The Killer from Buena Vista, Cut? (1 Viewer)

[Will K]

To quote a certain animated rabbit: "Of course you know this means war."

This is just one studio that flat out doesn't care.

Yep...and I thought it was hard trying to get an uncut film from Paramount.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

WHAT WE NEED TO DO:

Take out a full page ad in Variety informing the entire industry of the lack of respect Miramax/Dimension has shown for artist's right to have their film uncut and unbutchered/dubbed. This is PRIMO humiliation, and has always worked thus far with others (Star Wars, Buffy Season 3 finale)

Picket Miramax/Dimension, again, PRIMO humiliation. Make sure the news gets down there, especially shows like ET and/or Access Hollywood. Again, total humiliation

 

[Matthew Brown]

Jeff -
Excellent idea. I would just be afraid of winding up with either too much money or not enough. I know a lot of people would be willing to contribute. Maybe we could find out how much the full page add costs and get sponsers from web sites.

Matt

 

[Jeff Kleist]

$2500 for a full page ad

We just refuse donations beyond the $2500 necessary. Until you process them, the payments are not charged to the person, or funds extracted

 

[Matthew Kiernan]

Does anyone have confirmation - I mean has actually seen just what it is Miramax is releasing - that this is cut? You're screaming bloody murder but you don't even know if there's actually a corpse yet.

 

[Scott_MacD]

Chris,

There's a few PAL discs out there where the audio is almost indistinguishable, aside from the near imperceptible 4% speed alteration. The main way that they can be told apart is due to the alteration in pitch.Hopefully the audio will be lowered in pitch to reflect that of the 4% speedup, to compensate. It will still be spedup, but the pitch of the music and the voices will be correct.

 

[Matthew Brown]

The Killer will be the R rated cut and not the Director's approved version. John Woo himself is furious that Disney would not speak with him about this.

Lets just say a little white birdy told me.

Matt

 

[BooneG]

I just don't get it. They let Wo-ping redo "Iron Monkey", but they won't let Woo have his say with his own movie. Di$ney can kiss my (|). This is just so wrong. They have no idea how much money they are losing by doing this.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Aha! You forget, Yuen Wo-Ping has "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger" to his name, which makes him marketable. That and Disney probably told him they wanted to slice and dice his movie, and he got permission to be the one to do the butchery

At least that's what i'm betting

 

[Chad Parks]

...or the fact that Quentin has alot of clout around there, and made sure that Iron Monkey wasn't butchered. Too bad he doesn't oversee all the HK films.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Does anyone have confirmation - I mean has actually seen just what it is Miramax is releasing - that this is cut? You're screaming bloody murder but you don't even know if there's actually a corpse yet.

We don't need a body to start screaming. They've left a trail of bodies behind them like:

Drunken Master 2(ending cut, score changed, dub only),

Fist of Legend(important parts of film changed in dialogue, dub only)

Accidental Spy(21min cut, dub only, score probably changed)

Zu Warriors(Legend of Zu)-(20min cut, dub only(with stereotypical fake sounding Asian accents!), score altered)

Shaolin Soccer(Opening cut, music changed, dub only)

Shall we Dance?-(18min cut)

etc etc the list goes on and on and on. They don't call him Harvey Scissorhands for nothing. HK films are not the first, nor the last kind of foreign film Miramax has butchered.

Hong Kong film, like ALL film deserves to be released in it's original cut, original aspect ratio, and original spoken language.

HOW HARD IS IT?

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

How is the Universe release of The Killer? Worth picking up or should I just wait for the platinum release?

 

[Matthew Brown]

Todd -
I would wait for the HKL release. The Universe isn't that bad. I haven't been able to watch it on the 47 inch TV but on a 27 inch TV it looked OK. Here's some links to my reviews of the different versions as well as a review for the HKVIDEO release.
http://www.loveandbullets.com/killer.htm
http://www.loveandbullets.com/killerhkvideo.htm
Jeff -
The score to ACCIDENTAL SPY will be changed. It's the same composer that did redid DM II.
Matt

 

[Richard Kim]

I thought that with Criterion acquiring the rights to the Winstar library that they were going to rerelease The Killer. Since when did Buena Vista get the rights?

 

[Matthew Brown]

The KILLER and HARD BOILED weren't part of the deal. I am sure Buena Vista could easily outbid Criterion on the rights aquisition.

Matt

 

[Todd Terwilliger]

Matthew:

Thanks for the reviews. It looks like I'll wait for the platinums.

 

[Ted Todorov]

I thought that with Criterion acquiring the rights to the Winstar library that they were going to rerelease The Killer.

The deal was extremely limited -- six or eight titles only. Since a couple of the specific titles were not announced, all the wishful thinkers decided it must be The Killer & Hard Boiled. There was never ANY indication that Criterion had gotten the rights back.
Anyway, I got a few HKL DVDs recently and judging by their quality, I think that a HKL DVD will blow away Criterion's The Killer (which I have, and it is a pedestrian non-anamorphic transfer from pretty badly scratched source elements), not to mention any garbage coming from Miramax.
Ted

 

[David Lawson]

For those of us without a region-free player, which is the current best version to get? DDDHouse has the Universe version for HK $40 and the MegaStar version for HK $92, the latter of which wasn't reviewed by Love And Bullets. Is the Winstar version now OOP, along with the Criterion?

 

[Jeff Adkins]

The Winstar would be the best to get if you can find it as it uses the same transfer as the Criterion and it's a higher bit rate (Criterion was only single layer).

If you can't find the Winstar, one of the HK versions is pretty good, but I can't remember which.

Jeff

 

[Scott_MacD]

The Winstar would be the best to get if you can find it as it uses the same transfer as the Criterion and it's a higher bit rate (Criterion was only single layer).

The Winstar version of Hard Boiled has the shortest layer change I've ever seen.. (around 30 seconds into the title.)