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Interesting and unusual DVD/Blu-Ray releases (News)

Fran_Garcia

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We must be of a similar age..this was another one i used to love. I will be importing this i think (y) I already got the VS The BeastMaster set
Yup, similar age. I also got The Beastmaster set. And I am going to import this one too. Several years ago I got the Cloak & Dagger Score released by Intrada.
 

The Danger Zone

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One of Adult Swim's most popular shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is coming to DVD in a complete "Baffler Meal" box set this July. I don't know about the UK, but this should be interesting, to say the least. I just hope we get the uncensored HBO Max episodes.

I like the name choice for this. Great callback to that one episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast!
 

matrixgrindhouse

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At long last, Police Story 3: Supercop is getting a proper release! And for you 4K people (in whatever region the UK is for that format), the first three in a box set! Note that the extended Japanese cut of part 1 isn't making the cut, so stick with Eureka's previous Blu-Ray if that's of importance to you. That's my favorite cut of the film, but all three are great in their own way.


And the equally talented 88 Films are releasing Police Story 3 in the US as well! No word on what will be different between the two versions just yet.

 

matrixgrindhouse

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Big-Boss-Mandarin-2.jpeg


They found it. Those absolute brilliant madmen at Arrow found the longer cut of The Big Boss. And the lost "log fight" from Game of Death! Alas, the legendary "saw in the head" scene is still missing. But screw it. It's as close as I'll ever get to seeing a "new Bruce Lee movie". What a dream come true.

That said, I was never crazy about the original music in the Mandarin audio for Big Boss. Some day, when I get well, I might do some selective mix-and-matching of the long cut with the Peter Thomas and Joseph Koo scores as featured on the Criterion set.

 

mnkykungfu

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^I would love to see someone try to rescue that GoD Bruce footage and combine it with other footage to make a watchable narrative. Maybe a grindhouse kind of film with some gritty, cheesy voiceover and some "missing reels"?
 

matrixgrindhouse

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^I would love to see someone try to rescue that GoD Bruce footage and combine it with other footage to make a watchable narrative. Maybe a grindhouse kind of film with some gritty, cheesy voiceover and some "missing reels"?

They kind of did this with some opening text on the Criterion set's "Game of Death Redux". While not perfect - I still think it's the most cinematic presentation of the 1972 footage thus far. I'm sure Arrow's going to have something comparable for their release.

That said, there's so many Bruceploitation movies wherein a yellow-jumpsuited protagonist fights up a pagoda that could be used as placeholder footage if that's what you're talking about.
 

mnkykungfu

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^I've seen a few. But ideally I think it'd cut the majority of non-Bruce footage from GoD and the sequel, combine what's got Bruce in it from those, and add in a 2nd or 3rd character to focus on as an ensemble film. The Bruce stand-ins generally look nothing like him, don't have the body or movement right. Better to just focus on Bruce footage from other locations, maybe ETD extra scenes and so on. I'm not sure what other actor or film could be combined with this and hold up alongside it... maybe Circle of Iron, where Bruce was working on similar ideas? Or maybe try to rescue some footage from the newer Bruce Lee TV series and obscure it with film grain, etc?
Anyway I just really want to fit the GoD footage into a narrative film that isn't garbage. Lol
 

TM2YC

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I much prefer Arrow's "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to bonus features, with multiple cuts, multiple audio mixes, dubs etc, over Criterion's "you're getting one mono mix and that's it!" approach :LOL: . The only cloud is that Bruce boxset seems to have just thrown the old rubbish looking special edition blu-ray disc of 'Enter the Dragon' in there. For rights reasons I guess? I'd been looking forward to owning the new theatrical remaster of that in a set that isn't the expensive imported Criterion one.

Speaking of Arrow, this forthcoming boxset looks very tasty: Enter The Video Store

14539097-1515040545714553.jpg


I think it's supposed to be like renting a stack of VHS tapes in the 80s, except this time they're HD. It includes one of my favourite movies from childhood, 'Robot Jox' which has rarely been released in HD but now in a new 2K transfer from the negative!


UnfitInnocentElephant-size_restricted.gif
 

matrixgrindhouse

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I much prefer Arrow's "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to bonus features, with multiple cuts, multiple audio mixes, dubs etc, over Criterion's "you're getting one mono mix and that's it!" approach :LOL: . The only cloud is that Bruce boxset seems to have just thrown the old rubbish looking special edition blu-ray disc of 'Enter the Dragon' in there. For rights reasons I guess? I'd been looking forward to owning the new theatrical remaster of that in a set that isn't the expensive imported Criterion one.

