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147-408: Avenging Force is a 1986 American action film directed by Sam Firstenberg . The screenplay was written by James Booth , who co-starred in the film. It was originally intended as a sequel to the 1985 film Invasion U.S.A. , which starred Chuck Norris in the role of Matt Hunter. In Avenging Force , Hunter (played by Michael Dudikoff ) faces off against a group of far-right extremists known as

294-524: A sex slave . He rescues her, which attracts the Pentangle's attention, but escapes into the swamps on foot. The Pentangle hunts him throughout the night, but one by one, Matt eliminates Lavall, Wallace, and Delaney until only Glastenbury remains. Ambushed by Glastenbury, Matt stabs him, which allows both men time to escape, with Matt taking Sarah to Brown for treatment and protection. Matt then confronts Glastenbury at his mansion. Declining his offer to join

441-510: A Global release status of Chinese-language martial arts films, most notably Zhang Yimou 's Hero (2002) and House of Flying Daggers (2004), Stephen Chow 's Kung Fu Hustle (2004) and Chen Kaige 's The Promise (2005). Most Hong Kong action films in the first quarter of the 21st century, such as those in Cold War (2012), Cold War 2 (2016) and The White Storm film series have their violence toned down, especially compared to

588-675: A TV set with a VHS mechanism, were also once available for purchase. Combo units containing both a VHS mechanism and a DVD player were introduced in the late 1990s, and at least one combo unit, the Panasonic DMP-BD70V, included a Blu-ray player. VHS has been standardized in IEC 60774–1. The VHS cassette is a 187  mm wide, 103 mm deep, and 25 mm thick (7 3 ⁄ 8 × 4 1 ⁄ 16 × 1 inch) plastic shell held together with five Phillips-head screws . The flip-up cover, which allows players and recorders to access

735-569: A disadvantage. Matsushita's backing of JVC persuaded Hitachi , Mitsubishi , and Sharp to back the VHS standard as well. Sony's release of its Betamax unit to the Japanese market in 1975 placed further pressure on the MITI to side with the company. However, the collaboration of JVC and its partners was much stronger, which eventually led the MITI to drop its push for an industry standard. JVC released

882-436: A fight sequence. In the 1980s, American martial arts films reflected the national move towards conservatism, reflected in films of Chuck Norris and other actors such as Sho Kosugi . The genre would shift from theatrical releases towards the end of the decade with the rise of home video, the lower box-office of American martial arts productions, and a significant portion of direct-to-video action films that first were made in

1029-427: A flying erase head for erasing individual video fields, and one was a dummy used for balancing the head drum. The high tape-to-head speed created by the rotating head results in a far higher bandwidth than could be practically achieved with a stationary head. VHS machines record up to 3  MHz of baseband video bandwidth and 300 kHz of baseband chroma bandwidth. The luminance (black and white) portion of

1176-409: A former Adidas model, is more agile than Dirty Harry ever was." The Washington Post ' s Paul Attanasio also noted a perceived lack of subtlety in the film, and wrote that its action sequences are "orchestrated by director Sam (Doctor Ninja) Firstenberg with his usual panache." Action film While the term "action film" or "action adventure film" has been used as early as the 1910s,

1323-591: A functional prototype of the Betamax format, and was very close to releasing a finished product. With this prototype, Sony persuaded the MITI to adopt Betamax as the standard, and allow it to license the technology to other companies. JVC believed that an open standard , with the format shared among competitors without licensing the technology, was better for the consumer. To prevent the MITI from adopting Betamax, JVC worked to convince other companies, in particular Matsushita (Japan's largest electronics manufacturer at

1470-500: A global audience of these films in the United States and Europe, but was cut short on Lee's death in 1973 leading the phases popularity to decline. Following a period of stagnation, Chang Cheh and Lau Kar-leung revitalized the genre with shaolin kung fu films and Chor Yuen 's series of darker swordplay films based on the novels of Gu Long . Kung Fu comedies appeared featuring Jackie Chan as martial arts films flourished into

1617-566: A hero overcoming enemies or obstacles and physical conflicts or challenge, usually battling other humans or alien opponents. By late 2010s studies of genre analysis, the term "genre" itself is often replaced or supplemented with the words "mode" and "narrative form" with all three terms often being used interchangeably. Johan Höglund and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet said that the difference between these concepts are elusive, but stated that genre could be defined as belonging to specific historical and cultural moments while "mode" and "form" can refer to

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1764-454: A larger pattern that operates across a wider historical and cultural field. In their book Action Cinema Since 2000 (2024), Tasker, Lisa Purse, and Chris Holmlund stated that thinking of action as a mode is more helpful than thinking of it as a genre. The three authors suggested that action frames a certain manner of filmmaking and viewing exceed genre without eclipsing it stating that websites such as IMDb and Misplaced Pages rarely label films by

1911-555: A maximum of about 430 m (1,410 ft) of tape at the lowest acceptable tape thickness, giving a maximum playing time of about four hours in a T-240/DF480 for NTSC and five hours in an E-300 for PAL at "standard play" (SP) quality. More frequently, however, VHS tapes are thicker than the required minimum to avoid complications such as jams or tears in the tape. Other speeds include "long play" (LP), "extended play" (EP) or "super long play" (SLP) (standard on NTSC; rarely found on PAL machines ). For NTSC, LP and EP/SLP double and triple

2058-554: A propensity for violent action, identified with the films of Chang Cheh . Violent female characters have been part of cinema since its early inception, with characters such as Kate Kelly brandishing a shotgun in The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Women traditionally appear in action films as romantic interests, tomboys , or sidekicks to male protagonists. Violent white women would appear in other genres as well such as

2205-489: A second VCR. The first version of Macrovision introduces high signal levels during the vertical blanking interval , which occurs between the video fields. These high levels confuse the automatic gain control circuit in most VHS VCRs, leading to varying brightness levels in an output video, but are ignored by the TV as they are out of the frame-display period. "Level II" Macrovision uses a process called "colorstriping", which inverts

2352-483: A second trap set by the Pentangle, which eliminates several more assassins in a dockyard confrontation. Professor Elliott Glastenbury is the head of Glastenbury Industries and the leader of the Pentangle. He takes personal interest in Matt after he reviews surveillance of the botched Richards hit, Pentangle's first failure. The members Wade Delaney, Jeb Wallace, and Charles Lavall consider asking Matt to join. Learning that

2499-511: A series of action sequences, stating that that the difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Die Hard (1988), that while both were mainstream Hollywood blockbusters with hero asserting masculinity and overcoming obstacles to a personal and social solution, John McClane in Die Hard repeatedly firing his automatic pistol while swinging from a high rise was not congruent with

2646-745: A significant portion. These films include Taxi 2 (2000), Kiss of the Dragon (2001), District 13 (2004) and Unleashed (2005). Whan asked about the Americanization of these French films, Christophe Gans , director of Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) stated that "Hollywood ownership of certain elements [...] must be challenged, in order to show that these elements have also long been present in European culture." The most significant producers of French action films with international ambitions

