Old School Jackie

[hman]

I once started a thread about this at the old board. I reviewed Jackie's Snake and Crane Arts of Shaolin, one of my top five Jackie Chan movies. Check it out:

www.geocities.com/drngor/snakecrane.html

[Xenorama ™]

i'm pretty sure i've seen this, though it has been some time. i bet the DVD has been redubbed, like FEARLESS HYENA was?

[hman]

Nope, the Tri-Star DVD is the original dub, the same one that was in the PD VHS I had.

[hman]

I got a budget DVD of "The Fearless Hyena" for my birthday from my father-in-law. It actually had a really good picture and it seemed to have the original dubbing. I thought it was pretty good, but not as good as his Seasonal Films or Snake and Crane Arts.

[Xenorama ™]

i couldn't believe the way Jackie looked when hauling those bags of rice. he was really cut back then- insane!~

[hman]

I was pretty impressed, too. My gripe with this movie (and it's kind of a matter of taste) is that instead of doing comic twists on traditional styles, Jackie does more silly acrobatics. Even the invented styles of a lot of these movies probably had a stronger foundation in traditional martial arts than this movie. Good weapons scenes though.

[hman]

I watched two more old school Jackie films for the first time in the past few weeks.

One was "Magnificent Bodyguards" and the other was "Dragon Lord."

The former was actually pretty. Jackie Chan does some really fast handwork, especially in the first few fights. He's helped by Bruce Liang (Leung Siu-Lung), who does some pretty good kicking. James Tien is also at the top of his game (Tien for some reason did his best work alongside Jackie). Two notable aspects of the film: 1) It was filmed in 3-D so lots of fists, weapons, and snakes fly at the camera, and 2) it uses the Star Wars music in a few scenes. Recommended film.

I didn't really like "Dragon Lord" all that much. The acrobatics and stuntwork are impressive, but I really don't like Jackie when he just does the stuntwork w/o a strong martial arts foundation. That's the reason I didn't care so much for "Project A 2" as well. Nonetheless, there are some neat set-pieces in the film for those of you who enjoy seeing Jackie be Jackie.

Longer reviews are available at the blog.

[Xenorama ™]

i also prefer his kung fu movies over his later stunt filled movies. sure, it's nice he does (most of) his own stunts, but really, i wanna see him do kung fu, not leap off buildings and such.