Anyone know what the status is on the Shaw Bros. Celestial Film library being made available for DVD Region 1? I've tried researching it, and I keep finding old info dating back to '02 making it sound like these movies would be released very soon. Here we are, well into '05 and still no DVD Region 1 Shaw Bros. flicks. The most recent news I've heard is that Miramax was going to release these movies at some point. Anyone out there know more?

For those of you who might not know what I'm talking about, a while back Celestial, an overseas film distributor bought up most if not all of the Shaw Bros. film library. They remastered all of them and re-released them. The quality is greatly improved over VHS and bootlegs. Most of those DVD's from Crash Cinema or the myriad of others that bought the rights to a lot of the old classic kung fu flix (and a lot of really terrible ones, too) that go for cheap at your local video place are of VHS or worse quality. Waste of money, avoid them like the plague.

Anyway, I'm asking because I've almost broken down and bought a region free DVD player, just so I can get all those great old flicks in region 3. However, if Miramax or someone else out there is really going to release them in region 1 anytime reasonably soon, then I can wait. Unless of course, they butcher them like they did with Hero......