I did. But you’d eaten Sugar Puffs, which ruined it.
-
-
This is a family site. Please go back to discussing people brutally beating each other to death.Comment
-
Comment
-
Michelle Yeoh: ‘Jackie Chan thought women belonged in the kitchen – until I kicked his butt’
"The kung fu goddess talks about her most eye-popping stunts, her yearning to do another Crazy Rich Asians, and her outrageously enjoyable new Marvel movie, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"
Comment
-
Pretty decent list, to be fair, acknowledging the ones that nearly won.
Rather than a top 10, it's more their fave of 10 different subgenres (weapons, realistic, 1 v many etc.)
I also own a crazy amount of these on disc!
Comment
-
Few action movie notes.
(Spoiler tags to make this easier to read - no actual spoilers)
A few action films have been getting good responses including Scott Adkins' One Shot:
Never Back Down: Revolt, which features choreography by Tim Man and Cecep Arif Rahman (Raid 2's The Assassin)
Director Kellie Madison did the short film, The Gate:
and Donnie Yen's Raging Fire, which gets it's 4K release on 31st Jan:
Finally, Timo Tjahjanto has been lined up for a Last Train to Busan remake Last Train to New York and also an Under Siege Remake!
The best thing about this is not that this is being directed by the guy who did the AMAZING "Safe Haven" section of V/H/S/2 with Gareth Evans, The Night Comes For Us (Netflix) and Headshot (Netflix), all of which are must-sees for me, but that you know it's going to piss Steven Segal off and he's going to say something hilariously embarrassing!Comment
-
Got a bit of a soft spot for this one. Sammo swinging his nunchuks doing his best Bruce Lee impression is gold.
Comment
-
That’s tempting. Eureka! Is doing a great job with all these old HK films.Comment
-
As mentioned in the pickups thread, I got Arrow's release of Sister Street Fighter.
For Woovember, I had to see a film with Sonny Chiba.
I'm a sucker for movie nunchuks, so favoured SSF.
I'd started on the YouTube copy, but it's awful. I normally can cope with the grain, but I couldn't read the subs and it was really cropped tight.
Normally I'm scared I'll get buyers remorse, but I really enjoyed this.
Japanese martial arts flicks have a different pace to Hong Kong ones, like there's more power behind the blows than the highly-choreographed "dance" steps of their counterparts.
There's a mint funky soundtrack and the first film in the set has an isolated score I had a listen to for a bit.
The film itself is great, in that it's pretty cheesy, packed with fights and pretty violent.
Obviously, the gore has dated, but a dude with a sai in his head is still a dude with a sai in his head!
The plot comes straight outta a comic book, with the big bad sending his colourful henchmen to try to dispatch SSF, but she's tough AF, so she kicks their asses.
Etsuko Shihomi is great and I love how she's not sexualised. It's not that she's not pretty, but being sexy isn't something her character is thinking about - she's just snapping necks.
It's funny, because I attended my kids' karate lesson before watching it and saw some of their moves in the movie.
Although, my 5 y/o daughter didn't twist someone's around head so much that he staggered down the stairs backwards...
Comment
-
For #Chanuary, I finally watched Battle Creek Brawl/The Big Brawl.
It's one I've been meaning to watch since the Jonathon Ross feature that got me into Chan in the first place.
Seeing Jackie do flips and kicks was a world apart from sluggish American fighting scenes.
Bit of a curio, this. It was an early attempt for Chan to make it in America and features a lot of the same people as Enter The Dragon, but with a lot less impact. Same composer, Lalo Schifrin, does a decent score with a chirpy whistling theme, but with some funkier stuff in the fights (not as memorable as his ETD score, though).
Same Director, Robert Clouse, who refused to listen to some of Chan's suggestions, like flipping out of an open top car, but Clouse said he should just walk across the street. Chan argued people don't pay to see Jackie Chan walking.
My two main grumbles are Clouse's insistence on using OTT sound effects, so every punch needs a deafening THWACK. Same in ETD, but somehow more bearable. I remember trying to show my dad it and he just laughed at how it sounds like someone's banging a big bass drum.
The other is how the action scenes with the Western actors don't really work. Chan just runs rings around them as they lumber around doing slow punches.
However, it's a cheeky enough romp and Chan's scenes with any stunt performers he's worked with before really stand out.
He's on peak form here, too, so he's flipping and tumbling in a way no average person can. The film starts with him walking on the support struts of a bridge then doing pull-ups and it's really unnerving because you know there are no support cables.
Early HKL disc, so it's a bit light on extras. Not sure I'll watch it again, but it was worth ticking off.
Might listen to that Shifrin score again, though!Comment
-
Shaw Bros fans might want to listen to the Arrow Video podcast now covering the new box set in two instalmentsComment
-
Watched that new 88Films release of Armour of God this week and, holy smokes I love this film!
I listened to the first of 3 commentaries and dipped into the second, but also started again with another but didn't finish as I started exploring the extras. There's plenty on there including a nice look at the UK VHS covers, an hour long chatshow interview, a talk about the editing and some "now and then" location shots. Most of the locations have barely changed, which is good for synth band Papillon Rising, who do this brilliant homage using the existing locations and some clever editing!
I also want to read the booklet as there are some nice articles about Jackie Chan games, the majority of which I never knew existed.
I still enjoy the film as much as I ever did. The act in the third quarter loses a bit in the translation as there's supposed to be a lot of innuendo, but it's a nice lull in the action ready for the big finale.
The fight with the monks and then the amazons are just phenomenal.
Papillon Rising "High Upon High"
Last edited by QualityChimp; 20-01-2022, 07:32.Comment
-
I went to the Mockingbird Cinema in the Birmingham Custard Factory on Saturday for the Fighting Spirit Film Festival.
I couldn't make the start, but saw a new documentary called "Kung Fu Stuntmen: Never Say No!", which was fascinating.
It took a few turns as it started out celebrating that heyday of 80's kung fu actors, then contemplating just how dangerous some of the stunts were, then the sad demise of all the studios and finally the next generation of stuntmen being trained by the old guys.
After that, we watched the uncut version of Drunken Master II (with that outrageously non-PC ending), which was a real treat to see again as it's not as easily available as a lot of others as I think Warner Bros own it.
There are some really great sequences like the fight under the bridge and the tea shop fight, but the highlight is the end fight in the steel mill. Wowzers!
It was fairly low-key but sometimes these things need to get some traction again after Lockdown.
Comment
-
-
Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing fight, but I just feel less invested in Chan's Wong Fei Hung than, say, Ka Kui in Police Story, so that mall fight has more impact for me.
Who cares though, they're both ace and it was great to see at the cinema!Comment
Comment