever. Yeah. And then they started, they, they, they did put out a few blu-rays too. And they, they still put out a few, not that many. I remember, um, I want to say like within a year or two after they put out their first blu-ray, which was a Leslie Chung, Maggie Chung, Anita Moi movie called behind the yellow line. That was their first blu-ray. And they've probably put out, I want to say maybe 20 or 30 total not

that many i don't know why they haven't put out more i have a few of them and they look they look great you know they look they look really nice you know and also at that time they were licensing them out to american companies i know the weinstein company put out they had a line called kind of ridiculously called dragon dynasty um where they put out a lot of those with some of the worst cover art i've ever seen in my life um and there were some other small companies that put out blu-rays and dvds and most of those are out of print now and some of them there were a few that never didn't even come out in hong kong there's one movie called hong kong godfather which i think the company funimation put out that that never came out on dvd in, you know, with part of the Celestial. So interesting stuff there. Yeah. But, you know, these are highly sought after by

collectors. You know, if you're a Shaw Brothers fan, you're going to want to see pretty much everything. And, you know, overall, you know, the movies are pretty dang, dang good, you know. So where does Fortune Stars kind of come into the discussion? Yeah, well, another thing they did in terms of DVDs, and I want to say it was around, ooh, like 2007, 2008, they started finally treating their library much better. They started releasing movies with anamorphic transfers. They usually would have the same, those kind of wacky remixes,

but with nicer packaging, some extras not a huge amount of extras but definitely some extras and they called it their legendary collection i believe no no that was called their remastered digitally remastered but they also put out through the license to a company called joy sales they put out a lot of unremastered films um they had anamorphic transfers, but they were straight from prints and they were pretty beat up. But it was similar to what Celestial put out with the Shaw's, really, really obscure films. And those in some ways are at least as rare or even rarer, I think, than some of the Celestial, the Straw Brothers films. They put out hundreds and

hundreds of them. I remember I was really excited in 2012 when I was in Hong Kong, I found this, this store that had all these legendary collections and, uh, DVDs and they were going for three, 400 Hong Kong dollars, which is three for that's about 13 bucks. So about $4 and change a piece. So I bought probably maybe 20 of them or something. And those are extremely rare. You don't see them on eBay that often. So that's like the bulk of the Golden Harvest, the more obscure Golden Harvest stuff that did come out. There's a lot of these titles that probably will not see the light of day for a long time, if ever.

So these out-of-print DVDs are are even to put it this way, there's so many movies from the eighties and nineties. A lot of the stuff in the nineties, which I saw in the theater, I thought I saw probably three quarters of everything that played in the San Gabriel Valley from about 92 through 98. And a huge portion of that stuff is way out of print. It might've come out on DVD, but it's, it's been out of print forever. And God knows when it's going to show up again. It's, it's, it's kind of unfortunate unless you find the old DVDs. Right. So a lot of what we've been talking about are kind of for the hardcore fan like yourself. And I know, you know, people who collect those, but it seems like recently there's been a lot of

more accessibility for getting some of the great classics on blu-ray and uh in the last few years i know the the one i was thinking of was this shaw scope uh volumes that are being put out by arrow that's a great introduction for fans to the to some classic blu-rays from the shaw collection. I still am in awe of what Arrow did with these sets. Just, I mean, physically, they're amazing. Their packaging is incredible. They don't fit as nicely on my regular DVD shelf, but that's okay.

But they are just amazing. They're just amazing packages. I mean, beautifully put together. And, you know, the thing is, everyone argues, well, I wish this was on there. I wish this was on there. You know, I just think this is a gift. I mean, just to have these box sets that have, I think, between the two of them, these two releases are 26 films on there and just packed with extras and interviews. I have barely had a chance to go through all the extras, but I feel blessed to have these Hong Kong movie fan. I just don't really know what to say about them. They're just incredible. And if you're if you like these films, there's no reason not to get it.

They're worth every penny. I mean, just to see, for example, on the movie Mighty Peking Man that's on here, which is, you know, it is what it is. It's a King Kong ripoff, but, you know, it's it's enjoyable. you know, it is what it is. It's a King Kong ripoff, but you know, it's, it's enjoyable, but there's an interview with the actor, uh, Ku Fung on there, who is the, like one of the greatest character actors in Hong Kong history. He's still alive. He's 92. I think it seems like he was in every shop where there's no film ever made. You know, there's an interview, uh, like a 2004 interview with him. I never would have dreamed that I would have seen an interview with some of these people and some, you know, people that you're not going to find interviews with everyone else.

There's a you know, there are a few people out there who do these interviews and have done these in the past and they're finally getting their due. So, you know, kudos to those interviewers. I think they're on volume one here. I think there's like 12 films or whatever. The first one is just the first disc, I should say. I don't know that they're in any order of quality or anything, but King Boxer. I mean, it was terrific. I watched it just a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yeah.

And that's, yeah, that's a really good one. And it's, that's the movie that broke martial arts, broke Kung Fu martial arts movies in the West. You know, that Warner Brothers picked that up and released it as Five fingers of death and i think it was may of 73 uh so before i think it was before any of the it certainly was before enter the dragon i think it might have been before the other bruce lee films got wide releases you know outside of chinese theaters in the film notes here it says that it was five months before enter the dragon catapulted Bruce Lee into fame there. And again, like you said, it was Warner Brothers who did that, retitling it a little bit.

