Sad News for fans of the Shaw Brothers Movies (1 Viewer)

[Matthew Brown]

The rumors have been confirmed, Miramax has Video on Demand rights for North America on over 700 Shaw Brothers titles and video rights for 50 titles. (Thanks to Peter for correcting me in his response below!)

For more information, click here, http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=11872 .

So now you can look forward to English dubbed and edited classics. Who knows? Maybe they will add some Rap music!

The Celestial imports of these aren't perfect but they are uncut and have the original soundtracks. They also have some wonderful commentaries.

From what I have heard in the past, Miramax is only truly interested in some of the action/kung fu movies. This means that they will hold the rights to several movies they have no intention of ever releasing.

For an example of one of the Shaw Brother releases by Celestial, click here, http://www.loveandbullets.com/cdwm.htm .
This movie, COME DRINK WITH ME, stars a very young Cheng Pei Pei who you may recognize as the Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

Matt

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

The article says that Miramax has the *video* rights to only 50 films, but has *video-on-demand* rights to the entire collection.

Under the deal, Miramax has video distribution rights for North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand to 50 titles from the library. In addition, Miramax retains VoD rights to the entire collection for North America.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Sigh

Good thing here in Philly at the annual film fest we're having a Shaw Bros retrospective. Miramax hasn't had time to ruin them before then

 

[Matthew Brown]

Peter -
Thanks for the correction. I'll edit the original post.

Matt

 

[Mark Zimmer]

Well, that's 50 DVDs I won't have to buy. Thanks, Miramax!

 

[BrianV]

I feel pretty out of the loop. Why is this such a bad thing? Why is there an assumption that Miramax will alter these movies? Please enlighten me

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Because nary a film of Asian origin has passed Miramax's hands without being stripped of all original sound and music and sliced to ribbons by Harvey Scissorhands "making the film work"

 

[Matthew Brown]

Miramax also tries to keep the ORIGINAL, UNALTERED, movies from being sold in the US.


Matt

 

[Jason Hennigan]

Is this a surprise to anyone?

Di$ney doesn't care about the integrity of these films, and they care even less about what film enthusiasts have to say about them butchering (thus the "ax") films.

For whatever reason, Di$ney gave in and put the Japanese track on Princess Mononoke, and their upcoming Miyazaki releases appear to be ok also, but other than these 4 films, they shred everything.

And on top of that, they've been VERY active in buying up as many HK releases as possible. Their HK catalog is becoming extremely impressive. However all of the films will be released butchered, and will be avoided by a minority of the DVD buying public, and the majority won't even care that the film is completely different from the original HK version. And Di$ney will keep doing this until some new blood gets into their DVD Department.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

For whatever reason, Di$ney gave in and put the Japanese track on Princess Mononoke, and their upcoming Miyazaki releases appear to be ok also, but other than these 4 films, the shred everything.

Tokuma Shoten's contract with Disney has a lot of language that boils down to "Step out of line and die". Since the petition was given by the fans to TS, it was TS that saved Mononoke from being dub-only. Thanks to Steve Alpert caring about their new US customers, we never have to fight the battle on Miyazaki again.

I wish someone in HK (like the Shaws) had such a contract....