Member Tigerstyles Posted January 26, 2008 Member Share Posted January 26, 2008 http://www.shaw-brothers-reloaded.com/ An Excerpt of the upcoming Southern Screen Magazine No. 01/2008: Shaw Brothers Fans: Betrayed and taken for a ride…again! A small genre that has suffered ignorance, disdain and is laughed at once more is slapped right in the face by those who could do so much for it. Corporate decisions by old and new Celestial Pictures Ltd. bigwigs heap more pain and abuse upon the shoulders of a committed fan base that, given half a chance, surely still would shell out some serious money… Hong Kong/Paris/Los Angeles (Terence Hong). “Gweilo fans” of Asian cinema are used to be laughed at, to be ridiculed and to be treated with contempt for more than 40 years. Small wonder one is tempted to say, as avid foreign followers of Chinese movie studios, stars and the HK entertainment industry are known to be fans of the suffering kind, since their committed fandom for a genre, often called a niche product, is reduced to be treated like some back-alley drug peddling activity at best. Instead of nursing and supporting the interest of the bright eyed and bushy tailed global followers and to give them deserved respect, a chance to spend their dosh and to extend a helping hand of interaction, in the eyes of the Hong Kong film industry and particularly in the view of Celestial Pictures Ltd. the foreign Hong Kong or Kung Fu movie fan is generally not even deemed worthy of being considered at all. The old saying that the “HK film industry has achieved much with little effort and can do everything with nothing at all” has never been more appropriate. Even the “other special genre”, namely XXX porn which sadly is often compared to Asian cinema treats their customers far better and does not hesitate to interact and to react to the needs of their potential target groups. Instead the non-Asian fans and customers are taken for a ride by local companies over and over again. In 2000/2001 after up to some 35+ years of waiting, suddenly a bright light appeared out of nowhere to indicate a massive change in attitude and hence the end of a long and dark tunnel. A subsidiary of the Malaysian AAAN - Astro All Asia Network, a company named Celestial Pictures (HK) Ltd., appeared and struck a deal with legendary movie mogul Sir Run Run Shaw to restore and present the gems of the Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd movie studio to new audiences. The plan was to give some 760 movies lingering in Shaw’s vaults a complete modern make-over. Then the priceless gems (who by the way were sold for some 700+ million dollars which came handy in Shaw’s plans to build the new “Movie Town” complexes) should be used to fill the programmes of a newly created Satellite-TV channel named “Celestial Movies”. Furthermore, all films should see the light of the day as DVDs and VCDs, thus giving the customers a one-in-a-lifetime-chance to legally collect those masterpieces for home entertainment. Additionally the plans for “mobile services”, merchandise and other means of income represented the third pillar in the economic concept. In early December 2002 the partnership between Celestial Pictures and Hong Kong-based distributor IVL (Intercontinental Video Limited) resulted in the launch of the releases and the first batch of 10 films became available in stores in Hong Kong, Taiwan andThailand as well as in other Asian countries. Foreign fans were delighted and now able to purchase the restored movies via the internet and other channels and everything seemed like a dream had finally become true. But glitches in the production, the rush for “modern treatment” of source materials and the first step back, namely reducing the number of films to be included in one release batch to five – all those little things caused first alarm bells to ring in previously much tormented ears. The job advert columns in local HK newspapers were full with recruitment ads as Celestial hired and fired staff in breathtaking speed. The more time passed, the less the personnel which was committed to the releases became in numbers. People, who had no idea about the potential and the work of Shaw Brothers came and those who initially cared for the movies went. The same could be said about the CEO and vital positions. William Theodore Pfeiffer, a man who has some long running curriculum vitae in Asia and helmed big companies like Disney Asia, had been recruited to push for new, greener pastures. Officially he oozed care, compassion and knowledge for the masterpieces. In reality he tried to please Astro’s corporate leaders and share holders. And the rest of the management soon did not give a damn about Shaw anymore. One thing fans of this particular genre have learned the hard way: You seldom can combine love for art and pure economic interests. Even more so as the target projections, the visions and the implementation drifted very far apart. Severe mistakes were made right from the beginning. At the start the PR department of Celestial and IVL worked as a unit, later it all disintegrated. They had started with love for the fans, supplying the international public and private channels with material, ads and press releases on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Soon this stopped and the more the personnel changed, the more their expectations were not met, the more they turned their backs to the customers and started to treat them like Hong Kong movie companies have treated them for the last 