The DVD quality is fair, with a grainy transfer and burned-in English/Mandarin subtitles (that disappear on white backgrounds) and a 2-channel Cantonese soundtrack.

But aside from the film, the highlight of the package is a documentary on Hong Kong cinema, mainly concentrating on wuxia films, from the early days up to Crouching Tiger.

It showed some stuff I haven't come across, like the sorcerer who can grow a giant foot and and stomp on everything. "It doesn't matter what kind of martial arts you use," he tells the hero. There's also the "magic eagle", which swoops down to rescue the hero in times of trouble. At one point, it was a guy in an eagle suit, doing kung fu moves. He looked more like a chicken sports mascot than an eagle. Still, pretty cool. Really fascinating older clips of old black and white films where the "palm magic" was signified by drawing flying swords on the film itself.

Lots of great interviews -- Cheng Pei Pei, David Chiang, Gordon Liu, Lau Kar Leung, a bit of Sammo and even John Woo, who says his gunplay films are a natural extension of the wuxia genre. Huh. Don't know about that. Also clips from many of the Shaw Bros films: Come Drink With Me, The Magic Blade, The Heroic Ones, New One-Armed Swordsman, Vengeance, The Assassin, Legendary Weapons of China. It was a real treat for me, since I've been watching most of these restored Shaw Bros classics.