So that was kind of interesting. What was Warner Brothers role in some of the early 70s? I mean, were they one of the leading studios that kind of was putting out the stuff of the major studios? Well, I think so. I mean, this was, you know, there are probably people who will correct me on this and I might be wrong. But I believe Five Fingers of Death was actually open number one at the box office, which was a huge shock.

I don't think any martial arts film or kung fu movie had had a wide release like King Boxer slash Five Fingers of Death had. You know, I think the floodgates opened after that, you know, especially with Enter the Dragon coming out. I might be wrong, but I want to say the other Bruce Lee films didn't come out until after Enter the Dragon, at least in the, you know, American theaters. So this is pretty much what opened the floodgates. Yeah, Mourner did have a few other Shaw films. I know one of the other ones was the movie Sacred Knives of Vengeance, which they retitled The Killer. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It was called, I take that back. It was the original title of it in the English title from Shaw Brothers was The Killer. And then Warner Brothers retitled it Sacred Knives, The Sacred Knives of Vengeance. That got at least, that got a pretty decent release there.

But I think most of the Warner stuff was overseas more than domestic. And then MGM released Deadly China china doll if i'm not mistaken and then national general released of course the first three bruce lee films i mean well you know fist of fury big boss and uh way of the dragon were released with different titles by um by national general and they released some of the other shaw too, with, again, everything was retitled. So it's tough to say. But I think Warner Brothers can be credited as, you know, opening the floodgates, like I said.

There's a little side note that's a little interesting is that this film was actually, the director was actually South Korea. That's right, right. Which I, when I read that, I didn't know that. Probably a lot of people did, but I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah, he did quite a few films. of interesting. He did quite a few films. I would say he did quite a few martial arts films for Shaw and on a similar note, Shaw

Brothers also hired a Japanese director whose name I know in a way I forget his last name. Sorry. Who directed a lot of their musicals in the sixties and in the early seventies. So they were not, you know, you know, adverse to hiring outside talent. Right. Um, let's see, what are some of the others on that volume one? So they were not, you know, adverse to hiring outside talent. Right. Let's see, what are some of the others on that volume one? And then we'll go into volume two that kind of you think are just highlights.

I'm probably my favorite one on this whole set. Well, I'll say my there's my two favorite ones. But the one that I love is the boxer from Shantung on disc two, which is kind of like a, it's funny. You kind of call it like a Scarface type film, you know, arise, you know, a new newcomer to the criminal underworld rises to the top and then bad

things happen. It's a really great movie. One of the longest of the Shaw brothers films, I believe it's 134 minutes, but very well done. It's I think the first starring role for Chen Quan Tai, who was a big Shaw Brothers star. That, I think, is a really great film. And it's interesting because speaking of Scarface, not only thematically is it similar, but the ending of Boxer from Shantung, which is about 15, 20 minutes of unbelievable bloodletting.

It really reminds me of Brian De Palma's Scarface. And I'm not saying he saw it or anything that probably is too, too, too perfect, but the way the set is designed and what happens in that film, it really had De Palma's scene, Boxer from Shantung, probably not, but it's fun to think that way it really does remind me of that um but yeah that that's that's a great great movie on there and i'd say also uh shaolin temple from on disc three which is a kind of an all-star shah brothers martial arts film that one i i love that's again the last half hour of that is pretty much non-stop fighting and of the highest order this is a you know both these films were directed weller was co-directed by Chang Cheh,

who, you know, one of the, you know, classic Shaw Brothers directors, you know, top three, definitely, who is one of the, you know, the maestros of martial arts films. And then I also love, well, Undisq7, Crippled Avengers, which is one of the films

that features the Venoms. The last 15 minutes of Crippled Avengers is jaw dropping in my mind. I highly recommend that. And Disgate Heroes of the East is great, too. That's with Gordon Liu, you know, Kill Bill fame and 36 Chamber of Shaolin fame. He marries a Japanese woman. And one day they they start arguing about if Chinese or Japanese martial arts are better. And, you know, of course, he says Chinese martial arts are better. And somehow that gets back to her, her family or her acquaintances in Japan. And they come and I think eight is eight of them come to challenge him in different styles of martial arts.

And that one is great. And that's great. I always said that is the first martial arts movie I showed to my son when he was probably about maybe six or seven, because it is, it's not gratuitously violent. I don't think anyone dies in the film. It's just a great display of martial arts. And in the long run, it has a decent message, you know, of, you know, trying to get along. So I recommend that for early martial arts aficionados yeah i mean there's there's so many good ones in here i i watched recently too the executioners from shaolin which uh another great one right but i just love lily lee and that she's wonderful i mean she's like this wise kind of, you know, mother figure and obviously a great fighter as well.

But I mean, she she was fantastic. And the storyline in that is kind of, you know, it's got more of that epic scale. Right. Because it has multiple generations. And and also it's it's in that tradition of based on historical events. I think movies, which as an outsider, not knowing a lot about China, I love whether it's Chinese, Hong Kong, you know, Korean, Japanese, whenever you watch the films and you're learning something about the culture, I always kind of enjoy that facet versus just mayhem currently, because I kind of bit of a history buff myself. So I kind of enjoyed that stuff, but that's a, that's a great

one. I don't even own volume two because I'm trying to get through volume one, but I think you have volume two. What are some of the highlights in volume two? Well, a lot of the director, Lau Kar-Lung films on here. The first two discs are his, the 36 chamber trilogy, you know, 36 chamber of Shaolin, return to the 36 chamber, disciples of the 36 chamber. Those are all fun movies. I mean, to varying degrees. I mean, the first one 36 chamber of Shaolin is a stone cold classic. It's just, it's, it's amazing story-wise and martial arts wise. It's, you know, it's, it's just about as good as it gets in my

mind. The sequel, Return to 36 Chamber is almost like a parody of it. And it's not the classic that the first one was, but the the of course the fight scenes are still great and probably the last 10 minutes of it i think are as good as anything in in the first film personally um you know those are you know you can't go wrong with those and then um it's fine i haven't watched all of these on this disc but i've seen i think i've seen every all but one of these that are on here from because used to have the Celestial discs. I probably still do, actually. The other ones on here that I'm a big fan of are My Young Auntie, which is another Lau Kar-Lung film.

