The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk 1 & 2 (Deluxe Limited Edition) 88 Films

[The Mole]

As fans of Hong Kong Cinema know too well, Cantonese is not only a language very difficult if not sometimes impossible (as with many jokes in Stephen Chow movies) to translate into any other language. In addition to that Cantonese humour is most of the time filled with profanity, toilet humour, swearwords, sexual references and other nasty stuff. Why? Because people from Hong Kong are laughing their asses off about it. That is their humour. That is, what they think is funny.

Many older translations of Hong Kong movies have intentionally been dumbed down and/or trivialized in order to make the movies more accessable to general western audiences. This also meant taking out all the toilet humour, mean swearwords and sex jokes.

So something that would be in the same league as "Shut up, you motherf**ker" could easily become "Shut up, you idiot". Or someone saying something like "I'll rape you 'till you drop dead" could suddenly be just "Screw you" in the subtitles. Sitting in a cinema in Hong Kong watching a Hong Kong comedy could mean that while you as a foreigner were laughing about a subtitle saying "Well, I guess the joke was on me", the local guy next to you was laughing about the spoken dialogue saying "Well, I guess I have been f**ked in the a** by a bull."

What I am trying to say is: Only because we are accustomed to subtitles that used to simplify, trivialize and generally dumb down the dialogue in Cantonese language films, does not mean that the originals were as harmless or even child-friendly as we thought they were. And bringing the originally intended meaning back to the subtitles instead of just going on servicing the taste of western audiences is a huge step in the right direction, if you ask me.

[navydavey]

First time watch of the first movie for me yesterday, I'll try and watch the 2nd movie tomorrow if I can.

I've been working my way through Li's movies over the years thanks to 88 Films, Eureka and some American and German imports and on the whole I find his movies very much a mixed bag but mostly just feels like alot of missed opportunities on the whole.

I think Li has a decent screen presence and his skill is clearly incredible, but to me there is nearly always an over reliance on wire work to enhance his already graceful maneuvers and the movies themselves just feel like they miss something compared to the likes of Chan, Sammo, etc.

That all said, the first Fong Sai Yuk was bl00dy awesome, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the supporting cast really helped elevate this one for me, definitely top tier Li in my eyes.

[WaverBoy]

Originally Posted by navydavey

First time watch of the first movie for me yesterday, I'll try and watch the 2nd movie tomorrow if I can.

I've been working my way through Li's movies over the years thanks to 88 Films, Eureka and some American and German imports and on the whole I find his movies very much a mixed bag but mostly just feels like alot of missed opportunities on the whole.

I think Li has a decent screen presence and his skill is clearly incredible, but to me there is nearly always an over reliance on wire work to enhance his already graceful maneuvers and the movies themselves just feel like they miss something compared to the likes of Chan, Sammo, etc.

That all said, the first Fong Sai Yuk was bl00dy awesome, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the supporting cast really helped elevate this one for me, definitely top tier Li in my eyes.

I gotta disagree there — comparing Jet with Jackie and Sammo is like apples and oranges. Completely different styles all round. I can’t see Jackie or Sammo pulling off Fist of Legend or Once Upon A Time In China like Jet did. They all have their individual gifts and are all excellent at what they do.

[AnimalCMan]

LOL, this was a disappointing discussion to stumble upon. I will never understand subtitle snobs. Go learn Cantonese or Mandarin, then you won't have to come on here and complain about the hard work others have put into translating these films for you.

[russweiss1]

Originally Posted by AnimalCMan

LOL, this was a disappointing discussion to stumble upon. I will never understand subtitle snobs. Go learn Cantonese or Mandarin, then you won't have to come on here and complain about the hard work others have put into translating these films for you.

There are complaints on every thread when members find something they feel is below standard. Why should the discussion of subtitles be any different?

[Markgway]

Originally Posted by russweiss1

There are complaints on every thread when members find something they feel is below standard. Why should the discussion of subtitles be any different?

I think the objection Animal and Matt presented was about people complaining when they don't actually know what they're talking about.

For example...

Originally Posted by JackyJacquard

Ideally we would have the original ‘poetic’ track and Mark’s new translation to choose between. But we don’t.

[JackyJacquard]

Yeah also I would see any complaint about the absence of original subtitles to be just as valid as the absence of original audio, or video (ahem, George Lucas, cough)

Ideally we would have the original ‘poetic’ track and Mark’s new translation to choose between. But we don’t.

I should really get around to watching these movies actually. Just like my 500 other unwatched (more now lol I just splashed out on like half of Masters of Cinema)

[Alexcap]

not botherd if the subtitles for hong kong films are not accurate as long as the films have subtitles for the cantonese or mandarin and not dubtitles for them because i hate them.

[WaverBoy]

And it’ll be uncut! Although, I already own the 88 versions of all five films in that upcoming set. Oh well, at least I’ll have some additional different extras. And I only had the Blu-ray version of the Fong Sai Yuk set, so it’ll be nice to have those in 4K too.

[me_nnoccent]

Originally Posted by WaverBoy

And it’ll be uncut!

And where did you get the information on this?

I think it just a reprint of the 88 film version. The only different may be just the special extra feature/interview.

[cooey]

Originally Posted by me_nnoccent

And where did you get the information on this?

I think it just a reprint of the 88 film version. The only different may be just the special extra feature/interview.

It'll be the same scan as the 88 version, which was delivered to them uncut. Compulsory cuts for a horse fall had to be made, which won't be the case for the US release.

[NuXiaolin]

Originally Posted by me_nnoccent

And where did you get the information on this?

I think it just a reprint of the 88 film version. The only different may be just the special extra feature/interview.

That's very unlikely.

[schmutzig]

What's the likelyhood of Shout splitting these movies into future seperate releases? Really only interested in Fong Sai Yuk for the uncut print, the other stuff I already have from 88 Films...

[omgitsgodzilla]

I'm not aware of any precedent for that with these recent box sets. With the big deal they're making about this being a new label, they might handle it a bit differently from the Shawvelware boxes, but I wouldn't hold my breath.