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No contest, right?
Not so fast.
For either the martial arts purist or the unabashed fan of Hong Kong cinema, there is a case to be made that you might be better off with Cinematheque's program of obscure fare, including The Victim (a.k.a. Lightning Kung Fu), Invincible Kung Fu Legs (a.k.a. The Legfighters), The Master Strikes, and of course, the popular Enter the Fat Dragon.
In fact, you might want to consider the following five reasons to check out Cinematheque's kickass warriors and Fat Dragons Festival, which runs every weekend, beginning this Saturday until March 1.
Taking the pro-Hong Kong view are two expert witnesses:
Colin Geddes... 32, whose day job is the Midnight Madness programmer of the Toronto international Film Festival, is in fact the owner of the four films in Cinematheque's festival.
"I guess you could call me the Tomb Raider of Chinatown," Geddes says.
"Most of the stuff in my collection, basically, I just found in the garbage, or found from old Chinese theatres which were going to be closed and were being gutted. This collection I had came from a theatre with a whole bunch of films in the basement. The theatre was going to be torn down and I was able to run in and save the films."
Lee Demarbre... is an Ottawa-based filmmaker whose feature debut Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (seen last year at the FilmExchange Festival) was partially an homage to Hong Kong Kung Fu. (Demarbre's Christ executes a mean roundhouse kick). He has been dubbed the "Canadian king of kung fu action" and his martial arts-laden short Harry Knuckles has been programmed for the final weekend of the festival, along with The Victim.
Demarbre was working in a video store when he had his fateful first encounter with a Jackie Chan movie titled Police Story.
"I was blown away," he says. "I hadn't seen anything like it and I thought: Where can I find more Jackie Chan films? So I got my father to drive me down to Chinatown in...