Dragon Dynasty

[davebert]

And its 100% confirmed that HB has ONLY dubtitles? That just seems so inexcusably lazy. "Rather than hire a translator/subtitler, why don't we just have the intern listen to the dub and transcribe it?"

Bleh.

[justeleblanc]

Dubtitles are subtitles that are a transcription of the English dubbing for a film.

It doesn't sound problematic in theory, but are there examples of how its bad?

[Mr Sausage]

Dubtitles are subtitles that are a transcription of the English dubbing for a film.

It doesn't sound problematic in theory, but are there examples of how its bad?

The problem is that in order to make the Englished track more or less match the mouths of non-English speakers, dubbed movies play free and loose with the actual translation.

[davebert]

This is especially true for whatever reason in HK martial arts/action movies, which have developed a highly-stylized, highly-inappropriate aesthetics of inaccuracy when made for Western consumption. Hence, dubtitles are just as embarrassing as the half-assed supposed-to-be-funny-bad-when-the-movie's-actually-good dubs, except you get the pleasure of reading the nonsense instead of hearing it.

[kaujot]

I bought a copy of HB and, quite frankly, had no problem whatsoever with the dubtitles. No embarrassing translations or anything like that. Some things were Americianized, I suppose (can't think of any specific example), but nothing worse than what Kassovitz approved for La Haine.

[zombeaner]

Here are some of the upcoming titles. Many are unconfirmed, but listings have shown up on a couple of websites.

I found these listings on HKFlix.com, who are generally very reliable:

No Mercy For The Rude Really looking forward to this one, it stars Shin Ha-kyun from Save The Green Planet and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. 11/20/07

The Killer The other one everyone was waiting for. 11/6/07

City Of Violence Heard mixed reviews about this one. 9/4/07

Dragon Squad 9/18/07

Lady Kung Fu 10/30/07

Shaolin Wooden Men 10/30/07

Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin 10/30/07

[Gigi M.]

2-disc edition of John Woo's The Killer coming from Dragon Dynasty on November 6th.

[dx23]

From davisdvd.com:

Dragon Dynasty and Genius Entertainment will release John Woo's classic The Killer on November 6th. This new two-disc set will feature a remastered anamorphic widescreen transfer with Cantonese and English Dolby Digital Surround tracks (along with optional English subtitles). Extras will include an audio commentary with Terence Chang and John Woo, a collection of deleted scenes, retrospective featurettes and trailers. Stay tuned for finalized details soon. Retail is $24.99.

I just hope that they don't make the same mistake and include dubtitles instead of subtitles.

[Cronenfly]

Dragon Dynasty and Genius Entertainment will release John Woo's classic The Killer on November 6th.

What's up with this release? It's supposed to come out in less than a week, but there are no final specs, cover art, or reviews anywhere. The thread that got started on this release specifically was (rightly) locked, but the question still bears asking.

EDIT- Now listed as January 7, 2008 on HK Flix

[jbeall]

I watched Hard Boiled and as far as I can see, there's no appreciable difference between the subtitles you'd find on the Criterion release and the dubtitles here. At least, the meaning's consistently the same.

There are more than a few typos in the dubtitles, which continually pisses me off whenever I see it. Hire a goddamn competent copy editor, for chrissakes. But the image is good and the price is right.

I also watched 36th Chamber of Shaolin. This one I unreservedly recommend. Gordon Liu is extraordinarily graceful, and the choreography is absolutely brilliant. There's more than enough fighting to keep my attention, but it's all in the service of the plot (all too often the opposite is true). It's kind of a Bildungsroman of the kung-fu genre in that it's much more about the education--martial and otherwise--of the hero than about the inevitable heroic deeds he'll perform later on.

[Cronenfly]

Good to see Dragon Dynasty getting out class titles like Robin-B-Hood (2 Discs!!!!) instead of the Woo they're sitting on. Pardon my annoyance; The Killer being so much delayed (and after having already waited so long for a [hopefully] decent edition) has me pissed off.

