Ash Ketchum

Oh my God! Is Brigitte Lin as beautiful as ever or what?!

kahuna

This will be a Korean Drama 6 episodes.

DJariya

Thanks for the correction. The Netflix US trailer gave no indication that it was a TV series. Not even the synopsis said it was a series.

kahuna

when you posted this. I could not find it. I did find a k-drama (20 ep.) called "Black Knight: The Man Who Guards Me (English title) / The Black Knight (literal title). I went back through my back-ups and found it. It aired in late 2017. Today I finally found Black Knight listed on Asianwiki and MyDramalist.

dex14

Sakra is up on VOD.

RocShemp

Nice. Although I hope there's eventually a 4K UHD BD, even if only as an import.

LorenzoL

Twitter

L Everett Scott

I believe the intention behind telling a Qiao Feng-focused story is to launch a Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils universe as suggested in The Hollywood Reporter:

I'd love to compare Sakra to Iron Man and say that it's a solid launching point for more DGaSD movies, but it's simply not. I've never read any Louis Cha nor have I seen any previous adaptation of DGaSD so I was dependent on Sakra to guide me along its packed plot. The movie does a decent job of this in its first 15 minutes, but there's almost two more hours after the first part. The movie quickly establishes Qiao Feng as a righteous hero who's virtually unbeatable and wastes no time having his brothers in the Beggar Sect (of which he's the leader) turn on him when he's framed for the murder of a fellow sect member.

From there, he meets love interest A'Zhu (Chen Yuqi) while getting blamed for more killings, making him the most wanted man in the Martial World. The plot is supposed to be about Qiao Feng trying to find the identities of his biological parents, but then A'Zhu gets critically wounded in battle so he's forced to take her to a miracle doctor where all the heroes (who've all turned on him) are waiting for him. I haven't even mentioned the secrets A'Zhu is hiding from Qiao Feng or the motivation of the plotters who framed him in the first place. By the time time you reach the heavily CGI-assisted fight at the end, you'll probably have forgotten that the movie never revealed who actually killed some of the people who supposedly died at the hands of Qiao Feng. (Don't worry, a rather clumsily added epilogue addresses this latter plot point.)

Story-wise, this movie really needed to be trimmed down, preferably with a running time closer to 100 minutes. I suspect fans who are familiar with the source material might be more forgiving towards the narrative, but for someone like me who went in knowing pretty much nothing about the Louis Cha novel, this movie was an endurance test. It feels like it's trying to cram as much plot as possible from the book but is rushing through the story so no plotline has any room to breathe, so most of the scenes play like the snippets from a 'previously on' recap.

I suspect that some of you are saying who cares about the story...what about the fights? For my tastes, the first fight we get with Qiao Feng in the opening minutes is the best. It's definitely a set piece but unlike the others in the film, it's tightly focused and doesn't have distractions involving supporting characters. I also found the opening battle to be the best staged with the least amount of visual noise.

For anyone looking for wall-to-wall action, you're best off looking elsewhere. Sakra is so busy trying to get through its busy plot that it only has time for a few major set pieces. There are some minor skirmishes along the way, but they're not very satisfying. For martial arts movies, I lean pretty heavily towards stuff from the '70s and '80s which relied on skill and guts, so all the CG that's mixed in with the fights in Sakra really doesn't do much for me.

Hardcore DY fans or people familiar with the story in DGaSD might get more out of this movie than I did. For me, this is very easily a thumbs down.

Why So Blu?

GameFly shipped out the 4K disc of SuperCop - the new one to be released on Tuesday.

RocShemp

I just finished watching Sakra and really enjoyed it. Although I never read Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, I am well familiar with Louis Cha's style from having read The Legend of the Condor Heroes. So I was along for the ride with all the expected melodrama, over-the-top action with basically magical abilities, and breathless pacing. If Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils is anything like The Legend of the Condor Heroes, with regards to the serialized nature of the latter, then I understand why this movie only adapts one part of the former. If I have any complaints is that it could use a longer runtime to better establish the characters and their motives.

sleepyhead55

Wait, this was a book? I'm only familiar with the story from the famous (or infamous since one of the stars committed suicide in 1985) 80s serialized tv series.

Anyway, I watched all 3 Infernal Affairs Movies in the last few days (watched them in order of 2,3, and 1). 1 is still the best of the trilogy. Just in terms of the theme of the double and there's just a whole bunch of stuff I noticed this time around. I mean I never really noticed the significance of the famous scene in the beginning when both Andy Lau and the Tony Leung characters are listening to music together. Oh this one is nice and sleek and you don't really notice the 100 min runtime. 2 is a worthy sequel , even though it is a prequel. It's got a "Godfather vibe" to it where the son played by Francis Ng takes over for the father and is one cold ruthless sob. 3 isn't that bad if they edited out like the scenes between Yan and the therapist in the middle of the film. It seriously kills the momentum for me. The story about the Lau character getting overly paranoid and trying to cover all his tracks should have been enough. But instead this film feels overstuffed and you kind of have to get through a bunch of scenes to get to the good stuff.

