On some level, I knew this would happen. And by “this” I’m specifically referring to my steadily declining output for this wonderful website. Every time I check the main page for updates, I find the blogroll mocking me on a daily basis, reminding me that I haven’t updated this blog in close to two months. And so, I sincerely apologize to you few, you happy few who actually take the time out of your day to read my stuff. Thanks a million for your support. But I have to tell you, my hiatus from blogging was not without good reason.

To make up for Sanjuro’s two month blogging hiatus, Singapore’s very own Stefanie Sun wishes LoveHKFilm.com readers in the U.S. a belated Happy 4th of July!

For one, I’m in a PhD program. My areas of interest are 20th century American literature, Asian American literature and film, hard-boiled detective fiction, and American film noir. I’m taking my qualifying exam in the fall, so that basically means I’ve been spending the last several months of my life and will be spending the next several months studying my ass off for what I am certain will be the hardest final exam I have ever taken in my life — which, by the way, has a timed written component as well as an oral one in front of a wizened council of elders. In my worst nightmares, I imagine it looks something like this:

 GUILTY!

So to make a long story short, the last few months and the next few months for me means reading a lot of fiction and a lot of critical theory, as well as watching a lot of films that don’t have anything remotely to do with Hong Kong cinema.

When I do have free time, this is what tends to happen. I’m in a happy relationship, so that’s my number one priority. But aside from trying to be a good boyfriend, I — as some of you might remember — am also trying to be a good writer, and so whenever I get a sliver of time to myself, I work on my writing in the hopes that someday I’ll have another story, collection of stories, or novel to submit for publication. I’m actually pretty close to finishing a first draft of some new work, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that everything will turn out for the best.

Anyway, I guess I just wish I could split myself into three people — a movie reviewer, a would-be professor, and a writer of fiction. I guess I’m too ambitious for my own damn good.

Another thing that caused the hiatus is the simple fact that there are too many short-term distractions that I find myself succumbing to — I mean, when you can play Rock Band with friends, read the ever-addictive 20th Century Boys, or watch the latest episode of Supernatural for free, one feels less inclined to blog about one’s silly little opinions on Hong Kong cinema.

On the bright side, I’m going to be taking a short trip to Singapore, which I’m hoping will put me right smack dab in the Asian cinema loop. Last time I went, I saw Jay Chou’s Initial D car on display. Bam! That’s a blog post right there. I’m a little pissed that I won’t get to see/meet unofficial LoveHKFilm.com mascot, Ekin Cheng, as he’s set to kick off a 150-day countdown to the release of Storm Warriors. He’ll be there July 20-21, and unfortunately, I don’t get there ’till late August. Still, when I see the life-sized replicas of the two Wind and Cloud swords at VivoCity, you can bet your ass I’ll take pictures and blog about it. That’s a promise!

 I really wanna see you! I really wanna be with you!

Of course, I will watch any Asian film in Singapore theaters — even Murderer, despite Kevin’s warnings, simply because I think I might get a kick out of seeing that outrageous twist ending that he so graciously spoiled for me and all his Facebook friends. One thing I really love about Singapore theaters is you get the Asian equivalent of Kettle Corn popcorn . Another great thing is that every film has English subtitles. Thanks to that, I’ve gotten to watch everything from Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water to Jay Chou’s Secret during my intermittent trips to the Lion City.

Also, a trip overseas means my Asian DVD collection is sure to expand, despite the fact that I still haven’t completely whittled down my unseen DVD pile just yet. I’ll catch up with Singaporean cinema, which has a small enough movie industry that one could actually watch every film made in the last ten years if one were so inclined. Singapore is also a great place to get affordable Japanese and Korean films and television dramas. Last time, I picked up Nodame Cantabile and Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (review forthcoming!?) for a very small sum. Buying Hong Kong films is a little trickier, though, because sometimes the Singaporean distributors don’t include the original Cantonese track. For instance, my copy of Invisible Target only has a Mandarin dub. So…new DVDs means new blog posts.

I will be drinking a lot of this in Singapore. Admittedly, Coke tastes a bit better, but this is somehow more addictive. I think they may put crack in it. No wonder it’s not available in the United States.

Anyway, I guess I the whole point of this blog post was to say 1) I haven’t abandoned the blog, 2) I’m really sorry for the hiatus, 3) I had my reasons, which I’m sure you’ll understand, and 4) things are looking up.

So, in the words of our illustrious governor, I’ll be back.

When I was attending the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, I did a keyword search of “Wong Kar-Wai,” and amongst the results, I was directed to a couple of HK cinema-related books that I had no idea existed. One was a booklength study of Ashes of Time by Wimal Dissanayake; the other was an equally extensive look at Happy Together by Jeremy Tambling. Both were extremely well-written, illuminating, and full of little known facts about the films. The idea that this would be an ongoing series was an exciting prospect for a Hong Kong cinema fan such as I.

