Post # 246 Robot Love
Peter Singer, the author of a new
book on battlefield robotics, told LiveScience.com in May he had
seen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan grow so attached to their
bomb-disposal robots that, in one case, the soldier risked 160 feet
of enemy machine gun fire to retrieve his little buddy, and in
another, a soldier brought his robot in for repairs with tears in his
eyes over the "injury" to his beloved "Scooby-Doo." Several units,
he said, had given their robots promotions, Purple Hearts, and even
a military funeral. [LiveScience.com, 5-21-09] add comment to post #246permalink
Post # 244 Dreams
I have had several dreams recently that I have actually remembered. This, in the last few years has been unusual for me.
The first, I have to pee, so I do, which is not unreasonable. The strange element is that I pee in the garbage can, or the sink, or pretty much any receptacle that is not a toilet. The toilet is available to me. I just don't use it.
I have looked online and found that this dream represents a sense that one has lost control of the events in their life, or that one is taking control of their life. Thanks internet.
The other dream I am wearing pants. These pants are too short and they are too tight in the butt. So either I push my pants down so they look long enough, or I pull them up and they squish my butt cheeks together. I have found no interpretation to this dream so I am opening the floor to all the amateur psycho analysts out there, what do you think these pants represent? add comment to post #244permalink
Post # 243 Gene Generation
I heard there was a movie with Bai Ling in it where she was an assassin in the future and she wears a lot of leather. Both of these statements are true, which meant that I was destined to watch this movie. I wasn't expecting much and I don't know if that qualifies as my expectations being fulfilled or not. I did get to see Bai Lings boobs (twice), which does sort of elevate the whole status of this whole project.
The question one must ask oneself when venturing into a film is this: “Are Bai Ling's boobs enough to carry a whole movie? Even if they are generally clad in leather and sprayed down?” Sadly, it depends more on the genre of the movie than the quality of visible boobage. Bai Ling manages to almost pull off her role. The supporting cast, on the other hand, was really not up to the task, which is surprising because some of them are recognizable actors who do well in the other roles they have appeared in.
There is the case of the little brother, who is supposed to be a rapscallion troublemaker who is always down on his luck and I think he's supposed to be comic relief we feel sympathy for. I cannot express how much I hated this character and for me one of the best scenes in the movie is when a guy puts a gun in his mouth causing him to throw up. The only way the scene would have been better is if he had pulled the trigger. This character also gets peed on, but that's just gross.
In total, this means that Bai Ling and her boobs are not enough to carry a whole film (at least in the cyber-futuristic-action genre). Nor can the writers of this film understand that despicable characters are not appealing. I think we all want to root for an underdog, but if the dog has the mange you just want to keep them away from you and as sad as it is to admit it, you are sort of relieved when they are dead.
Other than Bai Ling's boobs the big draw of the movie would be the futuristic landscape they produced, mainly with greenscreen and CG. The overcrowded city is walled in by a massive structure that I assume is supposed to keep the populace in.
The reasoning behind this is never really explained, which I am actually ok with since you can't make a whole new society and then explain every aspect in it while still carrying on a story.
The problem is the ending of the film is a big reveal about the cities of the world, which up to that point had just been a backdrop. There are some conversations by the bad guys about going to a different city where everything will be better, but that's as much significance as it's given.
Here's the big spoiler, if you haven't already figured it out. If you don't want to know skip this paragraph and jump to the end even though you should have figured out that a pretty cheap Sci Fi story that involves wanting to go somewhere else always has the same ending. All the cities are exactly the same. Shock and horror. They all seem to be on some burnt out planet. They also seem to have no way of sustaining themselves. None of this is explained in the film and to be honest, when it happens you may not have cared enough to notice.
I think Bai Ling could do a movie and be good if they made the character just a regular Chinese chick, in leather, then stuck her in a situation that required to act like a regular Chinese chick in unusual circumstances. Just don't spend too much time trying to get her to act.
The guy who plays the little brother...I hope he changes his hair.
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Post # 242 5 Masters
The five masters movie has 3 fewer masters than the last movie I reviewed, but at the same time, it has 7 evil masters who round out the bad guys bringing this movie to a total of 12 masters, although 2 of those masters kind of suck, so I’m not sure it I should count them. Either way, there are a whole lot of masters in this movie.
