88 Films

[beamish14]

VS has expressed a willingness to release Clownhouse. So I could see them working with Bey Logan.

I’d be amazed if MGM ever licensed that title to a label

[Marlew]

Glad to see a principled response from these 88 collaborators. OPY is by far the biggest loss and I feel for him, he's done a lot of fantastic work under significant stress. Hope he can find a new welcoming home.

[What A Disgrace]

Could someone just convince David Kalat and Tim Lucas to be kung fu movie fans? I'm pretty sure they are relatively wholesome.

[dwk]

I’d be amazed if MGM ever licensed that title to a label

You are right, there is no chance MGM ever lets that out of the vault.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

1. Mike Leeder is just your average creepy sexpat who is strangely pro-CCP and against the HK protests, whereas Bey Logan was Harvey Weinstein's right-hand man and has been accused of sexual harassment by 7 different women.

2. No charges or convictions against Logan but I would imagine that it would be tough to get a conviction out of it, especially after a long period of time.

3. Leeder just pretends nothing has happened and has cleaned his social media feed up. Bey Logan on the other hand....

I believe I mentioned the CCP thing in a previous post. He makes it very clear he's on the side of the Chinese government during a few of his commentaries, but again, those are his political beliefs. If you choose to disagree with him, that's fine. It's not something that particularly bothers me as I engage with all sorts of media made by people whose belifs are antithetical to mine. And the sex worker thing too strikes me as an odd thing to pit against him. He's been in Hong Kong for what sounds like decades and doesn't just strike me as a sex tourist. There's this strong desire to legitimize and accept sex work, but then here people are shaming him about being a customer. I'm not even a big Mike Leeder fan, but neither of these things bother me much. Chris Doyle sounded girl crazy back in the day, but no one has come after him.

Regardless, Bey Logan sounds like a creep and an asshole on top of all that. I was never a big fan of his work and not sure what sort of connections he holds in the Hong Kong cinema world that would allow a label like 88 Films to fumble this badly. His commentaries were mostly just trivia lists and 88 Films burned themselves for that.

[Glowingwabbit]

Vinegar Syndrome posted the following on twitter:

Some customers have been asking whether Bey Logan was involved with some of our recent releases. While two of our discs contain archival material that was present on previous Dragon Dynasty editions, we can confirm that we have not partnered with Mr. Logan on any of our releases.

[Maltic]

I believe I mentioned the CCP thing in a previous post. He makes it very clear he's on the side of the Chinese government during a few of his commentaries, but again, those are his political beliefs. If you choose to disagree with him, that's fine. It's not something that particularly bothers me as I engage with all sorts of media made by people whose belifs are antithetical to mine.

Leeder is in "good" company there, with Jackie himself.

.. and btw what is Tsui Hark up to these days?

[Glowingwabbit]

Mike Leeder and Arne Venema won't be working with 88 anymore, though admittedly I don't believe that is too much of a loss considering Mike Leeder's sketchy past. However, it looks like OldPangYau might also not be involved with anymore future releases. This would be more of a devastating loss since he was a key component of these HK releases thanks to his work on finding better audio sources and alternate cuts (as well as creating excellent hybrid cuts).

OldPangYau is far and away the biggest loss from all this. His commentaries were superb.

OldPangYau is out.

https://twitter.com/OldPangYau/status/1 ... UEipNRErZQ

[zedz]

I'm surprised 88 decided to resume hiring him at this stage, unless they had assumed the dust had settled and didn't check his Twitter first?

The "suck it up, snowflakes" tone of their statement about the matter suggests they knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to score some imaginary points on the front lines of the culture wars.

[Orlac]

I'm surprised 88 decided to resume hiring him at this stage, unless they had assumed the dust had settled and didn't check his Twitter first?

The "suck it up, snowflakes" tone of their statement about the matter suggests they knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to score some imaginary points on the front lines of the culture wars.

To be fair, I don't think that was them, just another one of their contributors.

[ryannichols7]

I'm surprised 88 decided to resume hiring him at this stage, unless they had assumed the dust had settled and didn't check his Twitter first?

The "suck it up, snowflakes" tone of their statement about the matter suggests they knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to score some imaginary points on the front lines of the culture wars.

