Linn Haynes died a few days ago in a car accident. He was 32 years old. Linn was passionate about martial arts films and a constant presence in online fan communities where he brought a wealth of knowledge to the table and was generally a calm and sane voice of reason in the boiling scrum of shouting and flame wars that message boards can all-too-often become.

Linn was working with Media Blasters on its upcoming Shaw Brothers releases, doing audio commentaries and producing extra feature material. I'll try to find out the status of the discs, but in the meantime at the bottom of this page there's links to an interview with him about these releases, and an interview with him about Chinese nationalism in martial arts films which, while not authoritative (and Linn would never claim that it was) makes for some fun reading.

And, in case you're curious, here are the titles Media Blasters have picked up from Shaw:

Five Elements Ninjas AKA Super Ninjas
Heroes Two
The Master
Challenge of the Masters
Martial Club
The Deadly Duo
The Brave Archer
The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
Black Magic 2
Flag of Iron

(Interview with Linn about the special features on the Shaw Brothers discs)

(An essay by Linn on which DVDs you should own and why.)