Criterion's audio options on The Big Boss were great, to be fair. They had the original Mandarin track (where you could *hear* wherever they made censorship cuts), the Mandarin voices synced up with the Peter Thomas music from the English dub, and the Cantonese re-release audio with music by Joseph Koo (and Pink Floyd but don't tell their lawyers) and authentic Bruce battle cries. The only real omissions are the obscure alternate export English dub, and the Japanese version that had a hybrid of the Koo and Thomas scores, along with Mike Remedios's theme, "To Be A Man".

What did you dislike about Warner's Enter the Dragon? I thought it was a reasonably good looking Blu-Ray. And that mono track where you could hear Bruce's real voice instead of the soundalike for the added scene with the Shaolin abbot was a nice touch.

Truth be told, I never got around to watching the theatrical cut. I've just never had any interest in watching a version that had Bruce philosophize less. Now, maybe if there were a version that made John Saxon's fight scenes convincing...


As for Robot Jox - one of my earliest childhood memories is catching the last stretch of it on TV early in the morning, watching it with my dad. And even at whatever young age that was - single digit - I was already genre savvy enough to know that the thumbs-up in your .gif was a big subversion of the cliche. I distinctly remember my dad's surprise and enthusiasm at what transpired. Gonna have to revisit that with him some day.
 

TM2YC

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Criterion's audio options on The Big Boss were great, to be fair.

Yeah, just a general observation. Some CC discs have more options but in the majority of cases while the Criterion discs look and sound great, they seem to operate a "one true version" policy. Where as Arrow seem to have the opposite ethos, all versions are valid and should be included if at all possible. Even if it's a vandalised shorter cut, or a hilariously bad dub.

The Criterion versions appear identical to me - the difference with the standalone is far more clear.

Criterion vs Warner (UK)

^ That's the one I've got. One of those early blu-ray releases that looked good 15-years ago compared to DVD but doesn't now.
 

The Scribbling Man

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I much prefer Arrow's "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to bonus features, with multiple cuts, multiple audio mixes, dubs etc,

Yup. Every now and again they dish out an isolated score and FX track - very useful stuff.
 

Possessed

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I guess this could go here. My "Haunting of Julia" (AKA Full Circle) bluray arrives today! I love that movie. It means a lot to me. It has a chilling gothic atmosphere unlike anything else I've ever seen. The music alone makes me feel things.

This is a big deal because the only home media release it's ever gotten was a vhs release in the 80s. There was a hi def transfer on some streaming services back in the day but it was only 720p and was very soft and DNR'd. And even that transfer has been off of official channels for years and the only way to watch it has been compressed 360p uploads to YouTube. The reason being it's rights had been scattered throughout so many different random companies (Sony being one) and everybody was just afraid to touch it lest they get sued. But recently somebody affiliated with Shout! Factory decided to take it on and get the rights squared away. They restored it and gave it a new 4k transfer and after 40 years it finally has both a proper home media release and a proper transfer in general.
 

TM2YC

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Yeeeeeessssssss!!!!

Two more Chow Yun Fat 80s action movies (a 2-film Godfather-esque Hong Kong gangster saga) are finally get HD remasters/releases for the first time: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/rich-and-famous-and-tragic-hero/


With these two, Eureka's previous 'Wild Search' and 88 Films' 'God of Gamblers' (only a week), this will be a whole 4 of his films that will be watchable in not-sh*t quality! The old transfers for these two were so bad I had to custom make my own subtitles for the DVDs and de-4:3 letterbox them. We still haven't got 'Hard Boiler' and 'The Killer' etc but we're getting there. From my review of the almost unwatchably terrible DVD release I viewed a couple of years ago:

"This kind of action film-making will never happen again (and probably shouldn't) where you have stuntmen on fire somersaulting out of giant explosions, Ed-209/Robocop levels of insanely violent blood squibs and have what is clearly your actual lead actors putting out flames with their hands from the real Molotov cocktails you've just tossed passed their heads."
 

Darth Kermit

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this will be a whole 4 of his films that will be watchable in not-sh*t quality
88 Films also leaked that they are releasing Ronny Yu’s The Postman Strikes Back, starring Yun-Fat! Also, they released Lam Ngai-Choi’s The Seventh Curse starring him a little bit ago, which is batshit crazy and so much fun!
We still haven't got 'Hard Boiler' and 'The Killer'
Hopefully soon, but apparently the international rights holders for Cinema City and Golden Princess catalogue are asking for like $40 million for the entire catalogue, and don’t seem to be accepting single licenses, just all or nothing. A real shame. Can’t get all of Ringo Lam’s classic films like the On Fire series and Full Contact, John Woo’s 7 classics from A Better Tomorrow to Hard Boiled, a bunch of Tsui Hark films, and so much more. It’s a veritable gold mine, but no boutique label can afford to buy the entire catalogue.
 

matrixgrindhouse

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We still haven't got 'Hard Boiler' and 'The Killer' etc but we're getting there.