To be fair, I don't think that was them, just another one of their contributors.

it was really disappointingly Irongod, who has been a big time contributor to all these HK releases across each label, even Criterion.

it has been said elsewhere but my issues with Leeder being a creep are moreso in the fact of how unapologetic he is about it. have a burner account dude! I'm sure there's some other celeb or scholar or something that I like who does similar things, but as long as I don't have to know about it.

this isn't my lane of cinema as much as it is others but as far as scholars I didn't know about previously (cause obviously I love Tony Rayns), I appreciate Brandon Bentley and Frank Djeng. both are fairly unproblematic and knowledgeable in my experience. I know Djeng can sometimes be a little more of a "trivia track" guy but he has an infectious enthusiasm, reminds me of Bruce Eder a bit.

[zedz]

I'm surprised 88 decided to resume hiring him at this stage, unless they had assumed the dust had settled and didn't check his Twitter first?

The "suck it up, snowflakes" tone of their statement about the matter suggests they knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to score some imaginary points on the front lines of the culture wars.

To be fair, I don't think that was them, just another one of their contributors.

I had no idea who this Irongod character was and assumed he was speaking on behalf of the company. So they haven't made any statement?

[Glowingwabbit]

I had no idea who this Irongod character was and assumed he was speaking on behalf of the company. So they haven't made any statement?

I mean at this point what kind of statement can they even make? I assume it will be radio silence on this and they won't acknowledge it. They haven't tweeted anything today and Facebook has just been a post about their Dragons Forever check discs arriving.

[Finch]

No release date but confirmed for the US:

[Finch]

And the two horror titles for the UK in the first quarter of 2023:

[Finch]

Last not least a Twitter statement on Bey Logan from 88:

[Glowingwabbit]

Last not least a Twitter statement on Bey Logan from 88:

I was wrong. 88 managed to do a half-assed statement and advertisement for new releases all in one tweet.

[swo17]

I mean, they are dropping him though

[Glowingwabbit]

I mean, they are dropping him though

I mean yeah but the response is totally disingenuous. They were totally willing to work with someone like Logan until most of their regular contributors bailed and they realized they'd take a financial hit. Even with him gone they've lost any goodwill they might have had.

[swo17]

Eh, I'm willing to take their statement at face value. "We genuinely just wanted to make the releases better and more extras packed and that blinded our judgement, we messed up and now we'll do our best to make it right." They're dropping him. They're dropping the extras. They can't change that they started working with him or the fact that they learned the hard way that this would cost them sales and collaborators. But given where we are now, what more could they have done to address the situation? Not do so in conjunction with an announcement of Zombi Holocaust? Perhaps

[therewillbeblus]

It's a strangely written response that does read as shrugging off the validity of concerns for the bulk of it, though I do believe they were "genuinely" prioritizing the artistic value of supplemental material over sociopolitical concerns, as they say. Whether or not others agree with that ethos of prioritization is fair game, but do people really think they were intending to make a political statement rather than blindly inviting people to do extras without caring about/considering the social consciousness? Either way, it's not a good look, but there's a difference

[Orlac]

The very first DVD I bought, Fist of Fury, had a Logan commentary...in which he joked one of the extras was a young Steve Martin. Next thing you know that's all over the Internet as a "fact"

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

.. and btw what is Tsui Hark up to these days?

He was one of the three co-directors (along with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam) on last year's Korean War extravaganza The Battle of Lake Changjin (i.e., Chosin Reservoir). The same three are credited for this year's sequel, but Tsui directed about 90% of it. He also directed one of the better segments of the perhaps inevitably underwhelming omnibus Septet, a mostly amusing comedy bit about a near-future mental institution where the patients (and doctors?) all claim to be famous HK film figures.

[Mr Sausage]

Where did you find out who directed what in Battle of Lake Changjin? The second part of the film definitely had more of Tsui's touch to it, even if it was just endless battle scenes.

[Computer Raheem]

As this situation comes to a close, all I can feel afterwards is a sense of disappointment that it even occurred to begin with. I understand the idea of having a robust, well-curated series of extras (especially for an area of cinema crawling with self-proclaimed "experts" that are nothing more than glorified fanboys), but the risks of hiring such a toxic and genuinely loathsome figure like Logan should have conceivably outweighed the potential benefits. If their response is to be take at face value (and I don't think anyone's kidding themselves as to why 88 released this statement), it makes them look irresponsible in the face of public opinion. How did they think this would go over? Either they're stupid or they genuinely thought this would go over with zero consequences (giving the responses from most of the home video communities, not to mention their collaborators, I can't image them thinking that idiotically). The worst outcome is that 88 was trying to make some sort of "statement" by working with him - Irongod2112's maddening response, though not something that should be seen as indicative of what 88 was thinking, doesn't exactly help in this regard with what zedz accurately described as a "suck it up, snowflakes" attitude. Either way, this only makes me want to avoid their product going forward, which sucks considering the titles they've acquired.