Central Motion Picture Corporation

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I assume this is related to the above development, but last week, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of CPMC films showed up on Canadian iTunes for really low purchase prices ($3.99 and $4.99). I bought A Time to Live A Time to Die, The Terrorizers, and Dust in the Wind; I know there were several more.

Are you sure those are new? The CMPC has been renting and selling their titles on international iTunes storefronts for awhile now; there's some talk about it on page 7. It does look like that the prices have come down recently, based on the cached versions that Google has. It's actually cheaper to buy most of them now than it is to rent them!

For the sake of completeness or as near to it as I can get, these are the CMPC titles I've found on iTunes in North America; replace the "us" in the URL with "ca" to access them through the Canadian store. It looks like these might also be available through other international storefronts, like Australia (replace with "au"), New Zealand ("nz"), or the UK ("gb"), but I haven't checked all of those. They might well be available everywhere with certain exceptions based on local distribution.

Banana Paradise
Be My Lovely Child Again
The Cabbie
The Coldest Winter in Peking
Comes the Black Dog
A Drifting Life
Dust in the Wind
Eight Hundred Heroes
The Everlasting Glory
Fleeing by Night
Fly Up with Love
Growing Up
He Never Gives Up
Heroes of the Eastern Skies
Hill of No Return
In a Strange City
In Our Time
The Kinmen Bombs
Kuei-mei, a Woman
Lament of the Sand River
The Land of the Brave
Love Go Go
The Moon Also Rises
Murmur of Youth
My Favorite Season
Out of the Blue
The Peony Pavilion
A Pinwheel Without Wind
Rebels of the Neon God (link is to the Canadian store⁠—this is available in the U.S. store, but through a different distributor at a much higher price)
Red Persimmon
Reunion
The River
Robinson's Crusoe
Rouge of the North
Run Away
The Sandwich Man
Siao Yu
Spring Swallow
Strawman
Terrorizers
This Love of Mine
Three Summer
A Time to Live, a Time to Die
Tonight Nobody Goes Home
Tropical Fish
Vive l'amour
A Way We Go

There are some other titles available in certain territories, like Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet in Australia/NZ and The Personals in Australia/NZ/UK. There are also a lot of more recent (i.e., post-2010) films that I've excluded because I don't think they're what people come to this thread for⁠—most of them are actually PRC films, like Apart Together and the 3D version of Farewell My Concubine (the opera, not the Chen Kaige movie).

[willoneill]

I'm fairly certain they're new to Canada ... I went on a kick of Chinese/Hong Kong/Taiwanese films in the last few months, searching for different purchasing or streaming options. The Terrorizers and Dust in the Wind were not available digitally at the beginning of summer (again, in Canada). That said, maybe there were around before, had left when I was searching, and then came back. Either way, doesn't matter, they're available now for less than a cup of Starbucks.

[martin]

Just a heads up/warning:



I bought some of these early Taiwanese BD's back in the day when they were first released: Dust in the Wind, The Terrorizers and Vive l'amour. I recently tried tried to watch The Terrorizers (pictured above) again for the 80's annual project but it wouldn't load on any player (Oppo, Panasonic, Philips). I also tried via PC and two different external drives (one was a brand new Pioneer 4K drive) but with no luck. It seems to suffer from disc rot.

The data side has a characteristic golden/bronze hue but it looks totally transparent when one holds it up against the light. Vive l'amour looks exactly the same and has the same issues (not tested on PC/external drives though). Both are dual-format releases and the DVD's are fine, which is great, but I wish I had tried ripping the BD’s several years ago.

Dust in the Wind has a silvery look on the data side and plays fine. Also, Dust in the Wind looks like a proper pressed disc while the other two look like burned discs? There are some photos of the The Terrorizers disc in the spoiler with some further comments (no spoilers!).

Spoiler

Below we see The Terrorizers BD (left) vs a recent random BD (right) just for comparison. Notice how the vertical band to the left on the label side (above) is even visible on the data side below:



When the disc is held up against light (not any special light, just against the window in daylight without direct sunlight) the disc appears completely transparent when seen from the data side:





You can actually see for instance green trees outside when looking through the disc but's it's impossible to capture this effect on a photo.

[Murdoch]

Yeah, my copy of Terrorizers browned out over a year ago. So anyone thinking of grabbing a copy secondhand be warned.

[hearthesilence]

FWIW,The Terrorizers is available on Kanopy, so at least a good, legit version is readily available for home viewing in the U.S., albeit via streaming only.

[martin]

I've tested Vive l'amour on PC and an external 4K drive today but it wouldn't load.
Thanks for the updates. I am not in the US but we have a nice free streaming service here in Denmark with quite a lot Asian Cinema, modern and classics (at the moment for instance Hsiao-Hsien, Suzuki, Shindo, Teshigahara). It's nice to have a streaming option.
I'm going the sour grapes rationalisation route: These blu-rays were good at the time but far from perfect by today's standard. So wee need updates anyway...

[Tim]

I think I remember raising the issue with browning on The Terrorisers a few years back, perhaps in the Edward Yang thread. At the time there was a 30th anniversary edition available, which gave me a replacement BluRay. Perhaps there are still copies that can be chased down.