Seriously, whoever is sitting on the rights to that stuff needs to cut a deal. This is the golden age of Hong Kong action on English-friendly home media - why must John Woo's masterpieces gather dust? That said, with the lost theatrical Big Boss getting a release, and strong evidence pointing to an uncut Rumble in the Bronx, it can't be too much longer. I'm holding out hope that we can finally see Woo's extended cut of A Better Tomorrow 2 at long last.

Speaking of Bruce, here's the breakdown of the Arrow set (Blu-Ray version linked here, but I think the only difference for 4K is that, well, a lot of the stuff is in 4K.)

Some highlights that I found particularly interesting:

  • 99 minute version of Big Boss has Mandarin, Cantonese, and English audio - all three soundtracks represented. Also includes the English dub as shown in Japan, which has a hybrid of the music from the Cantonese and English versions, including the Mike Remedios theme song. No sign of the "Mandarin voices with English dub music" version from Criterion though.
  • 110 minute extended theatrical cut shares its disk with a 100 minute version that has an entirely different English dub, the (in)famous "Export Cut" adutio, and whatever the heck the 100 minute US theatrical cut is. Other than the title becoming "Fists of Fury," I'm not sure what's different about it. Also features an unrestored scan of the 110 minute version for the maximum Grindhouse experience!
  • Japanese English dubs with Remedios theme songs for Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon as well.
  • Seamless branched US and Japanese cuts of Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon as extras - no idea what's actually changed in those beyond alternate titles for the US (The Chinese Connection, Return of the Dragon), and different opening narration for Fist of Fury for Japan.
  • Enter the Dragon is the 40th anniversary disc which should be higher quality than the initial HD release, but nowhere nearly as good as what Criterion came up with. No theatrical cut. And apparently no mono sound for Bruce's real voice in the extended footage?
  • Game of Death '78: Like Criterion, it has the Japanese version as an extra. Only difference is that Bruce's battle cries are sourced from the real deal, not the new voice actor.
  • ... but they also have the Chinese language versions of it, which include additional and alternate footage, and two different alternate endings, all watchable with seamless branching.
  • A 3 hour documentary featuring two entire hours of the 1972 Game of Death footage, including some scenes that have never been seen before.
  • Game of Death revisited, a reconstruction from 2001 (I think this is what was on the Hong Kong Legends DVD?). No sign of Redux, from the Criterion version.
  • Game of Death II: You've got the extended English version with alternate music (as seen on Criterion), the shorter Cantonese theatrical version, "Tower f Death", and an alternate US home video version (no idea what's different), and the elusive Korean cut which features exclusive footage.

The absence of a few specific things related to Big Boss's shorter cut, Enter the Dragon, and maybe Game of Death redux do keep this from being the 100% definitive Bruce Lee set - but between the new Big Boss and Game of Death footage, plus a plethora of obscure alternate versions that did make it in - it's an absolute must-own.
 

Darth Kermit

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I'm holding out hope that we can finally see Woo's extended cut of A Better Tomorrow 2 at long last.
Probably won’t happen, same with his original 3 hour cut of Bullet in the Head. Woo said in a reddit Q/A that usually after the films were finished, the cut scenes were rarely kept, so likely only the negatives for the cuts as we know them are left. Hopefully we do see these films released soon from boutique labels, but like I said earlier, the rights holders want a fortune for the entire catalogue they own of Cinema City and Golden Princess, so it’ll probably be a little while.
uncut Rumble in the Bronx
I hope this is true, but the leaked UK Amazon listing isn’t definitive yet, and it’s likely Warner could just reissue the same US disc just in the UK. Hoping for an actual good release though, but Warner is just as bad as the rights holders for CC and GP. They wouldn’t give Arrow the 4K for Enter the Dragon and just gave them their old 40th anniversary disc that is 10 years old. And they haven’t touched their own GH catalogue since Mr Nice Guy and DM2.
 

TM2YC

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Related: The 88-Films blu-ray for Woo's 'Heroes Shed No Tears' has a featurette where they describe for you how the super rare Director's Cut/Workprint version which they've got a copy of (on VHS) differs from the other versions but then don't include it on the blu-ray!
 

Darth Kermit

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Related: The 88-Films blu-ray for Woo's 'Heroes Shed No Tears' has a featurette where they describe for you how the super rare Director's Cut/Workprint version which they've got a copy of (on VHS) differs from the other versions but then don't include it on the blu-ray!
Ugh, that’s another one that I forgot had studio induced trouble on the final cut. Wish they had included it, like they did the Jackie Chan version of The Protector.
 
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