2 > 1 > 4 > 3
Three is a very fricking boring film that doesn't git gud until the very end, even then it's light on fight choreography and big one singular set piece, that being the famous train scene
1. If you watch the bts you get the real sense all of this violently goes against Hollywood regulations and they're treating stuntmen like disposable objects. Great for a film, but a disaster for the people. Their sacrifice makes kino, but you can't do that now.
2. Asian-Americans are neurotic little white people without any of the kino flair of asians.
3. Your best hope is Korea or SEA - Korea has the cash but not as much talent for action, thrillers, or arthouse. SEA could do it, but they're too poor - a few Indonesian films are almost as good but not quite.
4. HK also produced top tier kino that often makes best films ever lists like In the Mood for Love but you notice this stopped after 2001? China take-over killed their film industry's creativity. Nothing has produced it ever or since.
>1. If you watch the bts you get the real sense all of this violently goes against Hollywood regulations and they're treating stuntmen like disposable objects. Great for a film, but a disaster for the people. Their sacrifice makes kino, but you can't do that now.
Sure Hong Kong cinema has crazier stunts due to the lack of regulations, but does that really prevent people from getting hurt? Seems more like they're more careful when it comes to actual risk.
Hollywood has much more hoops to jump through, so they will likely just go "let's CGI that" instead to make it faster and easier. There's also been a rash of stuntmen deaths in recent years, which will likely accellerate this trend. I don't know if HK in practice was more dangerous or safer (Hollywood might just be more open while HK tried to cover it up).
Also, Jackie Chan mentions that Hollywood was all about speed of production since time is money and in HK (especially productions he had control of) they were perfectionists doing take after take until it was right. That entire perfectionist mindset is utterly gone in hollywood and just getting worse.
More more more more more is the theme. Film this as fast as possible to make more MCU or Star Wars. Film more movies for streaming. Maybe after streaming dies, they will calm down?
For Korea? Too rich and well off. They'd never accept these crazy stunts. You'd have to go Indonesia or Thailand, but they're not rich enough to fund these productions. HK was right in that sweet spot of rich, well developed, but not tooo well developed they start to care about poor people not getting hurt.
>Also, Jackie Chan mentions that Hollywood was all about speed of production since time is money and in HK (especially productions he had control of) they were perfectionists
They take weeks or months to perfect a fight scene or stunt.
Yep, plus Jackie Chan and his crew came out of the HK Opera School. A weird old Chinese practice of having a kids board and train at a school with a punishing regime, but mixed with the Western influences of HK and flight from the commie take-over of the mainland.
All that dovetailing into the nascent Martial Arts movie boom. With Jackie creating his whole persona as an inverse of Bruce Lee style. All one-time-only stuff. Those environmental niches and conditions and opportunity/resources don't exist anymore.
There are still crazy stunt guys. John Wick is those guys making their own moves. And Tom Cruise is trying to match some of Jackie's bigger showcase stuntwork to stand-out in the era of too-much-cgi. But HK cinema was a kind of ideal western/asian melting pot of influences and mores producing something unique. Plus all that ambition and desire to be the equal of of any other movie industry in the world.
Also movie tickets were only a couple of bucks, and the filmmakers didn't hate their core audiences. They made movies that appealed to them and made them want to come back and see them multiple times, so those cheap tickets would add up to big profits.
meh. the john wick and tom cruise stuff is heavily analyzed with a hundred AI computers scanning every possible way a stunt can go wrong and what's the best vantage point to jump or what not. utilizing computers has been done even as far back as that parkour shit. don't think they just randomly did all those crazy jumps in tandem. i remember way back when the disney movie The Ice Princess came out and that hot israeliteess from buffy was using a laptop to help with her skating moves
jackie chan blindly jumped across buildings, under vehicles, windows with real glass with no fricking computer assistance back in his prime. he will always be the man for that and nobody will ever have the balls that he did in movies ever again PERIOD
Yeah Thailand and Indonesia had little bouts of good kino but I don’t think they’ll ever match the heyday of HK Golden Age. Too bad South Korea and the Philippines would never get out of whatever the frick their hang ups are to lead the way for Asian action kino instead
>China take-over killed their film industry's creativity
this
>Chinese takeover
You guys are too young to remember. It wasn't a Chinese takeover, it was an American takeover. China was still a shithole in the early 2000s. Chasing big profits, HK movie stars and directors made awful American targeted films like The Tuxedo, Spy Next Door, etc. This led to the creative death of most of the industry. Chinese influence would only exceed American around the early 2010s
They did leave briefly to make movies in the US from the 1990s to early 2000s, but none of them ever permanently tried to get citizenship and move. Although I think CYF has Singaporean citizenship now
>You guys are too young to remember. It wasn't a Chinese takeover, it was an American takeover. China was still a shithole in the early 2000s. Chasing big profits, HK movie stars and directors made awful American targeted films like The Tuxedo, Spy Next Door, etc. This led to the creative death of most of the industry. Chinese influence would only exceed American around the early 2010s
Stupid fricking Black person. Those film makers ran off to Hollywood because China took over HK and they didn't want to deal with China. Yes, they made Americna slop but that was to survive. These people either sold out to Chinese film industry and sung the praises of the CCP or they sold out to Hollywood.
You're fricking dumb. They were already trying to make inroads into Hollywood before the handover. They very much still lived in HK after the handover. And politically for the first ten years or so after handover under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, China didn't do anything to Hong Kong or the world in general.
And "survive" is a stretch. You're making it sound like these multi millionaires needed a lifeline.
A million things did go wrong, like cars landing on their roofs without a semblance of a roll cage
God bless criminally underpaid HK stuntmen, willing to die for kino
The political incorrectness of the hero blasting though a shanty town would feed too many twitter (or wherever they are now) clout-seeking shitbags.
It would be like a LA Action movie featuring a chase that rips through a skid row cardboard city while the junkies scatter like wienerroaches.
Even though it would feed the fantasies of normie movie-goers to see that shit cleared away with extreme prejudice.
The idiots in charge forget that movies were a great outlet for those sorts of dark desires.
(I guess b/c they wanted to create the notion that movies/media/games fuel that shit rather than manage it, because it turns the blame away from their own mismanagement).
My dad was there twice and said the brit time they were like half brit and it felt wholesome but the chinks moved in asap and 15 years later it was so different in a negative way. Chinks are dangerous man.
You could say the same about Japan and how the mutts moved in and completely fricked them up. I've only been to HK post-handover but it all felt very British to me. And very overpriced.
That was my thought as well when I watched this movie, you can tell everyone involved in this movie has a good sense of humor but if you watch mainland China movies everyone is stiff and everything is upright and depressing. It's really night and day
That's the Chinese and Russian MO. Just ship in as many of your own people as possible so that they'll always vote to join even if you have fully free elections. If China ever took over Taiwan, they'd ship out hundreds of thousands to mainland detention centers, and ship in several million patriotic branwashed Han to replace them. They then have a vote and lok, what do you see? 75% voted to join! Then those people stick around a few gens so they're "native" and you're fricked and nothing can undue it.
That's the Chinese and Russian MO. Just ship in as many of your own people as possible so that they'll always vote to join even if you have fully free elections. If China ever took over Taiwan, they'd ship out hundreds of thousands to mainland detention centers, and ship in several million patriotic branwashed Han to replace them. They then have a vote and lok, what do you see? 75% voted to join! Then those people stick around a few gens so they're "native" and you're fricked and nothing can undue it.
I didn't know that hong kong had an immigration problem, and that mainland chinese were that different than native hong kongers, I thought china basically just took hong kong by brute force anyway
Qrd on this?
When Xi stops swarming Hong Kong with thousands of street poopers, scammers, beggars, and knife attacks every day
>thousands of street poopers, scammers, beggars, and knife attacks every day
elaborate?
>I didn't know that hong kong had an immigration problem, and that mainland chinese were that different than native hong kongers,
Yes, yes, yes. HK was a liberal democratic capitalist country, with all that comes with. So like asian british people. China rapidly industrialized and they took hundreds of millions of dirt poor rural people and jammed them into cities - people who are okay with shitting on the streets, spitting in public, who can't fricking drive but now are driving some giant truck that crashes and kills 20. It will take China generations to civilize these people into half-way decent citizens.
>I thought china basically just took hong kong by brute force anyway
Brits forced them to sign a treaty leasing it for 100 years, the treaty ran out in 1997 and Brits were legally bound to hand it back. Some films in production ended up being finished without much hampering, but the cut-off is 2001. HK film makers then either sold their soul to Chinese film or Hollywood to survive, both huge downgrades.