The plot is pretty standard, the government burns down Shaolin temples (with the help of a spy) and kills all the Shaolin. Except 5. These 5 masters decide on revenge and a super annoying secret hand single that gets used way too often in the film in such an unsubtle way that any monkey would be able to figure out your signaling your association with a secret group of rebels out to upset the current order.
That said, the master spy, who really should have been noticed by the Shaolin masters from the temple as suffering from the spiritual problem of being “Something of a dick” which is a problem as it makes it impossible to attain any sort of level of spiritual clarity. You think you could beat that out of someone, but there are rare cases where it ends up making the dick stronger, and on top of that, angry, which is why he probably set about collaborating with the government and burning down the temples.
There is no distinctive stand out among the 5 masters, although they do follow the guy who can’t get the hand signals right in the first place, despite the fact that the hand signals are as simple as the ones you did with your friends in grade school.
The one dude who is too dumb to remember the one hand signal goes off to find out who the spy is, the others sort of break up and try to connect with other rebel types who are into causing trouble.
After a little of this and that, someone assassinates a guy to prove his loyalty and a guy gets captured and they send 500 guys to help him escape, the 5 masters decide they have to kill the 5 bad masters (along with the two lapdogs) but they aren’t skilled enough so they begin a harsh training montage.
They all decide that they will train in one style of kung-fu to beat a specific evil master. I am not what you would call an amazing strategist, but one of the problems with this plan was pretty apparent to me right from the get go. What if you don’t end up fighting your designated evil master guy? You spent a year training in this one style to defeat this one other style and then suddenly your fighting a different guy, what are you thinking to yourself? Damn, forward thinking and planning sure aren’t my strong points, too bad my crane style kung-fu absolutely sucks compared to this guys beat the crane style of kung-fu.
And what the fuck is it with one style of kung-fu being able to defeat a specific other style. Why not go for some sort of cross training like Tae-bo?
Not that this is a big issue, a lot of movies have included this faulty logic, because it makes it easier to understand, but it would be nice to see someone beat his opponent based on his well rounded skillset because there is always the chance that your opponent did something off the wall like train in a different style while you were training to defeat his original style and then he switches mid-fight and what are you going to do then?
Maybe I expect too much of my masters. You know, because there are 5 of them you might think one of them had the same idea as me. So they train for a year, it always takes exactly one year, which is starting to annoy me because it means I could, by now, know 35 different styles of kung-fu and be pretty darn awesome.
So they show up, line up and the 5 masters get the 5 anti-masters to break up, luckily they managed to get the exact masters they were planning on. They fight, surprisingly some of the good masters actually bite it, but they are heroes so they manage to take their opponents with them.
The final point I would like to make is that this movie has one of the most brutal cock-punch sequencesI have ever seen in a movie. Especially because the hero attacks the bad guys balls, like, 20 times in a row, and it kills him. He kills a guy by hitting him in the nuts.
Post # 241 8 Masters
This is about as classic as kung-fu cinema gets. Boys father is killed, there is some kind of challenge going around, which seems to be a big past time of all the kung-fu masters. Challenging people and killing or getting killed. Personally, I have always wondered why these challenges always seem to end up being to the death. It just isn’t really an efficient way to work. Basically every year your stable of masters gets cut in half. This could explain why all these movies happen a few hundred years ago because masters seem to be walking around all over the place, whereas now, not so much with the masters. The rule of diminishing returns would say that if the population of masters gets cut in half every year, pretty soon there would be hardly any masters at all.
So dad is dead, what do we do? Put the kid in a shaolin monastery, otherwise they might kill the son as well. Sure, he’s only 8, but that makes him just a tasty treat after a hard day of killing. Also, this movie has some of the most classic music ever.
Now we come to a second demonstration of one of those things that I just never understood. The shaolin train the shit out of this guy. I mean literally they are teaching this guy to tear people apart with his teeth. Not like a week-end course either, if you watch his training montage starts 6 minutes into the film where he is 8 and progresses until he is in his early 20’s and ready to go. According to the montage he did little else so for about 10 years this guy was taught how to break people down into their component pieces. They don’t have moments of him socializing or praying or even eating, so fighting and nothing else, was the focus of his montage.
Then they are getting ready to let him go and they basically tell him “Don’t fight with people.”
The only really appropriate response that I could think of was ‘Geh?’ Literally, what was the point of training this guy so thoroughly and then saying, you know what, don’t do any of the stuff you just spent years learning, cause that’ll learn ya.
