A Chinese Ghost Story 2 [Special Collector's Edition] [DVD]

 

 

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A Chinese Ghost Story 2 by Leslie Cheung, Staring Joey Wong, Michele Reis, Jacky Cheung. If you like Number 1 then this is a must. The action is good but like a lot of others the story line could be improved a bit, but well worth buying for your collection I recomend it.

I have been a lifelong fan of this series of movies and happened across this version of the DVD recently whilst browsing chinese versions on ebay. For my money, so far, this is without a doubt the "definitive" dvd release of this particular film in the series. As time passes and films such as this are mostly forgotten by Western audiences, it's good to see that the Hong Kong Legends company are still striving to maintain the high quality that they are known for on their dvds so far. It would have been easy enough to just do a direct transfer to shift 500 copies of this classic (but not really THAT well known these days) film. There's not a massive amount of "extras" on offer here BUT the key point here is that there ARE extras. Most of the Chinese/Korean versions of this disc have no extras and a fair few are in 4:3 - whereas this version is in 16:9 which is, of course, very welcome from the off. There's a couple of interviews with the stars, though there's no interview with the star of the series, Leslie Cheung (sadly he killed himself some time back). You also have a dual language option, with the ability to watch the film in either Cantonese or English (with subtitles provided for both audio tracks). There IS a commentary, but to be honest I always find the Hong Kong Legends commentaries a little dry. Bey Logan, whilst no doubt an expert on Hong Kong cinema, never manages to sound like he's not just reading facts from a pre-prepared page. As each actor comes onscreen we are treated to their date of birth and a chronological list of films they have appeared in. While this may be helpful for some, it is more a presentation of facts surrounding those featured in the film as opposed to dissecting the film itself. There are, obviously, moments when he is talking about what is happening onscreen but there are equally moments where he will digress into (for my ears) pointless territory. Again, it's probably a matter of personal taste but I just find his commentaries a tad humourless and, at times, a little like he's just reading out their career so far from the Chinese version of the IMDB. There is also a part where there is an intimate scene between the two lead characters and just as the woman is removing her clothes (it's tastefully done, no real nudity) he launches into a "shout out" to a "wife of a friend" who apparently thinks he is "the bomb". I thought the fact that his mind was clearly jogged by a naked lady then he brings up his freinds wife, well, I thought it quite inappropriate and somewhat cringeworthy. Again, maybe it's all a great coincidence and he just happened to mention her at that time but it seems funny that images of a (tastefully) naked woman would cause him to recall comments made by his friends wife :-s This guy pretty much always (from what I've seen) does the commentaries on these discs and to be honest if it wasn't a chinese ghost story film then I probably wouldn't have listened to it. Thing is, I'm really interested in any information I can get about these productions so I gave it a go. He does give out some great info at times with regards to insight into certain actors and parts of the film, I just wish he'd focused more on this rather than endlessly telling us what other films every onscreen actor has been in and what their date of birth is :-s

The final thing to mention is the transfer, which is really, really good. However, I'm used to watching these films on heavily worn video tapes so it almost looks like a different film ! This is the case with a lot of Hong Kong cinema from this period once "remastered", it usually makes the scenes look a little less fuzzy/dreamy than their (over watched) vhs counterpart. However, that being said, this is a really really excellent and sympathetic transfer. I'd say they could/should have knocked the dark up a little as some of the darker scenes have a tendency to be a touch "chalky" BUT that's a very small complaint, everything is super clear and there's no digital gunk/artifacts even in the darker parts of the film. Also, to be honest, when watching this dvd version I saw some effects that I had never been able to really make out on the VHS, which was a good surprise. There's no "cgi" really in this film, aside from using computers for matting techniques etc and the effects that do feature are pretty cool. Tsui Hark brought over a lot of Western "talent" to help teach the Hong Kong crews how to do certain effects and it's definitely noticeable. If only he'd done the same for his terrible "zu warriors" remake...

So, all in, if you've already seen this film you'll know that it's great - if you've not seen it then this is definitely the best version to get hold of. I think I paid £2.99 or something for it and for a landmark piece of Chinese cinema this is definitely worth it. Infact, at that price, it's a steal.

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