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Anyone check out Prison On Fire or Prison On Fire II yet?
The reviews at Blu-ray.com aren't so cheery but they're the only reviews I've seen sofar.
The reviews at Blu-ray.com aren't so cheery but they're the only reviews I've seen sofar.
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Rock! Shock! Pop! -
Anyone who precedes their name with "Doctor", just because they've got a doctorate in something (ie: music studies) is just a little bit pretentious, in my books.
Also, a Blu-ray review site that puts up the following disclamer: "Please note that this screenshot was captured at 1080p, resized to 720p and then compressed using JPEG to improve the loading time" and then produces a jpeg that is equal to or just a little larger than 100kb = epic fail.
I wish I could check them out and give you an honest appraisal, not some half-arsed, half-researched bowl of tripe full of inaccuracies passed off as fact, but as you know I am Region B/All limited so Kam & Ronson scotch me out there.
"Dr. Svet" obviously doesn't know how things work (or insisting on referring to Ringo Lam as "Lam Ling Tung", his Chinese name, throughout a review when the man is known globally by his Christian name makes him look like a tool), so the likelihood of the FS catalogue being brought to Blu-ray in the US is pretty much nil. Fox had a deal with FS, they released a load of titles, all were under-performers, the licence lapsed and now they're all OOP; pretty much same in every other Western territory they were licenced in.
No international distributor is going to re-licence films that didn't sell on DVD for Blu-ray release for a niche market where the potential to not even break even is high. Kam have region-coded their discs with obvious view and limitation towards the US market (otherwise the discs would be all region, as it's HIGHLY unlikely the films would be licenced for the UK or Oz, both Region B territories that had heavy ties* with the HK film industry prior, since there's just not the markets to support them).
Upscaled SD masters, 720p HD masters (people forget that 1080p HD has only been a relatively recent standardisation for HD; 720p was the standard resolution for HDTVs only a few years back - I worked in that industry, it was a big thing in 2009 to sell HDTVs that were "full HD") etc...potentially it's ALL the fans are ever going to get. Sitting on one's hands and waiting for "better versions" to come along that are 99% likely of never happening at this juncture, in depressed economies and with online piracy running rife over physical media releases now more than ever, though the individual's choice is just a little foolish.
I can't ever see "better versions" of a lot of these things ever coming along, tbh -- tape masters are all that's left for a LOT of titles of the period any more, with original negs long gone. And once Kam's BDs go OOP, I think people will be lucky to see any of the majority of the films on BD again. If they ends up licenced for the US (again, let's not forget most of these titles have been licenced a few times over there already and sold poorly every time), guaranteed the best you're going to get is seeing them as 720p online streaming files.
These are the sad, and realistic, facts of HK movie fandom. What a small pocket of onlines fans are dreaming of, is never going to happen. Fact.
Anyway, just my thoughts and two dollars worth (taking into consideration the strong Australian dollar) ;)
* that footnote: during the height of HK cinemagoing, outside of HK itself Oz had the highest rates of cinema attendance for Chinese language films in the nineties (late eighties/early nineties, the UK preceded Oz's record). Thus it seems odd that, due to licencing regulations they've imposed, FS should preclude the two very regions that were the fiercest supporters of HK cinema at its peak by locking out those regions from Blu-ray releases. Esp. when it's unlikely the titles will EVER be resold for territory licences in those regions again.
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You make some good points, and I'm tempted by them - but don't want to shell out for BD's if they're no better than the previous DVD releases.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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Tell you what -- when I get the remastered DVDs that were released through Joy Sales via Fortune Star in the mail shortly, I'll post screen caps and you can compare against Dr. Detroit ;)Comment
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Sounds good.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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Okay, as promised, here's the screen captures from the remastered DVD of Prison on Fire... :)
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Thanks for that, Mike. The Blu-ray screen caps do look like they show more detail and less compression (as they should).Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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My pleasure, dude! Hopefully that should make a mockery of all these "SD master upscale" nonsense comments being bandied about the 'net? ;)Comment
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Yeah, it doesn't look like an upscale to me. Maybe not a reference quality HD restoration, but there does seem to be an improvement based on the images.Rock! Shock! Pop!Comment
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That's been my experience so far too. I've been very happy with Tiger on Beat, Hitman, and Black Mask as I think they all look great. I still need to check out OUATIC II. Armour of God II looks like balls for some reason (granted I paid 10 USD for it, so I'm not complaining). I have to say I've been happy with the first smattering of Fortune Star Blu-rays I've gotten.Comment
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Mr. F! So good to see you here, and glad you're enjoying the Blu-rays. Were you as surprised as I was (as I could only get the DVD, being in Region B land) that Black Mask was now mostly uncut? ;)Comment
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Thanks! Funny thing was I had only ever seen the HK Video uncut version (or the Artisian which was uncut for violence). Truth be told I didn't even notice that the film looked less violent. Even in it's CAT IIB state it's still insane.Originally posted by Mike T View PostComment
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