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Tag: 1994

Podcast On Fire 192: Gambling Season – God of Gamblers & God Of Gamblers’ Return

pof192

Welcome to this retrospective of part of the God Of Gamblers series, its sequels and spin off’s. Hugely popular real life occupation for Hong Kong people and transferred to the screen as well, by the man who arugably did it the best while also adhering to comedy and action tradition of the golden period of Hong Kong cinema of the 80s and 90s. His name is Wong Jing and struck box office gold in 1989 with God Of Gamblers starring superstar Chow Yun-fat in his iconic role of Do San, the God of Gamblers, Andy Lau and Joey Wong. A few Stephen Chow vehicles in the same vein were made around this time and subsequently but in 1994 the team of Chow and Wong Jing got together for God Of Gamblers’ Return and those are the two movies we picked for episode one out of three in this series dubbed Gambling Season. With Kenny B and special guest and hos of the East Screen West Screen podcast, Paul Fox.

Contact the show via email at podcastonfire at googlemail.com, on our Facebook page and Facebook group or Twitter (@podcastonfire@sogoodreviews) and SUBSCRIBE to our iTunes feed. Music courtesy of Brian Kirby (http://briankirby.net) whose awesome clothing line you can find at http://www.shelflifeclothing.com/. We are also featured on All Things Film, a collection of like minded Film, Cinema, TV, Geek and Cult Podcasts.

Show Links: Read More

Commentary On Fire/This Week In Sleaze 9: Red To Kill (1994)

Billy Tang’s vile and acclaimed rape-shocker gets the Commentary On Fire/This Week In Sleaze treatment as both Sleazy K/Kenneth Brorsson, King Who? and the Innoncent One, Stewart Sutherland let the commentary booth run red!

Contact the show via email at podcastonfire at googlemail.com, via our forum (containing EXCLUSIVE content and announcements!), Facebook or Twitter (@podcastonfire, @sogoodreviews).

Fist Of Legend (1994)

not sure if I should use a capital o for Of

Return to a Better Tomorrow (1994)

Return To A Better Tomorrow?
Another Wong Jing Movie?
Really Bad?

No! Yes Many people hate Wong Jings movies and this title taken from the popular A Better Tomorrow series by John Woo. But this movie doesn’t star Chow Yun-Fat or Leslie Chung. Wong Jing uses fresh faces such as…Ekin Cheng, Chingmy Yau, Ben Lam and even Michael Wong…

Ekin Cheng plays Tony Chun, a triad leader with a heart. After being framed for possession of some bad drugs, soon Tony is forced to leave Hong Kong. Leaving behind his girlfriend, Chili (Chingmy Yau). Now staying Mainland China for the mean time. Meanwhile we find out it was Brother Lui Wei (Tony’s Triad Boss, played by Ben Lam) who framed him and is now attempting to kill him with help of one his henchmen; Holland Boy (Ngai Sing, also known as Colin Chou).

One of Tony’s low ranked followers; Lobster (Lau Ching-Wan) has an interesting side story. Lobster, aloving father to his little girl, Little Lobster! After being released from hospital, his greeted by Tony and his wife. Although Lobsters wife seems to have lost interest in him and her daughter, after finding out that she covered her daughter in cuts and bruises. Lobster realizes that she is cheating on him and beaten his daughter. Lobster doesn’t take this easy…I wont spoil the rest of the subplot for you. Read More

Fist of Legend (1994)

Budding martial artist, Chen Zen (Jet Li) returns to Shanghai after hearing the news that his teacher died. His teacher died in a challenge match against a Japanese Solider, Akutagawa Ryuichi. After returning to the Jing Wu School (which was ran by his teacher) and finding out the whole story from Hou (Chin Siu-Ho), Chen goes to challenge Akutagawa himself.

Upon his arrival at the Japanese School, Chen starts brawling with the students training after they refuse him to see Akutagawa. After single handedly defeating the students, Chen is confronted by Akutagawa and Chen soon defeats him easily. Chen couldn’t believe that his Master would have lost to someone obviously weaker than him, Chen questions that he could have been poisoned.

Chen digs up the body of his master has a doctor perform an autopsy on him. The tests soon show that his master was poisoned. Now Chen must find out who poisoned his master and why…

Chen is also dating a women in this film, to make things worse she is Japanese and Chens family at Jing Wu aren’t happy to see her. His girlfriend, Mitsuko Yamada (Shinobu Nakayama) is the niece of Funakochi Fumio (Yasuaki Kurata). Funakochi is friends with the twisted general Fujita, although he highly against the believes of the general.

Now to the facts, most of you should know this is a remake of Lo Wei’s Fist Of Fury, which starred the fighting legend, Bruce Lee. This time Jet Li has taken the role from Bruce. So who’s better? Bruce or Jet? for some reason I felt that Jet Li’s character had more impact although Bruce created ‘Chen Zen’. Plus adding Yaksuaki Kurata to the movie was a great idea, I really enjoyed his performance, his battle with Jet was fabulous and memorably.

The Action was very hard hitting making use of one feature which isn’t used very often, dislocation. In Jets opening scenes he is fighting off a group of unruly Japanese students. He manages to dislocate, ankles, jaws, shoulders, arms etc. This is very new, I still haven’t seen such films where this is used regularly. Now the battles are great, Jet Li vs. Chin Siu Ho, Jet Li vs. Yaksuaki Kurata & Jet Li vs. Billy Chow!!

Final thoughts. A ground breaking Jet Li flick, although Miramax have been known to for changes the film, with extensive change in the dialogue, the music and I think five minutes have been cut out too. So all I want to see now is the actual Hong Kong Release of Fist of Legend!!!

Chungking Express (1994)

ChungkingExpress

Plot: The story of Chungking Express is split into two stories, both based on two very different police officers.

Officer 223 (Takashi Kaneshiro) is a plain clothed cop who patrols the around Chungking Mansions, a drug-filled, rundown hostel populated by Indians, amongst other foreigners. He spends most of his time moping over the loss of his girlfriend, May. His method for getting over his worries is to jog. One night in a bar he comes to a decision to try and get over his lost love and decides to peruse the next woman that walks into the bar. Meets a blonde-haired Chinese woman (Brigitte Lin), although this woman has a couple of skeletons in her closet.

Officer 663 (Tony Leung) is a street cop, he spends his evenings patrolling the streets around the Chungking Mansion and for his evening break he always stops into the Midnight Express Deli. Where he’s served by a shy young woman called Faye (Faye Wong), Faye has a crush on the cop, but she’s to shy to do anything about it. After receiving a letter from his ex-girlfriend – an air hostess (Valerie Chow), Faye opens it and discovers that the hostess is returning her key to his flat. Faye begins to secretly sneaking into his apartment, changing all the little details to it, subtly adding her own touch. When arriving at 663’s flat one day she opens the front door to be met by 663… Read More