And it was the starring debut of Kara Hoy, who won the first Best Actress Award at the Hong Kong Film Festival for this. And it's basically a martial arts comedy about Lau Kar of how long plays a man who's whose brother passes away. And so his wife comes to stay with them and his wife is is extremely young, like around 20. And a lot of hijinks and martial arts mayhem ensue. And it's a really wonderful, funny, warm, hearted movie. So I'm a big fan of that. And then I'll also mention if you really like twisted sick movies, the Boxer's Omen is the way to go. It's it's not for the faint of heart. I

mean, Shaw Brothers made some really, really disgusting movies. And I say that, you know, as someone who enjoys many disgusting movies. So if you like really sick horror films with a lot of, you know, exploitation elements um gratuitous nudity included check out the boxers home it delivers and then um i'll just mention this is a fun one the last one in the set is the barefooted kid which is actually a remake of uh a chang che shah brothers film from 74 i think called um disciples of shaolin which actually i think is it 88 88 i I believe, put that out last year. And it's a remake by the famed director Johnny To of that film. And it's actually

really good. Aaron Kwok, who was kind of a, he's since really gotten to be a very good actor then, you know, he was more of a pop star idol at the time. He plays the lead, but you have a great supporting cast, including T. Lung, you know, the famous Shaw Brothers star and, you know, world renowned award winning actress Maggie Chung in the supporting role. That one I like a lot. I mean, all the movies on here are definitely worth seeing, but those are my personal favorites. And just for the listener, I mean, the volume one came out in December of 21. The volume two just came out last December ofcember of 22 so i mean these are pretty recent and what did you think about the blu-ray transfers and everything i thought the visuals

were they're incredible they're just great and i think they went back to the negatives i don't know if they're new scans but they're definitely new masters and it's interesting because i believe all the dvd transfers were done at pal you you know, were PAL transfers. So they have, they're slightly sped up on those old DVDs. For instance, like Boxer from Shantung, I remember on the original DVD I had around about 125 minutes. And then I got the Blu-ray from Celestial, which they put out maybe six, seven years ago. And that ran 129 minutes. This one runs 134 minutes. I think it's also because they used to, as I mentioned, there was a practice they had when at the splices,

they'd just remove the frames because the frames were damaged at the splices. They'd remove those. So I don't know if that really affected the running time that much. Maybe it did. But yeah, I know the transfers are as good as, as good as they've ever looked, no doubt. Probably better than when you first saw them in the theater. It's funny.

I when the first special first release this, they had some festivals that toured the US and they showed they showed in 2003. I think they showed some films at UCLA and a couple other venues. So I got to see on the big screen like One Arm Swordsman, Executioners from Shaolin, 36 Chamber of Shaolin, a bunch of films. And that was great to see them the big screen like one-armed swordsman executioners from shaolin 36 chamber of shaolin a bunch of films and that was great to see them the big screen you know i wish they'd do that more often they show up occasionally well with the i don't know with these new remasters i guess it would be kind of fun to to see these in the better quality now in the theater yeah if they

would ever do you know i don't know it's as we know you talk about okay the home entertainment market is shrinking and and all of these things and it's harder and more expensive to put out and yet something like hong kong cinema where it's really in it in some ways never been mined properly or fully or whatever i think it still has potential for getting uh some profits for the companies if they can put it out and using technology. And the other biggie, which we've talked about on this podcast, is the fact that there are machines now that are much cheaper to do the remasters from the films than it used to be

five, 10 years ago. So hopefully more of these will be remastered. And I'll say that the one thing just on the quickly say on in Hong Kong, they are still releasing, you know, classic or catalog films on Blu-ray. Some of them fairly obscure, which is a good sign. There's a company, Fortune Star, has licensed. I don't know if all of their catalog would get a portion of their catalog to a company called Panorama. And they've been putting those out now with the because of covid. Now the shipping charges are astronomical, but you can order those online and get some, you know, titles that might not make it out here or not make it out here for a while.

So there's good work being done over there as well. And just going back to the Shotscope Volume 1, I picked it up for, I mean, like 50% off or something. It was great because it wasn't the most current release so um i'll put some links on the website and the podcast show notes for people who want to maybe didn't pick it up yet and they want to get it at a really nice price i'm sure eventually volume two will come down but uh because it just came out last month it's a little bit more expensive but if you want want to own them, I mean, these are just great. I mean, as you and I talked about the artwork, the reprinting and the booklet and all the trivia.

