Hong Kong Legends Arrives To Region 1~!!!!!

[Guest Karnage]

Fox Brings Hong Kong Legends to the US

Fox Home Entertainment has announced that they are bringing to the US the 'Hong Kong Legends' DVD Line - considered by most to be the definitive versions of some of the top Hong Kong DVDs with superior transfers and plentiful extras. The first wave of Hong Kong Legends DVDs are set to be released on July 22nd and include: Magnificent Butcher (directed by Yuen Woo-ping of The Matrix and Iron Monkey Fame) , Naked Killer, Magnificent Warriors (with Crouching Tiger's Michelle Yeoh), Hong Kong 1941 with Chow Yun-Fat, and City Hunter with Jackie Chan. All the Hong Kong Legend DVDs are presented with new anamorphic widescreen transfers and Cantonese 5.1 Dolby Digital with optional English Audio and subtitles. To make good news even better, Fox has set the MSRP on these titles at $14.98 so you should be able to get them online for just over $11 each!

 

This is excellent news...note to disney, this is the way you are supposed to treat Martial arts films.

[Guest Mole]

What Martial Art films does Walt have?

[Guest DVD Spree]

Disney - by way of Beuna Vista - have the rights to analarming number of Hong Kong movies, including some Jet Li flicks, which they utterly butcher and give appalling transfers, often only with an English dub.

 

Great news Karnage! HKL kick all kinds of ass. I'm pretty surprised that they aren't kicking off the launch with the Bruce Lee DVDs, but I guess the rights to the previous Bruce DVDs haven't expired yet.

 

Awesome stuff!

[Guest razazteca]

Sweet cheaper better quality DVDs, Suncoast was charging $35-50 for these movies from other distributors. The Magnificent Butcher is an ok movie with Sammo Hung as the lead role, I think this is one of those Wong Fei Hong or Dunken Master movies but not sure which. City Hunter is one of those goofy comedies of Jackie Chan that are so bad its good but you must rent it just for the SFII scene.

[Guest Karnage]

Yeah I also don't see why they don't release the HKL versions of all the Bruce Lee movies since Fox distributes all of them over here(Except ETD)...I guess we will hafto wait and see.

 

The only thing that sucks about this is that Columbia Tristar and Buena Vista owns the rights over here to most of the movies that get the HKL treatment over in Region 2.

Columbia does sometimes do a decent job (like actually include the original chinese soundtrack) with Hong Kong films, but they are usually bare bones.

[Guest DVD Spree]

I thought it was Fox who did the previous Bruce set, so you're right - that makes the decision not to kick of the label with them pretty weird. Maybe they're marks for the nice pacakaging.

 

HKL need to release Purple Storm ASAP, because the last press of R2 discs had an error on them, and I need my fix of Josie Ho, damnit.

[Guest Crucifixio Jones]

I just read that the reason for the price decrease is because the Region 1 versions of the HKL series will lack audio commentaries. Should we consider this a big deal?

 

also:

04/04/03 - Shaw Brothers / Miramax Deal

 

Apparently a deal has been signed between Miramax and Celestial to distribute 50 films to North America, U.K, New Zealand and Australia. Plus there is an additional 'Video on Demand' deal with North America.

 

This will be greeted with grave concerns by many fans both old and new of Shaw Brothers. Miramax has lost the confidence of many fans of international cinema by its recent releases that have been accused of Americanisng and dumbing down the titles. Such films include Hero (Jet Li), Shaolin Soccer (Stephen Chow) and Accidental Spy (Jackie Chan).

 

Common Issues with Miramax / Dimension releases:

 

Film has been cut (e.g Hero was cut by 18 minutes after Miramax pressure)

New dubbed audio track (many viewers would like to have a subtitled alternative)

Re-titling of the film (e.g Fong Sai-Yuk became The Legend)

New musical score (most titles)

New opening titles

Limited extras

Delayed and limited cinema release

Further info on previous petition to Disney (inc. Miramax and Dimension)

 

http://www.petitiononline.com/warthkf/petition.html

 

Good FAQ on the Petition to Disney

 

http://alliance.hellninjacommando.net/faq.htm

 

please sign the petition if you find the arguments convincing

[Guest DVD Spree]

No commentaries?

 

YIKES.

 

That's a VERY big deal. It's amazing to have these HK films (that have traditionally only been available in appalling condition on tape) in crisp, remastered anamorphic widescreen and 5.1 audio, but apart from that, the best part of these DVDs are the commentary tracks. Certainly, those recorded by my man Bey Logan are simply the best commentaries in the business (along with Kevin Smith commentaries). Are you sure the info's correct? That would really take the sting out of the good news.

[Guest Karnage]

Thats fucked up if they don't include the commentaries. The only commentary you see on HK films over here in R1 is Ric Myer's "expert" commentary which is horrible.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

Hong Kong Legends coming to Region 1? Yes! I can only hope this means Premier Asia is coming our way too (because I still haven't been able to scrape together the cash to import and watch Ichi the Killer). However, from what I've heard the loss of the commentaries is a great one. Let's hope that's not true.

 

On the other hand, if we can just throw out random hopes from this deal... how about Fox bring HKL's The Killer stateside, eh?

[Guest Karnage]

On the other hand, if we can just throw out random hopes from this deal... how about Fox bring HKL's The Killer stateside, eh?

Like I said, Disney has the rights to a ton of HK films and The Killer is one of them.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

On the other hand, if we can just throw out random hopes from this deal... how about Fox bring HKL's The Killer stateside, eh?

Like I said, Disney has the rights to a ton of HK films and The Killer is one of them.

They do? But isn't there a Fox/Lorber release of The Killer in Region 1?

 

Guess I'd better keep scraping...

[Guest razazteca]

isn't there a Fox/Lorber release of The Killer in Region 1?

I have that release

[Guest Crucifixio Jones]

Fox/Lorber has released The Killer and Hard-Boiled here in the US and there are OOP Criterion Collection editions of both of those movies as well. Still neither holds a candle to the HKL The Killer release.

[Guest Karnage]

If anyone cares, here is the box art for the first batch of Fox HKL DVDs.