After last night's premiere of Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights at Cannes Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they would be releasing Wong's 1994 martial arts epic Ashes of Time Redux. The Redux part comes in because Wong has re-edited major scenes from the original cut. It is widely known that Ashes of Time had a troubled production history and that post-production took almost two years (Wong shot and released his critically acclaimed Chungking Express while still editing Ashes). When released in 1994 the film received negative reception from critics and audiences alike.
The film stars the late Leslie Cheung as a broken-hearted swordsman who travels the desert running into various characters played by some of Hong Kong's biggest stars including Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung.
The film only hit a handful of theaters stateside and has never had a decent DVD release. SPC has promised a pristine transfer of the film complete with new subtitles.
