Seen any good Kung-Fu flicks of late?

[prinnysquad]

The pole duel between Liu and Ko Fei in 8 Diagram is the best pole fight ever filmed. It is also my fave kung fu film to date. It is also a tragic, brutal film, with the shadow of Fu Sheng looming over it throughout, notably in the tone.

Man, get those VHSs converted! Is your Mystery of Chess Boxing vhs widescreen? That's quite a collectors piece if it is. Vanpubes and I have bought a handful of old VHS tapes off a well-known genre guy on ebay and plan to convert them to dvd, stuff like Shaolin Invincible Sticks and Strife For Mastery.

['Press Start']

Man, get those VHSs converted! Is your Mystery of Chess Boxing vhs widescreen? That's quite a collectors piece if it is.

Not sure, it does not say on the case. It is the Eastern Hero's release if that helps.

Five venoms collectable on DVD?

[prinnysquad]

If it's Eastern Heroes then it might be. If it has burnt-in white subtitles, with cantonese audio, then it's the real deal.

Five Venoms less so now that celestial have released so much Shaw stuff on R3 discs. Still a good one to have though.

[monel]

Watched Tiger Cage, the first in the series the other day. It has a great cast and is directed by Woo Ping but Donnie Yen only gets to have one decent fight. I was quite disappointed with the film overall. Was laughing at unexpected moments though, there is quite a bit of unintentional comedy.

For the fights and stunts Tiger Cage 2 is a much better film, although it has lots of comedy in it. I have yet to see the third in the series but there is no Donnie in it so I haven't got many expectations for it.

Of this particular kind of film by Woo Ping and Donnie, I would say In The Line Of Duty 4 is undoubtedly the best.

[prinnysquad]

Chuffed to bits to find a new dvd-palace. I'd fancied a few Joysales Legendary releases for a while, but they go for a fisting on amazon.

So, I decided to give renchi a go. They are selling them all at less than a fiver a disc. I was a bit wary of disaster so I ordered two as a test.

About a week and a half later, they turn up, very well wrapped - perhaps overly well (!) - and in splendido condition.

The Angry River (20 quid on amazon) and When Taekwondo Strikes (25 quid on amazon) for 18 USD (less than 12 quid), including p&p, combined. Good stats!

[QualityChimp]

Link-me-do then if they get the PS double-thumbs up seal of approval!
Maybe they've got Exciting Dragon!

Don't forget that Jackie Chan is on the last ever Friday Night with Jonathan Ross tonight.
He was on Chris Moyles' breakfast show yesterday and it was a totally wasted interview. Moyles was excited to meet him, but said nothing of value to him the whole time he was there. It was all about the Karate Kid remake and not a thing about any of his other films.

I'm hoping JR stops talking about himself for once and actually speaks to JC about his career and just geeks out!

[prinnysquad]

Man, I got back so late I switched on Wossy only for Beckham to be on. JC must have already gone. ****e and bollocks.

Renchi Joysales search. Not exhaustive! With random titles in the search, for some reason.

[QualityChimp]

I've not seen all of Jonathan Ross yet, but the interview was pretty good with JR referencing some of the films that got him into JC in the beginning. Worth watching, I think.

Finally finished a couple of films I've been struggling to find time to get through, so saw them in chunks.

Ip Man 2 was a good watch. Some fairly solid acting scenes from Donnie Yen and he seems to work well with director Wilson Yip. Sammo delivers some great fight sequences, but claims that they're his career best are hard to swallow after recently watching all the JC/Sammo/Yuen films and some of Sammo's other classics.

Also, I swear Sammo is dubbed in this. After seeing all those films, Martial Law and various DVD Special Edition interviews, he sounds like a newsreader in this!

Fave scene was probably in the fish market, as it all went a bit Rocky IV in the second half, but I like Rocky IV, so we're OK!

The other film I saw was Bad Blood and I really liked this too. It's written, produced and directed by Dennis Law, but it doesn't feature ridiculous CGI blood like Fatal Move did. There's a few big action names in there - Simon Yam, Bernice Liu and Andy On and it's pretty packed with action from the half-way mark.

The plot is engaging enough, but it's the 8 or so action sequences that impressed me. Most of them without wires too. All the main characters seem to have at least one fight sequence and all do a good job.

Shinobi and Megatron, I reckon this would be up your streets!

[monel]

I'll have to keep an eye out for Bad Blood, I haven't seen it, Simon Yam has been almost as busy as Donnie Yen in the past few years it seems.

If you saw the Mandarin version of Ip Man 2, Sammo would definitely have been dubbed (I think), that might be the reason why. Or maybe it's his voice in the Mandarin version and they dubbed it in the cantonese version. All a bit confusing.

I was a bit miffed that Fan Siu Wong didn't get to fight in Ip Man 2, as he was one of the best things about the first film.

[prinnysquad]

Love and Sword

Tien Peng effort. Quite story heavy, apparently based on a wuxia novel. Decent, although somewhat slow, swordplay. Neat ending, and very atmospheric. Improved when I insisted we switched to just the burnt-in subtitles rather than listen to the awful dub (while reading the subs - totally different and very distracting).

[Dennoman]

Recently watched Last Hero in China (Wong Fei Hong 4) again. It's got some of the most inventive scenes ever, with the chicken vs. armoured caterpillar scene and the drunken boxing at the end.

[prinnysquad]

Sounds class. That's Jet Li isn't it? Gotta love the old skool setting. Is this on-ground stuff or wire-fu?

[monel]

Last Hero is strings based stuff, Jet Li went off to work with Wong Jing after having problems with Tsui Hark I think.

The cockrel vs caterpillar battle is inspired by another film I can't quite remember the name of, I think Kid From Kwantung, seem to remember it's a Wong Yu Shaws title. Might be wrong.

edit-and Gordon Liu is the baddie in Last Hero. Oh, and the women in it are very pretty.

[Dennoman]

Pretty much all wired stuff yeah. Some quite nice on-ground stuff vs. the gang though.

[monel]

The Tony Ja film Tom Yum Goong is selling for 3.99 at Play. It's the 2 disc Warrior King version, which has the original version on the second disc, I think (and hope). Thought someone else might be interested, the action is ace.