HK film industry died out because production moved elsewhere. As for the Chinese mass migration it happened in the 1950s after the KMT lost the civil war, not 1997. And they didn't vote on the retrocession at all.
You can always spot a NAFO troon when they start spouting uninformed bs. Have fun dying in whatever stupid conflict your senile president cooks up against the chinks.
Honk Kong was supposed to be guaranteed 50 years of self rule after the British left in 1997 but China broke their promises and seized HK earlier because you can't trust China to honor their word
>"HK was a liberal democratic capitalist country"
Liberal capitalist, yes
Democratic, no
Before 1997 Hong Kong was ruled by governors assigned by the UK, there never were elections before the handover.
Honk Kong was supposed to be guaranteed 50 years of self rule after the British left in 1997 but China broke their promises and seized HK earlier because you can't trust China to honor their word
They played some word games about One China, two systems of government and will swear they never changed anything. They immediately began to infiltrate and subdue the country piece by piece, slowly over time. Installing more of their shills to power. So it's technically not broken, but in practice it's a Chinese colony rule.
Brits should have been there to back it all up to prevent all this. Then HK might have had an independence vote after the 50 years .
China didn't take Hong Kong. The British treatise only extended to 1999. At that point they had to return control of Hong Kong to China. China pretended like they would still allow it to run autonomously, but everyone knew it was bullshit. It always had a lot of mainlanders migrating there, often illegally (usually actually - like Jackie's own parents). Once it was part of China many moved there, and not to "escape", just cause wages were better. Prince Charles had to go there to oversee the ceremony. Said it was a depressing experience. They also demolished Kowloon. The British authorities were embarrassed at handing Hong Kong over with such notoriously ungoverned, criminal regions. I think the Van Damme movie Bloodsport is some of the last existing footage of the famous city.
>The British treatise only extended to 1999. At that point they had to return control of Hong Kong to China
This is not true.
>It being obviously necessary and desirable, that British Subjects should have some Port whereat they may careen and refit their Ships, when required, and Keep Stores for that purpose, His Majesty the Emperor of China cedes to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., the Island of Hong-Kong, to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, Her Heirs and Successors, and to be governed by such Laws and Regulations as Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., shall see fit to direct.
Well the actors back then were literally risking their lives for the opportunity to perform in brutal superhuman physical shoots and make kino. The actors now are fighting for their lives to collect bigger residual cheques to continue being featured in soulless goyslop written by AI chatbot. So; no. Never again
I haven't seen this movie. Does it play the stunt funny like Adam Wests " some days you just can't get rid of a bomb"? It seemed to just keep going and going.
the most unbelievable part about this isn't the stunt but the fact that the glass didn't break and the building didn't collapse given chinese architecture and all
As pointed out before me, it's a Dutch building. Also the fight they have on the rooftop is more impressive than the sliding stunt.
https://youtu.be/L_vO2snOHPU
Not good video quality but the aforementioned mall fight from Police Story 1 to get a handle on how insane it is
>get a handle on how insane it is
No need bro, was watching Jackie movies all week
Wheels on Meals ending is almost as good as Police Story 1, minus all the glass
On the Run
Bullet In the Head
Full Contact
The Big Heat (Johnny To's first movie)
My Heart Is That Eternal Rose
Close Encounters of the Dangerous Kind
As Tears Go By
Saint Jack (American film but set and filmed in old HK)
I fricked up the title, it's actually Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind. Also it doesn't exist in good quality like a lot of old HK movies, the copies on youtube and ok.ru are as good as it gets until some label remasters it
His background will never be replicated so we won't have another like him. He was sold to Chinese Opera as a kid, and used as slave labor in back breaking performances. Why teach the kids how to read if they don't have to? I don't think he was even literate until his late teens. That grueling background gave him the ability to be that dexterous and strong which allowed him to perform all those stunts too.
You should all watch Septet (2020). It's a nice love letter to Hong Kong and its cinema from Hongkonger directors. Surprised how this got past the Chinese censors, but the middle fingers are very subtle.
On the Run
Bullet In the Head
Full Contact
The Big Heat (Johnny To's first movie)
My Heart Is That Eternal Rose
Close Encounters of the Dangerous Kind
As Tears Go By
Saint Jack (American film but set and filmed in old HK)
If you want something newer just try anything from Johnny To and Fruit Chan
No.
-HK's film industry is dead
-China has swallowed the entire city and reclaimed it from the bongs
-The opera schools that trained the likes of chan/hung/yuen are now completely illegal so there is nobody with even half of their skill that can take their place
-Other film industries can't produce anything like it because of strict safety laws that HK didn't give a shit about
It's such a fricking sadness that we don't have HK's film industry anymore.
It was around 2009 when China seized the Hong Kong film industry and all films were required to be patriotically Chinese, which instantly murdered all creativity. The Chinese produced a disgusting piece of propaganda called Founding of a Republic which every big Hong Kong film star was required to be a part of if they ever wanted to work in Hong Kong again, by displaying their loyalty to the CCP.
You'll notice almost nothing good was produced after this date out of Hong Kong. The last wave of good Hong Kong cinema was the late 00's.
Depends on what you want. If its martial arts, Once upon a time in China is a good Jet Li movie. For comedy any Stephen Chow is good, particularly Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle, though God of Cooking is also really good. There's also other stuff like A Chinese Ghost Story, which is a mix of horror, action, and comedy. It also has Joey Wong, one of the more famous actresses from the 80s, their golden age for movies.
I was thinking JCVD is the closest we have to a western Jackie Chan, since he does so much of his own stuntwork. That really is him doing the splits, or doing that jumping spin kick.
It's funny how Belmondo is a legend in Europe, ex-USSR and East Asia but people in the Americas barely know who he is. Movie distrubition was weird back then.
Something's off about this. Like the guys acting or maybe the way it's shot or choreographed. He isn't selling the intensity of his attacks like Benny does.
this feels like that bicep shot in Predator, like "yeah. This guy is clearly as fast or faster than jackie. I definitely can't see what a hard time he's having at keeping up while jackie is pretending to have a hard time keeping up"
Probably not. What country is even like Hong Kong now? South Korea has rapidly advanced way too fast. They make slick high end entertainment now. Thailand gave it a brief shot, but they don't have the domestic market to support it.
I was in Taipei a few months ago and actually watched a live stage show of this with the pupeteers playing out a fight scene on stage. Was pretty surreal. One of the cosplayers they had on stage portraying a character later was a fan of my girlfriend's writing so I got to meet the cast too. Was pretty surreal.
it's honestly surreal realizing I'm old enough to nostalgically think of old hong kong like those gay artists thought of interwar paris. a kinotopia lost
taiwan's industry always is struggling because their actors are constantly tempted to sell their souls for big budget mainland projects and they just can't compete dollar to yuan on that.
Most of these movies are better watched in clips than from start to finish. They're not really that great as feature length films and Jackie is especially a bad dramatic actor.
I'm sure there's a bunch of socioeconomic reasons for why the films of the late 20th century were good, but even putting the whole China thing aside, people in HK can barely afford to live in the city. Why be interesting or experimental when you've got bills to pay and being formulaic is guaranteed to bring in some income.
Hardboiled is his magnum opus. It's probably the best action movie ever made.
A Better Tomorrow 1+2 are both more plot-heavy and both very good.
The Killer is more tragic and tries to be more serious. Also a great movie.
As much as I loved Bruce lee. I still think Jackie Chan is above him in term of fame. Jackie’s movies are just more entertaining. Bruce lee is more like an idealize version of an Asian action move star that passed away too earlier so people lament the loss of his possible potential. Jackie Chan actually made the kung fu genre popular international for a period of time. Just look at this thread, most of the clips are from Jackie Chan, nothing from Bruce lee.
But Bruce Lee has an immense concentration of quality. Like he has I believe only about 4 movies where he was the leading man as an adult, yet he is still famous today. Jackie has had god knows how many.
You're like those homosexual who argue over who is better in America, Stallone or Schwarzenegger. Who gives a frick. They both fill a slightly different niche, and both are necessary. Just enjoy both.
>I still think Jackie Chan is above him in term of fame.
You are entitled to your opinion, though I have to disagree. Jackie is famous. Bruce is iconic. He's been so mythologized that even people who have never seen his movies know exactly who Bruce Lee is.
Yeah I agree on Bruce being more iconic but Jackie is more popular in my opinion. Let’s be honest. Would you watch a Jackie action movies or a Bruce lee one?
I'd say you'd watch both for different reasons. If you want a fun, lighthearted action film with insane stunts you watch Jackie. If you want something ridiculously cool you watch Bruce.
