Somehow this information got past me. Lion's Gate Films have picked up several somewhat high profile martial arts titles and are dumping them to DVD with little to no fanfare. I stumbled across a few of them today.
The first is the little seen but much admired Thai action-drama film, Muay Thai Chaiya, retitled Muay Thai Fighter for simplicity's sake. This is one of the best Muay Thai focused films that Thailand has put out in these last few years. It may not have the ridiculous stunts of an Ong Bak or Chocolate, but it has a much more engaging plot and better characters than anything else to come out of that country in a while. I saw it first at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas several years back, and here at Twitch we've given in great reviews a couple of times. That one is set to release on April 12th in a DVD only release.
The second is the Pang Brothers super CG sequel, The Storm Warriors. The film came out to mixed reviews a couple of years ago, and was never heard from in the USA. We've reviewed the film and found it to be, "definitely not a masterpiece, but taking it at face value, it's an almost perfect piece of entertainment featuring some stunning art direction". Sometimes that's all it takes. I'd been holding off on buying an import with the thought that surely such big name directors and a big budget project would see a Blu-ray release here, but apparently I was wrong. The Storm Warriors will be released next week, February 15th on DVD only.
Oh, and in case you missed it, Wu Jing's directorial debut Legendary Assassin was also released through Lion's Gate on December 28th. I know I missed it...
Lion's Gate doesn't seem like they actually have any intention of trying to sell these titles, a shame, really.
The first is the little seen but much admired Thai action-drama film, Muay Thai Chaiya, retitled Muay Thai Fighter for simplicity's sake. This is one of the best Muay Thai focused films that Thailand has put out in these last few years. It may not have the ridiculous stunts of an Ong Bak or Chocolate, but it has a much more engaging plot and better characters than anything else to come out of that country in a while. I saw it first at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas several years back, and here at Twitch we've given in great reviews a couple of times. That one is set to release on April 12th in a DVD only release.
The second is the Pang Brothers super CG sequel, The Storm Warriors. The film came out to mixed reviews a couple of years ago, and was never heard from in the USA. We've reviewed the film and found it to be, "definitely not a masterpiece, but taking it at face value, it's an almost perfect piece of entertainment featuring some stunning art direction". Sometimes that's all it takes. I'd been holding off on buying an import with the thought that surely such big name directors and a big budget project would see a Blu-ray release here, but apparently I was wrong. The Storm Warriors will be released next week, February 15th on DVD only.
Oh, and in case you missed it, Wu Jing's directorial debut Legendary Assassin was also released through Lion's Gate on December 28th. I know I missed it...
Lion's Gate doesn't seem like they actually have any intention of trying to sell these titles, a shame, really.
Related Links
Galleries
More from Muay Thai Chaiya
- Reviews: Fantastic Fest 2008: Muay Thai Chaiya
- Reviews: FANTASIA: MUAY THAI CHAIYA Review
If these are handled anything like Lionsgate winners such as TWIN DAGGERS and TWO TIGERS, and from the lame-o packaging that appears to be exactly what's going on, then HD versions of these will be turning up on Netflix Instant fairly soon.
I was waiting for the US releases of these as well. Oh well, thats my que to pick up the imports. If I'm going to bother watching The Storm Warriors, why settle for the dvd? They did the exact same stealth releases for Wu-Jings Drunken Monkey, Four Dragons (Si Hai You Xia), The Great Challenge, Jade Warrior & Wushu (Worst box art ever?). Yeah, the folks at Lions Gate are experts when it comes to craping out a dvd and not telling anyone.
maybe they figure nobody is going to like The Storm Warriors. They'd be right. That movie blew so hard it was almost fun to watch, but then it overshot that loop-around and just sucked twice over. Pretty visuals are not enough to cover up the overuse of slow mo and "Vogue-ing" scenes that lasted 8 years. Even the fight scenes were so badly choreographed / shot.
Haven't checked out Muy Thai Fighter yet. Hopefully its actually good...
Save your cash regarding STORM WARRIORS, it's pants. But LEGENDARY ASSASSIN is all kinds of awesome!
Well, presumably they'll have lots more Asian titles to horribly mismarket soon: Lionsgate and StudioCanal just got distribution rights to (most of) the Miramax library. http://tinyurl.com/6h3tqhm