Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by Guest » Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:31 am

They completely miss the point. The charm of Hong Kong cinema was that everything was low budget as hell but they made up for it with some of the best action ever filmed, slick editing, and a style modern films will never come close to replicating. That brief era of John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam will never be matched.

Just look at that sellout Jackie Chan if you want a good example of how communism destroyed the Hong Kong industry.

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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by Guest » Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:45 am

Communism destroyed Hong Kong period. It was a mistake to give it back to the Chinese, especially since their government is illegitimate. But hey, gotta chase that almighty Yuan, right? After all, if we open up our business to them they'll totally ditch communism and change to suit us, and not the other way around, right?

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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by rabidtictac » Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:58 am

Guest wrote:
Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:31 am
They completely miss the point. The charm of Hong Kong cinema was that everything was low budget as hell but they made up for it with some of the best action ever filmed, slick editing, and a style modern films will never come close to replicating. That brief era of John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam will never be matched.

Just look at that sellout Jackie Chan if you want a good example of how communism destroyed the Hong Kong industry.
Jackie Chan is a good example of a guy who legit became garbage after he went mainstream. Not because I'm being a hipster. You can look at the movies independently and see the difference in quality. Compare Police Story with The Medallion or whatever other gay shit he made after getting Hollywood-pozzed.

It wasn't just the action, editing and style, either. Those old Chang Cheh and Lau Gar-Leung (sp) movies had a fair amount of cultural depth. 36th Chambers is about something. The action and editing would be enough to carry the film even with a garbage plot, but it doesn't have a garbage plot. Neither did Police Story. The story was never the main focus, but it was always good enough to be worth watching. Five Venoms is the same way. Despite existing largely as a vehicle for amazing martial arts stunts, the plot is a cold murder thriller about corrupt officials and greedy villains.

The budgets were low, but so were wages. The Shaws owning everything allowed them to pump out films on an assembly line, with a way higher degree of polish and consistency than you could get from conventional studios trying to meet the same quotas.

Tsui Hark is right on the borderline for me, between "okay this is still good" and "we're starting to get into mega garbage" territory. He clearly loves wuxia and the martial world of movies, but I think his skill at executing his ideas falls short at times. He's made a lot of movies and none of them ever resonated greatly with me personally. But I respect his respect for genre films. He's a lot like Quention Tarantino in that respect.
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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:58 am

Does he also like feet? There's something to be said about quality foot binding.
Guest wrote:
Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:45 am
After all, if we open up our business to them they'll totally ditch communism and change to suit us, and not the other way around, right?
This is a lie made by corrupt white devils.
Let's open our business to them. I am sure this will help them embrace the free market and democracy (Bullshit. They gleefully buy out foreign companies while keeping their own market under tight control. Somehow people still fall for empty promises of opening their market, something which they must've spouted for decades now at this point).
Or let's let them have the Olympic Games. I am sure this will help them embrace free speech and democracy (Bullshit. They only became more oppressive to prepare for their perfect little propaganda event, and the Winter Games of 2022 are already having the same effect.).
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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by Liar Revealed » Sat Aug 28, 2021 6:13 am

rabidtictac wrote:
Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:58 am
Tsui Hark is right on the borderline for me, between "okay this is still good" and "we're starting to get into mega garbage" territory. He clearly loves wuxia and the martial world of movies, but I think his skill at executing his ideas falls short at times. He's made a lot of movies and none of them ever resonated greatly with me personally.
I liked Once Upon a Time in China a lot when it first came out. Criterion is going to be putting out a Blu-ray this year.
お前はもう死んでいる。

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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by Guest » Sat Aug 28, 2021 1:16 pm

A Better Tomorrow 3 wasn't nearly as good as Bullet in the Head, but Tsui could do decent action when he wanted to. The only problem is he sucks with a budget, so as soon as he went Hollywood he went to shit. He did manage to put out this masterwork, however:


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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by Jiangshi » Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:52 pm

rabidtictac wrote:
Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:07 am
Depictions of violent acts that might amount to an offence under the security law or cause serious disruption to public order, such as rioting, arson or criminal damage, should not be permitted in a film if showing them could encourage or incite copycats.
Under this shitty definition, The Water Margin could be classified as a subversive threat to national security. :roll:


Key criteria going forward would be whether the film “explicitly or implicitly encourages or suggests” the audience might follow the crimes shown on screen and if the piece had a “reasonably apparent” intention to incite viewers to commit the acts.
Water Margin, again. A lot of hong kong films made by Chang Cheh have a martial outlaw perspective and glorify the outsider who lives in the martial world. They're hyper-masculine films about defying corrupt authority and either succeeding or dying in service of what they believe is right. The overarching plot of 36th Chamber of Shaolin (one of the most famous HK martial arts movies) is about rebelling against unjust government. At the end of the film, the monk teaches common people kung-fu so they can form a peasant army and revolt against corrupt officials.