Then the second irony, or the ironic 360, comes out in the test the guy has to pass if he wants to leave the temple, which is, of course, a massive series of fights. So they say to this guy, you gotta go, and once you go you can’t fight, but before you can go, you gotta beat the living shit out of some guys spray painted gold. Seriously, I am going to say that to you with a straight face.
Hero dude with thick neck then heads out into the world, where he will not fight, after beating the living shit out of the guy’s spray painted gold and picking up the big hot pot to burn a dragon into his arms, which sort of indicates you are a guy from Shaolin who totally throws down, but you can’t. He goes to town to get a snack.
Whoops, first mistake is to stop for food in a Kung-fu movie because some ruffian will eventually come around and start a fight, often they are the henchman of the movie’s antagonist.
So sitting down and trying to get a burger thick neck watches as some ruffians (whoa, surprise) come in and start ruffianing. They harass a guy but hero holds off, not getting involved and fighting. Then they start harassing the guys daughter an eventually it gets so bad that hero asks them to stop…and then whipping the shit out of them.
Looks like it took about an hour, or however long it took for the guy to be out on the road and get hungry, before he broke his promise not to fight. In fact, it was the very first thing he did, he didn’t even manage to eat his lunch.
So he goes home, meets his now blind mom and love interest. So, gotta get to the eight masters soon because at a couple of minutes each we have a 20 minute series of fights coming up somewhere.
Oh, here comes one of the eight masters now with a challenge. Hero refuses a bunch of times, runs away with his family to live in a house in a different place, the masters show up with a challenge again so they go and live in a cave. Seems sort of like it would have been a good idea not to leave the Shaolin temple at all. Guys mom was living comfortably with some chick. Sure she went blind and didn’t have her son with her, but she ate every day and people didn’t come around the house issuing challenges every day. Since her some came back, she now lives in a cave and then gets kidnapped by the 8 masters.
I am wondering at this point how difficult it would be to fake a loss and not die, since he is some kind of martial arts master himself. He should have the skills to get by, I assume. But that wouldn’t be much a heroic end, so the guy EVENTUALLY, and it takes a while, gives in and fights the 8 masters. It only took him a few minutes to give in at the beginning of the movie and beat the crap out of the rabble rousers in the restaurant.
So he beats down each master in turn, but before delivering a final death blow he gets a flashback to the beginning of the movie when the teacher gives him this line about not beating the shit out of anyone, but since he has already done that he decides the best course of action is to not kill his opponent.
The thing is, every time we watch a fight we have to watch a dramatic look and listen to the line again. Damn, that’s 8 times which is about 7 too many. After all this, guy decides to go back to the temple, so again, maybe it would have been better not to leave in the first place.
Post # 240 Lady Iron Monkey
I had to watch this movie twice. And I mean HAD TO simply because I was left so confused by my feelings after the first viewing. It turned out to be something called nausea because I had eaten too much yogurt. The movie on the other hand also gave me feelings, such confused strange new feelings.
You know what every little girl in China dreams of being? The legendary Lady Iron Monkey. You think I’m kidding but there is no Mao Barbie fad going on, it’s all Monchichi style with the girls cutting their hair and gluing it to their faces and arms, then jumping around not even coming close to hitting their friends. At least it’s safe.
Or maybe I just made that up, you’ll never know, because China doesn’t really exist, but sadly the movie, Lady Iron Monkey, does. I have seen the Iron Monkey movies and they are considered classics by people who love kung fu movies. Not many people mention Lady Iron Monkey, they have never seen it despite the fact that it has been confirmed that this film has the best opening song ever.
The movie starts off as every great comedy has. With a large Chinese man and a Chinese midget. One thing Kung-fu movies rarely get right is comedy, and this movie is a mess of attempted humor. They are teased by the monkey woman and some kids in monkey pajamas.
This sort of begs the question of “What the fuck is going on?” The woman is supposed to be what? A missing link, a child abandoned by her parents because she was atavistic? A human living in the wild because she was adopted by monkeys? She is supposed to have a functional tail, but we don’t learn that until near the end of the film.
The kung-fu master shows up and catches her, says she has a brain, that she is human and so takes her back teach her the ways of kung-fu. She grows up in a short training montage and then we subjected to the travesty that is this movie’s first plot arc.
