It seems now with DVD that the home viewing audience for these films is rapidly expanding. audience for such films stayed to the left of the mainstream, but some Asian Americans, and those in the know hipster film fans hunted down imported videos, keeping a market alive (Quentin Tarantino being the most famous example).įor the mainstream viewer, the limits of a cropped VHS in capturing the dizzying action and fractured English subtitles could be much too daunting. Hong Kong cinema, meanwhile, continued to evolve all on its own, with the “chop-socky” epics of the ’70s leading to a new style: rapid editing, flashy colors, acrobatic gunplay, artificial-looking sets, and a pantheon of great directors like John Woo, Hark Tsui, and Ronny Yu. Gone were the drive-in triple features and Times Square grindhouses, the slow travels of a few old Golden Harvest prints around the country.
The explosion around Bruce Lee in the early 1970s made martial arts popular across the globe, but then came Jaws (1977) and a change in distribution patterns. Since the kung fu movie were co-opted by Hollywood via Chuck Norris, Hong Kong cinema has not always had an easy time finding its Western market.
But no change - announced or rumored – is certain. The decision to restore the film’s original title and score was taken, apparently, in response to online petitions from fans. During this time, its title was changed to Kung-Fu Soccer, then back again, and a rap soundtrack, replete with Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting,” was added, then (allegedly) removed. Miramax was originally supposed to release Shaolin Soccer last fall, then it was pushed to April, and now it’s scheduled for 8 August 2003. rights have been bought by Miramax, a company notorious for re-editing and dubbing classic Asian action films, and for losing faith at the last minute and dumping them (in mutilated form) direct to video. Its theatrical fate remains uncertain, as the U.S.
A sort of Bad News Bears meets The Matrix, the film is one of the biggest box office hits of all time in Asia and should rightfully be regarded as a comic gem on the cultish scale of Duck Soup (1933) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).Īs it stands now, however, Shaolin Soccer is known in the West only by fans of Hong Kong cinema who can track down the imported DVD with its atrocious (but often hilarious) subtitles. That may change with the impending arrival in theaters of Shaolin Soccer (2001). Stephen Chow is a comic genius whose films have never seen mainstream release in the U.S.
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