[jbeall]

I thought Come Drink with Me was terrific. My only qualm (and Dave Kehr's, too) is the sloppy subtitling. They don't interfere with the picture and are in a nice font, but there are so many awkward translations. For example, "shunt aside!" when someone's in the way, and at one point the subs should say "Rubbish!", but instead they read "Nebbish!" But otherwise a good presentation, and the film is full of beautiful background compositions. And now I almost wish I'd been born 30 years earlier so I'd have a chance with Cheng Pei-Pei. Damn!!

Beaver

Dave Kehr

When released in 1966, King Hu’s “Come Drink With Me” opened a new chapter in the history of Asian action movies. Mr. Hu’s film turned the genre away from the supernatural vagaries and clanging swordplay that had dominated it and moved the action into the relatively realistic, hand-to-hand combat and clean, well-defined spaces of the contemporary kung fu movie. Mr. Hu’s most obvious break with the past was in casting a professional dancer, Cheng Pei-pei, as a female warrior, one of the genre’s first. These female martial arts experts fought alongside (and frequently against) their male counterparts without conceding an iota of ladylike bearing or spiritual chastity.

Ms. Cheng is probably best known to Western audiences for her supporting role as the villainous governess Jade Fox in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), Ang Lee’s homage to King Hu’s work. Here she can be seen in all of her cool, unflappable beauty as Golden Swallow, a mysterious figure who enters the inn where the first act of the film is set in the guise of a young male warrior. (The disguise, following another martial arts convention, seems to fool every male member of the cast, though Ms. Cheng remains glowingly feminine.) It is her job, on behalf of a distant, possibly despotic government (Mr. Hu seems little concerned with practical politics), to negotiate with a band of rebel eunuchs for the release of her brother, a government official.

Golden Swallow’s entrance at the inn — a classic den of thieves — inevitably recalls John Wayne’s shakedown of a hostile saloon in the opening passages of “Rio Bravo,” and she employs wonderfully Wayne-like methods, scrupulously maintaining her cool, fighting while pretending not to fight. When she is forced to resort to violence, it is executed with such precision and control that it hardly seems to qualify as violence at all.

The film proceeds through a gradual opening up, moving from the claustrophobic constraints of the inn, through the more open courtyards of a monastery commandeered by the heavies, and finally into open plains that suggest the spaces of the Hollywood western. (These sequences were shot in Taiwan rather than crowded Hong Kong.)

Disdaining the profligate stylistics of later practitioners, Mr. Hu keeps his action focused and authentic, and relies less on the flying wire work of later martial arts movies to create a sense of uncanny skill than on the simple, ingenious device of showing only the beginning and end of an action. Golden Swallow crouches into a leap, and then Mr. Hu cuts to her landing, having elided the few frames that would actually show her moving through the air. No digital interventions here: just good, solid, purely practical filmmaking.

This new version of “Come Drink With Me” comes from the Weinstein Company’s Dragon Dynasty collection, and is highly satisfying visually, apparently drawn from first-generation prints or negatives not yet compromised and cluttered by the English and Chinese subtitles that were superimposed on release prints of the 1960s. It’s eye-opening to see the production values heretofore obscured by generations of optical murk, but for some reason the creators of the new disc have simply transcribed the often crude, frequently unintentionally funny English subtitles created for the first theatrical release. One feels, undeniably, a twinge of grindhouse nostalgia when one character orders another to “shut up your mouth!” But certainly Mr. Hu, one of the most significant figures in Asian film, merits something more respectful.

[Michael Kerpan]

I wonder how this compares with the HK version (which is really pretty good)

[Foulard]

The earlier HK version is non-anamorphic, as I recall, so the new one should be an improvement...

[jojo]

2-disc edition of John Woo's The Killer coming from Dragon Dynasty on November 6th.

