DRAGON DYNASTY To Release HARD BOILED On Blu-ray By Christmas?

Dragon Dynasty, the Asian specialty imprint that hardcore kung fu aficionados can't decide if they want to kiss or kill, may be getting ready to drop one of the most popular movies in their vast catalog, Hard Boiled, on Blu-ray by Christmas.  I don't yet have confirmation on this, however, if true, this could be an awesome way to end the year.  DD released Hard Boiled on DVD a couple of years ago, and was simultaneously cheered by the casual Asian action fan and chastised by the hardcore film geek* contingent.  The problem?  Dubtitles.  Much of our readership understands this phenomenon from years of importing and bootlegging hard to find Hong Kong action films, but for the rest of you, I'll give a brief description.

When a non-English language film is prepared for distribution in English speaking territories, often an English language dub is prepared to cater to a broader audience that might not want to read subtitles.  This is an abhorrent practice to many film fans, but hey, if it gets more people watching better movies, it can't be all bad.  The main problem is that often, for pacing reasons and simplicity's sake, the original dialogue is not directly translated and many of the nuances of the original script are lost for convenience's sake.  Usually when it comes time to release that film on home video, the DVD publisher will furnish the dub as well as the original language track with subtitles following the original dialogue.  However, in many cases the subtitles will follow the English language dub rather than the original dialogue; hence, dubtitles.

Dragon Dynasty's Hard Boiled was such a title.  There has been considerable backlash among the film geek* community, and hopefully, if this title is indeed coming to Blu-ray in December, they will address the issue.  The picture on the old disc was great and there were some pretty cool extras, but that one little thing sparked conniption fits across the country on internet forum after internet forum.  Since the film geek community is their main demographic, and they hardest to please, let's hope Dragon Dynasty does us right this time around.

Then again, this may not happen.

My fingers are crossed, though!  Roll on Hard Boiled Blu-ray!

Look for it sometime around December 14.

* Despite my earlier insistence that my language was not intended to offend, I managed to offend.  So I softened the language a little bit.  Many apologies to those who may have felt I was condescending or dismissive, no such insult was intended.