RocShemp

Apologies if this has been posted before, but it seems we have an upcoming Chinese knockoff version of Top Gun:



Although, to be fair, the plot is certainly not the same. But the trailer feels one volleyball game away from copying the former film being the intent.

Brian T

Since everybody already knows what this film really is — I mean, besides a “hey world, we can do that too” TOP GUN ripoff — it does have an interesting back story in that the all-knowing, all-seeing and totally benevolent Chinese government yanked it from cinemas just days before it’s premiere last fall on some “significant” weekend, and after record ticket pre-sales there, which all had to be refunded. And, as with all things CCP, no reason was given, becauseCCP!!! The original trailer was bashed pretty hard for not only aping the entire vibe (if not the exact story) of TOP GUN, but also because the loads of digital effects did indeed pale by any comparison. There was also talk that scads of tickets were bought by legions of fans of star Wang Yibo to inflate the numbers in comparison with TOP GUN. That’s a thing that actually happens in China, at least until the government pronounced that ‘celebrity’ was no longer a character trait worthy of patriots. And so here it is, poised to still make a ton of money in China and the diasporas, but further proof that no expense must be spared in the total bureaucratic control of the arts!

(and yes, I’ll watch it. They already have it at Pacific Mall! )

The Guardian review amused me: “this less a film than a flying foreign policy document”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/01/born-to-fly-review-chinese-top-gun-puts-tech-propaganda-in-the-frontline





DJariya

Looks like Jackie Chan and Stanley Tong are making a sequel to The Myth

Twitter

dex14

I saw that announced a while back. Kung Fu Yoga was a sequel to The Myth too.

RocShemp

The Myth? Is that the one that had a collector's edition DVD box set where you had a mini archeological dig site?

...

Yup. That's the one.

dex14

I don't really think we need another Ip Man... but another Flash Point, yes, please. https://www.screendaily.com/news/ip-...nes-exclusive/

DJariya

I don’t understand the point of an IP Man 5. They already showed in the time period in 4 that he was dying of cancer and eventually succumbed to the disease. So they’re just going to jump to some other random time period in his life?

RocShemp

Yeah, that seems like a pointless cash grab. It also doesn't help that Ip Man 4 was only so-so. A sequel to Flash Point could be fun. I also hope he does make a sequel to Sakra as well. But the Ip Man franchise is played out.

DJariya

Bangladeshi produced action thriller starring Frank Grillo and Michael Jai White in supporting roles called MR-9: Do or Die.

OldBoy

Not sure anyone saw it, but there was a fantastic little special on ABC the other night. The rise of Asians in cinema or something like that. I recorded it. Good interviews, mostly cast of Everything, Everywhere…Good interview with Quan. I had no idea how he got here. Such an incredible story. Nice little hour.

sleepyhead55

Eye in the Sky(2006 or 2007). This was remade later on by South Korea as Cold Eyes (available on tubi or youtube). Anyway this one is waaaay more grittier than the polished remake. Almost docu style at times. I preferred the acting in this one aside from the female lead, may be due to familiarity though. Anyway a nice little surveillence film. The hand held shots work well here as they show you how many people of the unit are keeping an eye on a target and where they are located (ie boxing someone in). I like Tony Leung-Ka Fai as the bad guy. Produced by Johnnie To so there are some usually stalwarts here like Suet Lam (dude seems like he's in EVERY TO FILM) and Ramona Shiu, and of course Simon Yam. Still if you're coming in cold and have to watch one version, I'd go with the Korean remake Cold Eyes. The plot flows better and the production values are higher.

Confession (2022) This South Korean film starts out as a simple murder mystery and morphs into something else. It's still a mystery/thriller. But it does something interesting with the point of view/storytelling techniques. I figured out one of the twists pretty early on. Still, despite being overplotted and maybe having a few too many twists, this one is watching at least once.

IBJoel

Honestly, it's pretty incredible how much more of a real movie that looks like than Hidden Strike, despite having 1/10th the budget (if I did my conversions right)

Brian T

Thought about posting this in the music section, but it's probably just as well here, since some folks might remember Coco Lee from the theme song from CROUCHING TIGER.

Coco Lee, Hong Kong-Born Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 48
https://variety.com/2023/music/news/...er-1235661920/

Ash Ketchum

Sad news. It made me wonder why I hadn't heard anything about her since CROUCHING TIGER. The article kind of explains it. She focused her career on working in Mainland China. I'd have bought an album by her if I'd seen it in any of the Chinatown stores when I was going through their CD sections before the stores all closed. But it never occurred to me to seek her albums out or inquire about them at the stores.

P.S. The article says she did the voice of Mulan in the Mandarin-language dub of the Disney movie of that name, but it doesn't say which version it was, the 1998 animated film or the 2020 live-action one.