I mean, the time they spent in putting the information together is terrific. I did want to go back a little bit. I think we might have briefly touched on it. I might've briefly touched on it, but back in 21, again, not, not too long ago, but, um, back in November 21, the once upon a time in China criterion set came out and I did pick that up. It's terrific. And it looks great. I mean, this is like, that's like a must own, right? I mean, it really, if you,

if you want to be a collector of this stuff and then I think there is a tie-in to warner brothers don't they have a couple of the the releases they might have licensed out for that that's correct yes parts four and five were licensed by warner brothers because they were part of the as we discussed in the last podcast they were part of the uh library that raven chow sold to warner brothers in. So those two films were in there, were licensed from Warner. And those were really tough to find. It's interesting, you know, Criterion had, back in the Laserdisc days, I'll never forget when I found out that The Killer was being released on Laserdisc by Criterion. I never dreamed that would have happened.

That Killer Laserdisc set, which I still have, and then they put out Hard Boiled a couple years later, are just magnificent collections. It's a shame they're out of print. You and then they put out Hard Boiled a couple years later, are just magnificent collections. It's a shame they're out of print. You know, they came out on DVD in the early years, but I still have the Laserdisc sets really wonderfully put together. So Criterion does have a connection with Hong Kong films, and they did release Chungking Express, too, on Laserdisc and still have the DVD. I'm sorry, Blu-ray rights. But this was just wonderful. I'm sorry, Blu-ray rights. But this was just wonderful. I know that a company in the UK released the first three films and then the sixth film in a box, but they didn't get the fourth and

fifth. So Criterion was able to put together, you know, all six films in the series, you know, the series proper, I guess you'd say. To varying degrees, I love these movies. I was fortunate to see all of them in the theater around the time they came out. I saw, except for the first one, I saw all of them at the Chinese theaters in the San Gabriel Valley. So that was great to see them as they came out. And it's amazing that part three and four came out, I think three months apart. I remember, I remember seeing part three and I, yeah, I might be wrong about this, but I think when i came out of part three i saw a poster for part four on display and of course that they they sweat gently left the series um and was replaced by he's only in the first three first three and then he came back for

the sixth one as well okay and for me i mean part two i think is might be the of all the martial arts period martial arts films. That's probably my favorite period martial arts movie of all time. I think in terms of the quality of the action, of course, and then the story and the whole package put together, I think it's a masterpiece. I like Once Upon a Time in China. That's just a little bit behind that. I think it's great. Part three is probably my least least favorite of the series, although I still like it a

lot on a technical level. I mean, the virtuosity of those lion dance sequences, I don't understand how they did that. It's just absolutely staggering, you know, to think that was done, you know, of course, you know, with everything, what you see in front of you, no trickery, you know, no, no CGI or special effects that's amazing and going to parts four and five i'm so happy that these are now readily available because you know again i saw those when they first came out in the theater it's funny part five was

filmed i think shortly after four but they held it back because the period martial arts movie it was kind of dying out by the time they filmed part five. So it was held back. It didn't come out until it was maybe November of 94. Because I remember seeing it. I have a strange memory for these. I saw it like Thanksgiving weekend of 1994 at the Quahua. But anyway, those two are really entertaining movies. You know, they're not quite on the level of the it's certainly not in the first two.

But even four, which gets a really bad rap. you know they're not quite on the level of the the it's certainly not in the first two but even four which gets a really bad rap i really enjoyed four you know and just you know sheer you know entertainment value i think it's pretty great um so it's great to see those available and you know really nice transfers and then i i'm a huge fan of um once upon a time in china in america which was when basically they brought a whole film crew to te and shot a Wong Fei-Hung movie in, in Texas, you know, set in the old West. And, um, uh, uh, one of my best friends actually was a PA on that film. Um, his name is Joey O'Brien. He later became Sammo Hung's assistant and then, um, actually became a screenwriter and he wrote a few Hong Kong movies such as a

full-time killer and Motorway. But he started out there and he told me amazing stories about being on the set. You know, these people would work, you know, 30 hours, you know, 30 hour shifts and just nonstop filmmaking. And they were filming it. It came out for Chinese New Year 97, which was like early February, I think. And I want to say they were filming up until like maybe even december like early december or something it was crazy um but you know the movie is the movie silly yes it's silly but it's very entertaining it's got great action and criterion has the the original a soundtrack option which has jet lee it was shot in sync sound for the most part and it has jet lee's actual voice which i think was the first time you actually heard Jet

Li's real voice in a Hong Kong movie. So it's great to have that option there. It has a Mandarin audio track and it's shot in sync sound with Mandarin and English. So that's the, if you're going to watch that film, that's the way to do it. Silly, yes, but extremely entertaining. Well, I've only watched first three so far. I mean, between the Shaw Brothers set, I mean, I'm just like, I'm enjoying it, but I have to kind of take a break once in a while. Why aren't you watching them now? Tim, you should be watching them now. Yeah, exactly. Don't record a podcast. Just watch the movies. Hey, that's why I have to bring you on because you know all these, but I have to say that I'm really enjoying

the packaging. Criterion just did a terrific job. All the extras on there too. But I did want to ask you about Rosamund Kwan. Did you ever interview her? Never saw her, never interviewed her, unfortunately. She's great. Her father was a very famous actor. He was in a lot of early Shaw Brothers films. Kwan Song was his name.

He shows up in a lot of 60s Shaw shaw films and they look very much alike you can tell that they're related i mean he actually shows up believe it or not in police story 2 he plays the the uh i think the ceo of the company that's being extorted i know in those scenes in the boardroom yeah so that that's one thing you can see him and i think he passed away a few years ago and of course too has donnie yen in there and that's really fantastic to see him i mean in with jenny they're probably their first movie together so yeah um and it's it's amazing because that last i mean part two has three set pieces in a row at the end that are just mind-boggling you have the the white lotus cult showdown and then you have the

i guess it's the the fight with all the bamboo poles and the is it a grain factory i can't remember what it is exactly and then you yeah i mean it seems like there's beads from grain falling yeah when they're knocking over everything yeah and then you end in the the last bit takes place in the alley it's just you know three classic set pieces one after the other they They have a great little interview extra with Donnie on there talking about his, you know, his memories of the movie and everything is really interesting. So just a ton of extras just to work through the movies and the extras on these. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of fun, right?

