CHINESE ODYSSEY PART I & II

Mega Star is re-release CHINESE ODYSSEY PART I & II as a box set this November. These are the specs:

* HD Restored & Remastered
* Letterboxed and 16x9 enhanced
* Audio
o Cantonese (DTS 5.1)
o Cantonese (DD 5.1)
o Mandarin (DD 5.1)
* Subtitles
o Traditional Chinese
o Simplified Chinese
o English
o Japanese
o Korean
* Extras
o A Chinese Odyssey (Part I) DVD
+ Interview With Director Jeff Lau (Part I) [10 minutes]
o A Chinese Odyssey (Part II) DVD
+ Interview With Director Jeff Lau (Part II) [10 minutes]


Gifts

* Hard Cover Photo Book (64 pages)

If you've never seen these before now is the time and if you've already the old Media Asia discs, I'd consider upgrading. They're both great Stephen Chow movies. If you've never heard of them they're loosely based on 'Journey to the West'. Here's the wikipedia entry for 'Journey to the West' wiki entry

Here's some reviews at the hkmdb:

A Chinese Odyssey Part One -- Pandora's Box
A Chinese Odyssey Part Two -- Cinderella

click on 'Reviews' at the left.

I just got this for Christimas. I guess I'm gonna have to manually input these onto Listal. Can't wait to see Stephen Chow take on an adaptation of Monkey.

Cool. I haven't got around to ordering the set yet (but I will). I envy your opportunity to see these with fresh eyes. They stand up quite nicely to repeated viewings, but the first time...

If you like Stephen Chow, two more of his older movies (midish 90's) have been released: LOVE ON DELIVERY and OUT OF THE DARK. Of the two, LOVE ON DELIVERY is a more typical Chow vehicle. The two of them along with THE MAD MONK, made a fun triple feature (especially since I'd never seen any of them).

To be honest I'm not to familiar with Chow's work. I've only seen Shaolin Soccer, God of Cookery, and Kung Fu Hustle. So I'll have to keep an eye out. The problem with HK cinema is that there is so much of it that unless you have a guide you're going to end up missing tons of stuff.

Fantastic Film. Me and my friends laughed out loud at least a dozen times. The slapstick humour was brilliant even if it did get a little hard to figure out what the hell was going on right at the end. Subtitles were a bit of a mess too.

Are you talking about Part 1 - Pandora's Box, Part 2 - Cinderella or both. Arguably both movies are really one movie cut in two (like the Three Muskateers/Four Muskateers). Part 2 is the more serious half though it still has it's share of laughs.

Other Chow movies you might look into are FORBIDDEN CITY COP, ROYAL TRAMP (parts 1 & 2), and KING OF BEGGARS; they're all roughly along the same lines as CHINESE ODYSSEY. You might like FROM BEIJING WITH LOVE too.

You watch enough subtitled Chinese movies and you begin to get a feel for the subtitles (figuring out what they were trying to say and whatnot), but often the subtitles are good (and sometimes not...).

Yeah I've seen enough to muddle through, but it was a bit disconcerting to see Jing Jing be constantly called a he and have other odd like bits of broken syntax. I still think the worst subs I ever saw were on the HK version of Throne of Blood.

Also, I was talking about both films. While I loved the concept of King Bull throwing his city into the sun I'd lost track of who certain characters were and what there function was by that point.