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That's all the permission I need to get the disc, and have at least *some* version of Nomad on bluray. Thank you for the overview, Finch!

I also got my disc this week but forgot to put down some thoughts, so thanks Finch for stepping in. What I found interesting was that they practically left Nomad’s nighttime scenes alone. These have pleasing grain, detail and colors, so the tinkering during other scenes is that much more noticeable. I have a feeling that the NR was requested by Patrick Tam as My Heart is That Eternal Rose, another Mei Ah title / restoration, looks beautifully maybe because he didn’t supervise the mastering.

Some of you will probably notice some macro blocking in My Heart is That Eternal Rose even though Fidelity worked on it. This occurs during a scene where a location is completely bathed in red light and that’s where the grain structure briefly collapses. I’d bet the same is true for the US disc and maybe that blockiness is even in the master itself, which wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. Other than that, gorgeous presentation and the encode is fantastic.

Nomad comparison: Japanese and HK DVDs and Director´s Cut bluray:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=728385

All things considered, Nomad was way, way more watchable than I was afraid it would be, and My Heart is That Eternal Rose looks exquisite. The other thing I'm really looking forward to are the episodes of the CID TV show on both discs. This is a pretty incredible package.

TBH, the big thing that threw me was the new opening for Nomad on the director's cut, which adds a collection of new scenes to the front of the film (I mean, I hadn't seen the workprint or the Japanese version before, just the HK cut). New stuff to consider, surely.

Joey Wang is exquisite here––I know she was a big star in Hong Kong, and she was in tons of movies, but I still feel she was underrated––and under-appreciated when she made her curious retirement announcement. But still, to see Ng Man-Tat in 1080p glory, holy sh*t. I hope Radiance is one day able to release It's Now or Never, where Ng Man-Tat shines brighter than the sun.

feihong wrote: Tue Mar 11, 2025 8:40 am All things considered, Nomad was way, way more watchable than I was afraid it would be, and My Heart is That Eternal Rose looks exquisite. The other thing I'm really looking forward to are the episodes of the CID TV show on both discs. This is a pretty incredible package.

TBH, the big thing that threw me was the new opening for Nomad on the director's cut, which adds a collection of new scenes to the front of the film (I mean, I hadn't seen the workprint or the Japanese version before, just the HK cut). New stuff to consider, surely.

Joey Wang is exquisite here––I know she was a big star in Hong Kong, and she was in tons of movies, but I still feel she was underrated––and under-appreciated when she made her curious retirement announcement. But still, to see Ng Man-Tat in 1080p glory, holy sh*t. I hope Radiance is one day able to release It's Now or Never, where Ng Man-Tat shines brighter than the sun.

Isn't Ng Man-Tat already in Radiance's A Moment of Romance, another film in which he made a lasting impression? As for My Heart Is That Eternal Rose, HKIFF just announced a new restoration, which I'm quite curious to find out about.

feihong wrote:Joey Wang is exquisite here––I know she was a big star in Hong Kong, and she was in tons of movies, but I still feel she was underrated––and under-appreciated when she made her curious retirement announcement.

I’ve always liked her. She played a lot of bubbly pretty girls, and I can’t say there’s much to those particular performances, but at her best she could project a sadness and longing under her winsomeness that gave those parts depth. I remember her being something of a revelation in The East is Red, where she became the beating heart of that weird, sad movie. And how moving it was in Green Snake to see her develop her sexy naif character from A Chinese Ghost Story into something more mature and wise while Maggie Cheung played a character more in line with Wong’s typical roles. Tsui really used all facets of her across his films as director or producer.

I tend to think of her alongside Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin, but I get the impression most other people don’t. Maybe if she’d done more Wong Kar-Wai films?

