This month marked the end of an era, as Toronto's last Chinese theatre, the Long Shong I & II, closed its doors, another victim of Hollywood and HK video companies' rapid release policies. For the first time in literally decades, there is now nowhere in Toronto to see HK movies on the big screen, save for occasional showings at rep houses like The Royal. The Aberdeen Centre Theatre in Richmond, British Columbia is now Canada's sole remaining Chinese movie house.

It has been less than a decade since I regularly caught double bills at The Far East Theatre (with its local business ads between features and hovering, ever-present clouds of cigarette smoke) and The Mandarin Theatre (with its upwardly slanting layout and perpertually leaky roof) on Spadina Avenue but it is now beginning to seem like a lifetime. In fact, writing this, I almost feel like an old man telling his grandchildren about some long-forgotten age. We'll always have video but, for those of us who really caught the HK movie bug via regular visits to these long-shuttered venues, things will never quite be the same.

John Charles

Cover art courtesy Ocean Shores.

DVD Specs:

Ocean Shores #DV-132
Dolby Digital 2.0
Cantonese and Dubbed Mandarin Language (both post-synched)
Permanent Subtitles In Chinese and English
12 Chapters
Letterboxed (1.70:1)
Coded for ALL Regions
90 Minutes
Contains sexual violence and mid-range violence

Film Board Ratings and Consumer Advice

Hong Kong: III [Passed With Cuts]

Presentation

As with most Ocean Shores DVDs, the transfer here is the one originally created for the company's laserdisc. Colors tend to be light, contrasts are middling, and dark sequences are sometimes grainy. The print is also afflicted by a dusting of speckles; the Cantonese track is rather noisy and suffers from a brief dropout. There is also no video matte, which causes slight fluctuations in the aspect ratio. Unlike some of the company's discs, this one has chapter stops but there is still no menu and no extras.