The Secret Rivals Part 2 Crash Reg. 0 VS Soulblade Reg. 0

[saltysam]

Here's a classic example of a an excellent kung fu movie left to rot by not being looked after properly The Crash version has an awful sounding english dub only,the soulblade has an english dub & mandarin with english subs.

[saltysam]

Crash

Soulblade


Crash

Soulblade


Crash

Soulblade


Crash

Soulblade


Crash

Soulblade

[tom2681]

Looks like they shot this film using Jackie's Young Master camera (the one with the distorted lens).

Both dvds look terrible.

[Knetan]

hey,

Seasonal films in particular have not been stored well. Worse example was probably Butterfly Murders that had yellow staining all throughout the film. But if there's nothing else....

[grim_tales]

Both look shit.

[Knetan]

hey,

it ain't gonna get better soon. Soulblade probably is the sole option for quite some time now. Will happily support that. Being a HK cinema fan is to a certain extent about accepting lesser things and this current state of Secret Rivals 2 doesn't equal laziness. It is what it is.

[Markgway]

Soulblade at least has the correct scope ratio, but is washed out, the Crash print is a bit more colourful. I'd still go with Soulblade though (and that's not even taking the original audio into account).

[chenlung]

No offense mate but your captures are always off and it's really annoying. Please recapture them so that we can examine print damage (one reason is to investigate what prints were used, if they were the same and to see how significent the damage is). Thanks for supplying them anyway.

But from the overall: Contrast (in a possible attempt to save shadow detail) and colours looks weak in the Soulblade. However, print damage doesn't seem to feature a lot (probably the odd scratches and stuff on the majority of frames). But both DVDs suck thanks to overall lack of sharpness. Verdict (Soulblade): "Good effort with flaws"

Hell I can even spot a snort on Tino Wong's lip in the Crash Cinema DVD (last comparison) !

Soulblade wins automatically anyway in every account (despire low colours and contrast). Credit is due considering the incompetance of the Seasonal 'archivists' (even if some contents of the disc are sloppy when they could have been improved no problem). I'll buy it as it's not going to get better.

How is the title card (English/Chinese, English, German or a fake new English/Chinese one), subtitles (dubtitles? on-screen text covered?) and extras (Charlie Chin interview a camcorder job with poor sound/framing, and the original trailer)?

Thanks again.

[saltysam]

no offence in return chen lung but the captures are probably a millisecond off,i post these things to give people an idea what the dvd looks like and i'm sorry i haven't got the time or the will to sit at a computer all day matching caps to the exact nth degree. 8) if from these captures you can't work out both dvds are shitlooking and both prints used are badly damaged then i'm wasting my time and yours. i'm sorry you are annoyed but .the crash cinema release has been around for ages,i can't believe you haven't seen caps from that yonks ago. if people don't want me to post caps anymore due to inaccuracy no problem, i announce my retirement from posting dodgy caps

[chenlung]

Don't worry about it man, please keep posting. It just kept happening and I wanted to point it out (would be different if it was the odd one but it was every one).

Do you not have a feature to skip frame-by-frame?

However, if I have the DVDs, I can supply captures. For instance: I have Master of the Flying Guillotine 'Winson' and 'Pathfinder Reissue' DVDs so if I were to do those, perhaps someone else could to the 'Pathfinder original' and 'Madman' DVDs .

[Killer Meteor]

I find it very annoying that whilst this film has a lousy print but good effort in the presentation - juding from the screencaps anyway - Invincible Armour has a first class print but it's cropped to 2.05:1 and it's non anamorphic. It ain't fair!