A big shoutout to Yoshie for the plug! Book is now available via both actual and virtual bookstores although official release date isn't until Sept. 16. Folks can check out description and read comments at Verso website - www.versobooks.com - or at several on-line sellers (I posted a couple of announcements a few months ago so they're probably in the lbo archive as well). For NYC area listers, Verso is having a book release party at Anthology Film Archives on Saturday afternoon Sept. 18. AFA will screen Woo's *Bullet in the Head* and Donnie Yen's *Ballistic Kiss*. A chance to meet in person, Michael Hoover
Current issue of *Library Journal* recommends _City on Fire_ for libraries and here's what *Publisher's Weekly* said in its 8/9/99 issue (I've editorialized a little):
The Hong Kong film industry of the '80s and early '90s produced a treasure trove of films. It made matinee idols of (among others) Chow Yun-fat, Jackie Chan, and Maggie Cheung, reinventing genres style and generally beat the Hollywood dream factory at its own game with an 'anything goes' attitude - despite tiny budgets and brief production schedules. Hoover and Stokes rightly consider the anxiety produced by the ticking clock to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China as the key to this period of frenetic creativity. In the most serious study to date of Hong Kong cinema, the authors dutifully ground their account with social, political, economic, and historical analysis. Sometimes they get a bit carried away [[oh really]], however: comparing a Harold Lloyd stunt to a Jackie Chan variant, the Lloyd version becomes emblematic of the ideal of upward mobility in the American 1920s, and Chan's tumble reflects how 'Hong Kong's dollar fell during a run on the colony's currency in 1983.' The abundance of quotes from Marx and Engels [[for what's it worth, there aren't that many, but then, this *is* *Publisher's Weekly*]] at times makes a cinema noted for its pure entertainment value sound dull and allegorical [[re. allegories, see Yoshie's more astute comments!]]. Still the book's extensive interviews with major HK players - and detailed coverage of the comedies and romances that have enjoyed less international exposure than the now famous action films of Chan and John Woo - are of outstanding interest. So tantalizing is the treatment of many of these obscure films that readers will scurry to the neighborhood video store in search of such charmingly translated titles as *Tom, Dick, and Hairy* and *Shogun and Little Kitchen*.