It's just so much fun. And to have the historical perspective of looking back and then have these great transfers uh i don't know it's it's really great we are we are blessed to have these well i also noticed that criterion had that infernal affairs blu-ray which came out i think in november just this last november their collection there i i don't have it but that looked like a great set for uh for those those fans who might want to get that. I mean, Criterion is going to, you know, you, you're pretty confident that they're going to put out a pretty awesome set with great extras and transfers. Definitely.

And then before we talk about a couple of these, uh, January releases, Jeff, I did want to kind of go back to some of the Arrow and 88 films releases in 2022 that I thought were really fun. I mean, I watched the come drink with me. I just, I really enjoyed that movie so much. And it's pretty important in the, in the legacy. That's kind of, that's, that's a kind of a game changer. You know, that was, you know, the great director King who, who would, you know, been an actor, um, started out as an actor. Um, I actually saw him UCLAcla showed a film of that he

was in called red red blossoms in the snow it's like a 1955 melodrama and he was one of the not the lead but a major supporting part so he'd been around a long time and then he acted in some shaw films too as well and then he became a director he co-directed, there's a very famous Chinese yellow plum opera, Huang Meidiao opera film called The Love Eterna. And he co-directed that. And that's a wonderful movie if you, you know, if you like opera films. But then his first film, I believe, was called Sons of the Good Earth, which was a World War II story, which is pretty good. That came out on Celestial DVD. But Come Drink With Me was his first, I guess, foray into martial arts films. And you can see his, you know,

King Hu had a love of Peking opera style. So you can see in the fight scenes, which are, you know, I think they were pretty revolutionary for the time. There was another movie that came out a year before called Temple of the Red Lotus that is kind of a precursor to the modern martial arts films too, but come drink with me. I think is just a really great movie. Um, and again, a watershed,

um, you got chain pay pay a signature role. She's great. I guess, spoiler alert, but she plays a man in many ways. Right. But she's this woman just,

right. Just, uh, holding her own and, um her own and all that takes place in the end. I really loved all those scenes, that set piece. Oh, no. Yeah, it's great. The thing is, there's so many movies where women are disguising themselves as a man. And, you know, you see that in Dragon Inn. You see that in countless other movies. The lovers, the love eternal, the same thing.

And the women are so beautiful. It's like, you know, they're not men, but you got to run with it. That's fine. There's no problem. You know, I can handle that. Right. It's a movie. Exactly. Um, one thing that's interesting about King who, um, is that King who lived the last about maybe 15 or so years of his life, he lived in Pasadena, California. And, um, he would often show up to screenings of his films. And it's, it's funny. In 1996, I believe, yes, I went to this, this Hong Kong tourism,

they had a big Hong Kong tourism push in Los Angeles. And that was where I did my first interview with the actress Anita Yoon. And they had a reception at the Paramount Studios to screen a movie called Hoodoo Mun. So I went to that and, you know, Chai and Fat was there and Anita Yoon was there. Josephine Hsiao, another legendary actress. John Woo, the actress Christy Chung, I met there. And but I remember sitting there and looking over and seeing this older man kind of standing by himself. And I went up and said, excuse me, are you King Who? And it was King Who.

He was just, he had come and talked to him for a few minutes. And then just a couple months later, UCLA screened Dragon Inn, his film Dragon Inn, just a regular screening. So I went there and, you know, got there a little bit early and was sitting down and I turn around and there's King who's sitting right behind me unannounced. He came just to announce the film. And so we talked for maybe five to 10 minutes and he was really nice. I think I was mostly talking about the availability of his films, um, on video, which were almost non-existent and, uh, kills me because I got his phone number and I wanted to do an interview with him because I was doing, I was in my giant robot interview phase. And he said, uh, yeah, call me later. You know, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing something, but call me in like a couple months.

So I called him in a couple of months and his, his phone number was in the phone book. You looked in an old, you looked in the Pasadena phone book and he King who was in there with his actual phone number so I called him probably around October November and he said oh I'm going to Taiwan but I'll be back after Chinese New Year so call me then and we can definitely arrange an interview and unfortunately he went to Taiwan and he had heart problems and he had a procedure that went wrong and he passed away there so it was just so close but at least i had a little interaction with him and then they had a tribute to king who ucla because he put a lot of his films on hold at ucla in the archive and then they had a tribute to him and i think in august of 97 and unannounced uh ching pei pei showed up to one screening and um i got to meet her briefly

too she was a really sweet sweet lady very nice so that was kind of cool. Yeah. I'm happy that he had a UCLA connection and I got to say this, the booklet that comes with come drink with me has an essay about King Hu and it is absolutely one of the best things I've ever read on him. Incredible. Don't miss that. Well, right after that in April, there was another arrow release which i think um we should talk about and that's the eight diagram pole fighter which came out on blu-ray yeah i mean that ending is just amazing but talk a little bit about that film wow well i mean you know there's the the extras on this uh this uh arrow release are are exemplary and kind of give the full story about it. But it's funny.

