Haven't seen a Panorama Cathay/MPGI movie since 2006, and the last Shaw Brothers batch was at the end of 2007.

Seems like the MPGI series hardly got off the ground, while though the Shaw series beat us into submission with an endless stream of action films, their early drama library of films never materialized, alas.

Not sure if there was news/announcements about either of these series that I missed.

-- Peter

There wasn't anything announced but new releases quietly stopped in both ranges. Celestial's wound up at the end of last year, so if you're still waiting for unreleased films like TRAPEZE GIRL and more, it looks like that's it for DVDs. The only movement on the Celestial front this year has been the Blu-ray release for BEHIND THE YELOW LINE and repackaging like the Lin Dai box set, but very little by way of repressings. The Cathay discs, which didn't make it into many shops locally to begin with, only had a price cut last year but at least they've started to go into reprints so you can still pick up movies you might have missed.

Tim.

In regard to Shaw releases we are getting a fair amount released R1 (well it seems like a fair amount, it's really just a drop in the bucket). There's still quite a bit yet to be released R1. Anyone pining for Shaw dramas, romances or musicals is SOL though. Here's a breakdown by distributer:

BCI

• Life Gamble
  
• Opium and the Kung Fu Master
  
• The 14 Amazons
  
• Shaolin Hand Lock
  
• Hong Kong Godfather
  
• Shaolin Prince
  
• Invincible Shaolin
  
• The Bastard Swordsman
  
• The Duel
  
• Return of the Bastard Swordsman
  
• Shaolin Rescuers
  
• Soul of the Sword
  
• The Lady Hermit
  
• The Supreme Swordsman
  
• The Sword of Swords

Dragon Dynasty

• 1 Come drink with me. Director, Hu King-Chuan.
  
• 2 Shaolin temple. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 3 The 36th chamber of Shaolin. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 4 Killer clans. Director, Chu Yuan.
  
• 5 Disciples of the 36th chamber. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 6 One-armed swordsman. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 7 Vengeance. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 8 The flying guillotine. Director, Ho Meng-hua.
  
• 9 Mad monkey kung fu. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 10 The eight diagram pole fighter. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 11 Executioners from Shaolin. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 12 Five Shaolin masters. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 13 My young auntie. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 14 Shaolin mantis. Director, Liu Chia-ling.
  
• 15 Flying guillotine 2. Directors, Cheng Kang & Hua Shan.
  
• 16 Golden swallow. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 17 Return to the 36th chamber. Director, Liu Chia-ling.
  
• 18 Crazy Shaolin disciples. Director, Yau Ka-hung.
  
• 19 Return of the one-armed swordsman. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 20 New one-armed swordsman. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 21 The chinese boxer. Director, Wang Yu.
  
• 22 Crippled avengers. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 23 The Shaolin avengers. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 24 Martial arts of Shaolin. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 25 King boxer. Director, Chang Chang-ho.
  
• 26 Clan of the white lotus. Director, Lo Lieh.
  
• 27 The avenging eagle (not remake) Director, Sun Chung.
  
• 28 The invincible fist. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 29 Blood Brothers. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 30 Behind the yellow line. Director, Taylor Wong.
  
• 31 The five venoms. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 32 Painted faces. Director, Alex Law.
  
• 33 Love in a fallen city. Director, Ann Hui.
  
• 34 The anonymous heroes. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 35 Buddha's palm. Director, Taylor Wong.
  
• 36 Heroes of the East . Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 37 The boxer from Shantung. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 38 Monkey kung fu. Director, John Lo Mar.
  
• 39 Boxer rebellion. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 40 Dirty Ho. Director, Liu Chia-liang.
  
• 41 Look out, officer! Director, Liu Shih-yu.
  
• 42 The mad monk. Director, Johnnie To.
  
• 43 The angry guest. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 44 7-man army. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 45 The flying dagger. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 46 The savage five. Director, Chang Cheh.
  
• 47 Justice, my foot. Director, Johnnie To.
  
• 48 Hero. Director, Corey Yuen.
  
• 49 Out of the dark. Director, Jeff Lau.
  
• 50 Starry is the night. Director, Ann Hui.
  
• 51 The kung-fu instructor. Director, Sun Chung.
  
• 52 Man of iron. Directors, Chang Cheh & Pao Hsueh-ti.