I think that in spite of a lot of striking roles for Tsui Hark (Working Class, A Chinese Ghost Story, Deception, The East is Red, and to my eyes perfect in the older sister role in Green Snake), the loads of horsesh*t she did for Wong Jing helped to diminish her in some peoples' eyes. I thought she delivered very consistently in those movies as well––there is a wretched film in there in which she plays a criminal who shoots a child cowering under a table point blank after delivering the line "short life, huh?" But I think she's pretty credible as a genuinely hateful character, as well as in her more sympathetic roles. In comic roles she often seemed to be holding back her own laughter, reminiscent of Ann Sheridan in I Was a Male War Bride. Her copious roles as a lovely ghost seem altogether very consistent and effectively romantic, no matter how sub-par any of the knockoff films might be (and The Beheaded 1000 is pretty damn sub-par). I had forgotten this, but a love affair with a businessman and the subsequent negative publicity derailed her career after 1993. She made 8 films in 1993, and then was off-screen entirely until 1997, and she was only in 3 more films after that. Her biggest year was 1990, where she made 12 films.

Her Wong Kar-Wai movie came too late, essentially––and it turned out not to be a Wong Kar-Wai movie at all. I think she's fascinating in Peony Pavilion, and I wanted to see more of what she might do as an actress in queer-coded art-house movies. Apparently a combination of negative press, grief over the suicide of her friend, Leslie Cheung, and, apparently being filthy rich (she claims she has more money than she can spend in her lifetime), led her to retire. At almost 60 she looks eerily like she did in her heyday. Looking her up, I discovered she was known as one of the "Four Flowers" of Hong Kong cinema, along with Maggie Cheung, Cherie Cheung, and Rosamund Kwan. Never heard that moniker before. I guess it was the scandal that torpedoed her career. What a shame.


I forgot Moment of Romance was on Radiance. That's great. Someone needs to take up the cause of It's Now or Never, though! There's a lovely 1080p trailer for the film from Golden Sun Film, but I think it's last physical release was on VCD. Probably Ng Man-Tat's best comic performance, playing teddygirl Cheung Man's father––an aging gigolo who takes all kinds of dodgy supplements to entertain his equally-aging clientele. So funny.

What's sad is that I think she was really starting to come into her own as an actor just as her career was ending. Green Snake and The East is Red, both 93, showed a greater maturity and complexity to her acting. I mean, she was only 25/26 making those, just a kid really, and yet you see a more complex woman emerging in those performances. It would've been nice to see what she'd have done in her 30s. If you look at Cheung and Lin, so much of their best work came well into their 30s, and Wong never got that same chance to mature into her performances and do complex dramatic work.

I like Cherie Cheung and Rosamund Kwan, but they mostly gave uncomplicated performances that relied on their charm and pretty faces, whereas I think Wong was like Maggie Cheung: she had more more going on under the surface.

I really should watch Peony Pavilion.

Any love for Patricia Ha? I think she is the biggest discovery for me in this set. I first saw her in An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty years ago and thought she was very good playing a rebellious and seductive woman, but wow she completely owns Nomad. The film can't possibly be the same sexy, mysterious, and fatal story without her. I think she and Leslie Cheung form an interesting pair of siblings, with their gender roles subtly exchanged. And there is in this big sister role just a touch of surrogate mother of her younger brother, who seems to be fascinated with their long-dead mother at a younger age. It's hard to believe she was only 17 when making this film.

Unlike Joey Wong and Brigitte Lin who are both born in Taiwan, and unlike Maggie Cheung who spent most of her adolescence in Britain, Ha is a local-born actor who starts out as a local new gal and then slowly branches out to perform in both Taiwan and Mainland China, running a long and relatively prolific career. Versatile in playing modern as well as period roles, she lives and breathes her characters, often imbues them with her signature unruliness. It's a shame a lot of her works remain inaccessible, or in unwatchable copies. I'd like very much for someone to hurry up and restore The Woman of Wrath, made in the same year as An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty and arguably her best work to date.