2793-658: A similar level of popularity to that of the Western in the United States. The most internationally known films of this era were the films Kurosawa with Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). By at least the 1950s, Japanese films were looked upon as a model to be emulated by Hong Kong film production, and Hong Kong film companies began actively enlisting professionals from Japan, such as cinematographer Tadashi Nishimoto to contribute to color and widescreen cinematography. New literary sources also developed in martial arts films of this period, with

2940-406: A single genre and that streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix similarly dilutes what is marketed and received as action. In transnational cinema, there are two major trends in action films: Hollywood action films and their style being imitated around the globe and the other being Chinese-language martial arts films. The roots of action films extend into the beginning of film but it

3087-451: A three-act structure centered on survival, resistance and revenge with narratives where the physical body of the hero is tested, traumatized and ultimately triumphant. The third shift in action cinema, the postclassical, was defined by the predominance of Eastern cinema and its aesthetics, primarily the wire-work of Hong Kong action cinema from the classical era, through the convention of the increasingly computer generated effects. This saw

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3234-594: A tough police officer protects society by upholding the law against systematic corruption. This extended into films which O'Brien described as "knee-jerk responses" to perceived threats with rogue cop and vigilante films such as Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) where the restoration of order is only possible by force and antisocial characters prepared to act when society does not. The vigilantism reappears in other films that were exploitative of southern society such as Billy Jack (1971) and White Lightning (1973) and "good ol' boy" comedies like Smokey and

3381-463: Is Luc Besson 's France-based EuropaCorp , who released films like Taxi (1998) and From Paris with Love (2010). EuropaCorp produced Transporter franchise starred British actor Jason Statham and made him an action film star, which led him to feature in The Expendables series by the end of the 2010s. The action film genre has been a staple of Bollywood cinema . In the 1970s,

3528-563: Is 3.335  cm / s (1.313 ips) for NTSC , 2.339 cm/s (0.921 ips) for PAL —or just over 2.0 and 1.4 metres (6 ft 6.7 in and 4 ft 7.2 in) per minute respectively. The tape length for a T-120 VHS cassette is 247.5 metres (812 ft). As with almost all cassette-based videotape systems, VHS machines pull the tape out of the cassette shell and wrap it around the inclined head drum, which rotates at 1,800 rpm in NTSC machines and at 1,500  rpm for PAL , one complete rotation of

3675-574: Is a generic term to refer to several types of films containing martial arts. The wuxia film is the oldest genre in Chinese cinema. Stephen Teo wrote in his book on Wuxia that there is no satisfactory English translation of the term, with it often being identified as "the swordplay film" in critical studies. It is derived from the Chinese words wu denoting militarist or martial qualities and xia denoting chivalry, gallantry, and qualities of knighthood. The term wuxia entered into popular culture in

3822-424: Is applied to over 550 million videocassettes annually and is used by every MPAA movie studio on some or all of their videocassette releases. Over 220 commercial duplication facilities around the world are equipped to supply Macrovision videocassette copy protection to rights owners...The study found that over 30% of VCR households admit to having unauthorized copies, and that the total annual revenue loss due to copying

3969-729: Is based on Twin Dragons (1992). Other films such as the martial arts film Bhadrachlam (2001), borrows from American cinema with the Jean-Claude Van Damme film Kickboxer (1989). SS Rajamouli 's RRR (2022) was among the highest budgeted films made in India, and became a rare hit film outside of Indian diaspora, where it broke box office records in Japan and performed exceptionally well in American box office. Japan

4116-450: Is estimated at $ 370,000,000 annually. The system was first used in copyrighted movies beginning with the 1984 film The Cotton Club . Macrovision copy protection saw refinement throughout its years, but has always worked by essentially introducing deliberate errors into a protected VHS tape's output video stream. These errors in the output video stream are ignored by most televisions, but will interfere with re-recording of programming by

4263-419: Is extended/super long play ( 1 ⁄ 3 speed) which was primarily released into the NTSC market. As VHS was designed to facilitate recording from various sources, including television broadcasts or other VCR units, content producers quickly found that home users were able to use the devices to copy videos from one tape to another. Despite generation loss in quality when a tape was copied, this practice

4410-442: Is itself empowering and, if not, whether a hypersexualized female character can still represent strength and autonomy. Hypersexualized female action leads had tight fitting or revealing costumes that Tasker identified as "exaggerated statements of sexuality" and in the tradition of "fetishistic figure of fantasy" derives from comic books and soft pornography . This originated in television with characters like Buffy Summers ( Buffy

4557-422: Is magnified by the narrower tracks. The heads for linear audio are not on the spinning drum, so for them, the tape speed from one reel to the other is the same as the speed of the heads across the tape. This speed is quite slow: for SP it is about 2/3s that of an audio cassette, and for EP it is slower than the slowest microcassette speed. This is widely considered inadequate for anything but basic voice playback, and

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4704-535: Is now running for US Senate . At dinner, Larry hesitantly mentions threats made against his life during the election cycle, which he dismisses as harmless. Later that day, Larry, Matt and their families ride in Larry's float in the Mardi Gras parade. Disguised as revelers, assassins open fire on Larry's float, killing his eldest son. Matt and Larry take down the attackers, but Matt loses the last assassin in charge in

4851-578: The femme fatales in film noir and horror films of the 1970s. Violent women were common in action films since the 1960s. These films featured working-class women exacting revenge. Films of the 1970s featured black women such as Pam Grier in films like Foxy Brown (1974). In the 1980s, a new symbolically transgressive character emerged in the form of Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986) and Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and

4998-550: The Bollywood action film consolidated with two films starring Amitabh Bachchan : Prakash Mehra 's Zanjeer (1973) and Yash Chopra 's Deewaar (1975). The box office success of these films made Bachchan a star and spawned the "angry young man" film in Bollywood cinema. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the action genre film declined considerably with new films predominantly featuring former bodybuilders failing to reach

5145-517: The Hong Kong action cinema , such melodramatic male bonding and marginalized women characters, while the Korean films also have greater elements of tragedy and romance emphasized. Most martial arts films made before the mid-1960s were Cantonese-language productions. In comparison, Mandarin-language films were an integral part of Hong Kong cinema due to the influx of Shanghai film talent in

5292-469: The NTSC television standard were able to record one hour of programming at their standard tape speed of 1.5  inches per second  (ips). The first VHS machines could record for two hours, due to both a slightly slower tape speed (1.31 ips) and significantly longer tape. Betamax's smaller cassette limited the size of the reel of tape, and could not compete with VHS's two-hour capability by extending

5439-564: The September 11 attacks in 2001, which suggested an end to fantastical elements that defined the action hero and genre. Following the release of Quentin Tarantino 's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004) revisited the tropes of 1970s action films leading a renaissance of vengeance narratives in films like The Brave One (2007) and Taken (2008). O'Brien found that Tarantino's films were post-modern takes on

