City of Violence ( 2006 )
Like I said. Dragon Dynasty released a lot of Asian films I had never heard of before. They are well know to the avid Asian movie fan that seeks out every one of the latest films. I was once one of them. Somewhere around the late 90s almost all of the Hong Kong movie industries talent ( best actors, directors, fight choreographers, etc. ) Immigrated to Hollywood. The new wave of Hong Kong cinema had come to an end. So I lost interest and no longer kept up with the newest releases. For the most part Dragon Dynasty re released the new wave classics from John Woo, Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and the old school martial arts classics from Shaw Brothers. But along with them were more recent films I never heard of before. City of Violence is one of them. Made in South Korea, it has a cast and director who are not known outside of their country. The only notable thing about it is that it raked up a lot of awards. That is, a lot of Korean awards.
written by, produced by,, directed by and starring Korean film maker Ryoo Seung-wan, this is basically a tribute ( or rip-off, take your pick ) to the film style of Quentin Tarantino, right down to the choice in musical score. A former gang boss is murdered, his childhood friends return home for the funeral, and while there discover who the real murderer was and take revenge This is basically Kill Bill meets Reservoir Dogs. It is actually a very decent film. But the copying of Tatantino's style borders on ridiculous, especially since Tarantino's style is basically a hodgepodge of styles he stole from his favorite grindhouse directors. well, at least if Tarantino is serious about retiring after his Tenth film, then at least you have Ryoo Seung-wan to take his place.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 )
I had not intended to buy this film on Blu-ray, 40th Anniversary or not. But then a couple of months ago I found out it came in a special edition with a castle shaped box, four plastic barn animals, and a catapult to fling the animals over the wall and at Invaders. And for some reason the Blu-ray in the collectable box was cheaper than the noncollectable Blu-ray without the menagerie. And it turned out it had a few minutes of new extras. So I got it.
There are some films I own too many copies of, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one of them. Somewhere in my stash of old VHS recordings is the copy I taped off of PBS. But then I bought the movie on video so I could own a slightly better copy that didn't have the channel logo pop up every 15 minutes. I bought it again when it was released on laserdisc, because it was letterboxed for the first time, and had the deleted scene restored, and had director commentary from the two Terrys. Actually, the reason I bought a laserdisc player and switched to buying movies on laserdisc was to get the Criterion release of ...Holy Grail. I didn't intend to get it on DVD, because I already had it on Laserdisc. But then came the DVD release with more extras, including brand new skits from the surviving Pythons. This Blu-ray marks the fifth copy I have of the film. The only other movie I have that many copies of is Manos: The Hands of Fate ( all riffed, of course. )
Okay, so maybe this is a review of a toy more than it is a review of a film. It is on Blu-ray, but was shot on cheap film stock to begin with, so basically no vast visual improvement over the past laserdisc and DVD releases. I am sure everyone here has seen this by now, so not much of a reason to summarize the plot. ( But just in case someone here has never seen the movie, it is a bunch of skits involving King Arthur and his knights searching for the Holy Grail. ) And it is just as funny as ever. Perhaps I could comment on the edit of the film for the Blu-ray. There now exists four edits of this film. The original theatrical release which was what was released on VHS ( but as a pan-and-scan full screen ). The second edit for Criterion had a deleted scene from the Castle Anthrax sequence that Terry Jones edited out, edited back in by Jones because he decided editing it in the first place was a mistake. Otherwise the Criterion edit was the original film. The edit made for the Special Edition DVD release kept the Anthrax scene, but made a few edits to the footage removing a few seconds her and there where the characters were "not doing anything". Also, the soundtrack was remixed, removing some lines that the Pythons felt were not really funny ( such as Eric Idle yelling out "Lets build a bridge out of her!" after they prove Connie Booth is a witch. ). It also reinstalled the Dentist on the Job gag. For it's premiere, and in many theaters that screened the film in it's first week of release in the U.K., the Pythons deliberately had the first reel of a different film called Dentist on the Job played before being stopped after the opening credits and a card going up apologizing for the wrong film being played. The Special Edition DVD recreated this faux mistake with the addition of a voice over from Gilliam saying "God damnit, we're playing the wrong film!" just before it is stopped. The 40th Anniversary release not only keeps the deleted Anthrax scene, but thanks to digital cleaning, there is no longer a slight color alteration where the edit occurs. The entire opening credits are reconstructed, so basically you are watching computer generated credits instead of the original shot on film credits. I guess Sony didn't want to pay for the licensing for Dentist on the Job, so that was gone. And the original fade outs and fade ins are replaced with cleaner digitized fade ins and outs. And the soundtrack was once again remixed, changing many of the original sound effects. These are all very minor edits that only someone who has seen Holy Grail multiple times and has completely memorized it would notice. It is nowhere near the scale of what Lucas did to the original Star Wars films. But it is still a bit jarring . But like I said, the comedy still holds up.
Since most of the extras were ported over from the previous releases, I will just talk about the new extras for this release. Apparently there were a lot of extended and alternate scenes that for some reason were never part of the previous releases, including a slightly different ( and much bloodier ) attack by Sir Lancelot ( John Cleese ) on a wedding party when he mistakenly believes a damsel is being held prisoner in the castle. ( The original Red Wedding ). There was also a reel of raw unedited cartoons Gilliam had animated for the movie but were never included, which he finished as DVD extras. There are also a couple of other things I did not have time to get to, and will be watched, along with the older extras, sometime later this month. It also comes with an advertisement for The Holy Book of Days which is basically more extras including unused footage, video shot on the set and audio which should have been included as part of the Blu-Ray extras, but instead is exclusive to Apple for their i-Pad. You Bastards!
Which brings us to the review of the collectable packaging, a.k.a the toy. The box doesn't fold out into a castle as advertised. Rather, there is a box in a box which when put together give you a castle wall. The catapult is something similar to a spoon and looks nothing like a catapult. It attaches to a notch in one of the boxes and is capable of flinging any of the barn animals up, up, up and smack into the ceiling, which sort of counts as over the castle wall. Those looking to keep their boxes in mint condition, or avoid losing any of the animals should do this sparingly. The toy is a decent enough extra, but those who originally paid $25 or more above the retail price for the standalone disc to get the collectable box should feel justifiably cheated.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1732260 times)