I've only seen Pat Ha in two films, Nomad and On the Run, but she's magnificent in both, playing very different roles. She's playful and sexy in Nomad, but frigid and clinical, bordering on psychopathic, in On the Run. Indeed she owns that movie, too, which is an alright Yuen Biao action film hiding this terrific performance from Ha as a contract killer.

I always knew Pat Ha from On the Run and the Shaw Bros stuff, and from Nomad, and my impression was that she was really well-respected amongst fans and somewhat beloved in the Hong Kong movie scene.

She's the lead in a really interesting-looking adaptation of Eileen Chang's novel, The Rouge of the North, which is on my watch-list for the near-soon, but The Woman of Wrath sounds like a must-see. It looks like there's been a restoration of the film in 2022, and there's a good-looking trailer here. A review of Lam Nai-Choi's films revealed her the Mahjong/gangster drama Killer's Nocturne, where she is criminally under-utilized, and where, if I remember right, her head is delivered to another character in a box, like in Se7en, but only 8 years earlier, when that sh*t was still fresh and shocking––though I can't say I appreciated it.

A while ago there a 1080p version of Ha's film Life is a Moment appeared on Youtube. It's a sci-fi melodrama directed by Teresa Woo San (Director of the Iron Angels films). It's a nice-looking transfer as these older, cult items go. The English subtitles are not consistent. Ha clad in an iridescent turqoise space-age jumper is something else.

In 1985 she was in a Taiwanese cult film called The Glamorous Boys of Tang, which looks really interesting and seems unrelated to An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty, but which seems unavailable. There is a terrible-quality clip of about 50 minutes of the film on Youtube. However, there is also a 17-minute experimental art film from 2018 also called The Glamorous Boys of Tang, which is created by a filmmaker discovering that the original script of the Pat Ha movie included a collection of scenes cut probably due to censorship and "market orientation." The scenes are recreated by this other filmmaker as a short––gender ambiguity seemed to be a part of the film originally, but this later short seems to really play up the potential queer reading of the original film, it seems. The experimental film––all newly-shot, with other actors, of course––is streaming on the queer media platform, GagaOOLala.

Also in 1985, along with Her Vengeance star Pauline Wong (an actress who was much more pigeon-holed in particular kinds of roles than Pat, for some reason), she was in a sort of giallo-looking movie called Night Caller, playing a rookie detective named "Porky." The film was directed by Philip Chan, the police Chief in Hard Boiled. That looks like something I have to try and see. The whole film is on Youtube, thankfully.

Gossip I used to read was that Pat Ha was a recluse––I even heard someone back in the day claim she lived on one of the HK outer islands, all alone. I suspect the reality is probably just that she's a more private person than other HK movie stars, and her star moment in film was in the early new wave (Nomad is her first film). She did a striking amount of nudity (for a Hong Kong starlet) in her early films and played a number of characters who demonstrate notable promiscuity. That didn't get her downgraded as an actress (as it sometimes would for later stars––Brigitte Lin seemed especially in fear of this, really highlighting how unconcerned about stigma Pat Ha was), but I wouldn't be surprised if it lead her to be fairly careful about her public appearances, as well as her film choices. She didn't appear on-screen for almost all of the 90s and nearly all of the aughts (I don't remember her appearing in Sylvia Chang's Princess-D, but I guess I saw her there). Looks like she's been in some anonymous films and a bunch of television since, and there's a TikTok of her recently which makes her also look mostly untouched by time. Her early movies are a pretty adventurous bunch, with no unifying genres or repeating roles, and with seemingly no interest in being necessarily glamorous, heroic, or a star––she seems interested in being an actress before being a celebrity in these movies. In later films she seems typed as a mother or a queen, in more pop-oriented and empty-looking projects, horror films and melodramas.

Everywhere I read now says she is part of the "first generation of heroic women in Hong Kong." I don't know how that numbering can work, given it discounts Cheng Pei-Pei, Ivy Ling-Po, Hsu Feng, Lily Ho, and so many earlier stars. Maybe some nuance is lost in the translation of "heroic?" I've always appreciated her, but the relatively unavailability of a lot of her catalog has made it hard to track down the various gems, leaving her career something difficult to assess.