I always think 36 Chamber is probably the greatest Shaw achievement. You know, I mean, there are other movies I love, too. But after watching A Diagram Pole Fighter again with my son a couple of years ago, I don't know. This might be up there. I mean, it's a late Shaw film because it came out in 1984, although it started filming in 83. The big, you know,

the big pall over the production was that one of the stars, Alexander Fusheng, was killed in a car accident in July of 83 and hadn't finished the film yet. So they basically had to rewrite the entire movie and push the focus onto Gordon Liu. So it's interesting because Fusheng shows up and then kind of disappears at about the halfway point. just you know tragic story but maybe that gave them you know maybe that that paul just changed the entire tone of the movie because i mean it's a in some ways it's a pretty it's a pretty grim serious movie but i mean it it's incredible. It just, you know, it just works so well as a drama and, you know, as a tragedy. And as you said, that last sequence is staggering. I saw that at the New Beverly has screened that about 10 years ago on a double bill with, I think it was a double

bill with five element ninjas, another mind melting Shaw film. And to see that in the big screen, it's just amazing. But if you can't do that, see it at home. Yeah. I think it's a masterpiece. Absolutely. And one of Lau Kar-Lung's, you know, again, uh, the director Lau Kar-Lung, one of his finest movies. And it's kind of, you know, it's very operatic and tragic and in tone and everything, but the, the fighting with the poles and I mean, it's, it's fantastic. And then, you know, the disc has, um, you have interviews with Gordon Liu, Lily Lee, as you mentioned, and young, young Jing Ching, who's, um, who's one of the supporting players, martial arts star, and also, um, appreciation by Tony Raines, who's one of the best, certainly

West of the Western, uh, you know, aficionados and scholars on Hong Kong film. So it's just a great package. They do an absolutely wonderful job. Well, I mean, it was just the ones that we've talked about in 2022 and then the last part of 21. I mean, there's just like a terrific amount of great releases on Blu-ray for fans, but there's been two right now here in January as well to kick off the new year, which is a great way to start it. One of them was Dragons Forever, which I think you picked up. I do have a copy. I'm holding it right now. Again, kudos to 88 Films for an absolutely

stunning package. I picked up the 4K version, which has a 4K and a Blu-ray in it. Has a beautiful hard box and the cover art. Sometimes I'm not a fan of the newly painted cover art for some of these releases, but this one is fantastic. I got to say, whoever the artist is, sorry, I don't know your name, but did a really wonderful job. Comes with the opening it up inside the Blu-ray case. It has lobby card reproductions, has a really nice thick square bound booklet. I think that's what you call it, square pound with a couple essays in it and all the information and then it has a fold open poster a recreation of the original theatrical poster which is i call one of the big head posters you know big head little bodies i love those um on one side and then the other

side is the new art that's on the cover yeah and again i've i've gone through i listened to one of the commentaries by frank jang and fj de santo which was was excellent that's on the they have two versions of the film that was on the japanese cut which has some extra scenes on it so i don't listen to that many commentaries but i did listen to this one and it's it's fantastic um there's so many interviews and pieces in here i haven't had the chance to go through them yet but yeah it's incredible package just you know anything a fan could want and and and more overwhelming hours and hours of supplemental material i mean that just came out a couple weeks ago so uh you get a break there jeff for uh not being able to get through all the great material but i was going to ask you, I mean, you picked up the 4k. Have there been many other 4ks previously, or is this kind of a new thing

that we're entering where maybe we're going to start in the U S I'm thinking for a, for a vintage title like this, am I forgetting one? I might be wrong. I know like criterion put out in the mood for love and 4k, or that's coming out soon. There have been some. I have Shadow, the Zhang Yimou film on 4K. There have been a few in Hong Kong released. Not that many. Yeah, so but this is coming out.

I'm perfect. I know that 88 is in next month. Police Story 3, Supercop. For me, it's always Police Story 3. That's how I first saw it on Supercop. But I think that's going to be the same packaging as this. It's 88 films. I can't wait for that. I'm really excited that that movie was a very important one. I saw that film 11 times in the theater, believe it or not, only one of which was the U S dub. Um, I saw it at the cool wall when it opened in August of 92.

I think I saw it there four times and then it started playing around some of the art houses. I actually saw it once at a Korean movie theater, the four star on Wilshire. And it was a Korean print of the film. It had Chinese and English subtitles on the bottom and Korean subtitles on the side. That's interesting. And I still have the flyer. They have a flyer, a Korean flyer for the film, which I still have. have well i guess i was just kind of thinking i mean we you know way back at the beginning of this discussion in this podcast um we talked about the fact that uh we're looking forward to a 4k of enter the dragon hopefully this year from warner brothers but i was just wondering if there's going to be with 4k kind of gaining in

popularity obviously people building out their collections if we're going to see more we have police story 3 as you talked about that's coming out in 4K. That should be great. But I don't know, the first two Police Stories aren't necessarily on 4K, are they? No, I think they are overseas. I think there's a release of the first three in the UK. Yeah, I am not region-free. I'm not all region-capable, so I don't do that.

And I'm kind of, I don't want to go into that rabbit hole because I'm kind of scared where I'll end up. It might jeopardize my marriage. Okay. There's only so much wall space in your home. Exactly, yeah. Well, hopefully, like you say, that one's, the Police Story 3 one's coming out hopefully very soon. I mean, the date is a little bit flexible here because it was, I think, scheduled and then pushed back and everything. But no matter, it'll be coming out hopefully very soon.

