The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Thread

[nahnahnah]

I hope that they put out Johnnie To's The Mission.

[Yihetuan]

I'm still waiting on Criterion to put out To's Heroic Trio. Wasn't that announced more than a year ago & they even posted 4K restored shots from the film?

[bickle14]

3 hours ago, Yihetuan said:

I'm still waiting on Criterion to put out To's Heroic Trio. Wasn't that announced more than a year ago & they even posted 4K restored shots from the film?

Criterion never announced anything about a release. Janus Films (which Criterion is a subsidiary of) listed the films on their website (https://www.janusfilms.com/films/grid?search=johnnie+to), so places like Dawn of the Discs made postings that a release was imminent. They are also streaming on The Criterion Channel. I do think they'll be released eventually.

Edited July 14, 2023 by bickle14

[chen lung]

I have 35 mm English trailers for both films and tried to contact Criterion, but they’re not terribly good at responding to people.

[nahnahnah]

9 minutes ago, chen lung said:

I have 35 mm English trailers for both films and tried to contact Criterion, but they’re not terribly good at responding to people.

Maybe try asking Irongod or OldPangYau. 

Edited July 15, 2023 by nahnahnah

[chen lung]

I wonder if another label owns the rights in the UK.

[nahnahnah]

Criterion/Janus have the rights to both films in the U.K.

[chen lung]

33 minutes ago, nahnahnah said:

Criterion/Janus have the rights to both films in the U.K.

Hmm, in a way that’s a shame. Have they issued anything in the UK?

[Django]

I'm little bit confused with Criterion's releases and the region codes.

I found a copy of Three Outlaw Samurai online on the secondary market, the box says REG A but when I look on Criterions homepage it says that this release should be REG B also.

Do they sell identical copies that have different codes or how does it work 🤔

Edited August 2, 2023 by Django

[Takuma]

16 hours ago, Django said:

I'm little bit confused with Criterion's releases and the region codes.

I found a copy of Three Outlaw Samurai online on the secondary market, the box says REG A but when I look on Criterions homepage it says that this release should be REG B also.

Do they sell identical copies that have different codes or how does it work 🤔

I think the US disc was released long before Criterion was operating in the UK. They probably didn't have Region B rights at the time (why would they) and the US disc would indeed be Region A only. The UK disc is likely Region B&A since by that time they would have secured rights to both countries.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Takuma

[nahnahnah]

 

• 2K digital restorations of Spiritual Kung Fu, The Fearless Hyena, Fearless Hyena II, The Young Master, and My Lucky Stars and high-definition digital restoration of Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• Alternate stereo and 5.1 surround Cantonese soundtracks
• Classic English-dubbed tracks for Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, Spiritual Kung Fu, The Fearless Hyena, and Fearless Hyena II, plus an English-dubbed alternate track for Fearless Hyena II, and contemporary English-dubbed tracks for The Young Master and My Lucky Stars
• New audio commentaries for The Fearless Hyena and The Young Master featuring Hong Kong cinema expert and producer Frank Djeng (Enter the Clones of Bruce)
• Interview with author Grady Hendrix (These Fists Break Bricks) about actor-director Jackie Chan
• Archival interviews with Chan, actor-director Sammo Hung, actors Michiko Nishiwaki and Hwang In-shik, and more
• The Young Master promo reel from the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and deleted scenes from the film
• Interview from 2005 with Hong Kong cinema critic Paul Fonoroff about producer-director Lo Wei
• NG shots from The Young Master and My Lucky Stars
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: An essay by critic Alex Pappademas

[KenHashibe]

17 minutes ago, nahnahnah said:

 

• 2K digital restorations of Spiritual Kung Fu, The Fearless Hyena, Fearless Hyena II, The Young Master, and My Lucky Stars and high-definition digital restoration of Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• Alternate stereo and 5.1 surround Cantonese soundtracks
• Classic English-dubbed tracks for Half a Loaf of Kung Fu, Spiritual Kung Fu, The Fearless Hyena, and Fearless Hyena II, plus an English-dubbed alternate track for Fearless Hyena II, and contemporary English-dubbed tracks for The Young Master and My Lucky Stars
• New audio commentaries for The Fearless Hyena and The Young Master featuring Hong Kong cinema expert and producer Frank Djeng (Enter the Clones of Bruce)
• Interview with author Grady Hendrix (These Fists Break Bricks) about actor-director Jackie Chan
• Archival interviews with Chan, actor-director Sammo Hung, actors Michiko Nishiwaki and Hwang In-shik, and more
• The Young Master promo reel from the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and deleted scenes from the film
• Interview from 2005 with Hong Kong cinema critic Paul Fonoroff about producer-director Lo Wei
• NG shots from The Young Master and My Lucky Stars
• Trailers
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: An essay by critic Alex Pappademas

I was wondering when they were going to put out their Jackie Chan catalogue. Such a strange collection of films (My Lucky Stars being the only modern-day film out of the bunch, and Fearless Hyena 2 is awful IMO), but I’m not complaining, I will most likely get this the day it comes out. I’m a fan of most of these, and I’m intrigued by The Young Master Cannes promo reel.