5586-589: The Victor Company of Japan (JVC) . It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period in the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Magnetic tape video recording was adopted by the television industry in the 1950s in the form of the first commercialized video tape recorders (VTRs), but the devices were expensive and used only in professional environments. In the 1970s, videotape technology became affordable for home use, and widespread adoption of videocassette recorders (VCRs) began;

5733-453: The omega transport system) in a helical fashion, assisted by the slanted tape guides. The head rotates constantly at 1798.2 rpm in NTSC machines, exactly 1500 in PAL, each complete rotation corresponding to one frame of video. Two tape heads are mounted on the cylindrical surface of the drum, 180 degrees apart from each other, so that the two heads "take turns" in recording. The rotation of

5880-510: The xinpai wuxia xiaoshuo (or "new school martial arts fiction") coming into prominence with the success of Liang Yusheng 's Longhu Dou Jinghua (1954) and Jin Yong 's Shujian enchou lu (1956) which showed influence of the Shanghai martial arts films but also circulated from Hong Kong to Taiwan and Chinese communities overseas. This led to a growing demand in both local and regional markets in

6027-428: The 1960s with films like The Born Losers (1967) which was predominantly a drama, interspersed with martial arts scenes. American martial arts films predominantly came into production following the release of Enter the Dragon (1973), with the only higher-budgeted American film to follow in its wake being The Yakuza (1974). Lott noted the two films would lead to the two subsequent styles of martial arts films in

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6174-609: The 1970s. James Monaco wrote in 1979 in American Film Now: The People, The Power, The Money, the Movies that "the lines that separate on genre from another have continued to disintegrate." Tasker said that most post-classical action films are hybrids, drawing from genres as varied as war films, science fiction , horror , crime, martial arts , and comedy films . In Chinese-language films, both wuxia and kung fu are genre-specific terms, while martial arts

6321-784: The 1980s. Other films again modernized the form with gangster films of John Woo ( A Better Tomorrow (1986), The Killer (1989)) and the Wong Fei Hung saga returning in Tsui Hark 's Once Upon a Time in China featuring Jet Li which again revitalized the swordplay styled films. By the turn of the century Hollywood action films would look towards Hong Kong cinema and bringing some of their major actors and directors over to apply their style to their films, such as Chan, Woo, Li, Michelle Yeoh and Yuen Woo-Ping . The release of Ang Lee 's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) led to

6468-533: The 2000s. In 1956, after several attempts by other companies, the first commercially successful VTR, the Ampex VRX-1000 , was introduced by Ampex Corporation . At a price of US$ 50,000 in 1956 (equivalent to $ 560,343 in 2023) and US$ 300 (equivalent to $ 3,362 in 2023) for a 90-minute reel of tape, it was intended only for the professional market. Kenjiro Takayanagi , a television broadcasting pioneer then working for JVC as its vice president, saw

6615-706: The 21st century have been comic book adaptations, which commenced with the X-Men and is seen in other series such as Spider-Man , and Iron Man series. Tasker wrote that despite the central characters in superhero cinema being extraordinary, occasionally even God-like, they often followed the traces of the central character becoming powerful of which is fundamental to action films, often dealt with origin stories in superhero films. Action films often interface with other genres. Tasker wrote that films are often labelled action thrillers, action-fantasy and action-adventure films with different nuances. Tasker later discussed that

6762-522: The Bandit (1977). This era also emphasizes the car chase scenes as moments of spectacle in films like Bullitt and The French Connection (1971). O'Brien described these films as emphasizing "the fusion of man and machine" with the drivers and vehicles acting as one, concluding with what he described as "the ultimate in apocalyptic modernity and social erasure" in Mad Max 2 (1981). O'Brien described

6909-754: The Bollywood press who reported on him in the headlines of Bollywood magazines for his public brawls and affairs with leading actresses. In Dabangg (2010), Khan continued with this public persona, which was repeated in several of his later films such as Ready (2011), Bodyguard (2011), Ek Tha Tiger (2012) and Dabangg 2 (2012). From the 1980s, generations of actors in Telugu cinema have invoked Hong Kong action films, such as Srihari who stated he wanted to become an actor after watching his first Bruce Lee film. Several films in Telugu cinema were remakes of Hong Kong films, such as Hello Brother (1994) which

7056-542: The Dragon briefly allowed an influx of Hong Kong films to Japan, but the trend did not last, with 28 Hong Kong films, mostly kung fu films, being released in 1974, and the number decreasing to five in 1975, four in 1977 and only two in 1978. Ryuhei Kitamura , director of Versus (2000), said in 2004 that he grew frustrated with the Japanese film industry as producers felt they couldn't make action films in competition with Hong Kong or American productions. Versus grew to become popular outside of Japan, and Kitamura said he

7203-872: The HR-3300EK in the United Kingdom. The United States received its first VHS-based VCR, the RCA VBT200, on August 23, 1977. The RCA unit was designed by Matsushita and was the first VHS-based VCR manufactured by a company other than JVC. It was also capable of recording four hours in LP (long play) mode. The UK received its first VHS-based VCR, the Victor HR-3300EK, in 1978. Quasar and General Electric followed-up with VHS-based VCRs – all designed by Matsushita. By 1999, Matsushita alone produced just over half of all Japanese VCRs. TV/VCR combos , combining

7350-602: The Hong Kong film industry after the handover in 1997. Anglophone action film scholarship has tended to emphasize bigger budget American action films, with academics tending to find films that fall out of Hollywood productions as not quite fitting definitions of the genre. By 2024, many national and regional industries were known for action films. These include international films such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam , South Korean, Japanese, Thai , Brazilian , Chinese , South African , French and Italian action titles. At

7497-468: The Pentangle, both duel with Glastenbury's collection of antique weaponry around them. Glastenbury appears to have the upper hand, but Matt impales him on one of his own statues and kills him. Matt goes to the hospital to see Sarah, where Brown congratulates him on a job well done. Matt confronts him that only the Secret Service knew that the families were hiding out on Matt's ranch and so someone in

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7644-573: The Pentangle. In the swamps of the Louisiana bayou, two men are hunted and killed by four costumed, well-armed adversaries. A retired US Secret Service agent, Captain Matt Hunter, has retired to his family's cattle ranch in Louisiana and Texas , with his sister Sarah and grandfather. They drive to New Orleans and meet Matt's old military comrade and local politician Larry Richards, who

7791-807: The Red Lotus (1965) and King Hu 's Come Drink with Me (1966). In the 1970s, the Hong Kong martial arts films began to grow under the format of yanggang ("staunch masculinity") mostly through the films of Chang Cheh which were popular. This transition led to the kung fu film sub-genre at beginning of the decade and moved beyond the swordplay films with contemporary settings of late Qing or early Republican periods and had more hand-to-hand combat over supernatural swordplay and special effects. A new studio, Golden Harvest quickly became one of independent filmmakers to grant creative freedom and pay and attracted new directors and actors, including Bruce Lee . The popularity of kung fu films and Bruce Lee led to attract