I'll just say, just on Police Story 3, one other thing. Again, going back to Michelle, if you had told me back then that she would become an international star like this, I never would have believed it. A little fun story. national star like this, I never would have believed it. A little fun story. On New Year's Day in 1996, I was eating dinner at California Pizza Kitchen in Beverly Hills, sat down to eat, and then, oh my God, there's Michelle Yeoh, two tables over from me. So I patiently waited. I don't like to bother people when they're eating, but as I said, I won't bother celebrities. If they're Hong Kong celebrity, I will bother them. So I waited patiently until she left and I followed her and her couple other people that she was without. I think she was with her manager

and she said, hi, Michelle, fan of yours. And she was surprised, but totally, totally cool. Nice. We talked for about maybe 10 minutes. This is way before she hadn't even been cast in Tomorrow Never Dies yet. So she told me that I was the first non-Asian person to ever recognize her in the U.S. This is in 96? 96, yeah, New Year's Day, 96. Wow. And she had done this movie called Akam, which was, she played a stuntwoman, and she had a really bad injury in that film, and she had recovered from that fully.

So she said she was on, when I, when I were talking, she was on vacation at the time, but the movie, that movie did come out later in that year. And it's funny too. So, and then she, I still have, um, she signed my, I had a folded up a placemat from California pizza kitchen and she signed that for me with a happy new year on it. I'll just send that to you. And then it's funny about almost three years later, I met her at a art exhibit, the famous cinematographer, Christopher Doyle,

who did a lot of Hong Kong and Chinese films. He had an art exhibit in Hollywood and I went to it and there was Michelle there and she was with her same manager and she, you know, she's like, oh, I remember you. And so we talked a little bit. Why I didn't take a picture with her. I don't know, but I did take a, I did take a picture of her, but not with her, but she was totally nice and, you know, sweet. And, you know, again, just shows, you know, what class actually is. So, you know, I'm so happy of, you know, everything that's happened to her. Well, Jeff, in the alternate metaverse, you did take a picture with her. You just have to go find it.

A little reference for folks to the recent movie. Well, she's, I mean, she's a class act and she's terrific. And obviously you don't have a career like she has had if people don't like you in the industry. You know what I mean? Like, I think it's pretty hard to survive and everything if you don't like you in the industry, you know what I mean? Like, I think it's pretty hard to survive and everything. If you don't, didn't she have another film coming out in February? Magnificent Warriors? Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, that is, yeah, it's funny. The release dates keep changing. Yeah.

Magnificent Warriors coming out. It is February. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's one of her. I mean, we're talking about just in a week or two from probably when this podcast airs.

Yeah, that's one of her early D&B films. I think she only made, boy, I should have pulled up her filmography. She only made, I think, five films at the start. So this is one of them, one of her early films. And she married one of the founders of D&B films, Dixon Poon, and essentially retired. Then she got divorced and then she had a comeback with police story three. That was her big comeback. She hadn't made a movie for, I think, five years at the time.

My name is in words. I have not seen it. I don't think I've seen it in its entirety since I rented the laser disc, you know, back in the nineties, but it, you know, it's, it's a no brainer. If you're a Michelle fan, you got to get it. Well, I know that there's a Jackie Chan collection that came out from Shout Factory just this January, just like a few weeks back. But are there any collections of Michelle's work? Nothing I know of.

I mean, in the grand scheme, she didn't do as many films as, you know, a lot of other Hong Kong stars, you know, because she had big. I'm looking at her filmography now. She had big, I'm looking at her filmography now. She really only made, is it, six films before her semi-retirement or her not to last long retirement. One of them was a cameo. So, yeah, I don't know. And I think a lot of her films might be owned by different companies, so it might be tougher to do a collection. But I mean, her big run was she made basically, I think, nine or 10 films between 92 and 94. And those are pretty beloved movies you know and those could serve to come out you know have decent releases

because a lot of them have are are really tough to find well maybe because of the discussion of the current movie and just her resurgence in the public eye maybe we'll get lucky i think you're 100 somebody will do that next year or two. I would not be surprised by that. Absolutely would not be surprised. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, I think that the whole industry, the whole Hong Kong films and Asian movies, the popularity of like Korean movies and cinema. And I talk about that every once in a while on the podcast.

But anyway, it's a great time for reissuing maybe some of those, finding a way to package. And I hope that the arrows and they did films and criterions and Eureka's and all the other, you know, shop factories that they'll continue to do that because, and I, and I hope that people will buy it. If you support it, if you buy it, they will make it, they'll find a way to make the deals and get the deals done. Look, we still have hope for the golden harvest coming from Warner archive. And hopefully we'll see some stuff. There's nothing we can talk about. Sorry folks. Um, but the minute there is Jeff, you're going to be back on hopefully to talk to us about that stuff. I eagerly await that time when that happens. Well, um, hopefully it's the matter of, uh,

of just, um, when, you know, meanwhile, we've had a ton of stuff to talk about. I mean, there's been no shortage of good stuff. Are there any others that we haven't talked on that you are excited about coming out soon? Well, it looks like the company Shout Factory is getting into the Hong Kong business because as you mentioned before, they released the Jackie Chan set. And I think yesterday they just announced a volume two of the Jackie Chan set. But what I'm really excited about are a couple that are coming out this month. That is the movies Zoo Warriors from the Magic Mountain and Iron Monkey.

