Ong Bak

[Brian Thibodeau]

I went with the Thai DVD without subs. That was nearly two years ago, but at the time, I couldn't wait to see the film once I'd heard about it. The Thai DVD also comes with an impressive amount of extras and behind-the-scenes stuff. The thing is, the film has had so much written about it online, the you could easily find a plot synopsis somewhere, then refer to it while you're watching the film unsubbed. Truth be told, the plot isn't that complicated, and I found the lack of subtitles not to be a problem at all. The only thing I recall that puzzled me was the relationship of Tony Jaa's character to the female lead in the film, but I recall looking that up somewhere the next day. The Thai DVD can be had for about $12 US (SHIPPED!!) from www.ethaicd.com. Very reliable dealer.

[PAUL MARTINEZ]

I have a dvd with english subs. It didn't seem like a bootleg. But with today's technology who knows.

[Brian Thibodeau]

But with today's technology who knows.

So true. Sometimes it's tough to tell the difference! Boots these days don't seem to be the shot-off-a-theatre-screen or downloaded-from-the-internet-to-watch-on-a-three-inch-wide-screen junk people often think they are. The things are a like plague up here in Canada, particularly in the big cities.

I don't think Ong Bak has been officially released anywhere with subs except on the HK VCD, but I could be wrong. Perhaps your disc is a European release? (or a reasonable facsimile of same? )

[Loki666]

I assume you have the REDSUN DVD. That company is weird. On their website https://www.redsundvd.com/view_doc.php?view_doc=2 they sell R1 compatible copies of Ong Bak Thai Warrior, Kung Fu Hustle, Hero: Extended Cut and Izo amongst other titles, both featuring English subs. They have a lot of R0 titles that don't exist, and their prices on Japanese SEs are way too low and have way too many English subtitles
If you liked Ong Bak, they also have a R0 DVD of Panna Rittikrai (the choreographer of Ong Bak) Born to Fight. Cool flick, They do have official releases of movies that you can buy anywhere (like Chinese Super Ninjas). I think most of these are public domain titles though.

[MrBooth]

What's this myth about Public Domain titles that I keep hearing lately? Chinese Super Ninjas is *not* a public domain title, the copyright is owned by Celestial Pictures who have never licensed it for home video release in the US (well, Miramax have apparently bought the rights to some Shaw Brothers titles, that might be one). The releases from companies like Panmedia are not licensed, and are not public domain - they're just very well distributed bootlegs...

[Brian Thibodeau]

Would there be any chance that the dubbed, cut, U.S. versions of many old Shaw movies are in the public domain because the independent companies that licenced them no longer exist or, perhaps, didn't copyright their prints properly? I know little about copyright law, so please don't think I'm defending the practise, but it just seems like there's been such a proliferation of budget DVDs of crappy US prints of Hong Kong flicks - including a handful of Shaw titles - by companies like Xenon, Platinum, Crash, Brentwood, etc. that I have to think that THEY think the titles might be public domain simply because they're simply ot the original, uncut Chinese versions that Celestial distributes. Or maybe those "chop socky theatre" versions are in the public domain after all? Just wondering...

Having browsed that RedSun site extensively, I'm fairly well convinced that they sell A LOT of bootleg product, mainly since I've seen a great many of those exact same sleeves on bootlegs here in Canada, where we have a serious problem with the practice in the Chinese community. They often tend to look exactly like the originals with the exception of the addition of Chinese fine print, fake logos, phony hologram stickers, etc, or they're region 0 versions of movies that are widely known to be ONLY legally available in verifiably region-coded editions. The other problem too, it that they're carrying discs that, if you do the research on the originals, originate in any number of countries around the world, while their pricing system seems a little too consistent, with a very tight range for one-disc versions, another very tight range for 2-disc versions, etc., regardless of what country they should be coming from if they're legit. Compare that with the pricing stucture at the (somewhat overpriced) www.pokerindustries.com, for example.

They recently made a major bust at a major Chinese Mall here in Canada, and the word is many stores were shut down, though I can't verify this as I live a couple hours away. This isn't, however, the first raid this mall has been hit with, and in each previous instance, the offending stores were back in business in short order. Part of the problem is that, at least up here, the bootlegs are every bit the equal in quality to the real thing! They aren't your shaky movie theatre video-cam steals, or 3-inch wide internet downloads. They're dual-layered, fully featured, DTS or DD5.1 widescreen, subbed and/or dubbed duplicates of Asian, European and, most dangerous of all, Hollywood movies that are virtually impossible to tell from something you'd pay $15-$30 for in a store or online, the only difference being the addition of Chinese subs (unless they're booting the region 3 editions, which would already have them) and bits of Chinese print on the packaging. Maybe this is a Canada and China only thing, but now an absolute tonne of this stuff now turns up regularly on eBay posing as legit. And yes, I know all this because I've actually picked up some of the things at used record stores in this same city thinking they were bargain priced legit versions until someone pointed out just how widely available they are and at less-than-used prices (usually around 4/$20 tax in, if you can believe it). I can see why such a trade would survive as long as it has when it's largely confined to one ethnic community and the few non-Asian stragglers who know about it, where the golden rule is "keep your mouth shut." The sad thing is, it's increasingly difficult to even FIND legit Asian DVDs anymore because the stores that once sold them abandoned them because they couldn't compete with the boot sellers, who seemed to be on every corner.

[Loki666]

I E-mailed hlflix.com and according to them Chinese Super Ninjas (there should be a few Shaw Bros films as well) is indeed a public domain title. It is why they sell the REDSUN version on their site. hkflix.com does not sell bootlegs or illicit DVDs