7938-648: The Service is connected to the Pentangle, which strongly implying that Brown is the unnamed fifth member of the Pentangle's membership. Matt vows to continue fighting the Pentangle and leaves. Avenging Force received a theatrical release in the United States on September 12, 1986, opening at the RKO National Twin in New York City, New York, and other theaters. Avenging Force was released on VHS and Betamax by Media Home Entertainment . In 2014,

8085-477: The U-matic format. In 1971, JVC engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano put together a team to develop a VTR for consumers. By the end of 1971, they created an internal diagram, "VHS Development Matrix", which established twelve objectives for JVC's new VTR: In early 1972, the commercial video recording industry in Japan took a financial hit. JVC cut its budgets and restructured its video division, shelving

8232-484: The United States, Europe and Japan had during this period. Yip described Japanese cinema as the most advanced in Asia at the time. This was showcased by the international breakthrough of Akira Kurosawa 's films like Rashomon (1950). The film genre known as the chanbara was at its height in Japan. The style was a sub-genre to the jidai-geki , or period drama with an emphasis on sword fighting and action. It had

8379-406: The United States, with films like Enter the Dragon about people who reveled in combat, often in a tournament setting, and The Yakuza which had several genres attached to it, but featured several martial arts sequences. By the end of the 1970s, the style was an established genre in American cinema, often featuring tough heroic characters who would fight and not think about their actions until after

8526-536: The VHS became the most popular media format for VCRs as it would win the "format war" against Betamax (backed by Sony ) and a number of other competing tape standards. The cassettes themselves use a 0.5-inch magnetic tape between two spools and typically offer a capacity of at least two hours. The popularity of VHS was intertwined with the rise of the video rental market, with films being released on pre-recorded videotapes for home viewing. Newer improved tape formats such as S-VHS were later developed, as well as

8673-491: The VHS project. However, despite the lack of funding, Takano and Shiraishi continued to work on the project in secret. By 1973, the two engineers had produced a functional prototype. In 1974, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), desiring to avoid consumer confusion , attempted to force the Japanese video industry to standardize on just one home video recording format. Later, Sony had

8820-591: The Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)) and Xena ( Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001)). These series popularity demonstrated a growing market for female action film heroes, in films of the 2000s like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Charlie's Angels (2000), Ultraviolet (2006), Salt (2010) and series like Underworld and Resident Evil . These series like their television series earlier, had their leads eroticized as active and physically capable while also being scantily-clad, hyper-feminized similar to

8967-553: The action heroine's dual status of an active subject and sexual object was overturning the traditional gender binary because the films "assume that women are powerful" without resorting to justify her physical aggression through narratives involving maternal drive, mental instability or trauma. Purse found that female leads in films like Elektra (2005), Kill Bill , Underworld , Charlie's Angels and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) did showcase women having expensive cars, clothing, travel, homes and often high-paying jobs, but that this

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9114-454: The analog signal's colorburst period and causes off-color bands to appear in the picture. Level III protection added additional colorstriping techniques to further degrade the image. These protection methods worked well to defeat analog-to-analog copying by VCRs of the time. Consumer products capable of digital video recording are mandated by law to include features which detect Macrovision encoding of input analog streams, and disrupt copying of

9261-454: The bandwidth to over 5 megahertz, yielding 420 analog horizontal (560 pixels left-to-right). Most Super VHS recorders can play back standard VHS tapes, but not vice versa. S-VHS was designed for higher resolution, but failed to gain popularity outside Japan because of the high costs of the machines and tapes. Because of the limited user base, Super VHS was never picked up to any significant degree by manufacturers of pre-recorded tapes, although it

9408-435: The book Australian Genre Film , Amanda Howell suggested that this label was used to help distance Australian cinema from Hollywood films as it would be suggesting commerce over culture and that it would be "quite unacceptable to make Australian movies using conventions established in the U.S.A." Howell stated this to be the case with action films of the 1970s and 1980s with Brian Trenchard-Smith 's Turkey Shoot (1982) being

9555-409: The cassette through the circular hole in the center of the underside, and two photodiodes are on the left and right sides of where the tape exits the cassette. When the clear tape reaches one of these, enough light will pass through the tape to the photodiode to trigger the stop function; some VCRs automatically rewind the tape when the trailing end is detected. Early VCRs used an incandescent bulb as

9702-550: The classical form of action cinema to be the 1980s. The decade continued the trends of formative period with heroes as avengers ( Lethal Weapon (1987)), rogue police officers ( Die Hard (1988)) and mercenary warriors ( Commando (1985)). Following the continuity of the car and man hybrid of the previous decade, the 1980s featured weaponized men with who were either also carrying weapons such as Sudden Impact (1983), trained to be weapons ( American Ninja (1985)) or imbued with technology ( RoboCop (1987)). O'Brien noted that

9849-451: The contemporary definition usually refers to a film that came with the arrival of New Hollywood and the rise of anti-heroes appearing in American films of the late 1960s and 1970s drawing from war films , crime films and Westerns . These genres were followed by what is referred to as the "classical period" in the 1980s. This was followed by the post-classical era where American action films were influenced by Hong Kong action cinema and

9996-420: The crowd. Matt calls in a favor to his old boss, Admiral Brown, and learns the perpetrators are members of an organization known to US intelligence as the Pentangle. Taking the name of the five-pointed star, the Pentangle is a far-right group promoting extreme views on gun rights , immigration , and security whose leadership is suspected of operating a hunting club targeting people. The Secret Service suspects

10143-419: The cult to be composed of businessmen and authority figures with connections to Washington and to be run by five members, each represented by a point on the star, but it lacks further knowledge and asks Matt to infiltrate the organization to gain further intelligence. Matt declines because of his family, and but he sends his and Larry's family to hide out at his ranch. Meanwhile, Matt and Larry intentionally foil

10290-464: The decline of overt masculinity in the action film which corresponded with the end of the Cold War in 1991, while the rise of self-referential and parodies of this era grew in films like Last Action Hero (1993). O'Brien described this era as being soft where the hard bodies of the classical era were replaced with computer generated imagery such as that of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). This

10437-559: The direct-to-video field, or in similarly low-budget theatrical releases such as Bulletproof Monk (2003). While the American styled-films were predominantly made in the United States, productions were also made in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and South Africa, and were predominantly shot in the English-language. Heroic Bloodshed is a that originates with English-language Hong Kong action and crime film fan communities in

10584-399: The drum moving across the tape at (a writing speed of) 4.86 or 6.096 meters per second. To maximize the use of the tape, the video tracks are recorded very close together. To reduce crosstalk between adjacent tracks on playback, an azimuth recording method is used: The gaps of the two heads are not aligned exactly with the track path. Instead, one head is angled at plus six degrees from

