Shouting Grounds

There are those moments in your life (increasingly so, now that the Internet is so ubiquitous) were you may experience something for the first time, only to find out later that the opportunities to do so are drastically limited, or worse yet, in your ignorance, you discover that you will never experience it again. This is case with myself and kung fu cinema.

I really didn’t start watching and buying movies until the end of the 90′s, about the time when the modern-classic age of hong kong cinema was coming to and end. China now had possession of Hong Kong and many famous directors had fled for fear that their craft would be handicapped in some way by the political shift that was taking place. The great films of the 80′s and 90′s had already made their mark on the collective soul of chinese action cinema, and I was seeing it all for the first time.

The Prodigal Son

Out of the movies I’ve seen, “The Prodigal Son” film stood out. It stood out from the thousands of films because of it’s technical merit and because the respect for the chosen technique, featured in the story; Wing Chun.

No…not the band Wang Chun, or whatever…Wing Chun is a close-range Chinese fighting style. It is the style that Bruce Lee had been proficient in prior to creating his own forms. The secret behind the style is that the practitioner can defend and attack at the same time, without wasting energy with wild movement. Whether or not it could stand up to a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu onslaught (see “no”) is not my concern. It is a poetic style and lends itself well to being the featured art of a kung fu film.

Here is a scene from The Prodigal Son, which is, in my opinion, the finest technical fight scene I’ve ever seen in a film:

The fight scene is masterful in adhering to the rules of Wing Chun and not only is it fast, but it’s technically flawless. Very cool. That’s one that benefits from a slow-motion viewing or two.

Along with the riveting action sequences and technical accuracy there’s a great story and some comedy too. As with most Hong Kong action cinema you get a little of everything. One second someone’s wife could be getting raped, and the next there’ll be a fart joke. Couple this with the fact that the bad guy always gets killed/defeated and you now have the principle reasons why I love kung fu movies.

With the tone of recent martial arts action movies out of China turning, primarily, to tragic themes (Curse of the Golden Flower, Hero, Fearless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, to name a few), I miss the old care-free days of “Cantonese comedy”-infused films.

Just for fun, here’s the final fight scene (complete with shitty dubbing and ass-hair-burning musical score)(watch for the headbutt, awesome!):

Fucking Sweet

The actor in the first fight scene on the bridges, who is practicing Wing Chun, is Lam Ching Ying. Who died in 1997 from liver cancer. So he was long dead by the time I even saw this movie. Sucks that he’s not around to school the next generation of action stars.

Here’s a great page detailing the life and death of a great kung fu action star.

Here are some bonus clips of Lam Ching Ying in action (awsome):
Spook Encounters 2
Magnificent Butcher
Wheelchair Beatdown

I know I’m opening myself up for attack on this one… but since you all post stuff about games, movies, and whatever else it is that makes you get hard-ons, I’m posting my deepest, darkest fetish… New Kids on the Block are getting back together… and they’re having some sort of performance/news conference tomorrow morning on the Today show.

YUM-O! I feel like a twelve year old girl again… minus the acne and bad hair.

If I turn up missing — it’s likely because I skipped town with the fine honey on the left. (Sorry JT )

In an effort to saturate the Grounds with movie reviews, I’ve been combing the *ahem* libraries for some golden oldies. This time around, it’s George Romero’s Creepshow. I remember this movie from when I was a wee lad, and that it both intrigued me enough to watch it over and over again and that it scared the shit outta me. I’ll slice this review up to follow the serial nature of the movie, so follow along…minor spoilers ahead

Father’s Day
Not as creepy now as it once was. A group of smarmy republicans assemble every Father’s Day to honor their dead grandfather, who was rumored to have been killed by their mother with a marble ashtray because all the fucker did was bang on his chair with a heavy cane screaming and calling her Bitch all the time, complaining that they’re all just after his cash. If you ask me the fucker got what he deserved… In the end, it’s not as scary as it used to be. Satisfying though.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill
Stephen King (who wrote the stories) stars as a hillbilly’s hillbilly that finds a meteor on his land. Everything the meteor touches (or touches it in the case of King) begins to quickly overgrow with some eerie-ass grass…and not the smoking kind. While he begins to turn into a Chia Pet, he dreams about selling the meteor off to a local college to pay off his debts. More quirky than scary.

Something to Tide You Over
An old school tour de force, starring Leslie Neilsen and Ted Danson. Ted’s sleeping with Leslie’s wife, and Leslie wants revenge. Again, I can’t blame him. He’s got a strange CCTV fetish and a love for the tide. Probably my second favorite of the five serials.

The Crate
A couple of buddy professors secretly loath the ultra-controlling drunkass whore wife that one of them was unlucky enough to marry…to the point where the dumbass married to her daydreams about killing her. One day, a janitor at the college they teach at finds a crate hidden under a stairwell marked “Arctic Expedition, 1854″, all hell literally breaks loose. My favorite of the five stories.

