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

justeleblanc wrote:

patrick wrote: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?

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.

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

Dave Kehr wrote: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.

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

TechNoir wrote: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?

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