Miramax Films has dithered around for two years, but the studio is finally releasing Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer this coming weekend in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  The film is expected to expand to other cities gradually over the next few weeks if it demonstrates some drawing power in its initial engagements.  Miramax has a terrible reputation for butchering the foreign films it licenses -- and the reported running time for the Miramax version of Shaolin Soccer is down to 86 minutes (versus the film's original 111 minute running time).  On the positive side, it does appear that Miramax has decided to release the film with subtitles rather than dubbed and the studio has left enough of the rough and tumble martial arts/soccer action in the film to merit a PG-13 rating (versus the studio's original intent to cut enough violence out of the film to obtain a PG rating).  But even a truncated version of Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer is worth a viewing for fans of martial arts films.  Chow wrote, directed, and acted in this story of an unlikely team of misfits who use kung fu techniques to defeat a hated rival soccer team.

For pop culture retailers the primary means to take advantage of any success that the film might enjoy is Comicsone's graphic novel adaptation of the film by the well-known Hong Kong artist, Andy Seto.  Seto manages to capture much of the action and the comedy of the hilarious parody of martial arts and sports films.