Eh? So what happened to the Dragon Dynasty release? Unless you meant November 2008, which I doubt considering the time of your posting.

I guess all the bad reviews of the Hard Boiled DVD made Dragon Dynasty second guess themselves and are now trying to make sure they get it right with this one.

EDIT: Ah! Thanks for the redirect here mods.

Reading this thread, I would like to note that much of the more PARTICULAR online bitching I've read regarding Hard Boiled isn't so much the dubtitles, but rather that the picture has been tampered and "stretched" horizontally. Thus, on most setups, everyone looks about 10 lbs heavier.

DVD beaver doesn't mention this but I'd like to hear more about that.

[TechNoir]

I just picked up the Fist Of Legend disc. All the copies in the store say special collectors edition on the bottom instead of two disc collectors edition which is in all the pics I have seen of the new release. There is a sticker on the front that says over 3 hours of bonus features, but on the back the only listed special feature is the commentary. Anybody know if there are two versions of this new release?

[Finch]

I've ordered mine from caimanuk only this afternoon and am going on holiday so won't be able to confirm with regards to the specs on my copy for another week but will report back unless someone else confirms either way before then. Can't imagine DD would issue a "barebones" version with just the commentary and the SE separately and not mention it in the press release.

[Musashi219]

I just picked up the Fist Of Legend disc. All the copies in the store say special collectors edition on the bottom instead of two disc collectors edition which is in all the pics I have seen of the new release. There is a sticker on the front that says over 3 hours of bonus features, but on the back the only listed special feature is the commentary. Anybody know if there are two versions of this new release?

No idea about this. I picked my copy up from the local Best Buy and it clearly says Two-Disc Ultimate Edition along the bottom. Dragon Dynasty I don't believe have ever released two different editions of a film given the fact their editions are generally rather inexpensive even for two-disc sets. I saw no other editions with a different cover, although Best Buy has an exclusive of Fist of Legend packaged with Shanghai Express (they had the same thing for Flash Point packaged with Above the Law when it came out some months back). My recommendation is to return this Fist of Legend single disc and get the two-disc - there's some quality supplements on the second disc.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

On Logan's recent blog entry, he confirms that Dragon Dynasty are working on DVD releases for all three A Better Tomorrow films. He mentions meeting Chow Yun-Fat so one hopes that he's participating in the extras for it and hopefully for The Killer... whenever it comes out.

[Finch]

Two films I'd like to see DD tackle are 1966's DRAGON INN and A TOUCH OF ZEN by King Hu. And if they want to delve deeper into the Shaw Bros catalogue, a DD edition of THE ENCHANTING SHADOW (which prefigures A CHINESE GHOST STORY), THE FIVE DEADLY VENOMS and THE CRIPPLED AVENGERS would be most welcome.

Re Woo: I hope they make good on their promise regarding a definitive version of THE KILLER and that they don't forget BULLET IN THE HEAD (if they get to this one, I hope they include the option to choose the alternative - and superior - boardroom ending like the most recent Korean edition does).

[Caligula]

Amazon has The Enforcer up for pre-order. No mention about this on Dragon Dynasty's website as of yet.

[manicsounds]

with "Supercop" being the Dimension/Miramax american edit only, "Fist Of Legend" also being the American cut, and now "The Enforcer" being in DUBBED English ONLY, Dragon Dynasty has really gone down the drain....

[Caligula]

The Killer DVD & BD, 36h Chamber of Shaolin BD & Return to the 36th Chamber DVD announced on Dragon Dynasty's coming soon page.

[kaujot]

I'll believe it when they're a bit more specific. It's been announced before.

[Caligula]

I'll believe it when they're a bit more specific. It's been announced before.

36th Chamber of Shaolin is to be released on 2 March 2010, according to Amazon.

As regards Woo's The Killer, I share your scepticism. But, for what it's worth, the release date for both BD & DVD is indicated on the Dragon Dynasty website as being 30 March 2010.