>Would you watch a Jackie action movies or a Bruce lee one?
It's a tough call. I would say that Jackie's best are better than Bruce's, but that's more to do with the evolution of kung fu cinema (of which, Jackie was highly instrumental) than real superior quality. Enter the Dragon is a fantastic movie, and timeless. Drunken Master 2 is arguably the best kung fu movie ever made. I guess I'd have to side with Jackie. Bruce is still cool though in his own way.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I don't think it's a tough call at all. Bruce Lee films are more realistic and as a result are less entertaining. There's no question that Lee was the better martial artist but the choreography and fights he was in were not nearly cinematic enough to captivate audiences. His films are interesting and a few of them are even good, but Chan is like the reincarnation of Chaplin/Keaton and incorporates stuntwork and slapstick that I truly believe makes him one of the greatest movie stars of all time.
It's from Jackie's new movie Ride On where he plays an aging, out of the limelight stuntman who is estranged from his children >gee I wonder who could that be
>Hardboiled
Best action movie ever made >Winners and Sinners
Ensemble comedy with good fight scenes >Wheels on Meals Extremely comfy comedy + kung fu movie >Armor of God 1 + 2
Indiana Jones but Indy is played by Jackie Chan >Legend of Drunken Master
Period piece in ancient China. Great fights with some neat gimmicks >A Better Tomorrow
A serious gangster/crime drama >Infernal Affairs
the movie that The Departed was an adaptation of. (This might be Cantonese instead of HK though) >Tiger on Beat
buddy cop movie. It's basically a standard buddy cop movie and then the film makers realized there wasn't enough balls-to-the-walls action and added in an extra 30 minutes or so after what you would assume is the ending and made it absolutely cuhraaaazy >Prison on Fire
It's sort of like the HK version of Shawshank. Not to be confused with Prison on the Island of Fire which is also a HK prison movie and is also good. >Dragon's Forever
Solid Jackie Chan film. I would watch it after Wheels on Meals since a lot of the cast returns.
>Hardboiled >Best action movie ever made
110 fricking percent. If someone tells me their favourite action film is Die Hard or The Matrix I just assume they've never seen Hard Boiled. Nothing will ever top it.
>(This might be Cantonese instead of HK though
What do you mean with this? As in South East China? I'm pretty sure that Infernal Affairs is an HK film.
I watched Infernal Affairs as a kid with some Chinese friends of mine and they just referred to it as a "canto movie". I wasn't sure if that was just the language that was being spoken or if it was a region/genre. I don't know much about what if any movies China [proper] was making during the era of [British] Hong Kong cinema.
Cantonese is the major language spoken in Guangdong province, unlike other "dialects" the PRC has been more successful at stamping out the fact that people in Hong Kong primarily used Cantonese, which was also the dominant language in HK songs/movies/etc. (though Mandarin has been creeping in over the past 20 years) has ensured its continued relevance.
Mainland China actually has some pretty brilliant films but nobody in the west tends to know them.
mainland chinese media can be good but one has to either learn how to filter the propaganda schlock or learn to tolerate it
One of my favourite Chinese films is an Indiana Jones knockoff which has an opening scene absolutely eviscerating the cultural revolution. This was played on Chinese TV regularly while I lived there. It shows the little red book holders out wrecking shit and then getting absolutley murdered the shit out of by zombies. The censorship isn't quite as tight as most people think.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Tbf, iirc you are legally not allowed to show the cultural revolution in a positive light.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I did not actually know that. I know that the CCP actually have an openly negative outlook on Mao but didn't know that about the cultural revolution.
9 months ago
Anonymous
I'm not entirely sure about the "legally"-part, so look up the details before you go repeating it.
But i cannot recall ever having seen a chinese movie or tv-show where the cultural revolution is not depicted as bad, and nothing but bad. This despite there absolutely being a marked for red nostalgia, with loads of chinaboomers looking back at those days with rosy glasses.
And the official party narrative is that cultural revolution was only bad, and only gang of four were to blame. And disputing this could obviously be taken as challenging the current leadership (since they gained power by purging gang of four). So i do absolutely believe that chinese cencorship would slap down any production that tried to show cultural revolutionaries as not-misguided.
9 months ago
Anonymous
the cultural revolution isn't really a useful topic because even in China it's not looked upon fondly
a better example would be finding me a webnovel where the central government isn't always in the right (despite the hilarious fact that local officials are always scum sucking and useless) and all powerful. the most prominent example reverend insanity got banned in no small part because it shit on the government as a whole, not just corrupt "local" officials who totally aren't the norm guys - despite being literally everywhere lmao
9 months ago
Anonymous
That was something I picked up on almost immediately when I moved there. It's always the local government. Provincial governments face a lot of protests and such but it's never the central party in Beijing. Only with the recent covid lockdown protests have I seen the actual government come under scrutiny from the public and they relented fricking quickly.
9 months ago
Anonymous
much like the famous discussion about russia where it's always the corrupt boyars fault, never the tsars. it's a fig leaf excuse where the central government can tacitly admit there's a lot of corruption, nepotism, and other chicanery going on within the bureaucracy but maintain the continued purity of the good central government looking out for the people's interest.
the covid thing was a rare example where the party had embraced the policy so universally, and bungled it so comprehensively, that the fig leaf couldn't possibly work and that scared the CCP for sure.
9 months ago
Anonymous
It was a perfect example of how shit scared the government are of the people in China. Everyone always makes the mistake in the west as viewing the Chinese as brainwashed. They're not brainwashed, they're content. And if that contentness ever goes south the government is in big fricking trouble.
Something to also note is that Hong Kong was undergoing a severe financial crisis in the late 90s which led to a lot of belt tightening especially as there was increasing pressure to compete with Hollywood.
I'll never understand how Sammo Hung managed not to lose weight doing the things he does
It was kind of his trademark being a fat bastard that still does kung fu convincingly so there must have been some serious gorging going on whenever he wasn't filming
There’s some pro wrestlers who are pretty big guys too but can move pretty crazy in the ring though I’ll never understand why they wouldn’t lose weight either. Amish Roadkill comes to mind he was a portly guy but see his ECW matches and he could do top rope shit and the like. So some fat guys like Sammo got dope moves I guess
Bruce Lee's films aren't even good. Credit where credit's due, the guy played a huge role in introducing the west to asian kungfu films, which in turn lead to him being an icon, but the quality isn't that good. Especially when compared to other stuff Shaw Bros were already churning out in that period of time.
what do you care if you were gonna be a rich butthole spitting on the chinkies anyway
9 months ago
Anonymous
I don't think it was implied that you'd be a foreigner in that scenario or that you were looking down on those people, just that you'd be treated way better than in western countries where "the poor" are all apathetic and live comfortably enough to not give a frick about groveling to rich people
9 months ago
Anonymous
it's explicitly stated anon wants to spit on the poor who are groveling before him
9 months ago
Anonymous
Not spit on the poor, just be treated way better for your money because everyone else is still living in cardboard houses with no air conditioning and eating 95% rice diets. Any store or restaurant you entered, they'd consider you Humphrey Bogart, and you'd frick any woman you wanted
9 months ago
Anonymous
Chinaman societies are pretty well on the law and order front, and in my experience they're pretty cool with whiteys if you put in the absolute minimum of effort.
Expecting people to risk their neck or even just put personal effort into films in the 21st century is like thinking someone in 1990 would put their life on the line to reinvigorate the radio drama industry. Film is finished now FRICK OFF with this stupid board craving more films. Delete this fricking wretched board
Thanks to all the movie choices frens! <3 Aside from Sammo Hung, Jet Li, Jackie, Stephen Chow and of course Ip Man my HK movie knowledge is sadly lacking. I always look forward to these threads. ^-^
Not anytime soon. Nobody is interested in putting in the time to learn and execute choreography to a high level of mastery. 5/10 close enough is what is aimed for now. The last example from the west I can think of that even tries to get a 10/10 result and settles for something above a 6/10 is the Star Wars prequels. Only George Lucas's autism combined with his money was able to create and execute passable choreo.
John Wick is a love letter to and tries its best to live up to its inspirations but Keanu is old and stiff, in his prime was well below average by HK standards, and those movies are still subject to the rest of the modern western constraints which hobble every other production. It's never ever happening in the west and because of the westernization of much of the world, there isn't the leeway for it to happen anywhere else either.
John Wick Choreo style is different than HK style of action. HK action is derived from opera house so it's all about the actors hitting on beat to form a rhythm.
John wick's choreo is off beat in comparison since it's focused on Keanu hitting complicated moves that come from Sambo/Judo/BJJ.
