Talk:Cinema of Hong Kong/Archives/2012

VCD piracy?
I thought the piracy via video CDs in South East Asia -- which was the main market for Chinese and Cantonese movies in the world -- was a major cause of the collapse in revenues earned by Chinese movies in 1995 onwards? Is this right, and should this be mentioned?


 * You're right. This should be mentioned.  It's a major player on why the HK film industry did so badly in the late 1990s, together with the Asian economic crisis. Mandel 19:28, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

Newbie runs rampant on HK Cinema page
Thanks for pointing that out about piracy - I've slipped it in.

I'm a newbie here, hoping nobody minds my running rampant all over the Cinema of Hong Kong page as I have yesterday and today. I just thought the early sections in particular are showing the many hands that contributed to the salad and could use some cleaning up, clarification, reductions of redundant information, etc. And, well, they tell us "be bold!" in the tutorial, etc., so...

Maybe it's inevitable that there's a very heavy emphasis on the '70s-'90s action cinema, and we've got a good start on that. But HK film is a lot more than gun fu and kung fu and I for one would love to see this fact reflected more.

It would be particularly nice to expand the outline of pre-'70s cinema in much more detail. But this would involved heavy reliance on Stephen Teo's amazing book "Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions," the only work in English I know of that treats of these decades in detail.

I might try to recruit some of my fellow Asian cinegeeks, some of whom know a LOT more than me, to come in and contribute here.

Long story short, the web's crawling with HK film enthusiasts (a lot of whom are clearly already Wikipedia contributors) and I know we can make this page as good as the Wikipedia page on anime.

-Michael Wells, 3/13/05

Create separate Hong Kong Action Cinema page?
The action section here is so large and dominant (and the genre so popular in its own right, even to people who have no interest in other HK film) that it might deserve to be broken out into its own Wikipedia entry, with a Wikilink from the main Cinema of Hong Kong page. The main page could be more devoted to a broad overview of HK cinema and its history; the action page could go into even more depth. This seems to work well in other large topics with complex subtopics.

Feedback on this would be much appreciated.

-Michael, 3/17/05


 * I concur. Dunno about the others though. Mandel 15:27, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Sources for industry statistics? + Tales of Bruce Lee
I'm thinking some basic industry statistics are needed, especially in discussion of the current slump. Number of films produced annually now vs. in earlier eras, average budgets, etc. - that sort of thing. In U.S. dollars would be especially helpful, since few Americans, myself included, have much HK dollar sense. Anyone know of any reliable sources for such info that are readily accessible? I'm going to scrape through my half a shelf of HK movie books again to see what I can turn up - I know there's some such information scattered around in there - but a more up-to-date source is needed.

Also, no arguments to the contrary forthcoming, I guess I'll sometime soon start a Hong Kong Action Cinema article and move the bulk of the current section over there, leaving a more cursory overview in place here.

Another thing: a couple of the stories re. Bruce Lee have the air of the sort of urban legends that cluster around him. The one about James Tien's character being killed off in Big Boss in order to let Lee take over the movie - I can't find a source for that. Anyone else have one? It sounds unlikely to me - Golden Harvest had just signed Lee to a recordbreaking exclusive contract, so I can't see how they would have assigned him to a small or even supporting part in ignorance of his capabilities and star potential.

I found the one about Lee accidentally hitting Jackie Chan on the Enter the Dragon set, in Chan's U.S. memoir. But the bit about Lee's promising to use Chan in future films isn't there.

They're both good stories - but almost too good to be true. Thoughts?

In fact, it occurs to me to move most of the "Post Bruce Lee Void" section to the Bruceploitation article, just leaving a line or two at most about that little subgenre. The idea that the whole HK film industry or the whole kung fu genre was desperately adrift post-Lee strikes me as a major exaggeration anyway.

Thanks for any and all thoughts.