Firstly there is the ungainly hitting on town pretty girl by Fatty and the midget. I know you might be offended by my use of the term Fatty but that is the actual name this stock character is always given in these movies. So they fall over themselves and when our main character shows up (she isn’t given a proper name that I can remember) she gets in their way, although they had no chance at success, and they tell her how ugly she is.
LIM (Lady Iron Monkey) then decides to go out and see the world as some sort of teenage rebellion. She basically takes the place of a bride, this is a long painful comedy scene then she goes into town and crashes a kung-fu birthday party of sorts.
This is more than mid-way through the film and literally nothing has happened. I suppose what we were supposed to be watching was character development. It could be filler or comedic genius. There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Maybe this is like physics, it seems simple at first but the more you get into it the more confusing it gets, the more obscure. It might be a part of the Chinese mentality, the conflict between the desire to be beautiful and to have a tail.
So chick falls for the evil 14th prince of the emperor who uses her skills to fake his way into being next in line. Here we see the complexity of the movie... ah, who am I trying to kid. The depth of thought can be summed up with this line.
Evil 14th son of the emperor totally pimps LIM for a while and then she discovers him with his real lady and loses it. She goes back and does what anyone would do, finds strength in who she really is, becomes a better person and realizes that looks are unimportant.
But of course, that isn’t even close to being true. She takes a magical bath that gets rid of all the excess hair and she is suddenly pretty, because that is what is truly important. Although she doesn’t stay in the bath long enough to lose her tail.
Okay, so LIM has achieved her dream of being pretty and does what any sensible person would do, she returns to the service of the guy who dicked her over, oh, and there is some political intrigue.No surprise here at all, the new Emperor doesn’t keep any of his promises, he even tries to kill the people he made promises too and they go after him leading to a ridiculous foot chase. Isn’t this guy the emperor of all of China? Where are the freaking guards and how come the guys chooses to run? Couldn’t he at least get a horse or something.
So there is a final fight with some wicked thwack sounds and LIM gets her personal revenge, because again, that is what is important in life. Being pretty and getting revenge. At least that is what I learned from the film. Hell hath no fury like a monkey she bitch scorned.
What kind of pissed me off is she managed to do it using her secret kung-fu. So secret was this kung-fu that we, the audience weren't even let in on it. She does a kind of female monkey drunken style of kung-fu. The secret style of Kung-fu always seems to turn out to be drunken style, I just think we should see her train in it at least once, because somehow, despite the fact that we have spent most of the film watching a woman with hair taped to her arms and face, it's harder to believe if the wicked final move just comes out of no where.
Post # 239 American Samurai
This movie I downloaded just because I had watched all 5 American Ninja movies and still felt somehow…incomplete. I think it was because we all know that movies must come in trilogies. I don’t know what a quintualogy would be, so we can’t have one. Nope, we need two sets of three movies or the universe is somehow less stable. This movie has American in the title and Samurai, which is pretty close to Ninja because they are both Japanese and both had a penchant for head lopping offingism.
Surprisingly the overall story of this movie works better than the American Ninja movies simply because like all of the great martial arts movies it dispenses with any real story and instead gets the main character involved in a battle to the death tournament. It is really hard to go wrong with this plotline simply because it gives the fan what they have come to see. People fighting. The problem with scriptwriters in general is that they feel the need to give a reason for the main character to get into the tournament that doesn’t involve greed or the desire to kill a bunch of other people. This is the HERO after all. So the first 20 or 30 minutes of this film is taken up by the stupid stupid plot.
If I were going to write a movie it would be ‘Guy wakes up and then is thrust into the world of pitfighting because he went in the wrong door while looking for chili.’ You know what, it would fucking sell huge numbers. I would call it ‘Hot Chili, with moves so spicy, it’s deadly.’
I can accept the background on the main character, which is funny because it is almost identical to the back story to the original American Ninja film.
Kid gets lost on Japan, parents get killed (in this case through a plane crash) so kindly old Japanese warrior master figures he will raise the orphan in the tradition of his martial art, in this case, the samurai sword fighting. Despite the fact that Samurai would in most cases be totally against this, call it the Last Samurai syndrome where they figure teaching outsiders has suddenly become a good idea. There is a brother who I have labeled ‘Crazy Eyes’ who, of course, takes offense at the foreign kid learning the family traditions so he becomes a Yakuza killer dude. Way to stick it to your dad Crazy Eyes.