Edited August 15, 2023 by KenHashibe

[Ah_Tao]

34 minutes ago, KenHashibe said:

I was wondering when they were going to put out their Jackie Chan catalogue. Such a strange collection of films (My Lucky Stars being the only modern-day film out of the bunch, and Fearless Hyena 2 is awful IMO), but I’m not complaining, I will most likely get this the day it comes out. I’m a fan of most of these, and I’m intrigued by The Young Master Cannes promo reel.

Yeah it's odd tbh especially since Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and FH2 are absolute shit movies. Why in the world are these films bunched together like this and have the mainland flag for HK flicks? My guess is as good as yours

[KenHashibe]

Just now, Ah_Tao said:

Yeah it's odd tbh especially since Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and FH2 are absolute shit movies. Why in the world are these films bunched together like this and have the mainland flag for HK flicks? My guess is as good as yours

Gonna have to agree with you there. Again, such a strange batch of movies. I actually don't really like My Lucky Stars either, and Spiritual Kung Fu has some of his best fights from that era, but it's not necessarily his best film. Though the only movies I really like from this bunch are The Young Master and Fearless Hyena, I still have a lot of nostalgia for the rest (except Fearless Hyena 2 which is ABSOLUTE garbage), so I'm inclined to get it still.

Side note, I don't think it's meant to be the Mainland China flag. I think the star is just supposed to be a "comic book-style" impact effect, right below one of the Jackies kicking the other Jackie.

[Ah_Tao]

42 minutes ago, KenHashibe said:

Gonna have to agree with you there. Again, such a strange batch of movies. I actually don't really like My Lucky Stars either, and Spiritual Kung Fu has some of his best fights from that era, but it's not necessarily his best film. Though the only movies I really like from this bunch are The Young Master and Fearless Hyena, I still have a lot of nostalgia for the rest (except Fearless Hyena 2 which is ABSOLUTE garbage), so I'm inclined to get it still.

Side note, I don't think it's meant to be the Mainland China flag. I think the star is just supposed to be a "comic book-style" impact effect, right below one of the Jackies kicking the other Jackie.

Ah ok maybe you're right. I didn't think of it that only cause I saw the red background and yellow star 🤣. I still like the art though but I'm confused as to how they grouped these. It feels like they're releasing the leftovers that Shout didn't pick up for their American releases. I might get it since I don't have FH2 (it's still a bit fun tho I think it's trash as hell, nor do I think there's any others who released but please correct me if I'm wrong), and Spiritual Kung Fu. Hopefully we'll get to see Criterion do more Kung Fu, or even Sonny China since Shout seems to not release any other Chiba flicks

[Chemical Lemon]

1 hour ago, KenHashibe said:

I was wondering when they were going to put out their Jackie Chan catalogue. Such a strange collection of films (My Lucky Stars being the only modern-day film out of the bunch, and Fearless Hyena 2 is awful IMO), but I’m not complaining, I will most likely get this the day it comes out. I’m a fan of most of these, and I’m intrigued by The Young Master Cannes promo reel.

I think the logic of this collection is “these are the Jackie Chan movies that were left for us to license”. Shout factory has a significant chunk of his movies.  Twilight time had drunken master and snake in the eagles shadow. Warner and whoever else has most of his later stuff. I think 88 has the project A movies.  Criterion already released the police story movies. There’s honestly not too much stuff out there for them to have I think. It is weird though that they have so much low hanging fruit. I love Grady Hendrix so I have some desire to pick this up to support criterion releasing kung fu and having Grady on their releases. But man this is a tough sell, the only thing on here I don’t already have from 88 (and lucky stars from eureka) is FH2 and I’m not sure I want to pony up for that.  I already skipped the shout factory releases. 
 

I think twilight time went out of business, I feel like drunken master and snake in the eagles shadow would be Jackie movies they could sell to their audience so here’s hoping they get those. 

[nahnahnah]

> It feels like they're releasing the leftovers that Shout didn't pick up for their American releases.

