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muckefuckYesterday me and the GWO closed out the New Year's festivities by devouring the pomelo that's been on display for the last two weeks and watching The Eagle-Shooting Heroes (東成西就). His verdict on the latter? "That movie was very silly." And how--even among anything-goes Hong Kong film parodies, I think it stands out for sheer craziness.
We have Nuphy to thank for gifting us with a clean copy whose subtitles are almost as good as those we remember from the original theatrical release. Sadly, two of my favourite lines are still absent: "Unlimited Force" is rendered "mystical kung-fu", so the immortal line above comes out as a flat pronouncement on the immaturity of the Princess' skills. And the cast no longer cries "Deux Ex Machina!" when Tony Leung Ka-fai's immortal descends from Heaven at the end to save the day. Still, the subs are miles better than those packaged with the first DVD release.
A lot of the gags either haven't aged well. Perhaps I've also lost some of my taste for 無厘頭 ("no common sense") humour over the years. (I don't get the same kick from watching old Stephen Chow Sing-chi flicks either.) The movie is shot through with gay panic, which is made tolerable chiefly by the fact that one of the actors, Leslie Cheung, actually was gay so there's a smirking subtext to all his scenes. Sadly, the joy is undercut by his suicide ten years later. (Nine months after that, Anita Mui succumbed equally unexpectedly to cervical cancer, cementing 2003 in my mind as The Year Hong Kong Cinema Died.)
In fact, the chief pleasure I take from the film is watching my most beloved HK screen idols running around like looney tunes. They reigned supreme at a time when I was watching a dozen of their films a year. I followed their off-screen exploits online and actively studied Cantonese in the hopes of understanding more of the dialogue. Nowadays, the most recent HK film I've watched is 2004's Kung Fu Hustle and it's been three years or more since I so much as cracked a Cantonese grammar.
We have Nuphy to thank for gifting us with a clean copy whose subtitles are almost as good as those we remember from the original theatrical release. Sadly, two of my favourite lines are still absent: "Unlimited Force" is rendered "mystical kung-fu", so the immortal line above comes out as a flat pronouncement on the immaturity of the Princess' skills. And the cast no longer cries "Deux Ex Machina!" when Tony Leung Ka-fai's immortal descends from Heaven at the end to save the day. Still, the subs are miles better than those packaged with the first DVD release.
A lot of the gags either haven't aged well. Perhaps I've also lost some of my taste for 無厘頭 ("no common sense") humour over the years. (I don't get the same kick from watching old Stephen Chow Sing-chi flicks either.) The movie is shot through with gay panic, which is made tolerable chiefly by the fact that one of the actors, Leslie Cheung, actually was gay so there's a smirking subtext to all his scenes. Sadly, the joy is undercut by his suicide ten years later. (Nine months after that, Anita Mui succumbed equally unexpectedly to cervical cancer, cementing 2003 in my mind as The Year Hong Kong Cinema Died.)
In fact, the chief pleasure I take from the film is watching my most beloved HK screen idols running around like looney tunes. They reigned supreme at a time when I was watching a dozen of their films a year. I followed their off-screen exploits online and actively studied Cantonese in the hopes of understanding more of the dialogue. Nowadays, the most recent HK film I've watched is 2004's Kung Fu Hustle and it's been three years or more since I so much as cracked a Cantonese grammar.
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