10731-487: The earlier work of directors like Woo and Johnnie To . Antong Chen, in his study on the Hong Kong action film, wrote that the influence of China and the amount of Chinese co-productions made with Hong Kong created a shift in these films, particularly following the release of Infernal Affairs (2002). Harvey O'Brien wrote in 2012 that the contemporary action film emerged through other genres, primarily Westerns , crime and war films and can be separated into four forms:

10878-520: The earliest optical disc format, LaserDisc ; the lack of global adoption of these formats increased VHS's lifetime, which eventually peaked and started to decline in the late 1990s after the introduction of DVD , a digital optical disc format. VHS rentals were surpassed by DVD in the United States in 2003, which eventually became the preferred low-end method of movie distribution. For home recording purposes, VHS and VCRs were surpassed by (typically hard disk –based) digital video recorders (DVR) in

11025-432: The early 1960s and saw a surge in production of Hong Kong martial arts films that went beyond the stories about Wong Fei-hung which were declining in popularity. These new martial arts films featured magical swordplay and higher production values and more sophisticated special effects than the previous films with Shaw Brothers a campaign of "new school" ( xinpai ) martial arts swordplay films such as Xu Zenghong's Temple of

11172-459: The edge label. The tapes are made, pre-recorded, and inserted into the cassettes in cleanrooms , to ensure quality and to keep dust from getting embedded in the tape and interfering with recording (both of which could cause signal dropouts) There is a clear tape leader at both ends of the tape to provide an optical auto-stop for the VCR transport mechanism. In the VCR, a light source is inserted into

11319-491: The end of the 1990s. Films such as Chunhang (2000) and Memento Mori (2000) and action films Shiri (1999) and Nowhere to Hide (1999) received commercial releases in North America, Asia, and Europe. The success of the latter two films was unprecedented, and was followed by other South Korean action films in the early 2000s reaching the top of the local box office. These South Korean films mimic some traits of

11466-525: The families are hiding out at Matt's ranch, Glastenbury orders Delaney, Wallace, and Lavall to attack the ranch, kill the Secret Service agents and Matt's grandfather, and set the ranch ablaze. Matt, Sarah, and Larry's wife all escape, and Larry goes back to rescue his youngest son but is shot in the process. As Matt saves them both, Larry asks Matt to protect his son and dies. Meanwhile, Pentangle finds Sarah and Larry's wife hiding outside, takes Sarah hostage, and executes Larry's wife. Matt attempts to escape via

11613-532: The female leads in implausible elements, such as in Charlie's Angels , Fantastic Four (2005) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). The fighting styles of women also tend towards more traditionally feminine fluid movements of martial arts, over using guns or directly punching. Purse wrote that the contemporary female action film lead's sexualized brand had her in close proximity of post-feminism discourse about choice, power and sexuality. Marc O'Day interprets

11760-487: The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US by Kino Lorber . Nina Darnton, in her review of the film for The New York Times , wrote, "The heros themselves, the movie tirelessly points out, are kind men with strict codes of honor and intense personal loyalties. [...] The enemy is unambiguously bad. These kinds of movies are not strong on subtlety." She compared Dudikoff to "a young Clint Eastwood , though Mr. Dudikoff,

11907-415: The first VHS machines in Japan in late 1976, and in the United States in mid-1977. Sony's Betamax competed with VHS throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s (see Videotape format war ). Betamax's major advantages were its smaller cassette size, theoretical higher video quality, and earlier availability, but its shorter recording time proved to be a major shortcoming. Originally, Beta I machines using

12054-414: The following films were voted the top ten best action films of all time. In Hong Kong, the "new school" of martial arts films that Shaw Brothers brought in 1965 featured what featured what Yip described as "strong, active female characters as protagonists." These female-centered films were challenged with the rise of a new male heroic prototype marked by a strong sense of youthful energy and defiance and by

12201-419: The following steps, in this order: The erase head is fed by a high-level, high-frequency AC signal that overwrites any previous recording on the tape. Without this step, the new recording cannot be guaranteed to completely replace any old recording that might have been on the tape. The tape path then carries the tape around the spinning video-head drum, wrapping it around a little more than 180 degrees (called

12348-448: The formative trends at this point had become "identifiably generic" as film industries began to reproduced these films during the decade producers like Joel Silver and production companies like The Cannon Group, Inc. began to formulate production of these films with both high and low budgets. The action films of this era have roots in classical story telling, specifically rooted from martial arts films and Westerns, and are built around

12495-610: The formative, the classical, the post-classical and neoclassical phases. Yvonne Tasker reiterated this in her book on action and adventure films , saying that action films became a distinct genre during the New Hollywood period of the 1970s. The formative films would be from the 1960s to the early 1980s where the Anti-hero appears in cinema, featuring characters who act and transcend the law and social conventions. This appears initially in films like Bullitt (1968) where

12642-551: The former was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year in Japan. Following LoveDeath , Kitamura's next directing work was in the United States. The action cinema of South Korea mostly existed on the margins of the film industry in South Korea. The genre was initially called the Hwalkuk ("living theatre") was a term that indicated plays and films driven by action scenes, while this term has not been used regularly since

12789-505: The genre include chase sequences, fights, shootouts, explosions, and stunt work while other scholars asserted there were more underlying traits that define the genre. David Bordwell in The Way Hollywood Tells It wrote that audiences are "told that spectacle overrides narrative" in action cinema while Wheeler Winston Dixon echoed that these films were typified by "excessive spectacle" as a "desperate attempt to mask

12936-484: The genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that the reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." In the Journal of Film and Video , Lennart Soberson stated that the action film genre has been a subject of scholarly debate since the 1980s. Soberson wrote that repeated traits of

13083-430: The ground. While heroes in kung fu films often display chivalry, they generally hail from different fighting schools, namely wudang and shaolin . American martial arts films feature what author M. Ray Lott described as a more realistic style of violence over the Hong Kong wuxia films with more realism and are often low-budget productions. Martial arts began routinely appearing in fight scenes in American films in

13230-463: The growing using of computer generated imagery in film. Following the September 11 attacks , a return to the early forms of the genre appeared in the wake of Kill Bill and The Expendables films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse,

13377-414: The head corresponding to one video frame. VHS uses an "M-loading" system, also known as M-lacing, where the tape is drawn out by two threading posts and wrapped around more than 180 degrees of the head drum (and also other tape transport components) in a shape roughly approximating the letter M . The heads in the rotating drum get their signal wirelessly using a rotary transformer . A VHS cassette holds

13524-489: The image of Indiana Jones in Raiders swinging his whip to fend off villains in the backstreets of Cairo. British author and academic Yvonne Tasker expanded on this topic, stating that action films have no clear and constant iconography or settings. In her book The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film (2015), she found that the most broadly consistent themes tend to be a characters quest from freedom from oppression such as