So plot and story happen. This involves dude, all growed up, who is a reporter, heading to Turkey with photographer love interest (they totally get it on in like a day despite hating each other the first few hours) where they are investigating a murder by ‘someone’ with a sword. If you guessed the killer rhymes with ‘lazy flies’ you would be right on. Also, dude’s family heirloom sword gets stolen, you know that’s ‘daisy guise’ again. I spent the next while wondering if they were ever going to get to it and then chick gets kidnapped and dude gets forced into the underground tournament where the fight is to the death and of course the last fight is going to be with his brother. He is allowed to use his sword and everyone in the tournament has a ‘distinct’ style. This sometimes translates into ‘totally gay’ style but at least for the rest of the movie people will be doing little more than dishing out the pain.
There isn’t much to say about the rest of the film, as it consists of a cast of clichés fighting. I wonder what it must be like signing onto a film like this and then finding out you are one of the guys who gets killed in the first fights. You are, in essence, cast as the loser to show off how tough the other guys are so when they fight main character dude it doesn’t look one sided.
I don’t think I could do it. I would have to last at least one fight. Maybe getting killed by the antagonist would be okay, but none of this getting wiped out shit. Looking over my screen captures will tell you the rest of the movie. They do a little more graphic cutting, but when the limbs come off it starts to feel like my time hasn’t been wasted.
I did find Conan guy pretty funny, I had hoped he would hang around for more than one fight, but he was done in by massive Australian who makes penis joke.
Post # 238 American Ninja 5
Have you ever been tired before you started something? That is how I felt when I sat down in my chair and decided to watch the last installment of the epic movie series: American Ninja. This is the fifth movie, it seems they didn’t have the energy to give it one of the subtitles like the other movies. I guess it didn’t need one.
I am not sure who the character we are introduced to is supposed to be, or if he is supposed to be the same character from the other movies. It is the same actor, David Bradley from American Ninja 3 and 4. Only in those movies his name was Sean and now his name is Joe, which was the name of the character from American Ninja 1,2 and 4.
God I hate that I know so much about this now. If there was some way to flagellate these movies out of my mind I would be out on my prayer mat whipping myself with briars instead of writing this. I suppose my only way of purging now is to infect you with my copious knowledge of the American Ninja universe.
The guy who was Sean has become Joe, maybe through a ninja trick. Perhaps Sean killed Joe after shaming him in American Ninja 4 and through the rules of Ninja ascension could adopt his name if he chose.
Although, Sean had gone from being a tournament fighter to a CIA agent between movies so maybe this was just another really dramatic transition, or he had been put in a protection program for ex ninja cia agents.
So now Joe is living on a boat like Sonny Crockett, which is way cool, although he doesn’t have a pet alligator, which isn’t so cool, so it sort of balances out to being normal. The more I think of it the more I wonder about that alligator (Elvis) because it’s not the kind of animal that is easily domesticated and to be frank I don’t think the interior of a 20 foot boat is really a great environment. Also, seriously, Crockett used to take off on missions all the time. Going to South America and shit, leaving the thing for days. You’d think the first time he came back from an extended trip the thing would tear him apart, unless he was a ninja, which explains a lot.
One big advantage this film has is that actual asian people have joined the cast, giving it a taste of authenticity, unless you look at the ninjas, which are mostly white guys. The downside to this is that they are the likes of Pat Morita who did an admirable job in the Karate Kid, but was in no way convincing as a ninja.
Probably the best scene in the movie is near the start when they talk about the kid tagging along with Pat, their ninja clan and the heat.
Did you see that? Did you see how just casually the discussion of the secretive ninja clan was placed into the conversation so you didn’t notice? Man, ninja’s are awesome, using that old “Hiding in plain site” shit to totally blow your mind.
There is a distinctly new flavor to this American Ninja movie in that the bad guys names are Viper with a main henchman named ‘bloodhead’. These are pretty cartoony, and since the audio isn’t awesome I thought the bloodhead characters name was flathead, which in a weird way fit him.
