Ross O'Brien Archives -

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP.7 – HANDOVER BLUES Enough of the nonsense—this episode is serious. Ross O’Brien talks with Bey Logan about Hong Kong cinema in the years leading up to Britain’s handover of the colony to China in July 1997; debate ensues. For the most part, the business of cinema in Hong Kong carried […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP 6: MAKING SENSE OF NONSENSE Ross O’Brien talks with Bey Logan about mo lei tau—Cantonese “nonsense talking”—and how Stephen Chow turned it into the dominant Hong Kong film genre of the 1990s. Starting from the end of the heroic bloodshed cycle, they trace the shift from Chow Yun-fat’s rain-soaked hitmen […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP 5: THE KILLER’S CURSE The conversation series about the origins and evolution of Hong Kong action cinema culture continues! In this episode, Ross O’Brien sits down again with the Chronicler of Kung Fu Cinema Bey Logan in his Lantau lair to trace how Hong Kong’s post-kung fu boom birthed a […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP. 4: CHAN COMING OUT OF THE LEE’S SHADOW In this episode of A Better Yesterday–a conversation series about the origins and evolution of Hong Kong action cinema culture — Ross O’Brien and Bey Logan pick up the story in in the immediate aftermath of Bruce Lee’s death, and trace how […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP. 3: EXIT THE DRAGON THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP In the third episode of A Better Yesterday, Ross O’Brien and Hong Kong Cinemissimo Bey Logan cover the last three years of Bruce Lee’s life. In this short time, a young leading man transformed himself into an auteur; his death transformed him […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY – EP. 2: THE ONCE AND FUTURE DRAGON In this second episode of A Better Yesterday, Ross O’Brien continues his deep-dive with Hong Kong Cinemissimo Bey Logan, focusing on how Bruce Lee swam through the streams of both Hong Kong and American pop culture to become the most iconic figure in martial […]

A BETTER YESTERDAY EPISODE 1 A Better Yesterday is a conversation series about origins and evolution of Hong Kong action cinema culture — told from inside the wǔ guǎn. In this first episode, Ross O’Brien sits down with Bey Logan — writer, producer, martial artist, and one-man archive of Hong Kong film lore — in his lair, […]