20 odd years. Neglect, contempt and even denegation became the rule. Requests, offers of help and proposals were wiped away and soon treated like “treason” and “rebellion”. When PR-people and press contacts like Patty Keung, Mark Hsiao or Vivian Yu left the company, the climate froze and more and more international contacts who pushed Celestial’s products for free were cut off and ridiculed. Instead of nursing the committed people who offered help for free and who did PR activities far beyond CP’s reach, the departments closed their access to information and interaction and slapped them and hence the potential foreign customers right in the face. Instead of nurturing people with a love for their product, instead of following the law of pleasing user-generated content and “word by clicks”, they shut off blogs, websites and fan forums. Similar things can be said about the efforts to find distribution partners overseas. Celestial made the grave mistake to first offer the entire Shaw library to international bidders who only looked for some titles that were familiar names from the craze that had swept the globe in the 70ies and 80ies. As they discovered their mistake and nobody wanted to take the risk to purchase the whole catalogue, they made another one. They forced potential distribution companies to accept packets of movies, where they could only chose up to 70% of their titles and had to take the rest which were made up of films that nobody was really interested in. Later Celestial insisted on having the last say in presentation, art work and extra content like dubs, trailers and materials to be used, thus annoying their partners even more. Disney/Miramax (not at least because of Pfeiffer’s background) went first and quickly stored the films and remake-rights they had purchased. Only years later, in 2007 ex-Miramax bosses took some of those titles with them and started to release a batch of four titles via their new found company Dragon Dynasty. Perhaps some of them still scratch their heads and wonder why the sales did not meet their expectations. They simply should have guessed that titles, which had been out and available since 2003 were only of some interest for those people who can’t read subtitles and who get their kicks out of US-dubbing and some extras on the discs. Over all, surprisingly Celestial still succeeded to sell packages to areas like France,Spain, Germany, Italy,Japan, Australia, South America,Portugal, the Middle East, Africa and the EEC-countries. But most of the films those “partners” purchased never saw a release, as the sales were abysmal and the distributors cut their losses, stalling further batches, because the “real SB fans” in their neck of the woods had already purchased the original HK, Taiwan- or Thai-releases and bootleggers were already busy to get their share as well. Only complete fools would now strike a deal for material that has been out long ago and instead of offering a complete HK release worldwide by one company from the start, the whole initial plan sunk like a stone. Celestial Pictures faced another set-back in their evaluation of the Asian market. They catered for the Chinese speaking crowd, leaving the international market aside. But they did not realize that Shaw Brothers movies (if they are still known at all) are simply deemed “old”. And in Asia, particularly in China, HK and Taiwan, nothing is worse than “old stuff”. Hence they only attracted the “old folk”, whilst the young target generation mainly went to Moviesuper.com or HMV to purchase the newest Hollywood blockbuster or the newest fare of Canto-Pop-idols. Soon Celestial stopped with the cardboard slip-boxes, then they tried to minimize costs with their DVD-releases and instead presented some movies in VCD-format only. What a joke! Well, never mind, then let’s release both formats again…as one CP-insider was quoted soon after. About 2005 the company changed their programming of the Shaw library in their TV-channel “Celestial Movies” and filled the prime time slots with new films and cheap Shows, pushing the few daily Shaw titles to the slot between Midnight and 8 o’clock in the morning, because few watched the movies anyways. As early as 2006 IVL jumped the bandwagon of complaints and started to step back as currently only roughly 8 million DVDs or VCDs have been sold, a number that is far below any target. That roughly 50% of those sales are made by customers overseas is only mentioned behind closed doors and shielded mouths. CP also uttered complaints. A gross sale income of 16,2 million dollars made by about 120 employees in 2006 spelled early trouble. The initial 5-year-contract terminated and IVL refused to renew it even for a month to publish the few of the missing titles from the initial catalogue (which by the way have been neglected due to poor time management in the years of 2005 and 2006). Celestial now has changed large portions of their personnel… again. Most brave employees who still cared have left. One of the most prominent names is the resignation of Philip Lee who spent only roughly a year as a “vice president of new film content” and is rumoured to have thrown the towel because of “utter chaos ruling the company”. Most of the new staff does not know and much less care about their company’s Shaw library and the corporate view gives them strong support as Shaw’s library is deemed a liability and more or less worth of being thrown in a bin. It is almost cynical that Celestial still prominently mentions the ownership