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Big thanks to all those of you who entered our Shaolin DVD competition. There were over 215 entries in all! Unfortunately we only have three copies of Benny Chan‘s awesome Shaolin to give away, and for those randomly picked winners your DVD will be on it’s way soon!

Shaolin, starring Asian superstars Andy Lau, Nicholas Tse and Jackie Chan, is released on DVD and Blu-ray by Cine-Asia today. Cine-Asia is also bringing back their mega-sale today, with the entire DVD and Blu-ray catalogue  available through online stockists and HMV and selected titles will be available through Asda, Blockbuster, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Tesco. DVD’s will be available from £5 and Blu-ray’s from as little as £7, with new titles added to the sale including Ip Man 2, 71-Into The Fire, Young Bruce Lee, Woochi: The Demon Slayer and Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame.

Respected UK-based Asian film label Terracotta are launching a new horror imprint under the appropriate title ‘Terror-cotta’. The first release will be Yoon Hong-Seung’s Korean high-school horror Death Bell.

Formally a music video director described as South Korea’s answer to Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, Yoon Hong-Seung’s (aka Chang) debut film concerns a group of students at an elite high-school who get locked-in and forced into a series of sadistic games and quizzes where one student will die in a gruesome manner for each incorrect answer.

Theatrical and DVD rights for the film were acquired by Terracotta Distribution from Mirovision and Death Bell will be out on DVD October 10th with theatrical releases at selected cinemas and horror festivals to coincide with Halloween.

Yep, the legendary label is back from today, starting with Fist Of Fury, Prodigal Son, Ong-Bak and Warrior King…

From today Hong Kong Legends titles will be reissued by Cine-Asia under their banner as ‘Cine-Asia presents…’. Steve Rivers, who launched the HKL label originally, now executive director of Cine-Asia parent company Showbox Media was very excited, stating: ‘It’s fantastic to have these films come round again, because we enjoyed them, and we’re passionate about them. We’re hoping new fans to the Jackie Chan films since he’s been in Hollywood, and to films that we’ve put out, like Little Big Soldier and Robin-B-Hood. We hope that these releases will compliment our own, for instance those interested in the recent release of Young Bruce Lee will now be able to enjoy Bruce’s original films.

Steve stressed that because of the agreement with eOne — who actually own these titles and rights to distribution in the UK since they bought the HKL label originally when they were called Contender — the distinction being that the ‘presents…’ tag means the content is the same as has previously been released. These versions will not include any additional or new content.

The line-up starts with Bruce Lee’s Fist Of Fury, Sammo Hung’s cult classic The Prodigal Son, and two from Tony Jaa, Ong-Bak and The Warrior King. The next batch on 1 August includes a bumper stash of Jackie Chan with Police Story, Police Story 2 and the thoroughly unconnected New Police Story. There’s more Chan on the 22 August with Heart Of Dragon, Dragons Forever and Dragon Lord, as well as Bruce Lee’s Way Of The Dragon. Release dates are a little sketchy after that, but further releases include the 2-disc ultimate edition of Yuen Woo-Ping’s outstanding collaboration with star Donnie Yen, Iron Monkey on 26 September.

Our full interview with Steve — a rather enlightening look behind the scenes at one of the UK’s foremost Asian labels — will be published later this week…

Once upon a time a British label released classic Hong Kong films on DVD the way we’d always wanted to see them. Spruced up, restored, original language and bucket loads of extras! This pioneering label made an international name for itself remastering and reissuing old Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and other classic kung fu flicks.

Thoroughly spoilt we thought those blissful days would never end. But they did, when the label folded at the beginning of 2008.

(But then Steve Rivers, who founded Hong Kong Legends in the first place – and sold it to Contender – started up Cine-Asia, and that soon became just what we’d been missing, especially over the last 18 months!)

And now Steve’s got his mitts on the films released on the HKL label once again, as Cine-Asia start to reissue them once again – giving those of us who remember the label a chance to catch-up on titles we missed, and newbies a chance to catch-up full stop.

The schedule starts from 4th July, with the Bruce Lee classic Fist Of Fury, Sammo Hung classic The Prodigal Son and Tony Jaa’s Ong-Bak (yay!) and Warrior King aka Tom yum goong (er, not quite so yay!).

And we’ll be bringing you a fascinating insight into the Cine-Asia label soon. (Honest Steve & Louise, I will get round to it!)

It’s with great sadness I discovered that online retailer HKFlix.com is no more. Though we had somewhat distanced ourselves from them in recent years, mainly due to concentrating on UK based releases, they were our first retailer affiliate connection and in some ways much of the reason there is an easternKicks at all!

Back when I started easternKicks.com, they were the first retailer we approached, dreaming the impossible dream of ‘monetizing’ the site. (Lesson to those planning to do the same: do it for the passion, not the money!) At the time they had the best range of products, and were often a regular stop for my own purchases.

One of the first online retailers to to truly breakdown global borders and offer Asian and martial art releases to the world, but ultimately they couldn’t compete with the might of Amazon or Netfilx, nor the product range of Yes Asia. They folded in March this year.

The original co-founder wrote quite an impassioned letter on CityOnFire.com, explaining how he set up the company, how he eventually parted with it in October 2009 and how disappointed he became with how the company was run afterwards.

A sad day indeed…

The legendary UK label, world-reknowned for great DVD releases with superb restoration, is back from the grave… (more…)

Cine Asia (not quite sure, but should there be a hyphen in there?) have just announced a ‘mega sale’ of existing titles, with DVDs from £3 and Blu-ray’s from £6.99. So if you’ve fancied getting some of their quality editions of films they’ve been putting out over the years, or just want to expand your collection, now could be the time to start… Selected titles will be available from HMV, amazon, play.com, Tesco, Sainsbury and various retailers.

They’ve also taken the opportunity to revamp their website, and it’s vast improvement. (Perfect? Perhaps not quite, but then I would say that – I do this for a living…)

Go and take a look cine-asia.com…

The 21st Tokyo International Film Festival is to include a tribute screening to Japanese director Jun Ichikawa, who died last month, of his latest film Buy A Suit. His work included the adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Tony Takitani, and easternKicks was fortunate enough to talk to him about the film. It’s sad news to hear about his passing, especially as the years had not lessened his pushing of creative methods, both in telling a story and technology. In person he was reserved but quite charming. You can read our interview here, and read more about the tribute at TIFF on their site.