13671-409: The inclined head drum, combined with the relatively slow movement of the tape, results in each head recording a track oriented at a diagonal with respect to the length of the tape, with the heads moving across the tape at speeds higher than what would otherwise be possible. This is referred to as helical scan recording. A tape speed of 1 + 5 ⁄ 16 inches per second corresponds to the heads on

13818-557: The lack of content." Geoff King argued that the spectacle can also be a vehicle for narrative, opposed to interfering with it. Soberson stated that Harvey O'Brien had "perhaps the most convincing understanding of the genre", stating that the action film was "best understood as a fusion of form and content. It represents the idea and ethic of action through a form in which action, agitation and movement are paramount." O'Brien wrote further in his book Action Movies: The Cinema of Striking Back to suggest action films being unique and not just

13965-520: The late 1920s. These films were popular during the period, which comprised almost 60% of the total Chinese films. Man-Fung Yip stated that these film were "rather tame" by contemporary standards. He wrote that they lacked the kind of dazzling action choreography as expected today and had crude and rudimentary special effects. These films came under increasing attack by both government officials and cultural elites for their allegedly superstitious and anarchistic tendencies, leading them to be banned in 1932. It

14112-570: The late 1970s, with "action movie" becoming the more familiar term. The Korean action films came from Japanese cinema, James Bond series , and Hong Kong action cinema. As North Korea borders China, it block access to the continent from a South Korean perspective, the Cold War allowed South Koreans to substitute deferred travel beyond the border through films with locations shot in Hong Kong. While melodrama and comedy were staples in South Korean cinema, most action films were sporadic and tied to

14259-444: The late 1980s and early 1990s. In the Chinese language, the term used for these films is jinghungpin , literally meaning "hero films". Academic Laikwan Pang asserts that these gangster films appeared at a time when Hong Kong citizens felt particularly powerless with the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China set for 1997. The key directors of the genre were John Woo and Ringo Lam , and producer Tsui Hark , with

14406-513: The late 1980s and early 1990s. Author Bey Logan stated that the term was coined by Rick Baker, in the British fanzine Eastern Heroes . The term is used broadly. Baker described the style as Hong Kong action films which feature gangsters and gunplay and martial arts that were more violent than kung fu films and academic Kristof Van Den Troost described it a term used to distinguish Hong Kong gun-heavy action films from period martial arts films from

14553-431: The late 1980s in the United States were martial arts films. Towards the end of the 1990s, production of low-budget martial arts films declined as no new stars in the genre developed and older actors such as Cynthia Rothrock and Steven Seagal started showing up in less and less films. Even internationally popular films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) had negligible effects in American productions in either

14700-446: The light source: when the bulb failed, the VCR would act as if a tape were present when the machine was empty, or would detect the blown bulb and completely stop functioning. Later designs use an infrared LED , which has a much longer life. The recording medium is a Mylar magnetic tape , 12.7 mm ( 1 ⁄ 2 inch) wide, coated with metal oxide , and wound on two spools . The tape speed for "Standard Play" mode (see below)

14847-502: The majority stockholder of JVC until 2011) to build a video recording standard for the Japanese consumer. The effort produced the U-matic format in 1971, which was the first cassette format to become a unified standard for different companies. It was preceded by the reel-to-reel 1 ⁄ 2 " EIAJ format. The U-matic format was successful in businesses and some broadcast television applications, such as electronic news-gathering, and

14994-414: The miniaturized drum required twice as many heads to complete any given task. This almost always meant four heads on the miniaturized drum with performance similar to a two head VCR with a full sized drum. No attempt was made to record Hi-Fi audio with such devices, as this would require an additional four heads to work. W-VHS decks could have up to 12 heads in the head drum, of which 11 were active including

15141-624: The most notorious. Smith had previously released films like Deathcheaters (1976) and Stunt Rock (1979) when financial incentives were available for overtly commercial projects. She commented that action films did tell identifiably Australian stories such as the Sandy Harbutt 's biker film Stone (1974) and Miller's post-apocalyptic film Mad Max (1979) derived from Australia's social and cultural realities, as well as how George Miller 's later Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) derived from Australia's long-standing cinematic fascination with

15288-451: The need for his company to produce VTRs for the Japanese market at a more affordable price. In 1959, JVC developed a two-head video tape recorder and, by 1960, a color version for professional broadcasting. In 1964, JVC released the DV220, which would be the company's standard VTR until the mid-1970s. In 1969, JVC collaborated with Sony Corporation and Matsushita Electric (Matsushita was

15435-604: The notion that traditional marks of masculinity are not exclusive to men and that musculature was not natural, but something to be achieved. Accusations of these muscular women of the era were levelled at that them by 1993 were that they were "men in drag" and that the films generally have to "explain" why their female leads displayed physical aggression and why they were "driven to do it." As the 1990s went on, Hollywood films began having more conventional looking women in their action films such as The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996). A vibrant debate exists about whether hypersexualization

15582-435: The physical effort required to completing a task and the abilities and skills acquired over time. Films from the period reflected on the cultural and social climate from the period, as seen in invoking Japanese or Western imperialist forces as foils. The kung fu film came out of the wuxia films. In comparison to the wuxia , film, the focus on the kung fu film is on the martial arts over chivalry, The martial arts films

15729-474: The playing time for an E-XXX tape in an NTSC machine, this formula is used: Since the recording/playback time for PAL/SECAM is roughly 1/3 longer than the recording/playback time for NTSC, some tape manufacturers label their cassettes with both T-XXX and E-XXX marks, like T60/E90, T90/E120 and T120/E180. SP is standard play, LP is long play ( 1 ⁄ 2 speed, equal to recording time in DVHS "HS" mode), EP/SLP

15876-419: The playing time for any given cassette will vary between the systems. To avoid confusion, manufacturers indicate the playing time in minutes that can be expected for the market the tape is sold in: E-XXX indicates playing time in minutes for PAL or SECAM. T-XXX indicates playing time in minutes for NTSC or PAL-M. To calculate the playing time for a T-XXX tape in a PAL machine, this formula is used: To calculate

16023-574: The popularity Bachan had. These films predominantly earned their revenue through longer runs at B-grade theatres. A cycle of action films came from these films in the 1980s and 1990s called the Avenging Woman film, where female protagonists seek justice for a rape victim, where the protagonist seeks revenge through violence. In 2009, the action genre was re-popularized with the box office success of Wanted (2009) starring Salman Khan . Khan reinvented his screen persona with that of his image in

16170-543: The postwar period. These films were targeted at the more educated and more refined middle-class audiences who saw themselves as above the contemporary martial arts films. Scott Higgins wrote in 2008 in Cinema Journal that Hollywood action films are both one of the most popular and popularly derided of contemporary cinema genres, stating that "in mainstream discourse, the genre is regularly lambasted for favoring spectacle over finely tuned narrative." Bordwell echoed this in his book, The Way Hollywood Tells It , writing that