These films are great. Nomad left me with many of the same feelings that Mr Sausage mentions in his writeup, and very few actual 'thoughts' to document - it's an often frustrating but remarkably bold film for twisting around its tones so anarchically. At times I was put off by its attempts at humor, but then the film would magnetize me again with its sincere erotic attitudes and equally-sincere eruptions of violence that I can only compartmentalize as symbolic for the aggressive side of the labile moods of youth.

My Heart Is That Eternal Rose is much more of a straightforward crime melodrama, but it too has these abrasive idiosyncrasies that can either draw one in or repel them. The action sequences, particularly early on, are tight, claustrophobic, brash.. very much 'in-your-face', and they work in contrast to the more cooled observation of beautiful people occupying beautiful spaces occurring outside of these bursts of violence. The action setpieces near the end function like a deterioration of the already-intensified early ones; they are sometimes barely comprehensible in the editing choices. Deaths are shot in a curt and disorienting manner, perhaps the way such an experience would play out if one was really in the thick of a fight/flight situation (likewise in an attempted rape scene), and I admired the film greatly for changing its technical approach without compromising its philosophy. This is a scary, beautiful, confounding world, where anything wrong can happen -and fatalistically will- but it's the opposite of nihilistic. There's a very positive existential idea at the core - that love is worth experiencing no matter the cost or inevitable outcomes. And that goes for characters whose love is unrequited too. It's the act of 'loving', and chasing that love, that matters.

andyli wrote: Wed Mar 12, 2025 3:03 am Any love for Patricia Ha? I think she is the biggest discovery for me in this set. I first saw her in An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty years ago and thought she was very good playing a rebellious and seductive woman, but wow she completely owns Nomad. The film can't possibly be the same sexy, mysterious, and fatal story without her. I think she and Leslie Cheung form an interesting pair of siblings, with their gender roles subtly exchanged. And there is in this big sister role just a touch of surrogate mother of her younger brother, who seems to be fascinated with their long-dead mother at a younger age. It's hard to believe she was only 17 when making this film.

I finally started exploring the Pat Ha back catalog, and I watched a movie called Night Caller. This is a faintly giallo-inspired thriller (three years after Po Chi-Leong's masterful giallo-homage, He Lives By Night, which is a far better movie, but that shouldn't turn anyone off seeing this one) starring and directed by Philip Chan. Chan is the police chief in Hard Boiled, a wonderful actor who directed about 11 films (including the disappointing Sammo picture Where's Officer Tuba?). Night Caller is a really strange film, which shows off Chan's skills as a director––his extraordinary sympatico with the film's other actors is especially notable (indeed, Chan gives every actor, in even the smallest supporting role, and chance to shine––and his star role is generously subdivided with fellow cop-actors Melvin Wong and Patricia––who plays a cop somehow named "Porky"). Chan also has a great feel for images which have a dull, modest or unglamorous sheen to them, but which are nevertheless striking visualizations, which make massive contributions to what the movie aspires to be about.

There's also something I would call a generosity with characters that you don't often see in Hong Kong movies––lesbian characters, for instance, are taken very seriously in the film––as are elderly characters, and mentally-imbalanced characters (there is a moment where one of the insane villains of the piece dresses in blackface––is it terrible to say that the idea seemed to have appropriate story context that a viewer might be able to sublimate any understandable outrage? whereas I don't feel that burden of authenticity is met by other HK new wave blackface scenes in The Nocturnal Demon or Don't Give a Damn, for instance). Though the film makes relentless, mad fun at a child character, who is traumatized by seeing her mother knifed to death right in front of her, and has become selective mute as a result. In the finale of the film, as Melvin Wong (who has essentially adopted the girl, who is the only witness in the case he's investigating) seems to die in a hospital––and then we learn this was all an elaborate ruse prosecuted by doctors, nurses, all the cops in the precinct, and by Melvin himself, to apparently "shock" the little girl into finally speaking again. It is the craziest ending I could have imagined––just unearthly cruel to this poor kid, who just lost her mother, and then sees her adoptive father die in front of her, from the hands of the same killer, supposedly. Really a crazy way to end the film.