When I visited Hong Kong a few years back, I picked up a copy of Karen Fang’s informative look at A Better Tomorrow at one of the museum gift shops, and just recently, I finished reading Gina Marchetti’s take on the Infernal Affairs Trilogy. She does a heckuva job keeping everything that goes on in the trilogy straight, teasing out the implications of new, seemingly contradictory information we receive in the two sequels. To date, these are the covers of all the books in the series, save Lisa Oldham-Stokes’ He’s a Woman, She’s a Man and  Tony Williams’ A Bullet in the Head, which aren’t coming out until May.

Why am I listing these books here? Well, I’m not getting a commission from the University of Hong Kong Press, I can tell you that. No, I’m spotlighting these books for three reasons:

 1) This is a Hong Kong cinema site, so I suspect the LoveHKFilm.com readership would be somewhat excited to hear about this series if they weren’t already aware of it.

2) I’m curious — What Hong Kong movies/series do you hope will be spotlighted?

3) And to everyone — but Kozo, Kevin, and Sanney especially — what movies would you write about if you had the time/opportunity? Yuen Woo-Ping’s Wing Chun has a book! I like the movie, but wow, Wing Chun! That means you could write about ANY Hong Kong movie! Keep that in mind.

To answer my own questions, I would say — after some consideration — that I would love to write a book about the entire Once Upon a Time in China series, but I have to admit that the sheer scope of such a project, not to mention my difficulties with Chinese languages, scares the hell out of me. I would really want to do the series justice, but I would probably would not have the time or energy to devote myself to such a project. There are a lot of other Hong Kong films that I enjoy (Fong Sai-Yuk, Hard Boiled, Needing You, the list goes on) , but if I had to narrow it down to one film, I can honestly say that I’d love to write a book about Comrades: Almost a Love Story, although to be perfectly honest, a booklength study of the My Wife is 18  would probably be a lot less pressure for me to deal with.

Anyway, I’m curious what you all think.

Oh, and if you’re living in Hong Kong, you can order directly from the press. For those of you in the United States, you can also order these books on Amazon or directly from the University of Washington Press.

Hello, my name is Calvin McMillin, a.k.a. Sanjuro. You might remember me from such film reviews as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Swordsman 2, or perhaps the strangely infamous Flowers of Shanghai. I’m here today to give you the skinny on my new blog, Ronin on Empty. Now, you might be aware that I once had an irregularly updated column on the site called A Man Called Sanjuro or that I most recently maintained a blogger account also called Ronin on Empty. Those previous writing venues have been folded into this brand-spankin’ new LoveHKFilm.com blog. I wasn’t sure how or where to begin, so I did a few test posts to start out, which you can read underneath this one. With that initial tomfoolery out of the way, I thought I might use this first substantive posting as an opportunity to reflect on the past, consider the present, and speculate on the future.

 ”Be like water, fool! Be like water!”

I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I really got into Hong Kong cinema sometime in the summer of 1992. Before then, aside from the small handful of films Bruce Lee made in his lifetime, the only Chinese films I had seen were those poorly-dubbed chopsocky flicks that the local channels would show on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But in 1992, something truly glorious happened to me. While I visited Singapore on summer vacation, my family was all abuzz about a new Chinese movie that had just come out, and since they were all itching to see it, I tagged along for the ride. And boy, what a ride. As it turned out, the movie in question was Once Upon a Time in China 2. To put it simply, it was a magical time at the cinema. I honestly hadn’t been so fully immersed in a film since watching the Star Wars trilogy as a kid. Now I could go on for pages talking about Once Upon a Time in China 2, but I’ll spare you the frothing, fanboy excitement. Let’s just say I was hooked — BIG TIME.

 Best. HK Movie. Ever.

I just had to know — were there more films out there like this? And if so, how could I see them? The next day, one of my aunties  took me to the local video store, and I was able to watch a few Hong Kong films I’d never seen before. As a result, I had a great time devouring this “new” cinema that was so utterly amazing to me and yet had totally been under the radar for me for so many years. But when I returned to my home in Oklahoma, the my down-home rural locale made access to these films a major obstacle. For those of you too young to remember, the convenience of the internet was years away, and the DVD revolution had yet to occur. Getting to see Hong Kong films — in any form — was a pretty big deal.

“What’d you say about DragonBall Evolution?”

Not to sound like an old-timer, but I remember setting the VCR before I went to bed to record late night showings of dubbed versions of A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow 2, and Hard Boiled (complete with an Aussie-dubbed Chow Yun-Fat!) on Cinemax. Things got a lot better when I got my hands on various mail-order catalogs, which allowed me to order two-tape sets of Hong Kong movies for a whopping $40. Exactly why these movies were cut into two parts over two separate video cassettes remains unclear to me even today.

“Whaddya mean by ‘overcompensating’?”

