I just got and watched Opium and the Kung-fu Master starring Ti Lung. I am very excited to finally see these Shaw Bros films on Blu-ray (as much as those fans who are excited to see Criterion releases on Blu-ray).
I was very impressed with the overall quality of the restoration and encoding. Celestial Pictures and Shaw Bros started restoring their catalogs few years back and this is likely from one of those new masters. The print is extremely clean and vibrant. Image is 1080P sharp and detailed in many shots with others suffering from poor focus (very typical of other Shaw Bros pictures which was even noticeable on their standard DVD releases). The picture is encoded in AVC (pretty low bitrate since the entire 90 min feature only takes up 13GB). Audio is DD mono (encoded in 2.0) in original Mandarin, dubbed Cantonese, and fairly decent English. English subtitle is free from overt typos or grammatical errors and overlaps both the picture and the black bars. Extra features include a very informative booklet written by Ric Meyers, three interviews, pre-restoration trailers for the movie as well as other Shaw Bros features, and picture gallery. The case is standard slim plastic Elite style with reversible cover insert.
Although the booklet mentions that 14 Shaw Bros classics were selected for Blu-ray releases, I am not certain that it will happen now that BCI Eclipse has been shut down. I know Life Gamble is still slated for release later this month, but I am afraid there might not be any more coming any time soon. That's too bad since this was an excellent catalog release that put many big name Hollywood studios to shame at an excellent price ($15.49 on Amazon).
I was very impressed with the overall quality of the restoration and encoding. Celestial Pictures and Shaw Bros started restoring their catalogs few years back and this is likely from one of those new masters. The print is extremely clean and vibrant. Image is 1080P sharp and detailed in many shots with others suffering from poor focus (very typical of other Shaw Bros pictures which was even noticeable on their standard DVD releases). The picture is encoded in AVC (pretty low bitrate since the entire 90 min feature only takes up 13GB). Audio is DD mono (encoded in 2.0) in original Mandarin, dubbed Cantonese, and fairly decent English. English subtitle is free from overt typos or grammatical errors and overlaps both the picture and the black bars. Extra features include a very informative booklet written by Ric Meyers, three interviews, pre-restoration trailers for the movie as well as other Shaw Bros features, and picture gallery. The case is standard slim plastic Elite style with reversible cover insert.
Although the booklet mentions that 14 Shaw Bros classics were selected for Blu-ray releases, I am not certain that it will happen now that BCI Eclipse has been shut down. I know Life Gamble is still slated for release later this month, but I am afraid there might not be any more coming any time soon. That's too bad since this was an excellent catalog release that put many big name Hollywood studios to shame at an excellent price ($15.49 on Amazon).