The movie doesn't really hold up as a giallo, exactly––though there is a lot of suspense and some violent killings. Where it shines is in the performances, and the top performances that really make it work are the cop trio of Philip Chan, Melvin Wong, and "Porky" Patricia Ha. Patricia gets better and better as the film goes along, seemingly like more is being written for her character as things progress. But the surprise show-stopper turns out to be Pauline Wong, who plays the lesbian partner of the murdered model in the film. Pauline has always played mostly unearthly characters, or people animated by something beyond the norm––she is a memorable ghost in the original Mr. Vampire, again in New Mr. Vampire, and she is stridently intense in the grim masterpiece Her Vengeance, where we spend the whole movie wondering if she notices how her overwhelming need for vengeance against a gang of rapist droogs ruins and ends the lives of everyone even remotely close to her. Nothing for it, let's just do spoilers here:

Spoiler

Pauline is the murderer in this film, driven insane by her lesbian model lover's rejection, or maybe by refusing to take the mountain of pill prescriptions Melvin Wong discovers when he realizes she's the culprit,

and she plays the role with the unpredictable, wild immediacy of a jazz solo. I've always liked her work, but I never realized before how quickly and thoroughly she can develop a character onscreen. Pauline's character only gets about four scenes in this movie, but she goes through a vast gamut of different emotional colors, giving us a very full sense of who this character in all her dimensions. She goes through a flurry of costume changes, reads her lines with crazy timings, and feels by the end both tragically-spurned and genuinely frightening. Pauline is a treasure, maybe the best under-appreciated actress in 80s Hong Kong film, and this is one of her most impressive roles. By comparison, Pat Ha is fun, but much better-served by Nomad, in which she seems more risk-driven an actress the way Pauline is in Night Caller. Pat is sweet in this movie, and there is a clear sense that if the movie was successful, Philip Chan and Pat's "Porky" were set to go on a series of further harrowing cop adventures (Porky ends up blowing away a couple of villains by the end of this one, and the other cops celebrate that she is finally "blooded" in the chilling "happy" ending).

For all that, Night Caller doesn't quite hold up as a film. It often feels as if there is no real story being told here, no events or character desires to really focus upon. Characters have their particular interests and wants and needs, but none of these things seem to rise to the forefront of what's happening––and little of what the characters want seems to move the plot forward. Pauline Wong is the exception here,

Spoiler

except that her killings are essentially revenge for the she feels other people in the movie "made" her kill her lover.

Pauline does a great job of making it all seem very immediate, but her entire motivation is filled in in admittedly gripping flashback. In a way, I'd rather has seen the movie where Pauline Wong plays a model grappling with cognitive disabilities, who finds fulfilling love with a hot fellow model, and goes through a romantic melodrama. That's the most promising direction this could have gone in. As it is, the motivation for the murders feels buried along with the initial victim of the killing spree, and it makes the whole murder mystery element hard to care to track. Another effect of giving every actor their due is that most characters' stories don't quite pan out into anything meaningful. They are often missing crucial setup, development, or conclusion. But in spite of the film not quite working, I found I liked Night Caller a lot. I don't recommend it without reservations, but it is worth seeing, I think, for a glimpse into the acting talents of 5 or 6 criminally overlooked actors of the Hong Kong new wave. I wish there had been the chance for a follow-up, another adventure of detectives Philip Chan and Patricia "Porky" Ha. It was really an interesting watch. Right now the whole movie is up on Youtube, with the VHS trailers at the beginning––including one for a live-action Dragonball Z movie from Hong Kong, that looks insane.