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seen at Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater yesterday: The Dragon Lives Again, the infamously bizarre Bruceploitation feature in which “Bruce Lee” awakens in the underworld (which looks suspiciously like the real one, or rather how you’d expect the "real world" to look in a low-budget martial arts film from 1977) and quickly becomes embroiled in a power struggle for the throne involving numerous copyright-infringing knockoffs of iconic pop-culture characters, including “Clint Eastwood” as the Man with No Name, “James Bond,” Dracula, “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” “Emmanuelle,” and “Popeye,” among others. I can't say it quite lives up to that premise - among other things, it's too talky, the fight choreography isn't great, and there's some pretty bad comedy - but you can't really come away with ill will towards a movie in which "Bruce Lee" defeats Dracula by kicking him in the head with a literal "third leg," or where a Hong Kong Popeye knockoff downs a can of spinach before defeating a gang of mummies in a kung fu fight.
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Nov 14, 2022 19:26
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 10:02 |
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Dr. Jerrold Coe posted:My god, was it a nice widescreen print? I've been dreaming of such a thing, every version I've ever seen has been bad or worse quality It was widescreen iirc, though not great quality
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Nov 16, 2022 01:58
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Saw the bizarre Taiwanese wuxia Wolf Devil Woman - about a woman raised by wolves who takes revenge on the sorcerer, or possibly demon, responsible for her parents' deaths, yesterday at Spectacle in Brooklyn. fight choreography is mostly cut to shreds by the rapid-fire editing scheme, and most of what remains decipherable is nothing to write home about, but that editing! rapid zooms, hyper-fast match cuts of sorts to imagery that tangentially relates to what’s currently happening, flashbacks, repeated shots, very similar shots in rapid succession, and more. Combined with the supernatural craziness, decapitations, dismemberments, impairments, and the protagonist Snowflower tossing men around with a rope, it’s a truly, memorably weird experience, even if I can't exactly call it a great entry in the genre. the woman who plays the lead in this, Pearl Chang, was also the director (not exactly common in early '80s martial arts cinema), and she made three more films I hope to check out at some point.
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Dec 12, 2022 19:23
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Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn did a marathon of martial arts/horror genre hybrids yesterday. The two I caught were Holy Virgin versus the Evil Dead and Exorcist Master, both pretty fun vampire flicks, though I enjoyed the pacing and action in the later better (the former does have Donnie Yen and a whole lot of female nudity, though). also, Criterion Channel added Encounters of the Spooky Kind and the first four Mr. Vampire films last month. I've only seen the first Mr. Vampire. Also recommend the Jet Li Once Upon a Time in China movies, though I think only I-III and VI are on there at present, for whatever reason Barry Convex fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Oct 2, 2023 |
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Oct 2, 2023 17:10
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Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is coming to Criterion Channel next week
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Oct 24, 2023 20:22
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