Eager young pupil Yuen Tak must display more than enthusiasm to win over kung fu teacher Chen Kuan-tai in THE MASTER.
Brothers outing with some splen- did fighting, particularly Yuen’s prolonged duel with Johnny Wang Lung-wei (sporting the req- uisite white wig and eyebrows as the Devils’ leader), who wields a deadly ponytail.
Media Blasters’ 2.35:1 pre- sentation looks crisp and color- ful, but is not anamorphic. This is especially disappointing when one considers that the Region 3 HK release from Intercontinental release is 16:9 enhanced. The 4:3 letterbox image zooms up well on widescreen televisions, but the English subtitles will be cropped offscreen, unless your set in- cludes the option of raising the image. Cantonese, Mandarin, and English mono tracks are in- cluded, as well as a 5.1 mix for the latter, and sound fine. Fore- most amongst the extras is an interview with Chen Kuan-tai, in which the genre icon talks about the two year lawsuit he endured after deciding to break his overly restrictive, vaguely written Shaw Brothers contract, and the experience of playing an elderly master for the first time in this picture (actually an error on Chen’s part, as he had already
played a character of similar age in 1976’s CHALLENGE OF THE MASTERS). He also candidly ex- presses his dislike of the exces- sive use of somersaults and other Peking Opera stylistics employed in the film’s choreography. A trailer and still gallery are of- fered, and viewers interested in getting a better look at the fight- ing are also given the option of viewing the opening and closing sequences sans credits.
PRAY Purei
2006, Tartan Video USA, DD-5.1 & 2.0/DTS/16:9/LB/ST/+, $14.95, 76m 55s, DVD-1 By David Kalat
Mitsuru (Tetsuji Tamayama) and Maki (Asami Mizukawa) aren’t Bonnie and Clyde, but they’ve got their own criminal masterplan: to kidnap a rich kid and ransom her for a small fortune. The kidnap- ping part of the plan goes pre- ternaturally smoothly but, when it comes to the ransom demands, the whole thing goes off the rails. They call the family, only to find the girl’s parents blithely uncon- cerned: they say their daughter
died exactly a year ago. The pan- icky crooks double-check the kid’s ID, and realize they must have kidnapped a ghost. Now what?
This is just the first 3m of
PRAY, not even yet to the title sequence. Any film that confi- dently blows through its material so rapidly risks burning out too soon, but PRAY has not just one but three or four more twists in reserve to parcel out judiciously through its trim 77m running time. By the time Mitsuru’s gang starts getting hacked to pieces in the abandoned school where they’ve holed up, new revelations surface about Maki’s femme fa- tale duplicity and the presence of maybe more angry ghosts than first identified.
Novelist Tomoko Ogawa’s original story was first published alongside Yoshihiro Nakamura’s “Booth” in ABSOLUTE TERROR: NEW GENERATIONS THRILLERS SERIES. Japanese production company Pony Canyon, a low budget operation hungry for quickie movie properties, ac- quired rights to the book and made both stories into features (Nakamura directed his own
63
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