This isn't entirely true, as Miramax still owned the rights to all of the big titles at the time Criterion had licensed all of these titles. I wouldn't be surprised if Shout jumped on all of the major Jackie titles before Criterion did once Miramax lost their rights.

[Chorake]

I just like how there's now one more Chan film where he's dubbed by John Culkin in the Criterion Collection™ (could've been two if they ended up including the export cut of MLS).

Edited August 15, 2023 by Chorake

[starschwar]

I'm amazed that Fearless Hyena II is now in the prestigious Criterion Collection.  Move over Citizen Kane, we've got the real cinematic milestone now!

Is 88 ever going to get around to putting out a standalone release of that?  I think that and Magnificent Bodygards are the only Lo Wei era Jackie films that they haven't gotten to yet.

 

As for the contents of this set... I can kinda see the rationale.  Half a Loaf and Spiritual are his earliest comedies.  Fearless 1 and Young Master are part of the big breakout era.  All together, they sort of serve as a surrogate for SITES and Drunken Master - book-ends resembling his biggest rise from obscurity.  FH 2 is such an anomaly, but it does make sense to include it as a companion piece to the original.

 

It's 2023.  Can distributors please, please stop calling My Lucky Stars a "Jackie Chan movie"?  It's a solid action comedy ensemble piece, but Sammo is the lead.  It's like... so little has changed in the last 20+ years, where Jackie's most mild participation - even behind the scenes - got him top billing on the cover.  Even 88's guilty of this, giving him top billing for Killer Meteor.  Can't we get to a more honest, "with guest star" or "featuring"?

Edited August 15, 2023 by starschwar

[Killer Meteor]

Criterion...PLEASE fix the missing night filters for SPIRITUAL KUNG FU!!!

[popsjnr]

I will pass, Fearless Hyena 2 is pure garbage, wonder if they'll admit it was made during Chan's "kidnapping" by the triads (when it was Just Jackie)...the rest I have on 88films blu-ray so where's the need...truly though Magnificent Bodyguards needs to get a release, it's a helluva lot better than Fearless Hyena 2 for sure 

[nahnahnah]

@Irongod2112 would you happen to know why the other 2 cuts for The Young Master found on the 88 release aren't included here?

[RedMenace]

4 hours ago, nahnahnah said:

@Irongod2112 would you happen to know why the other 2 cuts for The Young Master found on the 88 release aren't included here?

I try not to read too much sentiment into the decisions of companies, but I get the sense that Criterion prefers to prioritize one definitive, authoritative version of a film where they can, especially if it's just one item in a box set. In this case, that's the domestic theatrical version in the original language with subtitles -- they're the arthouse people, after all. They won't go out of their way to include an original English dub if it means dealing with a whole alternate cut of the film. Instead, they'll use a newer one that already syncs to the version they've prioritized, and consider that box checked. That's my reading of what's included and excluded here, anyway.

[nahnahnah]

1 hour ago, RedMenace said:

I try not to read too much sentiment into the decisions of companies, but I get the sense that Criterion prefers to prioritize one definitive, authoritative version of a film where they can, especially if it's just one item in a box set. In this case, that's the domestic theatrical version in the original language with subtitles -- they're the arthouse people, after all. They won't go out of their way to include an original English dub if it means dealing with a whole alternate cut of the film. Instead, they'll use a newer one that already syncs to the version they've prioritized, and consider that box checked. That's my reading of what's included and excluded here, anyway.

I think you're reading too much into it as they have included muliple cuts for single films in boxsets such as the Jacques Tati and John Cassavetes collections, and even the Police Story collection has the original cut included for the second film. It could just be that the rights aren't available for those cuts for the films in this set.

Edited August 16, 2023 by nahnahnah

[RedMenace]

The Police Story set isn't really inconsistent with the approach I described; PS2 has multiple cuts on the disc because of Fortune Star's odd decision to treat the longer Japanese cut as their official main version, meaning the version Criterion would prefer had to be an extra.

Fair enough about the Tati and Cassavetes examples, though those are both instances of stuff that's historically been more Criterion's bread and butter. I doubt it's rights issues with these films, as these cuts and dubs were made by or at the behest of the original studios. They belong to Fortune Star, same as the versions of the movies Criterion is releasing. Maybe they'd have to pay extra for them, but if smaller labels did so, then the reason Criterion didn't is because they didn't want to. If I'm being honest, I don't think these releases are that high a priority for them, but they can see that the UK and other US boutiques' releases are doing good business, and they're getting in on it. Their approach strikes me as half-hearted by comparison.