Image Entertainment

• INTIMATE CONFESSIONS OF A CHINESE COURTESAN
  
• THE WATER MARGIN
  
• THE MAGIC BLADE
  
• LEGENDARY WEAPONS OF CHINA
  
• VENGEANCE IS A GOLDEN BLADE
  
• SHAOLIN INTRUDERS
  
• THE WANDERING SWORDSMAN
  
• THE DEADLY BREAKING SWORD
  
• BELLS OF DEATH
  
• SUPER INFRAMAN
  
• BIG BROTHER CHENG
  
• HEAVEN AND HELL
  
• THE KILLER SNAKES
  
• HUMAN LANTERNS
  
• BLACK MAGIC
  
• HAVE SWORD WILL TRAVEL
  
• MONKEY GOES WEST
  
• CAVE OF THE SILKEN WEB
  
• HOUSE OF TRAPS

Media Blasters

• Chinese Super Ninjas aka Five Elements Ninjas
  
• Heroes Two
  
• The Master
  
• Challenge of the Masters
  
• Martial Club
  
• The Deadly Duo
  
• The Brave Archer
  
• The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
  
• Black Magic 2
  
• Flag of Iron

WELL GO USA (10 total, these are the one's I'm aware of. Calling their line 'Sword Masters')

• BROTHERS FIVE
  
• HEROIC ONES
  
• JOURNEY OF THE DOOMED
  
• THE BATTLE WIZARD
  
• TWO CHAMPIONS OF SHAOLIN

Most everything listed has already been released by Celestial, even if it was only a VCD.

No confirmed sightings of Ann Hui's Starry Is the Night? (I hope this shows up on DVD).

Thanks for the info. I suppose they really only felt that the action movies were particularly bankable, which is too bad, but probably true. I do worry about existing Shaw releases going out of print, but I've already got at least 100 that I haven't gotten around to watching, so it seems foolish to keep stockpiling.

I hadn't thought of Starry is the Night, but given that the Shaw DVD series opened with Love in a Fallen City, you would think that this other Ann Hui movie would have been on the slate.

I was never able to get the DVD version of Love In a Fallen City -- just the (fairly decent) VCD version. It must not have stayed in print long.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're both saying, Dragon Dynasty have licensed both:

Dragon Dynasty:
33 Love in a fallen city. Director, Ann Hui.
50 Starry is the night. Director, Ann Hui.

The question is ... what are the odds that these films will actually be released on DVD, even though they have been licensed? ;~}

Celestial could also be leaving some of the unreleased titles for their pay-TV classics channel, in Hong Kong at least, though that isn't great news for those of us who don't subscribe to it.

Seeing those two Ann Hui films in the Dragon Dynasty lineup is quite a surprise, given the number of action titles around them.

Tim.

Hello,

Two points of note. Celestial TV's website does feature English navigation so if you're curious what's showing and what's not, it's pretty easy to check up on the matter yourself. Fire up the TiVo or DVR for those VCD-only or unreleased gems. See:

http://www.celestialmovies.com/05/default.asp

Point two. The trouble with Celestial for North American viewers is that it's owned by Malaysia's Astro, which doesn't seem to have a language package like the Chinese language bundles you can get with Direct TV, Dish Network, or KyLin. Also, with the way they break up Chinese packages--mainland, Hong Kong, or Taiwan-centric--if you want to check out vintage movies from all three regions, you sort of have to buy the other two Chinese packages (I don't think they do a la carte, unfortunately.) It's a pity Celestial never developed into the Pan-Asian classic movie channel like they announced they were becoming in the early 2000s (featuring Japanese, Korean, and SE Asian movies)--the rights rigmarole must have been too much of a gorilla to adequately vanquish.

I'm a terrestrial broadcast viewer myself--don't watch enough TV to justify a subscription fee--but friends who have had to put up visiting relatives seemed to like that "touch of home" pay TV grants incoming aunts and uncles.

But if people in HK are unwilling to pay for DVD's of old films I would assume they would not be particularly interested in subscribing to a channel that shows them either. I am guessing viewing/subscription figures must be very low...the two may be very different as the channel may well come as part of a package.

HK TV is the worst I've seen anywhere in the world and I think must be treated with disinterest by public (who I think generally use it as background noise) and advertisers alike; even the most popular sports channels (which are basically what keep the cable TV co's afloat) can't sell advertising space and they usually have to fill up commercial breaks with previews of other programmes. Terrestrial channel ATV have now added the phrase "Stand Strong China" to their on-screen logo which is permanantly shown on the top left corner of the screen.

Ah, HK TV--where the 1976 KING KONG was shown at least once every two months to an adoring public in the late 80s/early 90s, with a (typical) half-hour interruption for the news at 11...where an English-language newscaster announced that he was sick with allergies one night and simply walked off mid-broadcast...where formless-seeming variety shows like ENJOY YOURSELF TONIGHT (we miss you, Fei Fei!) played hour after hour on the Chinese channels...where you could stay out till dawn and never miss anything on TV... :)

Aw, c'mon. Legend of the Condor Heroes, Return of the Condor Heroes, Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The Duke of Mount Deer. It wasn't all dreck.

I do recall one of the stations showing older pictures at 2 or 3am--after a night of Lan Kwai Fong discos. Pretty much all gone now.

(HK, by the way, positively dazzles in IMAX in its DARK KNIGHT sequence.)