16317-534: The quality of the SP speed, and dramatically lowered the quality of freeze frame and high speed search. Later models implemented both wide and narrow heads, and could use all four during pause and shuttle modes to further improve quality although machines later combined both pairs into one. In machines supporting VHS HiFi (described later), yet another pair of heads was added to handle the VHS HiFi signal. Camcorders using

16464-402: The reception to the genre as being "the emblem of what Hollywood does worst." Tasker wrote that when action and adventure films secured awards, it is often in categories such as visual effects and sound editing. Time Out magazine conducted a poll with fifty experts in the field of action cinema, including actors, critics, filmmakers and stuntmen. Out of the 101 films ranked in the poll,

16611-616: The recording time accordingly, but these speed reductions cause a reduction in horizontal resolution – from the normal equivalent of 250 vertical lines in SP, to the equivalent of 230 in LP and even less in EP/SLP. Due to the nature of recording diagonally from a spinning drum, the actual write speed of the video heads does not get slower when the tape speed is reduced. Instead, the video tracks become narrower and are packed closer together. This results in noisier playback that can be more difficult to track correctly: The effect of subtle misalignment

16758-512: The respective analog TV standard (625 for PAL or 525 for NTSC ; somewhat fewer scan lines are actually visible due to overscan and the VBI ). In modern-day digital terminology, NTSC VHS resolution is roughly equivalent to 333×480 pixels for luma and 40×480 pixels for chroma. 333×480=159,840 pixels or 0.16 MP (1/6 of a megapixel). PAL VHS resolution is roughly 333×576 pixels for luma and 40×576 pixels for chroma (although when decoded PAL and SECAM half

16905-441: The road and cars and a history of cultural anxiety towards a bleak and forbidding outback landscape opposed to the optimism of American action films. France is a major European country for film production and has made co-production commitments with 44 countries around the world. Around beginning of the 21st century, France began producing a series of films explicitly intended for international markets, with action films representing

17052-401: The roof with Larry's son but is shot in the leg so that he falls to the ground. The Pentangle gives Matt two weeks to agree to be hunted, or it will kill Sarah. Before leaving, it executes Larry's youngest son in front of an injured Matt. Two weeks later, Matt shows up to a Cajun bayou party at which the Pentangle members are guests. Matt finds Sarah about to be auctioned off by the brothel as

17199-452: The second tape head, is another 1 ⁄ 60 or 1 ⁄ 50 of a second TV picture field, and so on. Thus one complete head rotation records an entire NTSC or PAL frame of two fields. The original VHS specification had only two video heads. When the EP recording speed was introduced, the thickness of these heads was reduced to accommodate the narrower tracks. However, this subtly reduced

17346-529: The serialization of Jinaghu qixia zhuan (1922) ( transl.  Legend of the Strange Swordsmen ). In wuxia , the emphasis is on chivalry and righteousness and allows for phantasmagoric actions over the kung fu film 's more ground-based combat. The Kung fu film emerged in the 1970s from the swordplay films. Its name is derived from the Cantonese term gong fu which has two meanings:

17493-485: The starting point of the genre being traced to Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) make a record-breaking HK$ 34.7 million at the Hong Kong box office. The style of these films would influence American productions, such as Michael Bay 's Bad Boys II (2003) and the Wachowskis ' The Matrix (1999). Korean media recognized the more fatalistic and pessimistic tone of these films, leading to Korean journalists to label

17640-433: The style as "Hong Kong noir ". The influence of these films was evident in early Korean films such as Im Kwon-taek 's General's Son (1990) and later films such Song Hae-sung 's A Better Tomorrow (2010), Cold Eyes (2013) and New World (2013). Postcolonial Hong Kong cinema has struggled to maintain its international identity as a provider of these types action films because the talents involved had abandoned

17787-517: The tape length. Instead, Sony had to slow the tape down to 0.787 ips (Beta II) in order to achieve two hours of recording in the same cassette size. Sony eventually created a Beta III speed of 0.524 ips, which allowed NTSC Betamax to break the two-hour limit, but by then VHS had already won the format battle. Additionally, VHS had a "far less complex tape transport mechanism" than Betamax, and VHS machines were faster at rewinding and fast-forwarding than their Sony counterparts. VHS eventually won

17934-441: The tape, has a latch on the right side, with a push-in toggle to release it (bottom view image). The cassette has an anti-despooling mechanism, consisting of several plastic parts between the spools, near the front of the cassette (white and black in the top view). The spool latches are released by a push-in lever within a 6.35 mm ( 1 ⁄ 4 inch) hole at the bottom of the cassette, 19 mm ( 3 ⁄ 4 inch) in from

18081-450: The term action film genre and adventure are often used in hybrid, and are even used interchangeably. Along with Holmund and Purse, Tasker wrote that the action films expansiveness complicates easy categorization and though the genre is often spoken of as singular genre, it is rarely discussed as singular style. Screenwriter and academic Jule Selbo expanded on this, describing a film as " crime /action" or an "action/crime" or other hybrids

18228-445: The themes that rescinded irony to restore " cinephile re-actualization of the genre's conventions." The genre went into full circle resurrecting films from the classical period with Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and Rambo (2008) finding the characters navigating a contemporary world while also acknowledging their age, culminating into The Expendables (2010) film. The most commercially successful action films and franchise of

18375-565: The time, marketing its products under the National brand in most territories and the Panasonic brand in North America, and JVC's majority stockholder), to accept VHS, and thereby work against Sony and the MITI. Matsushita agreed, primarily out of concern that Sony might become the leader in the field if its proprietary Betamax format was the only one allowed to be manufactured. Matsushita also regarded Betamax's one-hour recording time limit as

18522-529: The title character in China O'Brien (1990) who were physically muscular and or enacted more extreme violence that was usually reserve for male action leads. In her book Contemporary Action Cinema (2011), Lisa Purse described the media response to female leads in action films reveal a discomfort about their presence and are often described with hesitant terms of women moving into territories that are perceived as masculine. Revealing woman in this form deconstructs

18669-409: The track, and the other at minus six degrees. This results, during playback, in destructive interference of the signal from the tracks on either side of the one being played. Each of the diagonal-angled tracks is a complete TV picture field , lasting 1 ⁄ 60 of a second ( 1 ⁄ 50 on PAL) on the display. One tape head records an entire picture field. The adjacent track, recorded by

18816-539: The turn of the millennium, Australian genre films have gained increasing acceptance in the Australian feature film industry, while the action genre represented a small percentage of its output in the 21st century. Scholars of Australian genre film generally used the term "action-adventure" which allows them to apply it to various forms of narratives such as tongue in cheek heroic posturing stories like Crocodile Dundee (1986), road movies or bush/outback films. In