True HK love letters are in Matrix 1 and Kill Bill.
Talking about Kill Bill. Watching that Cynthia Rothrock webm earlier, she'd have been the perfect choice for that film. Tarantino fricked up by not going for her. He loves bringing old actors into the spotlight again.
John Wick Choreo style is different than HK style of action. HK action is derived from opera house so it's all about the actors hitting on beat to form a rhythm.
John wick's choreo is off beat in comparison since it's focused on Keanu hitting complicated moves that come from Sambo/Judo/BJJ.
True HK love letters are in Matrix 1 and Kill Bill.
Yep, Wick is unironically closer to (early) Seagal with his persona and action style
I don't dig it
HK action cinema has many different flavors to it, from early wuxia to Jackie Chan, all of them being distinct from one another
Jackie didn't quite manage to be a Bruce Lee clone so wisely decided to come up with his own style
Always liked seeing Lola Forner random appearing in some Jackie or Sammo film. She plays characters central to the plot in a couple of their films but appears in the background in a bunch more. She was primo in the 80's too, so that's a plus.
The mall scene in Police Story 1 is so good I told some people at a party it was real glass that the actors were being hit with and they believed me lol
Some of it IS real glass because sugar glass doesn't last in storage
Jackie famously jumps through real pane of glass in police story 2 and walks away with just a few cuts on his arms
There's technique to diving through tempered glass without being cut but most people don't even attempt it cause you will get serious cuts if you frick up
Frick that’s awesome a lot of that glass looks real and I didn’t know he got legit hurt jumping through those Christmas decorations in the end. Jesus even him diving at the villain on the escalators you see bts footage were he basically fricks up and misses too JFC what a movie
>It wasn't just a few cuts on his arm. It was several lacerations on his hands, 3rd degree burns and he broke his back when he hit the bottom. Scene was cleaned up, he got in a cab to go to another film shoot he was shooting at the same time, took two steps out of the cab and collapsed on the pavement.
Wrong stunt my son. Police Story 2, the one where jumps through a pane of glass from the roof of a moving bus.
The end of Police Story 1 is a lot more hardcore ofc and he's lucky to be alive.
because they spent whole weeks filming one (1) fight until it's perfect
plus Cynthia Rothrock is an actual kickboxing champ so they didn't have to spend months to years training her until she could do the moves
I’ve noticed Tubi has a lot of these HK flicks so I’ve been watching them there lately. Also if you know where to look YouTube and archive.org does too. So infuriating that Netflix and Prime barely has any good action shit up at all
That movie is my go-to-example for how surreal hk cinema can be.
Scene with baby taking a nail to the head and melodramatic slomo hospital scene, straight to slapstick comedy where babykiller woman is lol so wacky.
Or grenade scene, where our heroes throw dynamite at chained up kids, and the camera focus on how the dying kids all piss themselves (no idea if that was supposed to be funny), then straight to radical Skeletor battle scene.
No of course not. Not even indie films are this fun
Police Story 1 & 2 are the best action movies ever made. Period.
Wrong, that would be Woo's kino like Hard Boiled
It's Hardboiled.
what am I looking at
worm monster attacking
POV of being webbed in the face by Spider-Man
Is 3 not also in the conversation?,
2 > 1 > 4 > 3
Three is a very fricking boring film that doesn't git gud until the very end, even then it's light on fight choreography and big one singular set piece, that being the famous train scene
Literally NOT because of a few reasons.
1. If you watch the bts you get the real sense all of this violently goes against Hollywood regulations and they're treating stuntmen like disposable objects. Great for a film, but a disaster for the people. Their sacrifice makes kino, but you can't do that now.
2. Asian-Americans are neurotic little white people without any of the kino flair of asians.
3. Your best hope is Korea or SEA - Korea has the cash but not as much talent for action, thrillers, or arthouse. SEA could do it, but they're too poor - a few Indonesian films are almost as good but not quite.
4. HK also produced top tier kino that often makes best films ever lists like In the Mood for Love but you notice this stopped after 2001? China take-over killed their film industry's creativity. Nothing has produced it ever or since.
>1. If you watch the bts you get the real sense all of this violently goes against Hollywood regulations and they're treating stuntmen like disposable objects. Great for a film, but a disaster for the people. Their sacrifice makes kino, but you can't do that now.
Sure Hong Kong cinema has crazier stunts due to the lack of regulations, but does that really prevent people from getting hurt? Seems more like they're more careful when it comes to actual risk.
Hollywood has much more hoops to jump through, so they will likely just go "let's CGI that" instead to make it faster and easier. There's also been a rash of stuntmen deaths in recent years, which will likely accellerate this trend. I don't know if HK in practice was more dangerous or safer (Hollywood might just be more open while HK tried to cover it up).
Also, Jackie Chan mentions that Hollywood was all about speed of production since time is money and in HK (especially productions he had control of) they were perfectionists doing take after take until it was right. That entire perfectionist mindset is utterly gone in hollywood and just getting worse.
More more more more more is the theme. Film this as fast as possible to make more MCU or Star Wars. Film more movies for streaming. Maybe after streaming dies, they will calm down?
For Korea? Too rich and well off. They'd never accept these crazy stunts. You'd have to go Indonesia or Thailand, but they're not rich enough to fund these productions. HK was right in that sweet spot of rich, well developed, but not tooo well developed they start to care about poor people not getting hurt.
>Also, Jackie Chan mentions that Hollywood was all about speed of production since time is money and in HK (especially productions he had control of) they were perfectionists
They take weeks or months to perfect a fight scene or stunt.
That makes sense.
moronic post
>China take-over killed their film industry's creativity
this
Why does the US ruin everything?
Yep, plus Jackie Chan and his crew came out of the HK Opera School. A weird old Chinese practice of having a kids board and train at a school with a punishing regime, but mixed with the Western influences of HK and flight from the commie take-over of the mainland.
All that dovetailing into the nascent Martial Arts movie boom. With Jackie creating his whole persona as an inverse of Bruce Lee style. All one-time-only stuff. Those environmental niches and conditions and opportunity/resources don't exist anymore.
There are still crazy stunt guys. John Wick is those guys making their own moves. And Tom Cruise is trying to match some of Jackie's bigger showcase stuntwork to stand-out in the era of too-much-cgi. But HK cinema was a kind of ideal western/asian melting pot of influences and mores producing something unique. Plus all that ambition and desire to be the equal of of any other movie industry in the world.
Also movie tickets were only a couple of bucks, and the filmmakers didn't hate their core audiences. They made movies that appealed to them and made them want to come back and see them multiple times, so those cheap tickets would add up to big profits.
Well said, you're absolutely right.
meh. the john wick and tom cruise stuff is heavily analyzed with a hundred AI computers scanning every possible way a stunt can go wrong and what's the best vantage point to jump or what not. utilizing computers has been done even as far back as that parkour shit. don't think they just randomly did all those crazy jumps in tandem. i remember way back when the disney movie The Ice Princess came out and that hot israeliteess from buffy was using a laptop to help with her skating moves
jackie chan blindly jumped across buildings, under vehicles, windows with real glass with no fricking computer assistance back in his prime. he will always be the man for that and nobody will ever have the balls that he did in movies ever again PERIOD
There was a period Thailand was churning out movies with some pretty impressive stunts, but nowhere near prime hong kong.
Yeah Thailand and Indonesia had little bouts of good kino but I don’t think they’ll ever match the heyday of HK Golden Age. Too bad South Korea and the Philippines would never get out of whatever the frick their hang ups are to lead the way for Asian action kino instead
>asian americans are...white people
ywnbah(onky)
>Chinese takeover
You guys are too young to remember. It wasn't a Chinese takeover, it was an American takeover. China was still a shithole in the early 2000s. Chasing big profits, HK movie stars and directors made awful American targeted films like The Tuxedo, Spy Next Door, etc. This led to the creative death of most of the industry. Chinese influence would only exceed American around the early 2010s
Blame the Hong Kong actors who sold out trying to become "real" Hollywood actors and only Michelle Yeoh was able to do it after 20 years.
I thought the Hong Kongers like Chan, Woo, CYF were leaving for the USA precisely because they were worried about the communist takeover
They did leave briefly to make movies in the US from the 1990s to early 2000s, but none of them ever permanently tried to get citizenship and move. Although I think CYF has Singaporean citizenship now
>You guys are too young to remember. It wasn't a Chinese takeover, it was an American takeover. China was still a shithole in the early 2000s. Chasing big profits, HK movie stars and directors made awful American targeted films like The Tuxedo, Spy Next Door, etc. This led to the creative death of most of the industry. Chinese influence would only exceed American around the early 2010s
Stupid fricking Black person. Those film makers ran off to Hollywood because China took over HK and they didn't want to deal with China. Yes, they made Americna slop but that was to survive. These people either sold out to Chinese film industry and sung the praises of the CCP or they sold out to Hollywood.