They’re Creeping Up On You
EG Marshall is a particularly annoying SuperRepublican, living alone in a spartan apartment built to seal out pollution, germs and bugs. He obsesses about cleanliness while screaming at people on the phone, ordering them around and buying up companies. He gets his…and this story was the hardest for me to watch when I was young. An telltale quote, said by a woman’s voice on the phone to EG, “I hope you get cancer in the worst place!”

The best part of the movie is the way Romero mixed in the serial comic content with the live action content, tying the stories together with a short story about a kid killing his shitty dad. Each of the stories use comic-cell style overlays and crazy lighting throughout to link the comics to the live action…good stuff. Also you’ll notice that in each story, the people that meet their end have it coming, while the protagonists are usually people you also loathe…which in a way makes the world the stories are based in a little easier to believe, i.e. everyone’s human.

Arousal Factor – Magic John Stone for Creepshow – Snapped to Attention

Personal achievement Magic John Stone! This past Sunday was the Shamrock Shuffle 8K (5mi for us Americanos) here in Chicago. The weather was overcast, spitting rain and about 40 degrees, but thousands of people showed up to run the streets.

What a goddamn rush, man. Standing in the queue waiting to run, running up Columbus under the silver bridge at Millennium Park while people cheered us on, all of us yelling while running up lower Columbus, the little Italian woman on Grand that was yelling “Bravo!” to all the runners, running across the Chicago river, down State street past the Chicago theater and Macy’s, getting more Gatorade on my face than in my mouth, dodging the people who stopped to walk, never stopping to walk and sprinting the last 1/4 mile after turning off of Roosevelt…finishing a full 2m28s faster than my previous best 5mi time. Fucking priceless.

If you’ve never run a race, I HIGHLY recommend setting out a training plan and getting your ass out to beat the streets. Go get some great shoes and make it happen. After only three months, I’m a believer. If you had told me last New Year’s Eve that I’d be running now, I’d have laughed my ass off.

Next up: the Soldier Field 10 Mile on May 24th, a 10mi round-tripper down LSD starting outside and finishing on the 50-yard line of Soldier Field! Fuck yeah!

Cruising my daily bookmarks, I snapped up this article from Bit-Tech.net. First reactions included “I’ve never heard of Battlefield Heroes!” and “who the hell makes a game with only 2 maps?” Then I see this paragraph:

Though the game, which is being developed by DICE, is still being planned as an utterly free-to-play game which will generate profit through micro-transactions the developers still aren’t trying to create a huge selection of playing fields.

“EGAD…MORE EA BULLSHIT!!!” the little Irish Devil in my head screamed. Apparently they’re intent on finding new and interesting ways to wring the awesomeness out of one of my favorite franchises. “AND JUST LOOK AT HOW COMPLETELY THEY’VE RIPPED OFF TF2!” he continued. Needless to say, my head was spinning…and yet I googled myself over to EA’s official BF Heroes page to either A) find more reasons to hate this game or B) find out what the fuck, if anything, I could like about a supposedly free game.

The first page of the site says all the right things…but as with any page that has an EA logo at the bottom, you can usually just wipe your ass with it. “a fun cartoon-style shooter”…blah blah blah…”It will be released for the PC as a free download”…blah blah fuckin blah. However I still can’t shake the feeling that this might turn out to be something awesome. Onto the video page for some motion-based proof!

Holy shit! Yeah it’s an EA game, yeah it’s only got two maps, yeah I’m sure they’re gonna make you pay through the nose via micro-transactions for weapons, vehicles, maps, etc…but goddamn the video makes it look fun as shit. I want Socrates to sit on the wing of a P51 while I dive bomb some mother fuckers!

No doubt my heart will be not only ripped from my chest, but shat on, microwaved and fed to a Republican. But for the day I’m giddy about playing this game…and I think you should be too. But then again…

Video

I Think I Love My Wife

Having nothing to watch last night I found myself flipping through HBO’s OnDemand offerings when I came across the recent Chris Rock movie “I Think I Love My Wife“. Rock, who wrote, directed, and produced the film plays a bored married man who spends his days fantasizing about sex with other woman and his nights being denied sex by his wife. This all changes however with the arrival of Nikki (played by Kerry Washington), the sassy, super-sexy, ex-girlfriend of one of Rock’s old college buddies.

The Good:

• Kerry Washington is HAWT. Need more proof? Watch She Hate Me.
• There are certain scenes in the movie where Rock literally shifts into stand-up mode and begins delivering jokes as if he were on stage at the Apollo. These moments are actually quite funny.

The Bad:

• The Movie as a whole. The acting is nothing to write home about, the plot is forced and awkward, and the characters have ZERO chemistry.

The Ugly:

• Rocks acting is as bad as it ever was. At this point I think it’s safe to say the man simply doesn’t belong in front of the camera unless he’s performing stand-up.

The Verdict

Don’t rent, don’t buy. Keep your distance.

Arousal Scale – Redscape for “I Think I Love My Wife” – Snapped Clean Off