November 16, 2007 by hkfilmfan.

Here is great reason to be proud to be a card-carrying Andy Lau fan (literally - I’m a member of his fan club and actually have a membership card!).

This video is on YouTube and is getting mentioned in blogs.  It shows a fan at an Andy Lau concert who brings flowers up to Andy while he’s on stage.  After the fan leaves security personnel of some sort jump on him and although it is not quite clear what they do, whatever it is, it’s enough to make Andy jump off the stage and help the fan get clear of the security guards. Andy then walks the fan off to the side of the stage. 

This is a taste of Andy’s near legendary love for his fans. As a member of his fan club I am regularly invited to meetings in Hong Kong where you can go and meet with Andy. On the fan club’s website in the forum there are always stories of how great Andy was to meet and how he always treats them with respect and makes sure they know that he appreciates their support.

That is the sign of a true gentleman - and star!

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October 17, 2007 by hkfilmfan.

I was visiting my family in Phoenix, Arizona a few weeks back. Actually it’s an excuse to visit the Chinese Cultural Center in Phoenix!  One doesn’t normally think of Phoenix when you think of “Chinatown” but surprisingly there is a Chinatown of sorts just blocks from Sky Harbor Airport.

There is a nice little Chinese garden with a pond and some really nice statuary.  I took several pictures, of which one I’ve posted here. It’s a statue of Monkey King. I’ve been enamored of Monkey King ever since I first saw Stephen Chow’s “A Chinese Odyssey” (both parts). Stephen Chow plays Monkey King, a popular fictional character that practically every Chinese child knows. He is a mischievous and magical character usually portrayed as a kind of half man/half monkey.  Stephen plays him with a touch of sadness in “A Chinese Odyssey”.

The Chinese Cultural Center also has shops and an Asian grocery store. The main shop I go to is a music and video store. The music and films they sell are mostly in Mandarin and I can usually find something unusual when I go.

This time around I found a series of VCD’s with pictures of Nick Cheung, Chow Yun Fat, Stephen Chow, and Andy Lau interspersed among the Chinese characters. Since I only read about 3 words of Chinese, when I buy things like this I’m usually taking a gamble about what I’m getting. In this case “taking a gamble” was prophetic! I paid $6.00 for a VCD about how to cheat at Mah Jong!  I was thinking there might be clips from say, the”God of Gamblers” movies or “Tricky Master” since those were the movies the pictures on the case were from. No such luck! No clips, no English subtitles,  just tips on how to cheat.

My friends from work, Chuck and Xin, both speak Cantonese as their native language and speak some Mandarin as well so I took it to them and we watched it. They filled me in on some of the stuff I couldn’t figure out just from watching.  It was interesting, but not what I expected!

I also picked up a copy of “The Eagle Shooting Heroes” with  Tony Leung (both Chiu Wai and Ka Fai), Leslie Cheung, and Maggie Cheung. I haven’t watched it yet, but a little hand-applied sticker on the spine says it has English subtitles. I paid a little more for this than the aforementioned VCD so I hope it has English subtitles!

I also picked up Andy Lau’s new CD “Miracle World”. It’s mostly Mandarin songs with a neat pad of postcards with Andy featured on them and the lyrics sheet. Again, I can’t read the lyrics sheet or understand the songs, but they are fun to listen to. One is called in English “I’m Your Superman” - it even has some English lyrics!

They also sell some Cantonese music CDs. I got a Sam Hui CD that has music featured in his movies. It contains the theme song to the “Aces Go Places” series (”Best Partners” in English) and a Cantonese version of “Rock Around the Clock”.

That’s all for now - I’ll let you know if that DVD has English subtitles or not!

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September 16, 2007 by hkfilmfan.

Wikipedia responded and took off the text that was copied from hkfilmfan.com in the  entry for David Chiang that I found yesterday. I got an email response from Wikipedia that said that they had notified the editor of the copyright violation.

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August 16, 2007 by hkfilmfan.

Well, life intruded again!  It’s been a long time since I actually posted anything on this blog. So long, in fact, that I had to have my password sent to me since I had forgotten it!

I’ve been gearing up to do a little bit more work on my website, hkfilmfan.com, so I was doing some searching on the web for tidbits about my favorite stars. Somehow I ran across the Wikipedia entry for David Chiang. Imagine my utter surprise when I saw 2 paragraphs about David lifted directly, word-for-word from my website! After I picked my jaw up from my desk, I immediately set about figuring out what I should do.  I have never really looked at Wikipedia much so I didn’t know if I could really do anything. It turns out they have a link so you can report copyright violations. If I read the history of the entry and the person who made the entries correctly, it seems like they have been cited for it before. I’ve since asked for the entry to list my website as a reference, so maybe I will get credit for writing some of the entry.

On the bright side, at least someone has checked out my website and appreciates some portions of it!  I just wish they had asked me first!

Let me hear from you - I’d like to know that someone is out there.

So long for now!

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December 7, 2006 by hkfilmfan.

Let me introduce myself. This is my blog and you can call me HKFilmFan!

I’ve been a fan of Hong Kong films for many years and will talk about them to anyone who will listen. I guess that’s why I’ve started this blog.

My website http://www.hkfilmfan.com/ had a blog of sorts (actually just a page on the site that I posted things to) but I only got in a few entries and then life intruded. When I switched web hosts and had to revamp my website I found that I had blogging capabilities and decided to try again.

I started out on my website writing long reviews of films but I found I was having trouble writing long reviews but was having no trouble at all giving my opinion in capsule form on the films to my coworkers and husband. I also posted some of these capsule reviews on my previous blog. I’ve found that I enjoy writing these little “reviews” better than the longer ones, so I thought I’d start writing those kinds of things in this blog every couple of days or so. Let me tell you about my newest obsessions: David Chiang, Ti Lung and Alexander Fu Sheng! I don’t know quite how it started, but I happened on to some 70’s Shaw Brothers films with David Chiang and Ti Lung in them and they just caught my eye.