You're fricking dumb. They were already trying to make inroads into Hollywood before the handover. They very much still lived in HK after the handover. And politically for the first ten years or so after handover under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, China didn't do anything to Hong Kong or the world in general.
And "survive" is a stretch. You're making it sound like these multi millionaires needed a lifeline.
>They didn't want to deal with China
>These people sold out
you got your answer Chang. All of them sold out chinkbucks and muttbucks
You forgot Bulletproof Monk. As a massive Chow Yun Fat fan that was a very painful experience of a film.
Yeah, everyone jumped aboard the Hollywood train back then. From Jackie Chan, Jet Li to Chow Yun Fat.
It's been all downhill since the British gave control back to the chinks.
Sad!
true
Michael Bay is a fan of these movies
he even had a segment in Bad Boys 2 paying homage to this scene
a million things couldve gone wrong but they didnt give a frick. based
A million things did go wrong, like cars landing on their roofs without a semblance of a roll cage
God bless criminally underpaid HK stuntmen, willing to die for kino
The political incorrectness of the hero blasting though a shanty town would feed too many twitter (or wherever they are now) clout-seeking shitbags.
It would be like a LA Action movie featuring a chase that rips through a skid row cardboard city while the junkies scatter like wienerroaches.
Even though it would feed the fantasies of normie movie-goers to see that shit cleared away with extreme prejudice.
The idiots in charge forget that movies were a great outlet for those sorts of dark desires.
(I guess b/c they wanted to create the notion that movies/media/games fuel that shit rather than manage it, because it turns the blame away from their own mismanagement).
pretty sure that scene is supposed to be in kowloon which got cleaned up big time in the 90's. Those shanty towns were going, one way or another.
This is adding credence to tat whole "Asian people can't drive" thing.
holy shit which movie is this? One of the ones mentioned above?
Police Story
thanks anon!
My dad was there twice and said the brit time they were like half brit and it felt wholesome but the chinks moved in asap and 15 years later it was so different in a negative way. Chinks are dangerous man.
You could say the same about Japan and how the mutts moved in and completely fricked them up. I've only been to HK post-handover but it all felt very British to me. And very overpriced.
That was my thought as well when I watched this movie, you can tell everyone involved in this movie has a good sense of humor but if you watch mainland China movies everyone is stiff and everything is upright and depressing. It's really night and day
China has completely destroyed Hong Kong with their mass immigration. It’s over
That's the Chinese and Russian MO. Just ship in as many of your own people as possible so that they'll always vote to join even if you have fully free elections. If China ever took over Taiwan, they'd ship out hundreds of thousands to mainland detention centers, and ship in several million patriotic branwashed Han to replace them. They then have a vote and lok, what do you see? 75% voted to join! Then those people stick around a few gens so they're "native" and you're fricked and nothing can undue it.
I didn't know that hong kong had an immigration problem, and that mainland chinese were that different than native hong kongers, I thought china basically just took hong kong by brute force anyway
Qrd on this?
>thousands of street poopers, scammers, beggars, and knife attacks every day
elaborate?
>I didn't know that hong kong had an immigration problem, and that mainland chinese were that different than native hong kongers,
Yes, yes, yes. HK was a liberal democratic capitalist country, with all that comes with. So like asian british people. China rapidly industrialized and they took hundreds of millions of dirt poor rural people and jammed them into cities - people who are okay with shitting on the streets, spitting in public, who can't fricking drive but now are driving some giant truck that crashes and kills 20. It will take China generations to civilize these people into half-way decent citizens.
>I thought china basically just took hong kong by brute force anyway
Brits forced them to sign a treaty leasing it for 100 years, the treaty ran out in 1997 and Brits were legally bound to hand it back. Some films in production ended up being finished without much hampering, but the cut-off is 2001. HK film makers then either sold their soul to Chinese film or Hollywood to survive, both huge downgrades.
HK film industry died out because production moved elsewhere. As for the Chinese mass migration it happened in the 1950s after the KMT lost the civil war, not 1997. And they didn't vote on the retrocession at all.
You can always spot a NAFO troon when they start spouting uninformed bs. Have fun dying in whatever stupid conflict your senile president cooks up against the chinks.
Ivan your ammo depot is on fire, will you ever stop being a global embarrassment?
>"HK was a liberal democratic capitalist country"
Liberal capitalist, yes
Democratic, no
Before 1997 Hong Kong was ruled by governors assigned by the UK, there never were elections before the handover.
>Hong Kong
>democratic
Mutt brain for you.
Honk Kong was supposed to be guaranteed 50 years of self rule after the British left in 1997 but China broke their promises and seized HK earlier because you can't trust China to honor their word
They played some word games about One China, two systems of government and will swear they never changed anything. They immediately began to infiltrate and subdue the country piece by piece, slowly over time. Installing more of their shills to power. So it's technically not broken, but in practice it's a Chinese colony rule.
Brits should have been there to back it all up to prevent all this. Then HK might have had an independence vote after the 50 years .
Sad!
Well, it's not like the invasion, and broken promises of Tibet weren't preexisting for anyone to see.
Everyone hates mainlanders. They're hilariously known for shitting any and everywhere like dogs.
China didn't take Hong Kong. The British treatise only extended to 1999. At that point they had to return control of Hong Kong to China. China pretended like they would still allow it to run autonomously, but everyone knew it was bullshit. It always had a lot of mainlanders migrating there, often illegally (usually actually - like Jackie's own parents). Once it was part of China many moved there, and not to "escape", just cause wages were better. Prince Charles had to go there to oversee the ceremony. Said it was a depressing experience. They also demolished Kowloon. The British authorities were embarrassed at handing Hong Kong over with such notoriously ungoverned, criminal regions. I think the Van Damme movie Bloodsport is some of the last existing footage of the famous city.
>The British treatise only extended to 1999. At that point they had to return control of Hong Kong to China
This is not true.
>It being obviously necessary and desirable, that British Subjects should have some Port whereat they may careen and refit their Ships, when required, and Keep Stores for that purpose, His Majesty the Emperor of China cedes to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., the Island of Hong-Kong, to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, Her Heirs and Successors, and to be governed by such Laws and Regulations as Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., shall see fit to direct.
The New Territories (mainland) were only leased till 97. Imagine New York City trying to function where Manhattan became an independent nation.
Well the actors back then were literally risking their lives for the opportunity to perform in brutal superhuman physical shoots and make kino. The actors now are fighting for their lives to collect bigger residual cheques to continue being featured in soulless goyslop written by AI chatbot. So; no. Never again
Never again.
When Xi stops swarming Hong Kong with thousands of street poopers, scammers, beggars, and knife attacks every day
No China’s obsessed with big cgi heavy michael bay style movies now. Every movie they’ve made just apes Transformers from 2008
I don't care if he's Muhammad , I'm 'ard Bruce Lee.
It's really weird seeing Charlie Cho in these movies, as he's mostly known for playing rapists and lechers in cat-III movies
Which one is this? Can't be a period piece and I don't remember this fight in Dragon's Forever and it definitely isn't Wheels on Meals.
Tiger on the Beat
God of Gamblers
Tiger Cage 2
A Better Tomorrow 2 (also 1 but that's not really obscure)
Tragic Hero
Police Story 2
I haven't seen this movie. Does it play the stunt funny like Adam Wests " some days you just can't get rid of a bomb"? It seemed to just keep going and going.
the most unbelievable part about this isn't the stunt but the fact that the glass didn't break and the building didn't collapse given chinese architecture and all
I dunno about nowadays, but Hong Kong once had the same standards as the rest of the Commonwealth countries.
homie, that building is in Rotterdam, Netherlands
As pointed out before me, it's a Dutch building. Also the fight they have on the rooftop is more impressive than the sliding stunt.
>get a handle on how insane it is
No need bro, was watching Jackie movies all week
Wheels on Meals ending is almost as good as Police Story 1, minus all the glass
"Who Am I?" 1998
Gimme some obscure recs, bros.
Long Arm of the Law
Righting Wrongs (HK Cut!)
Devil of Rape
>Devil of Rape
For me it's Devil Fetus 2: The Rape After
On the Run
Bullet In the Head
Full Contact
The Big Heat (Johnny To's first movie)
My Heart Is That Eternal Rose
Close Encounters of the Dangerous Kind
As Tears Go By
Saint Jack (American film but set and filmed in old HK)
know any place i can watch Close Encounters in decent quality?
