Member SadShawFan Posted May 7, 2010 Member Share Posted May 7, 2010 Slowly our beloved movies are snubbed, our hopes for the release of the reminder of the vast SB catalogue is fading and the last one to leave will surely switch the light bulp off... In the past months some 80-90 percent of CP's work force has been laid off or has quit already. Sources and friends are no more, the interaction that (if at all) only trickled has now come to a complete halt and the massive changes in personnel and business plans show more than ever that Shaw films do not interest them anymore... Now, as of today, Celestial Pictures has re-vamped their corporate site and has removed the long-running and well frequented "Shaw Brothers Library Search" as well as any infos about their Shaw movies which have gone off the site now. Does it mean that Shaw does not feature in CP's corporate plans? Well, most likely. It sure looks like the last nail has been set in position to be hammered into the coffin of something that never fully fulfilled its potential and which never has been finished way before it faded out... SOOOOO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Fang Shih-yu Posted May 7, 2010 Member Share Posted May 7, 2010 Slowly our beloved movies are snubbed, our hopes for the release of the reminder of the vast SB catalogue is fading and the last one to leave will surely switch the light bulp off... In the past months some 80-90 percent of CP's work force has been laid off or has quit already. Sources and friends are no more, the interaction that (if at all) only trickled has now come to a complete halt and the massive changes in personnel and business plans show more than ever that Shaw films do not interest them anymore... Now, as of today, Celestial Pictures has re-vamped their corporate site and has removed the long-running and well frequented "Shaw Brothers Library Search" as well as any infos about their Shaw movies which have gone off the site now. Does it mean that Shaw does not feature in CP's corporate plans? Well, most likely. It sure looks like the last nail has been set in position to be hammered into the coffin of something that never fully fulfilled its potential and which never has been finished way before it faded out... SOOOOO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Interesting. You've picked up on this from more than visiting Celestial's site, I guess. Where did you get your additional info, then? This is an eye-opener! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member LeRolls Posted May 7, 2010 Member Share Posted May 7, 2010 That's too bad. I guess they were't as profitable as they thought they would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Fang Shih-yu Posted May 7, 2010 Member Share Posted May 7, 2010 That's too bad. I guess they were't as profitable as they thought they would be. It must be so for ALL the Shaw titles Celestial have put out, even the non-martial-arts movies!... Does it mean it's time to stockpile the movies we want right away before they're gone? We need a touch more info on this, I think.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member kungfusamurai Posted May 7, 2010 Member Share Posted May 7, 2010 Celestial has only itself to blame. It didn't jump on the kung fu bandwagon worldwide early enough, and then it took forever to get the good movies out. They shouldn't have sold the rights to companies like Dragon Dynasty which sat on the rights for too long without releasing anything. Maybe there should have been a clause, like they'd have to put out DVDs by a certain date or else the rights go up for bid again. Another problem is that these films are not shown on TV anymore, and that was the medium by which many younger people got to know these films. Not every market showed these films in the theatre back in the day, so TV was probably the best way to get to a wider audience. If a company like Spike TV had started showing them earlier, I think there would have been way more interest generated with a new generation of fans. Oh well, hind sight is 20/20. My concern is that the films will die on DVD and never get reissued on future new technologies because they won't be seen as money makers. I'm also concerned about how the films were mastered (i.e. telecined) and if they were saved as hi definition masters before and after they were cleaned up using software. KFS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest HongKongMaster Posted May 8, 2010 Share Posted May 8, 2010 personnally im really happy that celestial put some money in remastering theses movies and im sad they surely loose many money on this project, but without them i would never have seen these movies in good quality, ivl release around what 500-600 dvds its awesome and very couragous, i would have love to get all the 60's and 70's and even the 50's movies in all the genre but im really happy with those already out and i personnaly thanks celestial and IVL for this awesome dream becoming true, don't count on me to badmouth celestial pictures and IVL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member The Lizard Posted May 8, 2010 Member Share Posted May 8, 2010 In the past months some 80-90 percent of CP's work force has been laid off or has quit already. Sources and friends are no more, the interaction that (if at all) only trickled has now come to a complete halt and the massive changes in personnel and business plans show more than ever that Shaw films do not interest them anymore... Are those CP sources same which did lead SBR to make statement there will be 60+ more Shaws to be released in HK including to kill a mastermind And I agree to HKMaster 100%.I have either nothing to complain concerning celestial,got already plenty of proper stuff thx to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member HyperDrive Posted May 8, 2010 Member Share Posted May 8, 2010 It didn't help that Celestial rushed the remasters and added an annoying remixed soundtrack and folly to some. Then again, this company was most likely ran like every other company nowadays, on pure credit while praying that the consumer credit ball never stops rolling. Well guess what, it did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Stuntman Jules Posted May 10, 2010 Member Share Posted May 10, 2010 I'm of opinion that they shouldn't have remastered the films as meticulously as they did in the first place. The remasters impressed me at first but now I think they look very "artificial" like they're shot on HD. The masters are so "clean" and sometimes the choppy cinematography and mass-produced sets are only made so much more glaring by this. It was a waste of money to go as far with the restoring and remastering on these films that have only a niche audience. They should have cleaned the films up, given the most popular titles more through restorations and released them all like Fortune Star did with Golden Harvest titles. Their business model was much smarter. They look good and better than they've ever looked, but they didn't meticulously recolor every frame and erase every film scratch and spot of grain so it doesn't even look like it was shot on film anymore. That said, they did give the movies a nice "rebirth" and it was really fun while it lasted. The films were hugely popular in HK in the 70s so it was an easy mistake to make, I think. The problem is the Hong Kong and world of this decade is a fairly different one taste-wise. I'm 23 and a lot of people in my age group think Star Wars is a "little cheesy". Some, but not all of us of course, have been so jaded by state of the art CGI FX and car commercials and music videos with visceral half second cuts that everything made before 1990 seems really "old". But it was sorta like the 70s again when you could go to your nearest Chinatown and see one of these films, you could go to Chinatown and buy the discs of some out there 70s HK flicks that you hadn't seen in 20 years if at all and all that. So on the one hand I think its annoying they didn't release them all and would rather have had them all released a little rougher then had a little over half of them released in meticulous remasters, but I'm also like "appreciate what we did get". We would still be watching our atrocious quality nth generation German dubbed bootlegs of certain films and have not seen others at all if not for Celestial and their efforts. So, as with many things in life, there was some bad and some good that came of it, kungfusamurai, I remember Linn Haynes saying years ago that Celestial's remastering process "destroyed most of the prints". If that's true than that's another demerit against their remastering process. If you have any knowledge and concern for film preservation you keep the physical elements of a film intact, for Christ-sake. There are still probably some theatrical prints floating around of some of the films, though, they might come in handy some day. And only the most popular (almost entirely the kung fu films) had HD masters and new prints made, so yes, Celestial wasn't very forward thinking and now Bluray possibilities for a lot of these films are shot if Linn was right about the elements being trashed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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