Once A Thief

[YenChanChow]

Originally Posted by apollo828

- The new Blu appears to be sourced from the 4K master and looks pretty nice. Still, the disc is the usual K&R junk. BD25, 5.1 remix (no original mono), etc. There's also a trailer and Kent Tsang interview but that's it. The Disk Kino 4K should be much nicer when it comes out, although it'll be significantly more expensive.
- As best I can tell from all the stories floating around, the original Golden Princess owners (I'm not sure if they still own the rights) aren't willing to make any new deals unless everything is licensed for some astronomical fee. Presumably, that wouldn't include the actual costs of restoring these films, but who knows. Either way, just because there are avenues doesn't mean there are options. John Woo said in an interview that he can't get the owners to license his films. If a powerful player in Asian and Hollywood cinema can't shake these films loose, I'm not holding my breath for re-releases anytime soon. (Believe me, the lack of remasters isn't for lack of trying by people who have major connections and money backing them.)
- Why the odd 4K remaster for A Better Tomorrow and Once a Thief? ABT was, as I recall, paid for by a luxury watch company that just wanted to say they supported art. I assume they paid through the nose and got little more out of it than bragging rights. I think OaT had a similar sponsor, although I can't find the info offhand.

At this point I'll take the usual K&R junk with shit audio and compression with a nice image over nothing. I'm well aware of the hearsay about the all or nothing deal of the Golden Princess library, but that only applies outside of China/HK. Clearly Fortune Star/K&R still owns all the rights. Why else did we get fairly recent (restored) releases of ABT (2016), Hard Boiled (2019), and now Once A Thief (2024), all which are part of the Golden Princess library?

That's the thing that gets me, if the K&R still owns the rights, then there nothing holding them back from releasing the recent restoration of Bullet in the Head, or some version of The Killer. Shit audio's better than no video!

Interesting tidbit about the luxury watch company. Didn' know that. I did find some possibly related information about 4k restoration of multiple classics at the 2024 Shanghai International film fest, seems like they used AI to do it? It's using some proprietary tech, I gotta wonder what the results look like.

https://x.com/Amarsanaa__/status/1796129361680376305
https://informedainews.com/docs/ai-e...y/3-2024-06-08
https://www.cnbeta.com.tw/articles/movie/1433952.htm

Originally Posted by Jigvell

This video should explain the problems with licensing John Woo films...

The REAL Reason why John Woo's Hard Boiled & The Killer won't ever be released on 4K! - YouTube

This only applies to western releases. Doesn't explain K&R's lack of Bullet in the Head/The Killer.