Michael Wells 03:31, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Too many anecdotes would read strangely here. Some of your suggestions could go into other pages, eg. Bruce Lee.  I have a feeling this page will get rather too large in size (some parts remain unwritten) if completed, so it's best not to dump everything into the Hong Kong cinema pages. Mandel 18:18, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, yeah, I think that the page is already bloated. It would make sense to put much of what's already here into a separate History of Hong Kong Cinema entry, linked from the main entry, and make the main entry more of a general overview.  (As well as having a separate Hong Kong Action Cinema entry, as mentioned above.)  This would be along the lines of what a number of other entries do, including film entries - see the Anime entry, for example, although unfortunately no one has done anything with the separate History of Anime entry in that case.  Michael Wells 04:06, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New "Hong Kong Action Cinema" page
I've created a new Hong Kong action cinema entry and moved the entire section on action cinema of the '70s-'90s there to get it started. I think this less creates a hole than makes more obvious those that were already there. A broader overview of '70s-'90s film can get started now. Could particularly use contributions from people who know more than I (not hard) about '70s films aside from kung fu and about the "Second Wave" directors of the late '80s-early '90s (Stanley Kwan, Clara Law, etc.) Thanks.

Michael Wells 03:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

List of film-related topics
There is a dispute over how cinema of China, cinema of Hong Kong and cinema of Taiwan should be presented on the list of film-related topics. I changed how it is presented. User:Huaiwei reverted it, saying that " This is ridiculous. Since when is HK cinema not Chinese cinema? Then what is it? English? Thai? Japanese? ", " Chinese cinema is understood to refer to cinema produced in Greater China. They may develop in different geographic entities, but they remain inter-related throughout history. " , and " I know Chinese cinema enough to know that it didnt being in 1949. Nor did HK cinema develop without direct influence or contributions from Greater China. I hadent seen any arguments against this. ".

To my understanding the cinema of China article is bascially about the cinema of mainland China, which the cinema of Hong Kong and cinema of Taiwan aren't subset of. All opinions are welcome over how it should be presented. &mdash; Instantnood 14:55, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

(Please response at talk:cinema of China. Thanks.)

East Asian cinema
Hi. I created the East Asian cinema template and the associated article and would like to request some input on that article from the people who've worked on the various cinema articles for countries in the Far East / East Asia, including the "Cinema of Hong Kong" article. I think it would be worthwhile to expand the East Asian cinema article cos it's quite perfunctory at present, but I don't have the time to research each country's output as thoroughly as I'd like and I don't want to simply rewrite what you already have here. I tried putting up a request for expansion but little has happened.

My intention was to focus on the Western experience of East Asian cinema - particularly focussing on the impact and influence of the movies, directors, stars and film styles from the Far East on European and American audiences. This would include the increasing popularity of Eastern films in the West, especially box office, video & DVD market successes, but also cult figures and genres. It should also include information about collaborations and crossovers by Eastern and Western film makers.

Because of it's wider focus, the East Asian cinema article should ideally have synopses of the film industries of each East Asian country, but not just simple reiterations of what already exists in a more substantial form here.

I'm sure some users may disagree with my some of my ideas here, or have a better structural approach as to how the article should be expanded and evolve. That's cool - all I want is to make the article encompass as much scope as possible and to be a worthy place to group these diverse film cultures together. Each country should be represented, so I realise that using my intended focus may skew the article in favour of the larger industries of Hong Kong, China and Japan, which may be unwise. Anyway, any help on the East Asian cinema article would be appreciated.

Cheers, Gram 00:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

History of Hong Kong movies during the 50-70s
I remembered at that time there was a strong division between leftists and rightists. The article currently didn't mention any of those, it actually didn't mention any leftist production at all.

208.191.146.19 15:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfree images
According to our non-free content criteria, we cannot use a non-free image unless it contributes significantly to an article in ways that words alone cannot. Since we are a free content encyclopedia, we put strict limits on what non-free images we can use. In this article, none on the non-free images are necessary to inform the reader about Hong Kong cinema. That's why I removed the images from the article. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:37, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Cat III?
Suggestion: "Cat III" on the exploitation film page links to this page. A search through the page for "Cat III" yields no hits. It would be clearer if the exploitation film article linked right to the Category III films subheading, or even better of the exploitation film article said "Category III" instead of Cat III and linked right to the subheading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.13.180.50 (talk) 01:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)