Seen any good Kung-Fu flicks of late?

[prinnysquad]

I'm reading two compilations at the moment:

The Art of Vengeance Volumes 1 and 2

Basically it's a collection of scans of martial arts film posters from 1970 to 1980 compiled by Toby Russell and Rick Baker. It's class - you can see the fold marks in the scans from some of these rare posters. It's fascinating to see the shift in styles too. The early 70s seemed characterised by hand drawn posters, the mid 70s had a lot of stylised combinations of photos of the actors surrounded by painted elements. The late 70s had, for me, an over reliance on big photos of stars and not enough 'atmosphere'.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, that book looks great.
I love the cover!

[prinnysquad]

It's tremendous. I've got a few more things incoming soon in that line. I'm loving the posters these days - it's like a lost art style and really evocative of the period. You can just imagine them plastered up outside some grindhouse in Chinatown in 1974.

[prinnysquad]

New poster arrivals:

Legendary Weapons of China
The Sword of Justice
Exciting Dragon (aka Drunken Dragon)
What Price Honesty?

And a freebie I've yet to identify. It's a foreign language poster - maybe Middle Eastern - of a kung fu film.
Edit: It is King of Fists and Dollars.

First two on that list are very rare.

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[QualityChimp]

Nice article on modern action films and good examples to follow.

http://www.avclub.com/article/how-make-good-action-film-11-lessons-modern-movies-222083

[kryss]

The Avenging Eagle was the last one I saw until this week. Good plot but too much fisheye.

Heroes of the East with a main star so looks like a young Miyamoto! Lots of fun, again, too much fisheye!

[QualityChimp]

I saw the Shaolin live show yesterday, which is really interesting.

They do a series of demonstrations of weapons and styles, do a bit of fighting then finish with some feats of endurance.

It was really fun spotting the various styles like monkey, snake and mantis.

[k0pp0]

Seen it twice myself. Always impressive.

[prinnysquad]

The Avenging Eagle was the last one I saw until this week. Good plot but too much fisheye.

Heroes of the East with a main star so looks like a young Miyamoto! Lots of fun, again, too much fisheye!

Heroes is super. Classic Shaw from Pops with Gordon Liu breaking out the moves arl owa. Amazing how the film shifts tone, and there's themes of misogyny and cultural racism explored. It's got a great ensemble with Hsiao Ho, Norman Chu and Yasuaki Kurata.

[kryss]

Kurata is originally from just up the road from the misses too.

[prinnysquad]

Kurata is BRILLIANT in Legend of a Fighter. A really good fighter in brawler films.