The Criterion Collection just made a surprise announcement that's bound to excite a lot of people: a Bruce Lee box set. Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits features five of Lee's iconic films, and comes packed with special features – including alternate versions of the films, interviews, documentaries, and more. The Criterion Bruce Lee box set arrives in July.
On July 14, Bruce Lee enters the Criterion Collection with Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits. The box set comes with five of Lee's films, as well as "alternate versions of the films, interviews with Lee's collaborators and admirers, documentaries about his life and philosophies, commentaries, promotional materials, and so much more." Those films are The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Game of Death, The Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon.
Here's where I confess I've only see Enter the Dragon among these titles, so I'm excited to get my hands on this box set to check out all the rest. Here are the full special features for the release:
4K digital restorations of The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Game of Death, and The Way of the Dragon, with uncompressed original monaural soundtracks
New 2K digital restoration of the rarely-seen 99-minute 1973 theatrical version of Enter the Dragon, with uncompressed original monaural soundtrack
2K digital restoration of the 102-minute "special-edition" version of Enter the Dragon
Alternate audio soundtracks for the films, including original English-dubbed tracks and a 5.1 surround soundtrack for the special-edition version of Enter the Dragon
Six audio commentaries: on The Big Boss by Bruce Lee expert Brandon Bentley; on The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, Game of Death, and The Way of the Dragon by Hong Kong-film expert Mike Leeder; and on the special-edition version of Enter the Dragon by producer Paul Heller
High-definition presentation of Game of Death II, the 1981 sequel to Game of Death
Game of Death Redux, a new presentation of Lee's original Game of Death footage, produced by Alan Canvan
New interviews on all five films with Lee biographer Matthew Polly
New interview with producer Andre Morgan about Golden Harvest, the company behind Hong Kong's top martial-arts stars, including Lee
New program about English-language dubbing with voice performers Michael Kaye (the English-speaking voice of Lee's Chen Zhen in Fist of Fury) and Vaughan Savidge
New interview with author Grady Hendrix about the "Bruceploitation" subgenre that followed Lee's death, and a selection of Bruceploitation trailers
Blood and Steel, a 2004 documentary about the making of Enter the Dragon
Multiple programs and documentaries about Lee's life and philosophies, including Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (1973) and Bruce Lee: In His Own Words (1998)
Interviews with Linda Lee Cadwell, Lee's widow, and many of Lee's collaborators and admirers, including actors Jon T. Benn, Riki Hashimoto, Nora Miao, Robert Wall, Yuen Wah, and Simon Yam and directors Clarence Fok, Sammo Hung, and Wong Jing
Promotional materials
New English subtitle translations and subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Jeff Chang
In the early 1970s, a kung-fu dynamo named Bruce Lee side-kicked his way onto the screen and straight into pop-culture immortality. With his magnetic screen presence, tightly coiled intensity, and superhuman martial-arts prowess, Lee was an icon who conquered both Hong Kong and Hollywood cinema, and transformed the art of the action film in the process. This collection brings together the five films that define the Lee legend: furiously exciting fist-fliers propelled by his innovative choreography, unique martial-arts philosophy, and whirlwind fighting style. Though he completed only a handful of films while at the peak of his stardom before his untimely death at age thirty-two, Lee left behind a monumental legacy as both a consummate entertainer and a supremely disciplined artist who made Hong Kong action cinema a sensation the world over.
