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About Hong Kong Nocturne...

When searching for stuff at YesAsia.com, it pays to click the "Include Out of Stock Items" box as it opens up more possibilities. I'm not sure if you did or not -- this is just a general tip I give people.

The product is listed here, but its status is "Track it Down".

This status occurs when a product leaves stock and then is not stocked during subsequent restocking rounds because YesAsia.com's supplier can't fulfill it. It doesn't necessarily mean it's out of press though.

If you're willing to wait, you should provide your e-mail, which means that you'll get notified when the DVD is restocked. Alternately, you may want to seek an alternate source. It's hard to tell about Shaws discs because I've heard that generally, the parent company is not happy with the overall sales of the line. No telling when someone will want to pull the plug on the whole thing.

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How can I make the request to stock an item on DVD?

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Actually, I have heard cases of people doing this via the Customer Service department...and I believe it actually works.

However, what's necessary is that the product is actually available. In the case listed above (Hong Kong Nocturne), the situation may be that all existing copies are on the shelves and the supplier simply doesn't have any to sell to wholesale partners like YesAsia.com.

Actually, a simple way is just asking me. If I can find the answer, I'll let you know.

Ultimo Ross:

Sadly, the products you've brought up are pretty much Out of Press. For Magic and Me and Sexy and Dangerous, I definitely know that to be the case.

In the case of the 2 Korean films, this seems to be a recent occurence...however, Korean films going out of press is a bit of a recurring phenomenon. From what I've picked up, Korean films have rather small print runs because of the market is not screamingly huge. After 2-3 years, it's not unheard of for the product to go out of press, though this is more a factor of "out of supplies" than actually "not making it anymore."

Right now, basically there are no supplies of these 2 films. They could get repressed one day, like many Korean titles did last year(i.e. Who R U or Save the Green Planet). I have the suspicion that this will be the case for at least Happy Ero Christmas because of the stars. You can always attempt to grab them at another retailer while they still have them in stock.

Sorry I don't have better news.

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Your powers are weak Kozo

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I can only get answers, not change reality. Actually, you've touched upon a big problem for people currently getting into Asian Cinema. Once upon a time, the problem was simply availability. Then with the Internet and DVD, availability was choice. Now that some stuff has run its course, it's going Out of Press, and with the bad climate in Asia (especially Hong Kong) for entertainment, nobody is looking to repress their older DVDs. I'm starting to wonder if I should just snap up everything I don't own, simply to get my hands on it before it goes away.

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I notice that quite a few of the customer reviews are pretty darn worthless -- do you folks at Yesasia actually look over the vote results to see how helpful the customer comments were to other customers?

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Customer reviews are unfortunately not an exact science. I agree that many are worthless, plus a lot of people use them as a message board instead of a customer review system. All the "I loved it!!!!111one!!11" and "OMG, he's so hott1111!1!" is useless. At the very least, the amount of people leaving personal messages to Rain and F4 have started to disappear.

I personally don't have time to look at customer reviews very much. I rely more on the "Report This" function, where people can report other reviews for being off topic or irrelevant. It catches some, but not all of the problems. Actually, if we chose to delete everything but helpful, ontopic reviews, our amount of customer reviews would probably shrink to less than 20 a day. I'd get points for integrity, but I'm sure there would be many upset people if I started to exercise my own judgement.

What YesAsia.com really needs is more thoughtful reviewers...if we could establish that, I believe the less useful reviewers would be ignored. The problem is that right now there's more blind fanaticism than people actually writing meaningful stuff. Some of the stuff you'll run across is mind-blowing in its utter disregard for logic and/or reality.

But I digress. If you see anything that you feel needs to go, just use the "Report This" function. I check that almost daily.

Hi Lupinthe4th--

Sorry for the late response to your question. The Milkyway Image Beyond Imagination book is bilingual, with all its text presented in both English and Chinese. I got a copy for myself. The pictures are both black-and-white and color, but the paper stock isn't of the glossy variety. All-in-all, I would consider it a must for true fans of Johnnie To's films. The price tag is a bit difficult to justify, however.