Chinese Cinema on DVD/BD

[feihong]

So I wonder what the version was which I've seen then? I don't recall the law coming in to punish the guilty at the end of the picture. I'll have to watch it again and see which version I've got.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

There should be a series of three white-on-black title cards just before the closing credits with stuff like "Nuo is arrested in Hong Kong" and "The riot against demolition has been resolved and peace is quickly restored." The longer cut apparently ends with the real estate company's "Achieve Dreams of Wealth" slogan. Interestingly it also actually shows Nuo being loaded into a police car instead of only alluding to her arrest in a title card—very strange that this wasn't included in the cut version.

[colinr0380]

I have just happened across these videos whilst looking up old BBC "Film Club" introductions: Tony Rayns introducing a double bill in 1988 of In The Wild Mountains (a real obscurity from Xueshu Yan, a director who only went on to make one further film in 1988) followed by A Chinese Ghost Story

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

I have just happened across these videos whilst looking up old BBC "Film Club" introductions: Tony Rayns introducing a double bill in 1988 of In The Wild Mountains (a real obscurity from Xueshu Yan, a director who only went on to make one further film in 1988)...

The IMDb only lists one, but he did two others, both set during the Sino-Japanese War and neither with an official English title I can find: "Step Into Glory" (1994) and "Silent Woman, Silent Bomb" (2000). He also worked in television, as did a lot of other filmmakers after the Chinese film industry entered its crisis period in the early '90s. In the Wild Mountains is pretty obscure now but was prominent on the festival circuit when it came out; it's still worth seeing as a look at rural changes during the hectic 1980s.

The real reason I checked out this thread is because Well Go has acquired 100 Yards, the latest from Xu Haofeng (The Sword Identity, The Final Master). Interestingly this one is codirected with his brother Xu Junfeng, who has no other film credits I can find but has worked with Haofeng on some martial-arts history books. Xu Haofeng's The Hidden Sword vanished after a Montreal festival screening in 2017 (possibly because of a dispute over the final cut) and The Weary Poet (with Zhou Xun and Chen Kun) is still MIA despite wrapping in 2018, so this is long overdue.

[colinr0380]

Thanks for the correction, Fanciful Norwegian. It's always good to know that there is more work out there than imdb suggests there to be.

[feihong]

The real reason I checked out this thread is because Well Go has acquired 100 Yards, the latest from Xu Haofeng (The Sword Identity, The Final Master). Interestingly this one is codirected with his brother Xu Junfeng, who has no other film credits I can find but has worked with Haofeng on some martial-arts history books. Xu Haofeng's The Hidden Sword vanished after a Montreal festival screening in 2017 (possibly because of a dispute over the final cut) and The Weary Poet (with Zhou Xun and Chen Kun) is still MIA despite wrapping in 2018, so this is long overdue.

Well this is great news. The Final Master has been one of my favorite films from the 2010s, and it looked like a big advance in artistic sureness and sophistication for Xu Haofeng––one that led me to anticipate some artistically thrilling movies to come. What happened instead is kind of stunning and––for me, at least––deeply sad––with, as Fanciful Norwegian points out, two subsequent films unaccounted for. So I'm really looking forward to 100 Yards. With the retirement/irrelevance of the previous generation of Hong Kong martial arts stars and filmmakers (Jackie Chan horse cop movie, anyone?), and the dismally characterless majority of the output from subsequent stars like Tony Jaa and Wu Jing, I have hoped that Xu Haofeng's films would augur a new, important movement in martial arts films. I hope that will still come to pass.

So the trailer for 100 Yards looks pretty phenomenal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX7eQxIVxLI

Gorgeous costumes, cool sets, intense-looking people...what looks to be a thorny story of political intrigue in the martial arts world...and those thick, juicy sound effects...lots of what made The Final Master so good looks like it's here in this one as well. Love the "Gangs of New York" vibe to the different martial arts groups. And...wow, that's Andy On! He looks so f*ckin' great here. Can't wait to see it.

Incidentally, In the Wild Mountains is findable on the interwebs, with English subtitles, in a print that looks like it came off a laserdisc or something.