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Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Last Hurrah for Chivalry Dragon Dynasty DVD Review

Video Quality: Last Hurrah for Chivalry comes to us anamorphically enhanced for widescreen TVs and in its proper original aspect ratio. The picture quality during the first fifteen minutes does display some minor print damage. However, it disappears after a short while and is never very noticeable. Otherwise, this print sourced from a Fortune Star HD master looks great and his very rich and vibrant colors without looking oversaturated. The picture also does not suffer from any ghosting or any transfer-related issues.

Audio: The audio quality is also excellent. The mono as can be expected by Dragon Dynasty releases is actually a mono track and not a downmix. There is also a Fortune Star created 5.1 mix and English dub, which are also both fine and suffer from no distortion or other audio issues. The English dub is sadly one created recently by Fortune Star. However, this is really not something that can be blamed on Dragon Dynasty, as the previous dub was created by Media Asia when they owned the rights to the Fortune Star collection and thus was not owned by Fortune Star.

Extras: First of all, we get another excellent commentary by Bey Logan, who once again gives great facts and background stories about the film, such as its place in the box office when it first came out and its theme song by Roman Tam. Bey Logan also hosts an excellent feature about Chinese weapons showing demos of weapon use with historical information on their usage on and off-screen. The feature runs a little short of 11 minutes. Next up are some great interviews more than likely coming to us courtesy of Mike Leeder. First is an interview with villain Fung Hak-On. The interview touches on many subjects such as John Woo’s start at Golden Harvest and their friendship. This interview runs around 9 minutes long. Another interview with Lee Hoi-San is also on the disc. Lee looks really old, but is still able to give a great interview talking about working with Woo and the film. This interview runs about 11 minutes long. Finally, the original trailer and a new promotional trailer round up the extras.

Final: If you have the slightest interest in this film (and it’s a really good swordplay film), then I highly recommend that you get the brand new Dragon Dynasty Special Edition. It’s got great picture and sound quality and some really nice extras. This is a really easy film to recommend.
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