18963-422: The use of locations such as Hong Kong. These films often featured one-legged or otherwise handicapped action characters similar to those of Japanese films ( Zatoichi ) and Hong Kong films ( The One-Armed Swordsmen ). These included Im Kwon-taek's Returned Left-Handed Man (1968), Aekkunun Bak's One-Eyd Park (1970) and Lee Doo-yong's Returned One-Legged Man (1974). In the 1990s, the country's national cinema

19110-444: The vertical color resolution). JVC countered 1985's SuperBeta with VHS HQ, or High Quality. The frequency modulation of the VHS luminance signal is limited to 3 megahertz, which makes higher resolutions technically impossible even with the highest-quality recording heads and tape materials, but an HQ branded deck includes luminance noise reduction, chroma noise reduction, white clip extension, and improved sharpness circuitry. The effect

19257-404: The video is frequency modulated and combined with a down-converted " color under " chroma (color) signal that is encoded using quadrature amplitude modulation . Including side bands , the signal on a VHS tape can use up to 10 MHz of RF bandwidth. VHS horizontal resolution is 240 TVL , or about 320 lines across a scan line. The vertical resolution (number of scan lines) is the same as

19404-411: The video. Both intentional and false-positive detection of Macrovision protection has frustrated archivists who wish to copy now-fragile VHS tapes to a digital format for preservation. As of the 2020s, modern software decoding ignores Macrovison as software is not limited to the fixed standards that Macrovision was intended to disrupt in hardware based systems. The recording process in VHS consists of

19551-753: The war, gaining 60% of the North American market by 1980. The first VCR to use VHS was the Victor HR-3300 , and was introduced by the president of JVC in Japan on September 9, 1976. JVC started selling the HR-3300 in Akihabara , Tokyo, Japan, on October 31, 1976. Region-specific versions of the JVC HR-3300 were also distributed later on, such as the HR-3300U in the United States, and

19698-475: The woman of exploitation films of the 1970s such as Caged Heat (1974) and Big Bad Mama (1974). While characters like Frank in The Transporter series are permitted to visibly sweat, strain and be bloodied, Purse found a reluctance for filmmakers to have their female leads have any appearance warping injuries to ensure a perfectly made-up face. Comedy is often used in films of this period to place

19845-448: Was "only a semantic exercise" as both genres are important in the construction phase of the narrative. Mark Bould in A Companion to Film Noir (2013) said that categorization of multiple generic genre labels was common in film reviews who are rarely concerned with succinct descriptions that evoke elements of the film's form, content and make no claims beyond on how these elements combine. Film Studies began to engage generic hybridity in

19992-408: Was a difficult market for Hong Kong action cinema to break into. Prompted by the success of Enter the Dragon and the popularity of Bruce Lee, Toei made their own Bruce Lee-style martial arts films, with The Street Fighter and its two sequels starring Sonny Chiba as well as a spin-off with a female lead similar to Hong Kong's Angela Mao called Sister Street Fighter . The success of Enter

20139-512: Was a major liability for VHS-C camcorders that encouraged the use of the EP speed. Color depth deteriorates significantly at lower speeds in PAL: often, a color image on a PAL tape recorded at low speed is displayed only in monochrome, or with intermittent color, when playback is paused. VHS cassettes for NTSC and PAL/SECAM systems are physically identical, although the signals recorded on the tape are incompatible. The tape speeds are different too, so

20286-466: Was aiming for the foreign audience, as he was disappointed with the current state of Japanese films. Kitamura's characters have been described as "a careful combination of the maverick independence of 1980s Hollywood action heroes and the calmness and acceptance of Japanese samurai, a consistent criticism of Japanese people today." Kitamura followed up Versus with two manga-inspired big-budget action films, Azumi and Sky High . Both released in 2003,

20433-417: Was displayed in corresponding with corresponded with millennial angst and apocalypticism showcased in films like Independence Day (1996) and Armageddon (1998). Action films of mass destruction began requiring more overtly super heroic characters with further comic book adaptations being made with increased non-realistic settings with films like The Matrix (1999). The fourth phase arrived following

20580-469: Was in decline by the mid-1970s in Hong Kong in relation to the stock market crash which went from over 150 films in 1972 to just over 80 in 1975, which led to a downfall in martial arts films produced. When the economy became to rebound, a new trend of martial arts films, the Shaolin kung fu films emerged and sparked a revival of the genre. Unlike the wuxia , the kung fu film primarily focuses on fighting on

20727-509: Was in decline leading to Hong Kong gangster films filled in this void leading to large commercial success at the national box office. Early Korean heirs to Hong Kong action films include Rules of The Game (1994), Beat (1997), and Green Fish (1997) involving men who gain confidence and achieve personal growth as they embark on journeys to protect national state and meet devastating ends. South Korean cinema only received international attention in both art film and blockbuster formats towards

20874-599: Was not until the base of Chinese commercial filmmaking was relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the late 1940s that martial arts cinema was revived. These films contained much of the characteristics of the previous era. During this period, over 100 films were based on the adventures of real life Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung who first appeared in film in 1949. These films primarily on circuited within Hong Kong and Cantonese-speaking areas with Chinese diaspora . Yip continued that these Hong Kong films were still lagging behind in aesthetic and technical standards that films from

21021-504: Was only in the mid-20th century when action films developed into their own recognizable genre instead of being a collection of other types of films such as Westerns, swashbucklers or adventure films. Films have been described "action films" or "action-adventure film" as early as the 1910s. Only by the 1980s was the term action as its own unique genre used routinely in terms of promotion and reviewing practices. The first Chinese-language martial arts films can be traced to Shanghai cinema of

21168-566: Was only shown as being applicable to white middle-class women. Purse found that these women were empowered at the price of women of other ethnicities. This is seen in Aeon Flux (2005) where Sithandra dies protecting Aeon and Rain's death to make way for Alice in Resident Evil (2002). VHS The VHS ( Video Home System ) is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes , introduced in 1976 by

21315-522: Was produced by all three companies until the late 1980s, but because of cost and limited recording time, very few of the machines were sold for home use. Therefore, soon after the U-Matic release, all three companies started working on new consumer-grade video recording formats of their own. Sony started working on Betamax , Matsushita started working on VX , and JVC released the CR-6060 in 1975, based on

21462-534: Was regarded as a widespread problem, which members of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) claimed caused them great financial losses. In response, several companies developed technologies to protect copyrighted VHS tapes from casual duplication by home users. The most popular method was Analog Protection System , better known simply as Macrovision , produced by a company of the same name. According to Macrovision: The technology

21609-534: Was to increase the apparent horizontal resolution of a VHS recording from 240 to 250 analog (equivalent to 333 pixels from left-to-right, in digital terminology). The major VHS OEMs resisted HQ due to cost concerns, eventually resulting in JVC reducing the requirements for the HQ brand to white clip extension plus one other improvement. In 1987, JVC introduced a new format called Super VHS (often known as S-VHS) which extended

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