I fricked up the title, it's actually Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind. Also it doesn't exist in good quality like a lot of old HK movies, the copies on youtube and ok.ru are as good as it gets until some label remasters it
Kung fu:
Can que (1978) - Crippled Avengers
Tian can bian (1983) - Bastard Swordsman
Huang jia shi jie (1985) - Yes, Madam
Fei lung mang jeung (1988) - Dragons Forever
Dung fong tuk ying (1987) - Eastern Condors
The Blade (1995)
Heroic Bloodshed:
Lung foo fung wan (1987) - City on Fire
Chan sam ying hung (1998) - A Hero Never Dies
Horor/jiangshi
Sang faa sau see (1998) - Bio Zombie
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987)
Just dl'd Tiger Cage trilogy.
That's Jackie out there. On in one hundred trillion. Blessed.
His background will never be replicated so we won't have another like him. He was sold to Chinese Opera as a kid, and used as slave labor in back breaking performances. Why teach the kids how to read if they don't have to? I don't think he was even literate until his late teens. That grueling background gave him the ability to be that dexterous and strong which allowed him to perform all those stunts too.
The Man needs to cone to America & GET ALL THE AWARDS. Would Jackie accept the Mark Twain prize in person?
You should all watch Septet (2020). It's a nice love letter to Hong Kong and its cinema from Hongkonger directors. Surprised how this got past the Chinese censors, but the middle fingers are very subtle.
Which film?
My Lucky Stars
When she undresses and reveals that muscular body I know it's supposed to be a gag but Jerry it moved.
>Hong Kong cinema again
>police story
>hard boiled
>the killer
>A Better Tomorrow
>Bullet in the Head
>City on Fire
what else is worth the watch?
Chungking express, fallen angels, in the mood for love, the list goes on
City on Fire and Bullet in the Head are rarely mentioned. Very underrated movies.
>the list goes on
well make it go on homie im searching for some good HK movies and I've watched a lot of them
I gave a list of old action movies here
If you want something newer just try anything from Johnny To and Fruit Chan
Wheels on Meals is a personal favorite of mine. The fight between Jackie Chan and Benny the Jet is kino.
No.
-HK's film industry is dead
-China has swallowed the entire city and reclaimed it from the bongs
-The opera schools that trained the likes of chan/hung/yuen are now completely illegal so there is nobody with even half of their skill that can take their place
-Other film industries can't produce anything like it because of strict safety laws that HK didn't give a shit about
It's such a fricking sadness that we don't have HK's film industry anymore.
probably not with how much cgi has advanced
god damn looks like he broke his neck for real
Because he probably did
Bless the anons for these webms.
It was around 2009 when China seized the Hong Kong film industry and all films were required to be patriotically Chinese, which instantly murdered all creativity. The Chinese produced a disgusting piece of propaganda called Founding of a Republic which every big Hong Kong film star was required to be a part of if they ever wanted to work in Hong Kong again, by displaying their loyalty to the CCP.
You'll notice almost nothing good was produced after this date out of Hong Kong. The last wave of good Hong Kong cinema was the late 00's.
80s HK girls annihilate modern Kpop trash
Yes
Watched that with my gf and we both broke out laughing, best ending
Name?
Encounters of the Spooky Kind, from the 70s, I think its considered the first Jiangshi movie
Watching this now. There's no way this didn't inspired Raimi when making Evil Dead. The first 15 minutes was incredible.
Watch Mr Vampire later.
I
Honestly, they were basically live action anime girls.
Anybody got the car chase through the shanty town down a mountain?
it was already posted
Where do I start with HK movies? All I've really watched is Drunken Master.
hard boiled, police story.
Depends on what you want. If its martial arts, Once upon a time in China is a good Jet Li movie. For comedy any Stephen Chow is good, particularly Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle, though God of Cooking is also really good. There's also other stuff like A Chinese Ghost Story, which is a mix of horror, action, and comedy. It also has Joey Wong, one of the more famous actresses from the 80s, their golden age for movies.
who is that in the photo????
Just go through every action movie Jackie did in the 70 to 80s. Easiest point of entry I think.
chunking express
Dragon Inn 1992
Mr. Vampire
Watch God of Gamblers.
Nope. Everyone is too up their own fricking arses trying to be autuers and being psueds they forgot how to actually make good movies
I was thinking JCVD is the closest we have to a western Jackie Chan, since he does so much of his own stuntwork. That really is him doing the splits, or doing that jumping spin kick.
tom cruise is up there too, even though he is no martial artist. his MI stunts remind me of jackie chan's antics a lot
i dont think some french homosexual doing the splits is comparable to what jackie chan did
Chan said he was inspired to become a stuntman after seeing Jean Paul Belmondo do all his own stunts in a bunch of french movies
It's funny how Belmondo is a legend in Europe, ex-USSR and East Asia but people in the Americas barely know who he is. Movie distrubition was weird back then.
A lot of euro movie stars are like that. Alain Delon and Franco Nero were huge around the world too except in English speaking countries
What movie is this? I can feel that Jackie Chan fight scene rhythm all over it. Also the way the she took off her jacket at the beginning.
Maybe one of the In the Line of Duty films. It's Cynthia Rothrock.
Righting Wrongs
we all know about classic Jackie chans
What about any of his work in last 10 years?
what happened to the John Cena movie with him?
The only good film he's made in the last decade was the one with Pierce Brosnan
No because chinese items always break so whenever they try making films it goes up in flames and the casts die on set.
I refuse to believe dozens of stunts didn't die in each movie
What movie is this? Is it a comedy?
Something's off about this. Like the guys acting or maybe the way it's shot or choreographed. He isn't selling the intensity of his attacks like Benny does.
this feels like that bicep shot in Predator, like "yeah. This guy is clearly as fast or faster than jackie. I definitely can't see what a hard time he's having at keeping up while jackie is pretending to have a hard time keeping up"
Infernal Affairs was kino
Cinema really peaked at late 80s early 90s Hong Kong kinos.
Everything went down hill after that.
jackie chan you say?
Didn't know I needed a kungfu in suspender kinda movie until I saw this
this fight is kino
Post Benny kicking the candle out. I know you've got it.
Jackie Chan turned out to be a commie and a bootlicker of Chinese authorities.
So no, never gonna happen again.
Sad!
That really has helped to kill the genre more than anything, just plain disappointing.
His horse movie from this year or last is really good though
as opposed to being a simp for the west?
I remember the first time I discovered 80s/90s Hong Kong kino, amazing to see where Tarantino stole everything from
For some reason Tarantino dislikes Chow Yun Fat
and who doesn't love a little smokino?
I am Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung pilled
for me it's boxer's omen
>this really happened in real life
really makes you think
Probably not. What country is even like Hong Kong now? South Korea has rapidly advanced way too fast. They make slick high end entertainment now. Thailand gave it a brief shot, but they don't have the domestic market to support it.
Taipei. Which is funny because some of the earliest martial arts films were from Taiwan, but their action movie industry is completely dead now.
>Taiwan
Puppet wuxia lives on!
Based and puppetpilled
I don't really like where s3 is taking the series
S1 was great, first movie was fine.
The rest, eh, i'm not gonna bother watching the next season.
I was in Taipei a few months ago and actually watched a live stage show of this with the pupeteers playing out a fight scene on stage. Was pretty surreal. One of the cosplayers they had on stage portraying a character later was a fan of my girlfriend's writing so I got to meet the cast too. Was pretty surreal.
What a coincidence I too am a fan of your gf's writing
That's pretty surreal.
What a coincidence I too am pretty surreal.
Surrealad (surreal lad)
it's honestly surreal realizing I'm old enough to nostalgically think of old hong kong like those gay artists thought of interwar paris. a kinotopia lost
taiwan's industry always is struggling because their actors are constantly tempted to sell their souls for big budget mainland projects and they just can't compete dollar to yuan on that.
korean films arent even that good anymore
A big mouth, on a wet arse.
Love Hwang Jang Lee.
>chink chigurh
Here's my hot take for the day, I guess:
Most of these movies are better watched in clips than from start to finish. They're not really that great as feature length films and Jackie is especially a bad dramatic actor.
They're fine as feature length films because they are so short and move extemely fast from set piece to set piece.
I wish HK did more adaptations of Gu Long and Liang Yusheng instead of just the endless rehashes of Jin Yong.
