Seen any good Kung-Fu flicks of late?

[monel]

megatron-I haven't seen that yet, I have True Legend, Bodyguards & Assassins, Ong Bak 3 and the Ip Man prequel on my watch list before I get that. I'm not really a Michelle Yeoh fan either, although I am a fan of John Woo. I know everyone likes Yeoh though, it's just me.

prinny-my mate give me a Vengeance disc today, Drunken Master Strikes Back, was a surprise. Not sure if I've seen it.

Mad Gear-Does the Project A boxset have an extra fight between Jackie and Biao?

[prinnysquad]

prinny-my mate give me a Vengeance disc today, Drunken Master Strikes Back, was a surprise. Not sure if I've seen it.

Cool. I've got it but not watched it.

Beware of its aliases, for there are many:

http://www.hkcinemagic.com/en/movie.asp?id=9604

[megatron]

megatron-I haven't seen that yet, I have True Legend, Bodyguards & Assassins, Ong Bak 3 and the Ip Man prequel on my watch list before I get that. I'm not really a Michelle Yeoh fan either, although I am a fan of John Woo. I know everyone likes Yeoh though, it's just me.

I'm not a huge Yeoh fan really either but I've heard good things about this one. Hopefully they are better than the films on your list.

I got a projector recently though so I think I'll be going through some old classics. Had a quick flick through of Drunken Master 2 and Wheels on Meals on it and it's pretty awesome seeing them on a big screen.

[QualityChimp]

When are we all coming over Megatron?

[monel]

Well, Bodyguards & Assassins is supposed to be OK and the Ip Man film has Sammo and Biao in it...

Ong Bak 3 I have not much hope for. Don't expect much from True Legend but I've flicked through bits, the mountain bit was visually quite good.

I rarely watch new stuff though, if I do watch something it tends to be much older.

[QualityChimp]

I managed to get a couple of flicks in this weekend.

Gallants - I really enjoyed this. It's a very small film that's only about a handful of people, but I found it riveting anyway. The old guys kick some serious rump and it's all very old skool in its delivery from the soundtrack to the characters and the Kung-Fu they practice. Good fun. It's like a small group of people wanted to make a tribute to old kung-fu films. It's a touching tribute to friendship and growing old too. Siu-Lung Leung is great as Tiger and his introduction had me rewinding and watching again.

Ninja in the Dragon's Den - I bought this of forumite Davesol ages ago and was put off watching it as it was older than I thought it'd be, but glad I made the effort now. It stars Conan Lee, Hiroyuki Sanada and Hwang Jang Lee. It starts of a little directionless with loads of gratuitous ninja training montages and then Conan Lee fighting a load of people because he likes fighting, but finds it way later on and both the leads are really charasmatic. There's a brilliant fight sequence where Conan beats up the Bull King whilst both wearing stilts!

Other great scenes include trapping the ninja using lots of boobytraps and the massive fight scene at the end of the film.

I even found time to watch it again with the Bey Logan commentary on. He talks a lot about how Conan Lee should've been the next Jackie Chan. He looked very similar and the JC camp were getting worried about this talented and younger upstart stealing his thunder, but a couple of bad film choices meant he was never as big as he should've been. He even tried to get him on the commentary, but his manager was making all sorts of crazy demands so they left it.

I now want to see him with Chow Yun Fat in Tiger on the Beat, because the chainsaw fight looks great...

[monel]

I need to get Gallants.

Tiger On The Beat has a great ending, rest of the film is just OK, but I try and watch every Lau bros and Chow Yun Fat film I can.

Chainsaw fight is good, too.

Fu Sheng of Shaw Bros was supposed to be in Snake In The Eagles Shadow I think, but Shaws wouldn't allow it or something. If he hadn't died there's no knowing what would have happened. I don't think he was as physically gifted as Jackie but he had good looks and great timing acting wise.

[QualityChimp]

I saw Jackie Chan in The Medallion as I'd not seen it since release and was a bit let down by it.

So this time I came to it with quite low expectations and quite enjoyed it. If you approach it realising it's just a fun comedy-action film, you'll get more from it.

I didn't like that before he's powered-up, JC is clearly on wires on what's otherwise a great chase scene and Lee Evans is made out to be unlikeable and inept at his job, so it's hard to like him again later, but he's goofy enough to forgive.

The action scenes are fun and quite inventive, but you feel the end product isn't the sum of its parts: Jackie Chan starring, Bey Logan writing, Scott Adkins, Michael Strange and Brad Allen as henchmen, and so on.

Fun but disposable. There's some genuinely funny outtakes at the end and Claire Forlani is gorgeous!

[QualityChimp]

Nice Hong Kong movie poster archive here:

http://hkmovieposter.blogspot.com/

[monel]

Thanks for that link, really liked the Zu Warriors poster there. Simple one but never seen it before.

I saw a great Better Tomorrow poster for sale once but I didn't purchase it. Never saw it again .

[prinnysquad]

Deadly Silver Spear

Jimmy Wang Yu plays a badass spear assassin expert mofo who is enrolled to take out some bad uns. He gets sucked into a plot to achieve dominance of the martial world as he aims to protect a childhood friend.

Despite all the twists and bluffs, it's all quite standard story-wise, and the dub makes it easy to understand. Plus, the direction is tight enough, and costumes clear enough, to make the usual who-is-who? problems practically non-existent in this wuxia-basher. The set design and photography is decent, too. Wang Yu is good as the hero of the piece. He's a man of martial expertise, and utterly ruthless with those who stand in his way. There's some reasonably inventive and violent scenes with his spear, and a special flying ring of death wielded by the main goddamn bastard of the film. There's a sound pace to the film that keeps things ticking along nicely. Much better than expected, nothing amazing or eye-opening, just a nice surprise and a solid genre flick. The action was sorted by Lau Kar Wing, so there's pedigree there.

We watched the Eastern Heroes dvd version of it and there's a threadbare Wang Yu interview as an extra, with a load of clips from a film mixed into it. It looks class. Really long cuts and fast action, set in maybe an early 20th century setting. Wish I knew what it was!!

[monel]

Lau Kar Wing doing the action? Sounds good. I'm not really a Wang Yu fan though, never really liked his fighting skills.

He's supposed to be some high level triad btw.

[prinnysquad]

Yeah. Heard he liked his bar brawls and rumbles. Haha.

The action isn't spectacular, or anything like it. The spear work is ok, and gets better during the film. The weapons and gadgets are entertaining though, as are the bits of violence. Think low-brow indie that's better than you'd expect.

[QualityChimp]

Anbody got a subtitles file for Panyhose Hero?

I'll watch it on the laptop eventually, but I can't find any subs for it.

[monel]

I thought the only versions out had embedded subtitles?