It sounds like this is only applying to new movies though, so it won't affect me. Just people trying to make relevant films in HK. Like the article said though, HK cinema is dying. China is largely producing trash now, aimed at the absolute lowest common IQ.
Journey to the West too. At least the first 10 chapters which consist of the Monkey King rebelling against the heavenly bureaucracy.

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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by rabidtictac » Mon Aug 29, 2022 11:19 pm

Just finished up watching Master of the Flying Guillotine. Incredibly fun movie. I don't particularly care about the One-Armed Boxer character, and I'm not the biggest Jimmy Wang Yu fan (he's pretty wooden,) but the movie is amazing. Primarily because it's not about Jimmy Wang Yu. This isn't a OAB movie, it's a movie about a kickass monk with a razorblade head-catcher on a chain. :lol:

My only criticisms of the movie are these:

Firstly, the film was poorly preserved. As a result, the film's quality is highly variable and always sub-par. I'm watching the two-disc special edition, so maybe there's a better version out there. But a disclaimer at the start of the film indicates that the reason for the poor quality is the contamination/loss of the original prints. That seems to have been a very common problem when attempting to reissue old kung fu movies. Many of the Shaws' films are lost to the ages because they were never preserved. In this case, we're talking about an independent film directed by and starring Jimmy Wang Yu, so who knows what the preservation process was like in those days.

My second criticism is that a large portion of the film features a kung-fu tournament which neither the Guillotine Monk or Jimmy are participating in. It's a nice showpiece for various martial arts (including some seriously cheesy yoga arm stretching and a proto-Ong Bak thai warrior) but it has little relevance to anything. The major plot points of the tournament could have been hit in about ten minutes, instead of the around 30 it takes up.

That said, the final two battles of the film are showstoppers. The battle in the coffin store not only still holds up today, but is of such high quality few martial arts flicks can top it. This movie is definitely a brand of kung-fu fantasy, but it remains plausible throughout its runtime, unlike many pure wuxia films. The hero overcomes by using his brains rather than his superior martial arts. And may I also note how spectacular the sound design is in Master of the Flying Guillotine? It's so good that Tarantino stole shamelessly from it for Kill Bill. When the monk swings his guillotine with that german rock music playing, and you hear the crazy jet plane sound effect, it's both hilarious and awesome. :lol:

Old movies are so much more fun than new ones. This kind of crazy shit, you can't see it anymore. It would all be shitty ps2 CGI nowadays. Hell, one of the fucking fights takes place in a burning building. There are fires on all four corners in the interior shot of the hovel where the two actors are fighting. That's real fire! :lol: They are fighting in real fire and real smoke is all over the place. It looks like it was hell to shoot.



This is the best part of the movie, in case you don't care about the whatever plot. :lol:
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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by VoiceOfReasonPast » Tue Aug 30, 2022 3:52 pm

I want those eyebrows.
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Re: Hong Kong Cinema/Martial Arts Films: Big Fight in Little Corona

Post by rabidtictac » Tue Aug 30, 2022 4:44 pm

I think the brows kind of work. Believe it or not, but many Hong Kong era makeups and props are worse than those brows. As an exaggerated caricature (notice how his eyes are also painted black to signify blindness,) he's fine.

When you watch kung fu movies now, especially in high-definition, of course the makeup and props are very obvious. The Five Deadly Venoms film has some particularly terrible stick-on beards. You have to keep in mind though, not only the relative budget constraints of these movies, but also the shitty film stock many were shown on. With a lower-quality print, the cosmetics fade more easily into the background. This is true even with high-budget older films. People watch old movies in HD now and they laugh/think they're all shit because the special effects are obviously fake. But so what? It's more about suspending your disbelief and being greeted by the extraordinary. These jaded cucks shit from great height on old, ambitious shows who pushed the limit of what was possible to depict on a screen, but then they cream their jeans for ps2-era CGI while watching regurgitated capeshit plotlines.

Having taken a peek at the other Flying Guillotine movies, I have to say that Master of the Flying Guillotine handles the titular weapon the best. The weapon seems just baaaarely plausible, as a cloth cap-trap encircled by iron blades. In the other movies, the flying headcutter is all metal, and far too heavy/bulky to work as intended. Fatal Flying Guillotine even has the prop mounted on fucking wires, which sloooooowly propel it forward at about 1mph. See below:



:lol: :lol: :lol:

The Master version achieves its effect via expert editing, which ends up looking far less fake nowadays.
RAPEMAN wrote:
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>liberal: ban x
>trump: yeah ban x
>liberal: no bro x is awesome

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