If rumble in the bronx came out today, Cinemaphile wouldve hated it just for pic rel alone despite francoise yip
It's not our fault we have Black person fatigue. This was done to us. I remember when you could like black actors because they were good actors.
You homosexuals will argue about anything, so Sammo or Jackie?
I prefer Jet Li, Tonny Leung and Andy Lau more.
>I prefer Jet Li
Not always keen on wire-work but this is kino.
>tfw just want tea in peace
>Jet Li
how?
He cool in Fist of Legend, Hero, Fearless, Dragon Gate and Once Upon a Time in China
I'm sure there's a bunch of socioeconomic reasons for why the films of the late 20th century were good, but even putting the whole China thing aside, people in HK can barely afford to live in the city. Why be interesting or experimental when you've got bills to pay and being formulaic is guaranteed to bring in some income.
I always wondered if that's the character giving a thumbs up to the other bad guy or the actor, forgetting he's still in shot
I like to think he gave it because he's an butthole and was loving that moment kek
Jackie is the greatest kinoture of all time
What's the best John Woo movie? He really made a lot of schlock in America
A Better Tomorrow, I think
I saw this but I didn't know it had a sequel, guess I knw what I'm watching tonight
Hardboiled is his magnum opus. It's probably the best action movie ever made.
A Better Tomorrow 1+2 are both more plot-heavy and both very good.
The Killer is more tragic and tries to be more serious. Also a great movie.
Can anyone name more famous international Asian movie star than Jackie Chan? The only one I can think of that is even close to him is jet li.
Bruce Lee obviously, unless you don't count him as a proper Asian star
As much as I loved Bruce lee. I still think Jackie Chan is above him in term of fame. Jackie’s movies are just more entertaining. Bruce lee is more like an idealize version of an Asian action move star that passed away too earlier so people lament the loss of his possible potential. Jackie Chan actually made the kung fu genre popular international for a period of time. Just look at this thread, most of the clips are from Jackie Chan, nothing from Bruce lee.
But Bruce Lee has an immense concentration of quality. Like he has I believe only about 4 movies where he was the leading man as an adult, yet he is still famous today. Jackie has had god knows how many.
You're like those homosexual who argue over who is better in America, Stallone or Schwarzenegger. Who gives a frick. They both fill a slightly different niche, and both are necessary. Just enjoy both.
Schwarzenegger is better though
Schwarzenegger is better.
Schwarz is better.
>I still think Jackie Chan is above him in term of fame.
You are entitled to your opinion, though I have to disagree. Jackie is famous. Bruce is iconic. He's been so mythologized that even people who have never seen his movies know exactly who Bruce Lee is.
Yeah I agree on Bruce being more iconic but Jackie is more popular in my opinion. Let’s be honest. Would you watch a Jackie action movies or a Bruce lee one?
I'd say you'd watch both for different reasons. If you want a fun, lighthearted action film with insane stunts you watch Jackie. If you want something ridiculously cool you watch Bruce.
>Would you watch a Jackie action movies or a Bruce lee one?
It's a tough call. I would say that Jackie's best are better than Bruce's, but that's more to do with the evolution of kung fu cinema (of which, Jackie was highly instrumental) than real superior quality. Enter the Dragon is a fantastic movie, and timeless. Drunken Master 2 is arguably the best kung fu movie ever made. I guess I'd have to side with Jackie. Bruce is still cool though in his own way.
I don't think it's a tough call at all. Bruce Lee films are more realistic and as a result are less entertaining. There's no question that Lee was the better martial artist but the choreography and fights he was in were not nearly cinematic enough to captivate audiences. His films are interesting and a few of them are even good, but Chan is like the reincarnation of Chaplin/Keaton and incorporates stuntwork and slapstick that I truly believe makes him one of the greatest movie stars of all time.
I remember being a kid and watching Hard Boiled for the first time.
I can imagine it was similar to third worldies watching golden age Hollywood for the first time.
no
and its unlikely that we will ever see a good era of cinema ever again
>My Lucky Stars or Winners and Sinners
Cool, thanks
>I don't remember this one. Jackie looks a bit older too
It's City Hunter
Thank you!
imma need a source my guy
Mortal Kombat surely?
Their best days are behind us
wtf is this and why is it so sad?
It's from Jackie's new movie Ride On where he plays an aging, out of the limelight stuntman who is estranged from his children
>gee I wonder who could that be
If that sounds too real for you anons the main draw is his costar is a horse
they dont make them like they used to
No sense of flow what so ever.
this whole show is wire. actors, cameraman, director live on the wire
why are they so addicted to crouching dragon shit
For me its Shanghai Noon and Knights
What are some HK kinos? I have only seen the first Police story
>Hardboiled
Best action movie ever made
>Winners and Sinners
Ensemble comedy with good fight scenes
>Wheels on Meals Extremely comfy comedy + kung fu movie
>Armor of God 1 + 2
Indiana Jones but Indy is played by Jackie Chan
>Legend of Drunken Master
Period piece in ancient China. Great fights with some neat gimmicks
>A Better Tomorrow
A serious gangster/crime drama
>Infernal Affairs
the movie that The Departed was an adaptation of. (This might be Cantonese instead of HK though)
>Tiger on Beat
buddy cop movie. It's basically a standard buddy cop movie and then the film makers realized there wasn't enough balls-to-the-walls action and added in an extra 30 minutes or so after what you would assume is the ending and made it absolutely cuhraaaazy
>Prison on Fire
It's sort of like the HK version of Shawshank. Not to be confused with Prison on the Island of Fire which is also a HK prison movie and is also good.
>Dragon's Forever
Solid Jackie Chan film. I would watch it after Wheels on Meals since a lot of the cast returns.
>Hardboiled
>Best action movie ever made
110 fricking percent. If someone tells me their favourite action film is Die Hard or The Matrix I just assume they've never seen Hard Boiled. Nothing will ever top it.
>(This might be Cantonese instead of HK though
What do you mean with this? As in South East China? I'm pretty sure that Infernal Affairs is an HK film.
I watched Infernal Affairs as a kid with some Chinese friends of mine and they just referred to it as a "canto movie". I wasn't sure if that was just the language that was being spoken or if it was a region/genre. I don't know much about what if any movies China [proper] was making during the era of [British] Hong Kong cinema.
Yes, they say canto because of the language.
Mainland China actually has some pretty brilliant films but nobody in the west tends to know them.
Cantonese is the major language spoken in Guangdong province, unlike other "dialects" the PRC has been more successful at stamping out the fact that people in Hong Kong primarily used Cantonese, which was also the dominant language in HK songs/movies/etc. (though Mandarin has been creeping in over the past 20 years) has ensured its continued relevance.
mainland chinese media can be good but one has to either learn how to filter the propaganda schlock or learn to tolerate it
One of my favourite Chinese films is an Indiana Jones knockoff which has an opening scene absolutely eviscerating the cultural revolution. This was played on Chinese TV regularly while I lived there. It shows the little red book holders out wrecking shit and then getting absolutley murdered the shit out of by zombies. The censorship isn't quite as tight as most people think.
Tbf, iirc you are legally not allowed to show the cultural revolution in a positive light.
I did not actually know that. I know that the CCP actually have an openly negative outlook on Mao but didn't know that about the cultural revolution.
I'm not entirely sure about the "legally"-part, so look up the details before you go repeating it.
But i cannot recall ever having seen a chinese movie or tv-show where the cultural revolution is not depicted as bad, and nothing but bad. This despite there absolutely being a marked for red nostalgia, with loads of chinaboomers looking back at those days with rosy glasses.
And the official party narrative is that cultural revolution was only bad, and only gang of four were to blame. And disputing this could obviously be taken as challenging the current leadership (since they gained power by purging gang of four). So i do absolutely believe that chinese cencorship would slap down any production that tried to show cultural revolutionaries as not-misguided.
the cultural revolution isn't really a useful topic because even in China it's not looked upon fondly
a better example would be finding me a webnovel where the central government isn't always in the right (despite the hilarious fact that local officials are always scum sucking and useless) and all powerful. the most prominent example reverend insanity got banned in no small part because it shit on the government as a whole, not just corrupt "local" officials who totally aren't the norm guys - despite being literally everywhere lmao
That was something I picked up on almost immediately when I moved there. It's always the local government. Provincial governments face a lot of protests and such but it's never the central party in Beijing. Only with the recent covid lockdown protests have I seen the actual government come under scrutiny from the public and they relented fricking quickly.
much like the famous discussion about russia where it's always the corrupt boyars fault, never the tsars. it's a fig leaf excuse where the central government can tacitly admit there's a lot of corruption, nepotism, and other chicanery going on within the bureaucracy but maintain the continued purity of the good central government looking out for the people's interest.
the covid thing was a rare example where the party had embraced the policy so universally, and bungled it so comprehensively, that the fig leaf couldn't possibly work and that scared the CCP for sure.