of Shaw’s treasures in every of today’s scarce press releases, since they neglect this treasure and treat it as bad as they treat enquiries by foreign customers and press. At the moment even outspoken CEO Pfeiffer is seemingly unable to comment on the future of these gems and alerted fans and insiders fear for the worst. Despite everything one fact timelessly remains rock solid: The Gweilo fans of Shaw’s library have once more been taken for a ride and have once more been slapped right in their faces. In some forums, in some blogs and on some websites open disgust is starting to be evident and the sad days of bootlegging, of expensive backdoor deals for missing titles and copyright infraction of CP-content raise their ugly head once more. Why? Well, only one company can answer that. Therefore…thank you Celestial Pictures – you just put another nail into the coffin of a genre that has suffered enough already. PS: You can read the full press article (3 pages & related pictures) in the upcoming brand new issue No. 01/2008 of SOUTHERN SCREEN MAGAZINE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member greenfan Posted January 26, 2008 Member Share Posted January 26, 2008 That article is absolute rubbish. Over 500 Shaw Brothers films brilliantly restored and released, including some films that people never thought they would see. Damn those Celestial bastards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tantao3-son of tantao2 Posted January 26, 2008 Member Share Posted January 26, 2008 ...Celestial released 587 "Shaw" films during the last 5 years...This is great! But unfortunately 190 films are still in their "vaults"...This is not great! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ShawBrothers Posted January 26, 2008 Share Posted January 26, 2008 it's better than have 600 movies release by rarekungfumovies or flashlegsrare with their awful bootleg fullscreen english dub only Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tai_shin_mun Posted January 26, 2008 Member Share Posted January 26, 2008 You can blame them for not being good at marketing and some bad decisions.Dubs definitely should have been included when possible to increase sales in english speaking countries. But you can`t be angry because they do not release certain titles.Disappointed yes.Someone said bad money is better than no money but that`s not true.If movies do not make enough profit,why bother?I do not know which has been affected more to sales,bootlegs or piracy but my bet is on piracy.There are lot people around who would not pay even 1$ for movie if possible to get it for free. Celestial did great work bringing to surface many previously unavailabe movies,they do not deserve barking or whining about titles which are cancelled.Writer of article seems to take it as an personal insult:rolleyes: +"Soon Celestial stopped with the cardboard slip-boxes, then they tried to minimize costs with their DVD-releases and instead presented some movies in VCD-format only. What a joke!"I`m sure businesspersons in IVL did not see it as joke when read sales reports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member HAZ Posted January 26, 2008 Member Share Posted January 26, 2008 He might have a point, but the author comes off too mucn like a nutbag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Linn1 Posted January 27, 2008 Member Share Posted January 27, 2008 I love the site certainly. There's some things in this that are correct, some I'd like to know sources for some of it. "Only years later, in 2007 ex-Miramax bosses took some of those titles with them and started to release a batch of four titles via their new found company Dragon Dynasty. Perhaps some of them still scratch their heads and wonder why the sales did not meet their expectations." I don't get this, as the DD Shaw Brothers titles did well. "instead of offering a complete HK release worldwide by one company from the start, the whole initial plan sunk like a stone." This would have been the worst thing they could have done. To have what's in effect a new company bring out hundreds of films on DVD for distribution around the world would have been foolish in the extreme. What would have happened is we would have seen a new company trying to do a job no established company had ever done ie create and distribute dvds for every market in the world. They would have made next to nothing once the dust settled, and likely not released a quarter of what we got. You can blame them for not being good at marketing and some bad decisions.Dubs definitely should have been included when possible to increase sales in english speaking countries. Their entire point was to sell rights to other markets, so it would make no sense to include dubs for another market. We got subtitles only because these were release in Hong Kong. Had they been in the mainland, there would have been no subs. With all that in mind, not having English dubs on their releases wasn't a dig at English fans, it was what had to be done business-wise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Righteous Master Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 You guys are right. The author of this article is going a bit overboard with his gloom and doom reports on Celestial and IVL. Celestial has released 587 titles that all look absolutly great. So much for the gloom and doom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member venoms5 Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 Does anyone have accurate