But the situation improved as time passed. Video stores like Hastings started carrying VHS tapes of HK movies with subtitles, and I’d watch every single one that would show up on the shelves, even ones I probably should’ve avoided. After Rumble in the Bronx and Rush Hour performed well at the US box office, more and more Jackie Chan films were released in the US. Sure, the English dubbing and recuts might not have been the most desirable format for hardcore fans, but you have to remember that these were different times. It was a minor miracle seeing a Jackie Chan movie in an American theatre. And then something even cooler happened — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit American shores. I distinctly remember the unbelievably surreal quality of watching CTHD in Mandarin and then later Iron Monkey in Cantonese in a rinky-dink six-cinema theatre in Duncan, Oklahoma. To me, this was unthinkable only a year before. When I saw the first Once Upon a Time in China on DVD at Wal-Mart for $19.99, clearly it was a good time for Hong Kong cinema fans in the United States.

My first three post-1997 HK flicks all featured Ekin Cheng. And I liked them. Sue me.

When I returned to Singapore in 2002, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of Hong Kongfilms on VCD that I encountered there. Unsure of what to buy beyond the films I knew from 1980-1994, I consulted the internet. I typed in “Hong Kong film,” and I was instantly taken to a little website bearing the name — you guessed it — LoveHKFilm.com. I thought the reviews were well-written and funny; whoever this Kozo guy was he sure did share my sense of humor and love for HK cinema. I couldn’t believe a site like this existed. I contacted Kozo, who was looking for reviewers, and for reasons I can’t quite recall, I asked if I could join. I think my first review was Swordsman, based off a crappy VCD, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, a lot has changed since I started writing for this site all those years ago. Back then, I was a single, fresh-faced, clean-cut junior high teacher who spent his weekends reconnecting with Hong Kong cinema through a copious amount of DVD and VCD purchases from Yesasia and local video stores. Now, I’m grizzled, long-haired PhD student with a beautiful girlfriend and a workload that just gets piled higher and deeper with each passing day.  I have a tough time finding the time to even watch a HK movie, let alone review one, and unlike Kozo and Kevin Ma, I’m far, far away from the Hong Kong action to be anywhere near the cutting edge in terms of my review output. It also doesn’t help that the heyday of HK cinema is long since gone. Earlier, I likened my experience watching Once Upon a Time in China 2 with my childhood viewing of Star Wars, and I’m wondering what to do with that comparison. I mean, just 8-10 years ago, I used to collect Star Wars VHS tapes, DVDs, tie-in books, graphic novels, toys galore, you name it. Today? I’m totally indifferent to the franchise. But is that how I feel about HK cinema? Not at all. I’m not ready to give up on it. Really, it’s just a question of re-energizing myself.

Pictorial Representation of Sanjuro Re-energized

So how do I do it? Well, I came up with two ideas. I recently calculated the number of DVDs that I own that I haven’t watched, and the number was somewhere in the 100s, depending on how you count TV shows. Of those, probably 80 are relevant to this website and 50-60 of those have never been reviewed by anyone at LoveHKFilm.com. Thus, my goal for the year is to slog through the remaining titles in my collection, and review every relevant movie. My collection runs the gamut of pan-Asia stuff from Japan, Korea, and Malaysia, as well as a number of Hong Cinema films, especially from the Shaw Brothers most prolific era. There are even a few gems that Kozo, Kevin, and I haven’t touched yet (Centre Stage, anyone?), and I’d love the chance to remedy those omissions real soon.

I promise to review this movie someday.

The second effort to rejuvenate things is this blog. And at the risk of looking like the site’s resident curmudgeon, I’m doing to dip back into the archive from time to time to spotlight movies from “the good ol’ days.” This blog, however, won’t be about my personal life, so don’t worry about weepy blog posts entitled “Sad” or “Desperate Cry for Help.” Instead what I want to do is simply talk about Hong Kong and Asian entertainment in a format that can’t be given adequately treatment in a review. I might want to focus on an unsung film, an underrated performance, or a really great action scene. This blog is very much a work-in-progress. What I suspect you might find most consistently is a blog that’ll provide some US Blu-Ray and DVD news on HK and Pan-Asian movies, as well as some short essays on Hong Kong cinema from time to time. I’ll try to surprise ya.

Unlike Chow Mo-Wan, I never write in a suit. Hell, I don’t even smoke.

The other thing that I may want to do is serialize some of my fictional work. This is a tricky issue due to a) rights issues, b) relevancy to the site itself, and c) your interest as readers. I’m a writer – or at least trying to be – and I was lucky enough to get two stories published; one was a little ghost story called “Raffles Place Déjà vu” that got picked up (and re-edited quite embarrassingly) in a Singaporean horror anthology, and the other was a short story called “The Sushi Bar at the Edge of Forever,” which finally got published a couple years ago in The Hawaii Review. Anyway, if I do decide to serialize some of my stuff, I want your comments, your criticisms, your suggestions. Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexandre Dumas, and even Stephen King have been successful with the serial format, and while I know I’ll never be as popular as any of those fine fellows, I’m intrigued to experiment with the form and challenge myself to make it interesting for all of you. I’m not doing this for the fame (although that would be great); I’m more interested in telling stories, and I’m sincerely hoping people like them. If you’re interested in me posting stuff like that, let me know.

* * *

In the words of Shakespeare (or was it Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa?): It has begun.