It was a perfect example of how shit scared the government are of the people in China. Everyone always makes the mistake in the west as viewing the Chinese as brainwashed. They're not brainwashed, they're content. And if that contentness ever goes south the government is in big fricking trouble.
Crazy to imagine that Jackie was absolutely over the hill by the time he became famous in the west. His heyday was in the 1980's.
Best fight scene ever filmed. Period.
Something to also note is that Hong Kong was undergoing a severe financial crisis in the late 90s which led to a lot of belt tightening especially as there was increasing pressure to compete with Hollywood.
The days of buying children and turning into super humans by inhuman training are over. Don't be sad because it's over, be happy because it happened
Sammo looking good
Only four of them became popular.
>four
that's generous, I would even say 2 is pushing it
Sammo Hung! Absolute legend. His US cop show was actually really great.
I'll never understand how Sammo Hung managed not to lose weight doing the things he does
It was kind of his trademark being a fat bastard that still does kung fu convincingly so there must have been some serious gorging going on whenever he wasn't filming
There’s some pro wrestlers who are pretty big guys too but can move pretty crazy in the ring though I’ll never understand why they wouldn’t lose weight either. Amish Roadkill comes to mind he was a portly guy but see his ECW matches and he could do top rope shit and the like. So some fat guys like Sammo got dope moves I guess
Opinions on these, bros:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Jackie-Chan-Collection-Volume-1-1976-1982-Blu-ray/326756/
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Jackie-Chan-Collection-Volume-2-1983-1993-Blu-ray/331826/
???
No.
>NOOOOO BRUCE, PLEASE! HAVE MERCY! AIEEEEEE
Bruce Lee's films aren't even good. Credit where credit's due, the guy played a huge role in introducing the west to asian kungfu films, which in turn lead to him being an icon, but the quality isn't that good. Especially when compared to other stuff Shaw Bros were already churning out in that period of time.
Yeah, with how I see it, Bruce set the stage and Jackie become the star.
You can if you make your movie in some unregulaited shithole with local talents (poor kids).
imagine being young and rich in HK or Japan during the 80s and early 90s
must've been heaven
why?
All the usual benefits of being rich + a huge economic contrast where everyone else is still 3rd world poor and will throw themselves at your feet
just move to india with a fat stack of US dollars
I wouldn't want indians anywhere near my feet
what do you care if you were gonna be a rich butthole spitting on the chinkies anyway
I don't think it was implied that you'd be a foreigner in that scenario or that you were looking down on those people, just that you'd be treated way better than in western countries where "the poor" are all apathetic and live comfortably enough to not give a frick about groveling to rich people
it's explicitly stated anon wants to spit on the poor who are groveling before him
Not spit on the poor, just be treated way better for your money because everyone else is still living in cardboard houses with no air conditioning and eating 95% rice diets. Any store or restaurant you entered, they'd consider you Humphrey Bogart, and you'd frick any woman you wanted
Chinaman societies are pretty well on the law and order front, and in my experience they're pretty cool with whiteys if you put in the absolute minimum of effort.
But india is full of indians...
Bad idea unless your part of a Tibetan Buddhist conclave that secludes itself away from the rest of India.
Expecting people to risk their neck or even just put personal effort into films in the 21st century is like thinking someone in 1990 would put their life on the line to reinvigorate the radio drama industry. Film is finished now FRICK OFF with this stupid board craving more films. Delete this fricking wretched board
Even Jackie Chan is a soulless commie shill nowadays
Its unironically over
Thanks to all the movie choices frens! <3 Aside from Sammo Hung, Jet Li, Jackie, Stephen Chow and of course Ip Man my HK movie knowledge is sadly lacking. I always look forward to these threads. ^-^
AI renaissance is hurtling towards us
You need FILM to get kino.
You cannot have kino on a DIGITAL CAMERA.
WAKE UP.
Not anytime soon. Nobody is interested in putting in the time to learn and execute choreography to a high level of mastery. 5/10 close enough is what is aimed for now. The last example from the west I can think of that even tries to get a 10/10 result and settles for something above a 6/10 is the Star Wars prequels. Only George Lucas's autism combined with his money was able to create and execute passable choreo.
John Wick is a love letter to and tries its best to live up to its inspirations but Keanu is old and stiff, in his prime was well below average by HK standards, and those movies are still subject to the rest of the modern western constraints which hobble every other production. It's never ever happening in the west and because of the westernization of much of the world, there isn't the leeway for it to happen anywhere else either.
gotta love globalisation, everything is exactly the same, and that same is boring safe uninspired garbage
forever and ever
John Wick Choreo style is different than HK style of action. HK action is derived from opera house so it's all about the actors hitting on beat to form a rhythm.
John wick's choreo is off beat in comparison since it's focused on Keanu hitting complicated moves that come from Sambo/Judo/BJJ.
True HK love letters are in Matrix 1 and Kill Bill.
Talking about Kill Bill. Watching that Cynthia Rothrock webm earlier, she'd have been the perfect choice for that film. Tarantino fricked up by not going for her. He loves bringing old actors into the spotlight again.
Rothrock refused to give Quentin a footjob
How dare she!
To replace Uma? Nah
To be fair, Thurman is a much better actress than Rothrock by far.
Not as good at the action though. But Vol 2 had no action and basically relied on her acting so you may be right.
Yep, Wick is unironically closer to (early) Seagal with his persona and action style
I don't dig it
HK action cinema has many different flavors to it, from early wuxia to Jackie Chan, all of them being distinct from one another
Jackie didn't quite manage to be a Bruce Lee clone so wisely decided to come up with his own style
man there are way too many movie titles here. but I havea lot of material to look at now
im watching hard boiled right now guys, wish i had a few beers but im broke
love me some chinkino
No. Cultural peak has passed
I like drunken master the training scenes are funny
john wick
Always liked seeing Lola Forner random appearing in some Jackie or Sammo film. She plays characters central to the plot in a couple of their films but appears in the background in a bunch more. She was primo in the 80's too, so that's a plus.
The mall scene in Police Story 1 is so good I told some people at a party it was real glass that the actors were being hit with and they believed me lol
Good shit
Some of it IS real glass because sugar glass doesn't last in storage
Jackie famously jumps through real pane of glass in police story 2 and walks away with just a few cuts on his arms
There's technique to diving through tempered glass without being cut but most people don't even attempt it cause you will get serious cuts if you frick up
Frick that’s awesome a lot of that glass looks real and I didn’t know he got legit hurt jumping through those Christmas decorations in the end. Jesus even him diving at the villain on the escalators you see bts footage were he basically fricks up and misses too JFC what a movie
>It wasn't just a few cuts on his arm. It was several lacerations on his hands, 3rd degree burns and he broke his back when he hit the bottom. Scene was cleaned up, he got in a cab to go to another film shoot he was shooting at the same time, took two steps out of the cab and collapsed on the pavement.
a mans gotta
Wrong stunt my son. Police Story 2, the one where jumps through a pane of glass from the roof of a moving bus.
The end of Police Story 1 is a lot more hardcore ofc and he's lucky to be alive.
Not good video quality but the aforementioned mall fight from Police Story 1 to get a handle on how insane it is
Even white people could do it
Cynthia Rothrock is fricking awesome.
because they spent whole weeks filming one (1) fight until it's perfect
plus Cynthia Rothrock is an actual kickboxing champ so they didn't have to spend months to years training her until she could do the moves
Pretty sure she was a high-level taolu/wushu performer primarily?
How did she do it? Every other martial arts star of the time who met her always said she was based as hell.
that pole magically doubled in length
It was a golden time for them in film, I'm thankful it happened at all. Some places are never so lucky.
I’ve noticed Tubi has a lot of these HK flicks so I’ve been watching them there lately. Also if you know where to look YouTube and archive.org does too. So infuriating that Netflix and Prime barely has any good action shit up at all
The big streaming services are pretty lame for anything that's not a mega blockbuster or cheap B movie.
For me, it's fallen angels.
cute and cool af. love me some maggie cheung
That movie is my go-to-example for how surreal hk cinema can be.
Scene with baby taking a nail to the head and melodramatic slomo hospital scene, straight to slapstick comedy where babykiller woman is lol so wacky.
Or grenade scene, where our heroes throw dynamite at chained up kids, and the camera focus on how the dying kids all piss themselves (no idea if that was supposed to be funny), then straight to radical Skeletor battle scene.