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THE THIRD (AND HOPEFULLY NOT FINAL) WONG FEI-HUNG KUNG FU MOVIE REVIEW


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  • 4 weeks later...

So, Ron mother fucking Smoorenburg finally set up a YouTube channel last year and posted some of his movie / television show fights and stunt work online.

In case you live under a rock and don't know who he is....

Subscribe and support the man's channel by shooting a few likes to his content.

Ron Smoorenburg - YouTube

Edited by J.T.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Someone had the good taste to upload the 1995 MTV Movie Award Lifetime Achievement going to Jackie Chan.  Quentin Tarantino presented the award.

The highlight montage featuring Kung Fu Fighting and More Human Than Human remains one of my favorite things in the world.

Edited by J.T.
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On 12/15/2022 at 12:04 PM, odessasteps said:

Last Hoorah for Chivalry coming to Criterion. 

I believe my review of Last Hurrah for one of the Kung Fu movie review projects was lost during one of the last board updates.  

My retrospective of James Ryan still survives.

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If your thirst for good jidaigeki has not been satisfied, go and check out the Samurai vs Ninja channel on YouTube before the Content Nazis shut it down.

SAMURAI VS NINJA - YouTube

Kurama Tengu is there for fuck's sake..

English sub | Kurama Tengu | action movie | Full movie - YouTube

I also recommend checking out the semi-official Toei Jidaigeki channel.  The first two episodes of Red Swallow:  Oyuki are there.  I haven't seen them since i was a kid.

東映時代劇YouTube - YouTube

Edited by J.T.
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On 6/7/2022 at 1:30 AM, J.T. said:

So, Ron mother fucking Smoorenburg finally set up a YouTube channel last year and posted some of his movie / television show fights and stunt work online.

In case you live under a rock and don't know who he is....

Subscribe and support the man's channel by shooting a few likes to his content.

Ron Smoorenburg - YouTube

I feel like I remember a thing where Jackie talked about how this dude was awesome but they couldn’t get him to “screen fight” aka pull his strikes so Jackie really is defending himself and taking full strength shots from him. Either way amazing scene and I love this movie even though I remember a lot of hardcore KF peeps back in the day not liking it. 

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5 hours ago, FourPostMassacre said:

I feel like I remember a thing where Jackie talked about how this dude was awesome but they couldn’t get him to “screen fight” aka pull his strikes so Jackie really is defending himself and taking full strength shots from him. 

That is not quite true.  Jackie is an incredibly dedicated performer, but he can be really hard to work with especially if you are not a member of his inner circle of preferred stunt performers like Wong Jing. 

During the documentary made about the production of Who Am I?, the filmmakers kinda thew Ron under the bus.  There were some language gaps and it took Ron a while to get the hang of the complex fight choreography, but Ron got a bad rap in the industry mostly because the commentary in the documentary attempted to paint him as incompetent.... which he is not.

Here is Ron's interview with Viking Samurai that paints a much better picture of what happened on set.

What happened on Jackie Chan's Who Am I? / Ron Smoorenburg shares intimate details on his Experience - YouTube

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/16/2022 at 2:04 AM, odessasteps said:

Last Hoorah for Chivalry coming to Criterion. 

There was a documentary released six or so years ago called "The Posterist" about Yuen Tai Yung, the artist who did the movie posters for a lot of mostly Golden Harvest films, starting with Bruce Lee and then on to Jackie, Sammo and the Hui Brothers. One of them is Last Hurrah for Chivalry which famously gives away the ending to the movie. Really interesting, made by one of the sons of the Huis. Most of the people here have probably seen at least one of his posters used either on a tape or dvd. Even the art for Jackie's The Big Brawl is by Yuen Tai Yung.

Gallery here.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sometimes the best shit comes on at two in the morning on some channel that no one else watches.   Thanks to my night duty insomnia, I was up surfing through the Pluto TV line up native to my Vizio smartset and the Vizio channel, Dark Matter, showed Brotherhood of Blades 1 and 2, but showed 2 first since it is the prequel.

Very satisfying Wu Xia epics very much in the same modern vein as 14 Blades.  You will forgive the CGI blood and dramatic interludes because the fights fucking rule and that's what's most important.  If we have another one of these projects, I may have to do a special review on these films.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Q1Q2 is a youtube channel with new Chinese releases with English subtitles. A mix of genres but they have a bunch of wuxia movies. Modern wuxia tends to feel kind of the same - everyone flies and lots of cgi in the mix. One movie I watched that had good non-wuxia action was the 18 Arhats of Shaolin Temple starring Xie Miao (or Miu Tse), who played Jet Li's son in the New Legend of Shaolin and My Father is a Hero.

Oddly, Black Belt Magazine (yes, the same one that you used to see in the newsstands when you were picking up issues of PWI) has a youtube channel that puts up various action movies alongside martial arts instructional videos. They have the Five Deadly Venoms, Nine Deaths of the Ninja and Legend of the Eight Samurai there.

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Yes, Madam! features Cynthia Rothrock in her fighting prime and Michelle Yeoh in her first starring gig.  It is not bad, but the fights are not as memorable as they should be.  There isn't anything that Rothrock or Yeoh do in Yes, Madam! that they doesn't do better in anything else, especially Yeoh who aged like a fine wine and is arguably better in later outings like CTHD and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once than she was when she was just starting out.

Most of the ITLOD movies are fairly entertaining actioners.  Royal Warriors stars Hiroyki Sanada and Mike Wong, III features Hiroshi Fujioka (best known for Kamen Rider), and IV has babyfaced Donnie Yen in it.

The plots are shoestring thin, but that doesn't really matter.  As you can tell from the casting, these movies showcased well known martial arts film leads that knew how to kick ass and look good while doing it.

Edited by J.T.
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40 minutes ago, J.T. said:

Good collection although I am not sure how you can have a set with Golden Swallow in it and not include Come Drink With Me.

It’s the dullest answer: Arrow has the rights for Come Drink With Me and already released it on blu.

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If you have Xfinity as your cable provider, you might want to check your notifications.   I saw that I have a free week of Hi-YAA!, the martial arts streaming service.

I plan on watching Legend of Zu tonight and then picking out random shit that I either haven't seen or don't recognize.

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