I'll start with the earlier one, Zoo, which just is turning 40 years old this year. It's a landmark fantasy film directed by choi hark the you know the the one of the finest greatest directors and producers ever to come out of hong kong um probably the most i mean if you've ever seen this in the theater you'll know because i actually i saw in the cinematech about years ago. It's probably one of the most kinetic movies ever made. I mean, you feel like you're being assaulted in a good way. Just an incredibly inventive Chinese fantasy film that that you it was one of the first movies that use kind of Western style special effects. He hired because Troy didn't have some training in the U.S. And he I think he hired some U.S. special effects people as consultants.

So it is, compared to what was coming out at the time, it was pretty much a giant leap forward. You know, it looks, you know, of course, dated today, but incredible cast, Sammo Hung, Yun Byu, Bridget Lin, Adam Chang, Damian Lau, Moon Lee, huge, you know, great cast and just an amazing fantasy film, probably one of the fastest paced 90 minutes you'll ever see in your life. So excited about that. And then even better in some ways, or at least close to my heart is the movie Iron Monkey, which ties in perfectly. It was actually, I mean, not really part of the Once Upon a Time in China series, but definitely done as that. The title of the movie in Chinese is Suning Wong Fei Hong, which means like young Wong Fei Hong and then Iron Monkey.

So it shows Wong Fei Hong as a young as a child, basically probably is about a 12, 13 year old. And his adventures with his father played by Donnie. Donnie Yen plays his father, Wong K. Ying. his adventures with his father, played by Donnie. Donnie Yen plays his father, Wong K. Ying. And Iron Monkey is like a Robin Hood type figure that steals from the rich to give to the poor and goes up to corrupt officials. It's directed by Yun-Mo Ping, who you'll know, you know, most people will know as being the choreographer of the Matrix films with his brothers. And I don't think I've met anybody who has not liked Iron Monkey. It is it is just it's about I think it's like 89 minutes, just pure entertainment across the board. I usually would back in the 90s.

I would show that people was kind of an introduction to Hong Kong movies. And again, I didn't I don't think I met a single person who didn't like that movie. It's it's just it's a wonderful it's got a lot of heart. Incredible action scenes. It's funny. I saw it weird it played at a at an edwards theater in monterey park for some reason they started showing hong kong movies for a very brief period of time and it was like in fall of 93 and i i was just floored by it um i'd seen other martial arts films but this one just had a really good place in my you know really has a

special place in my heart so i'm'm really excited to see a decent release. It came out in the U S it was got a theatrical release in like 2001, but of course it was dubbed and replaced with the music score. I'm not a fan of dubs or replaced music scores. I like the original. So I believe this version is going to have both for those who prefer the dub. But yeah, it'll be great to see this film get a decent release. I can finally retire my DVD for this one. Well, this is a great year. Just like the last year, I think for some of the finest films to come out now in Blu-ray 4k, maybe, I mean, it's just, and I hope people support it. I have one final question I was going to ask you, Jeff, and that is your son now is in college. And I mean, our generation kind of grew up with

some of this Hong Kong films or, you know, as we came of age or whatever, but how are some of these films playing with some of the younger people? Well, I, thankfully my son loves movies like I do. He, it's funny, he's, he's kind of on his own. He's kind of discovered his own path as well, but I made a point to show him all types of movies growing up of course i you know focused on the hong kong stuff and but he loves those movies he loves indian movies he loves you know he's really into even more than me into more art films than i am you know a lot of non-narrative stuff um he's really into like he loves terence mal. So he's probably an outlier, but he does have some friends who are really into movies too. And they, you know, I think it's just great to

appreciate all types of genre. You know, if you're a movie lover, you're going to appreciate, you know, maybe to varying degrees, all types of different movies. So I know he's shown, showed some of these, some of the Hong Kong movies to his films. I think he showed the killer too. I mean, how could you, if you like movies, how could you not like the killer, you know? Um, so I think, yeah, there is, and just, you know, being online, I, you know, in some Facebook groups and I've seen their younger people who appreciate these as well. So, um, it is kind of a goal. I mean, I, you know, finally we're at this point where these movies are getting treated with the respect they deserve, you know, even if the movie is not a great movie, it's getting treated with respect.

And that's what's important. I think that's what was missing from a lot of Hong Kong films. They were treated as purely exploitation films. Some of them are. But, you know, that doesn't mean they're, you know, for me, pretty much all movies are art. If it's good art or bad art, that's up to the individual. But I think, you know, pretty much all movies should be treated with the respect they deserve. And Hong Kong movies were not afforded that respect, at least in the West for a long time.

But I think we've finally arrived there and it's, it's a good time. Uh, well, that's been a lot of fun, Jeff. Uh, it's, I love talking to stuff with you cause you just have the background and the knowledge and, and your finger on the pulse of this stuff. I could, I, I really enjoy doing this too. It's, uh, it's one of my favorite topics. this do. It's one of my favorite topics. Well, I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Jeff Briggs as much as I did. We covered a lot of territory and talked about a lot of releases. So I'll have links to some of them in the podcast show notes and on our Facebook page. You can also

go to our website at www.theextras.tv and i'll have everything there as well and if you're interested in the latest on the warner brothers own golden harvest titles i encourage you to join our warner archive and warner brothers catalog group where we'll be posting any updates to that collection and releases as soon as that information comes out and we discussed the highly anticipated enter the dragon 4k, the Bruce Lee classic, which is expected to release for the 100th anniversary celebration of Warner Brothers this year.

And I know they're going to be showing it at the TCM Festival in April. So hopefully it'll be not too long, but we'll be keeping tabs on that release in the group as well. And it's a great place to go. If you want to keep tabs on any Warner brothers releases. Now, if this is the first episode of the extras you've listened to and you enjoyed it, please

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