British distributors Eureka Entertainment have announced that they will add two new titles to their Blu-ray catalog: King Hu's classic film
A Touch of Zen and Peter Yates'
The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
A Touch of Zen
Named one of the 100 best films of all-time by TIME Magazine, and one of the ten greatest Mandarin-language films in history by the Hong Kong Film Awards, King Hu's 1971 masterpiece
A Touch of Zen is the holy grail of wuxia pian. A huge influence on Ang Lee's
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (and practically every martial arts movie ever made), Hu's three-hour epic weds glorious highwire-flying action sequences with insightful philosophy and a cinematic grace that remains unmatched to this day. Simultaneously profound and profoundly entertaining,
A Touch of Zen is absolutely required viewing for any serious fan of wuxia.
Scholar Ku (Shih Jun) is approaching middle age, but has yet to find a wife. His prospects seemingly improve after a mysterious girl named Yang (Xu Feng) moves into the abandoned villa next door, but the fierce beauty wants nothing to do with the bookish Ku. When the scholar discovers Yang is the fugitive daughter of a wrongly executed noble being hunted by the authorities, he agrees to help Yang and her coconspirators elude capture and exact their revenge. With imperial forces closing in, Ku, Yang, and their band of rebels enter into a deadly fight that takes them on a journey throughout China and ends in the unlikeliest confrontation imaginable. (Synopsis courtesy of YesAsia).
Earlier this year,
A Touch of Zen was screened in the Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival. It was the first Taiwanese film and the first film in Mandarin to be presented at the prestigious festival.
The film was restored in 4K at the L'Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna. The director of photography supervised the color grading.
STREET DATE: JANUARY 25.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Peter Yates, the Oscar-nominated director of riveting crime classics
Roberry and
Bullit, teamed up with the incomparable Robert Mitchum for an unforgettable excursion into Boston's criminal underworld.
Based on the acclaimed novel by George V. Higgins,
The Friends of Eddie Coyle follows an aging gunrunner's troubles at the peripheries of the local mob once he finds his options split disastrously between the threat of a fresh prison sentence or police cooperation.
STREET DATE: JANUARY 25.