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Re: Recommend Movies...
Naa, I think you misunderstood something here. Quentin Tarantino doesn't own the rights to "Hero". Never has, never will. It is owned by Miramax, who just happen to be the guys that are producing and releasing his movies. The Weinsteins thought that Hero wouldn't be profittable on the US-Market, and therefore canned it for almost 1 1/2 years, and only because QT said that he would "present" the film they're putting it out now. It's only because QT's Name means money, nothing lese, nothing less. Miramax(e) tends to pile up the rights to various asian movies, to either never release them, or only after a few years (when every real fan already has a bootleg or an imported version) or heavily cut, redubbed, retitled and rescored (see various Jet Lee Films and "Shaolin Soccer". New Line did the same with Jackie Chan's "Rumble in the Bronx", "First Strike" or "Mr Nice Guy"). "Hero"'s limited theatrical run in Cities like L.A. or NY was simply because of the Academy Awards, as they tried to cash in on the success Columbia had a few years ago with "CTHD" (But it didn't work out for them, "Somewhere in Africa" from Caroline Link was the superior movie)
If you had a bad version of CTHD it certainly was a bootleg. Why? Because CTHD was a US-Production all along. Chinese Crew, british Photographer, US-Money (or, well.. japanese Money, as Sony/Columbia is still a japanese Company).
The differing in quality always has to do with the masters they're using. In Asia, Movies are an every day thing like Milk or Bread. In HK you go into a VCD/DVD-Store, buy a few films (VCDs cost normally around 80 cents top 1,30$, DVDs start at 2 $), watch them and throw 'em away. In many cases there aren't even any masters of older films! They used to master on beta, and after some time just recorded a new movie over the existing one. That's the reason why many older Films from Guys like Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung always have the Label of "Atlas Film" in the Credits, as they had to come and get the old german masters, as we always handled the world sales.
Another thing is, that many (smaller Labels) especially in Britain tend to take just an DVD as the master, it's much cheaper than to take the negative and make a new print of it. A good example is Tartan, who put out the Ringu-Trilogy long before Countries like the US even took notice. They're grainy, colors washed out and mostly hardsubbed. One company that always does the best prints worldwide is Britain's "Hong Kong Legend's". It doesn't get better than this, and even their us-american counterparts simply suck. The only complaint with HKL is, that sometimes they put trailers on the dvd, that they made themselves, if they couldn't find the original theatrical trailer. And i tell you, a Trailer to "The Killer" with music from Hans Zimmer's "Directors Cuts: Action" simply sucks
But in the end all this talking is just blabbering. All that counts is the movie, just take a look at "Van Helsing". The production values etc were great, but the movie totally stunk. No anamorphic 16:9 Letterbox with DTS 6.1. Secrete can save a bad movie...
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Originally Posted by Jozie
the crappier the better
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