It appears that Mei Ah Entertainment, the Hong Kong distributors of John Woo's Han Dynasty epic RED CLIFF, have pulled the DVD and Blu-ray of RED CLIFF 2 from shelves just 3 months after being released.
While I have not had this confirmed officially from Mei Ah themselves I have noticed over the past few weeks that many of the stores I frequent in various parts of Hong Kong and Kowloon were "out of stock" of the title, while they still had plentiful copies of part one. Yesterday I asked a friend who works at a major international retail outlet in Hong Kong who confirmed that Mei Ah had deleted the title.
Obviously this move is to improve the box office takings of the truncated International release, which condenses the 150-minute first part and the 142-minute second part into a single 148-minute release, effectively losing an entire film in the process. It does appear that some online retailers are still carrying stock of RED CLIFF 2, so this is merely a heads-up to advise people that if they have been meaning to check out Woo's sprawling epic in its entirety, they had better not dawdle!
...
.......
Odd this, in Singapore you can get parts 1 and 2 on Blu Ray (not the Mei Ah release - part one is without the watermark - but its BD25 not BD50 so I can't comment on how much of a difference there is in picture quality) but part 2 is BD50 and the transfer to me seems really solid.
Ok, so which version is it that I should run out and buy? Taiwan, Mei Ah, Hong Kong? And from where?
I know little to no Chinese (be it Canton, Mandarin or anything related to them). So I want best possible DVD-quality with English subs for as much of the extra's as possible.
I need to see the full version before the truncated...
Rumor says, John Woos Epic will be released in Germany only on DVD. ONLY ON DVD!
I own the Mei Ah "Red Cliff" 1 + 2, and they own me in return. These are reference material BluRays, absolutely stunning AV-quality and good English subs. They are regionfree too.
The much maligned watermark (on movie 1 only) is actually a small logo popping up in the top-left corner, outside of the shown movie. It says "HD" and is visble for a few seconds every twenty minutes or so. But even though I'm very irritable towards watermarks (generally an instant "no-buy"for me) this actually didn't bother me at all. Half of the time I missed seeing the watermark alltogether.
I've been collecting some BluRays for half a year now, but it was only last weekend that I bough myself a player. Yes, I know....
But the Mei-Ah "Red Cliff" discs are what I've been using to show people just how frigging awesome BluRay can be. The richness in textures, the different clothes and armour, the sharpness during large troop formations...
Our affiliate YesAsia still has them both, although I do notice the price did NOT exactly go down in the last few weeks...
Here is Red Cliff 2, links to number 1 are in there too:
http://www.yesasia.com/global/red-cliff-2-blu-ray-hong-kong-version/1014460938-0-0-0-en/info.html
May 15, 2009 The Magnolia genre label has picked up U.S. rights to John Woo's two-part military epic, which it plans to release in the fall theatrically as one 2 1/2 hour film and on VOD and DVD in its full two parts.
As reported here. Did Magnet's plans for the film change or something, and I missed it?
Rhythm-X I don't doubt Red Cliff will be made available at some point in the future in its entirety in a number of countries, I just felt it was newsworthy to report that the domestic DVD/BR release in the film's country of origin is being screwed with, thanks to mighty, money-fuelled influences on the other side of the world.
Your source is a "friend" at a "retail outlet." Geez, if Twitch is going to make up garbage to increase sales at their sponsors, they can at least try a little harder. You know you could always ask Mei Ah directly but then your little lie would be exposed. The title is not deleted; it is between pressings which is the norm for Hong Kong. I'll wait to see if Twitch posts a correction but I won't hold my breath as the purpose of this post (putting affiliate $ in Todd's pocket) is quite apparent. Seriously, does Twitch have any credibility left?
That is quite an accusation. If this site is so useless, why are you posting?
Kwinger55, if only life was that easy and a ploy like that would actually work.
But note that the article doesn't feature any affiliate links.
Also note that the link I posted here in the comments does not contain our affiliate extension and therefore doesn't generate money for us either.
So kindly pipe down...