Hey folks, Harry here. Now... all together, "Clap your hands, Get out of Bed... Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead!" Pat your talk back selves on the back. Shove that fist in the air, lean your head back and quote Kevin Spacey. We Rule! Thanks to your help and that of Shanghai Lil... Well... read up, you'll see...
Harry,
A little while ago I relayed a report to you from some people I know that are "in the know" at Dimension Films. It concerned Dimension's continuing practice of taking classic Jackie Chan films and butchering them beyond recognition. The film in question this time, however, happened to be the extraordinary Drunken Master II. I had no reason not to believe what these people were telling me - I've trusted them for a long time and history has shown that butchery seems to be the mission statement at New Line and Dimension when it concerns Jackie Chan.
Some people in the last talkback who claimed to be with Dimension were asking - "why would we want to cut such a classic, especially the greatest fight scenes ever put to film?" Good question. That's what we all wanted to know, but you can't play innocent on this one, Dimension - just look at the utter tragedy that is your treatment of Operation Condor - you cut out tons of the absolute coolest comedy and action in that film, why would you treat any other film differently?
Needless to say, the talkback boards were live last time with outrage. It was a festering mine-field of venom toward those who would destroy a classic with their chainsaw-like cutting tactics. However, now it appears that all is well. It seems film fans everywhere have not spoken out in vain. In short, through the magic of modern communications, film fans have saved Drunken Master II.
It's been reported to me that the prints that will now go out across the land sometime later in the year will be faithful reproductions of the original film. Every fight scene will remain totally intact, as will the rest of the film. The movie will have a strong marketing campaign, playing off of its legendary status as the greatest martial arts film ever(Hey guys, I love Fist of Legend - in fact, I watched it yesterday for the tenth or so time, and while it IS great, it doesn't even compare with the imaginative choreography and smoothness of the fight scenes in DMII. Fists has the same robotic, metronome type Woo Ping choreography which is often undercranked to the point of obviousness(just look at the backgrounds), yet is incidentally some of the best ever done. But nobody has ever gotten close to the smooth flow of the best Jackie Chan fights, which are hardly ever undercranked and never obviously so like much of the Jet Li stuff, but I digress).
Supposedly, the Drunken Master II DVD will probably be one worth salivating over, as well. The other American Chan DVD's have had MAYBE a trailer on it(They take as much care with the extras as they do with the films, I suppose), but this one may be much cooler - that was all I was told, but I did hear rumblings of getting the original language version as an alternate audio track for the DVD, which is so obvious we shouldn't be celebrating over it, but I guess we need to be happy for even the obvious at this point(I just hope they enhance it for widescreen as well...).
Now to the not so good, but necessary news. This film is going for a wide, family audience, so it WILL be dubbed, which was always something that was inevitable. Chan did his own voice of course, but I haven't heard about the quality of the other voices, so let's keep our finger's crossed. I just hope we don't hear the "characitures" companies feel compelled to put over people in dubs. I don't know where they get half of these guys' voices, because as many people as I talk to in a day I NEVER hear any of the high-pitched, whiny or low-rumbling, gruff voices that you hear from the "good guys" and "bad guys" on dubs. Here's a simple test, studios: If you close your eyes and your dubbed voices sound stupid or not like people you'd hear in real life - DON'T FREAKING USE THEM!!! It's the old anime problem - the English voice actors almost always sound like CARTOON VOICE ACTORS and the Japanese voice actors almost always sound like REAL PEOPLE. Let's hope we get as good a dub on DMII as Miramax did on Princess Mononoke, which is probably the best dub job I've ever heard(though I'll still take the original anyday).
Another piece of business - the original score HAS BEEN REPLACED. The reason for doing this is not as sinister, though, as we all might think. Most of the reason is due to the lack of source material. It's just hard to find the source materials used to make the original soundtrack for the film. With so many versions out there of these films things get mixed up and lost. So the music has been re-scored - why they didn't just re-score the original is beyond me, but supposedly the new music is very good, so we'll see.
The last change is the elimination of the very, very last scene, but that IS in poor taste and technically doesn't constitute cutting since many versions of the film never had it in the first place.
So to sum up, we've been heard on AICN and are getting the DMII we deserve. The film WILL play uncut, with all the fight scenes totally intact as well as the rest of the film. The only catch will be the dubbing, which is necessary(and we can hopefully bypass it on the DVD anyway), and the re-scoring, which I think is the only truly negative here. But the important thing is that we'll get to see an amazing film on the big screen with a pumped up crowd. It's important for everybody to know this so we can all call off our boycotts and such on this film and instead go out and support it, while enjoying the fruits of our collective efforts in saving a classic.
Thanks everybody. I'm sure Jackie thanks you, too.
Shanghai Lil
