Hong Kong Digital #138: As Tears Go By / Days of Being Wild

*As Tears Go By*	*Days of Being Wild*
Australia: R Great Britain: 18 [Passed With Cuts totalling 17 seconds] Ontario: AA (Possibly Cut) Singapore: PG [Passed With Cuts]	Australia: M (Occasional Violence) British Columbia: 14 YRS (Some Violence, Occasional Suggestive Scenes) Great Britain: 12 Hong Kong: II Ontario: AA Singapore: PG [Passed With Cuts]

PRESENTATION

AS TEARS GO BY and DAYS OF BEING WILD were the first HK movies to be issued on DVD in 16:9 by a local video label. That said, they still tend to look like run-of-the-mill HK transfers and should not be considered definitive. TEARS boasts deep blacks and largely attractive hues, though contrasts are variable. The 35mm print source has light wear but nothing overly distracting. It does, however, look its age at times, with intermittent grain. HK theatrical prints and early video releases have absolutely horrible English subtitles which would sometimes even disappear for minutes at a time. A British PAL tape, on the Made In Hong Kong label, offered a much improved translation but was compromised by BBFC censorship. Mega Star's subs fall somewhere in between: they cover all of the dialogue but are graceless, with typos and grammatical slip-ups galore.

From DAYS OF BEING WILD onwards, it becomes difficult to judge the accuracy of video transfers, as Wong and Doyle became less and less concerned with conventional imagery, introducing heavy grain, diffusion, and/or washed out colors into scenes for effect. Before their rights expired, Mei Ah issued DAYS on DVD, utilizing their old LD master. The results were acceptable, though marred by substandard compression and a lack of extras. Mega Star's release measures 1.79:1 and the image is soft, with light hues and weak contrasts. However, the other releases also looked this way, so the transfer would appear to be more or less accurate. The print has light wear throughout much of the running time and, alas, the English subtitle translation is of a considerably lower standard than most versions in circulation. Both films were originally issued in mono but have been given 5.1 remixes here (in contrast to the norm for HK DVDs, only Cantonese tracks are provided, with no Mandarin option). The sound usually remains up front, with new rear channel effects (sometimes sounding too crisp and immediate) added for atmosphere. As the audio was derived from the prints' optical tracks, pops and crackles can occasionally be heard but are not a major issue. The discs includes the trailers for each film.

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