info as to how well these titles have sold, not just in Asia but other places? They must have sold fairly well in there as I don't see the point in continuing as long as they did if they were selling so poorly. Versus what they spent cleaning the titles up, I imagine it was under expectations, but considering the rapidity with which the titles were released and the fact that so many of them saw a release of some kind (I don't recall a library of films ever being released in this manner before) they must have moved a fair amount of discs in Asia. And I'm sure piracy contributed a major blow to a number of these films and more than probably played an important role in the remaining 200 or so films not being released. I remember picking up some of the discs in one of the NY Chinatown shops on one of my visits and the lady proprietor pointed me to the bootleg versions which were sold right next to the legit ones. However, I did see a few Chinese buying the legit DVDs (and some of the VCDs) on separate occasions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Markgway Posted January 28, 2008 Share Posted January 28, 2008 I have it on the highest authority that the best ever selling Celestial title was DISCO BUMPKINS.... don't believe me. See if I care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member venoms5 Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 Why did the other DISCO BUMPKINS get VCD only releases then? According to the actor filmography for Mai Te Lo, (I think it was for him) this was a big hit in HK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member silver hermit Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 way to support shaw guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Mr. Vampire Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 Fully support SB... But Celestial can blow me. I demand the release of the other films! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tai_shin_mun Posted January 28, 2008 Member Share Posted January 28, 2008 Vampire.I would love to see release of to kill a mastermind,dark rendezvous+others...but you have to see their point.Would you work for less than your worth is just to make others happy?Charity does not pay off financially:p. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Markgway Posted January 29, 2008 Share Posted January 29, 2008 I was, er, joking about Disco Bumpkins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member venoms5 Posted January 29, 2008 Member Share Posted January 29, 2008 I was, er, joking about Disco Bumpkins. I thought so but wasn't sure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member bunafireonafussy Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 Fully support SB... But Celestial can blow me. I demand the release of the other films! IVL is the company you should be complaining about they did the HK releases but in reality you have nothing to complain about. they have done more than any company has/will done/do period. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ShawBrothers Posted January 30, 2008 Share Posted January 30, 2008 we are lucky that its not joysales Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member oldeschool17 Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 where the hell did the white ivl covers go on that website? Ive emailed them but they have yet to reply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member greenfan Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 Into their 'Pay content' section? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member oldeschool17 Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 Yer right, they just posted a message on the frontpage about that. I should have downloaded them when i had the chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tarim69 Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 I will ALWAYS be grateful to Celestial for these releases. Back in the early 90s when some of my tapes were dying and I was buying crappy VHS dubs from places in NYC I never dreamed I'd have these in beautiful remasters in 16x9 in the original language. I think if they had gone Region0 with these and made some sort of US distribution deal so you coudl pick these up in Best Buy they would have made a KILLING. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member HAZ Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 I don't think many people in the west give a rats ass for Shaw Brothers films. Sure, you have some devotees, people who know the actors names & who want to see all of the movies presented in a high quality dvd. But then you have the guy who goes to Best Buy & sees "Shaolin Master Killer" on the shelves and is like: "Lookee heer! Ain't that the gooky-eyed, bald headed feller who does all that ka-ra-tee? He sure is funny lookin'!" I see that as representative of the majority of people who buy these films in the west. I'm sure that Dragon Dynasty did well enough with their Shaw releases, but soon it will be a year & only 4 films have come out. I'm now seeing them discounted in the stores. Many other releases are "projected", with no firm idea of when they'll come out. We'll see what happens with media blasters next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member bunafireonafussy Posted January 30, 2008 Member Share Posted January 30, 2008 shawscope.com-reloaded who cares?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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