Comments on: Mad Monkeys, Bulkbits and Bushels of Breath

By: Scott Spiegelberg

Scott Spiegelberg — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 19:48:19 +0000

People are arguing about fu, but no one has taken issue with the claim that English is a tonal language? It is a stress language, plain and simple. The misreading by emphasizing Red over the other words is a matter of stress, not pitch. When we can have a single phoneme mean something different depending on its frequency, then a language is tonal.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 12:18:33 +0000

Police Story is relatively unknown? To quote South Park, are you high or just incredibly stupid? I have to agree with Matt that Iron Monkey has some amazing choreography, especially the final fight on the burning poles. Probably the best wire-fu film after Once Upon a Time in China. Infuriatingly, there’s no UK DVD of Drunken Master II.

By: Matt McGrattan

Matt McGrattan — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:12:10 +0000

Some of the best fight choreogrpahy I’ve ever seen is in Yuen Woo-Ping’s ‘Iron Monkey’. His fight choreography for Crouching Tiger is fine, but he’s really going for it with ‘Iron Monkey’…

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:34:09 +0000

Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain. Soothly we live in mighty years!

By: George

George — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:26:53 +0000

Wow, Holbo is a kung fu fan. Who knew? PS: never seen one better than Drunken Master 2.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:49:22 +0000

I guess maybe another reason I don’t mind the whole Lau Kar-leung’s “Gangs of New York” thing is I pretty much liked “Gangs of New York.” Also, I saw “Drunken Monkey” back to back with Michelle Yeo in “Silverhawk”. Even if you think Monkey is terrible, you’d have to admit that there’s terrible and there’s TERRIBLE, compared to which terrible is good. But I just plain thought it was good. They obviously cared so much about making the fights look good in a ‘none of your fancy camera work’ way that they just didn’t bother much with the plot. Plus that opening scene with Wu Jing all roped up and scurrying across the ceiling?

By: Shai

Shai — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:27:57 +0000

I'll check that out. Have you seen Jackie Chan's Young Master? The final showdown is the best kung fu fight I've ever seen. For some reason the rest of the movie has telegraphed choreography but it's worth it. Police Story I and Dragon Strike aka Dragon Lord are relatively unknown but good too.

By: Shai

Shai — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:25:31 +0000

By: Bryant

Bryant — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:23:23 +0000

I really recommend the Region 3 Mad Monkey Kung Fu (here)—the Celestial Pictures re-release is utterly beautiful. Very high quality stuff. What’s going on here is that Celestial bought the rights to reissue most of the old Shaw Brothers movies and is doing an incredibly good job cleaning them up and bringing out the quality. It’s sort of as if, say, no MGM movies were available on DVD as anything other than bootlegs and grainy digitizations, and then Criterion came along and started methodically redoing the whole catalog. It’s so nice. Sorry, I’m waxing passionate. But when you can get a region free DVD player relatively cheap, it’s worth it to expand the range of available cinema, if you’re a movie geek like me.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:55:55 +0000

But I thought it was kind of cute how the heroes dressed like their wardrobes came straight off the rack at the gap, even though it was supposed to be a period movie. And that basketball scene. Of course it’s not as good as the first and – yes, of course it isn’t a sequel. (What was I thinking?) But it is sequel-ish. An homage to that first one. Thanks for the link to the all-region version. That’s useful.

By: Ckrisz

Ckrisz — Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:50:28 +0000

DRUNKEN MONKEY is definitely NOT a sequel to MAD MONKEY KUNG FU. It’s also a terrible film. Lau Kar-leung’s a visionary filmmaker, but this is his GANGS OF NEW YORK. Just awful. An all-region version of MAD MONKEY KUNG FU is here: http://www.pokerindustries.com/poker.store?page=item&sku=MADMONKYPM-DVD Don’t bother with Amazon for Hong Kong films – go to http://www.pokerindustries.com or http://www.yesasia.com.