The premise is that Joe is housesitting and babysitting for his ninja friend, and a rip-rollicking adventure ensues, in a bland sort of way. We are very much victims of convenience story theatre here. The kid happens to need something to get him interested in ninjaing as a profession, the girl on the boat up the dock happens to find Joe so attractive that she re-varnishes his deck (that is not an innuendo) and she happens to be the daughter of a guy who is inventing some kind of pesticide which is going to be turned into a chemical weapon but he doesn’t know that and when he finds out they kidnap his daughter (with ninjas) on Joes date with her and thus the story begins.
Seems to me it would be a lot easier to get scientist a (with morals) to make the pesticide that serves the world be leaving no residue when washed with water and then hiring scientist b (without morals) to do a conversion. It would save the effort of kidnapping and plainly makes a lot more sense. You also don’t get people coming after the person you kidnapped, which may bring undue attention to your plan to make a biological weapon based on pesticide.
The kid stows away with Joe on his adventure, which is great. It feels about as natural as when a new kid is introduced into a sitcom because all the other kids have gotten to old to be cute but are too young to be sex objects. (Please refer to Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, Growing Pains and pretty much any show that lasted long enough for one of the kids to hit puberty, although none so generous as Punky Brewster)
In the other American Ninja movies the Ninjas spend an inordinate amount of time standing around waiting to get their ass kicked, one improvement we see in this film is the ninjas suddenly appearing, getting their asses kicked and then moving onto the next scene. Although they do tend to appear in the gayest way possible, and an interesting sidenote, you can figure out how far along you are in the movie if you keep a sharp eye out for the the color of the ninja uniforms. Each scene the ninjas change colors. The reason for this is not explained, but I am figuring this is so the video game based on the film would be easily recognizable and you could hear kids shouting with joy “Purple ninjas, I got to the purple ninjas!”
There is some banter between Joe and the kid, who I have named Pongo in honor of the kid from the last movie, and will herein refer to all sidekick kids as Pongo unless I have the misfortune to end up reviewing Sidekicks where the sidekick kid (Pongo) is the main character dreaming about fighting with Chuck Norris. In this one case I will refer to Pongo as UberPongo.
Some things I noticed about this movie, and movies in general is that kids cannot ride a bicycle as fast as a truck can drive. The average speed of the average bicycle rider on an average bike isn’t getting anywhere above 20 miles per hour. That is frustratingly slow in an internal combustion engine, unless you are in a model T where they speculated that a human would not be able to survive speeds over 40 or 50 mph. The directors etc try to compensate in this film by having Pongo take several shortcuts through a city he has never been to before. I think you can see the logistical problems here, but it also shows that the American Ninja series has, at this point, become a kids movie.
There is no significant violence in the movie, no blood, no graphic deaths and in fact I think they are trying to shift the paradigm into a new audience. I doubt any of the writers or producers ever used the word ‘paradigm’ but good on them for trying.
Joe gets captured pretty early on in this movie, harking back to him getting captured in American Ninja 4, which once again makes me think that Joe/Sean is the worst ninja ever.
Of course Viper the Mexican wrestler killed Pongo’s dad so he has to go through the Luke Skywalker school of training in one lesson to become a master so you know he now able to kick the crap out of adult hired mercenaries, which he does for the rest of the film.
The finale is a room that was obviously built for the final it’s almost silly. White walls and floor with white boxes and soft lighting and just a touch of fog. The ninja’s…white suits, so I guess they are the last level before the final boss.
There is some other stuff, but really, you know how it ends.
Post # 237 10 Fingers of Death
This is a Jackie Chan movie, one of his first, so it gets treated with a little more reverence than the other movies reviewed here, that is, until the first moustache hits the screen. Then I realized that despite the fact you can see Jackie Chan’s ability in the movie, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be good.
We open with two guys in hoods not wanting to kill innocent people. Fags. We get a great introduction to the ‘power’ theme of the movie, blindfolded. If you kill a man, sure that’s something, but if you’re a real man, you do it blindfolded. Even better than that is this line where the bad guy states what he must do, then tells someone else to do it. That's quality management.
The story here is about a Chinese Oliver Twist. A down on his luck kid wants to learn kung-fu. Not eat or, you know, get money, but just learn kung-fu. I guess the hard streets of dirty china (and I mean dirty dirty China) kung-fu means life or death.
Of course, the uptight ‘man’ won’t teach kung-fu for free. Damn the man. So opportunity knocks in the form of an old dirty NAMBLA member. He claims to be the best teacher in all of China, and then doesn’t exactly go in for the Yoda school of training in the dirty forest. No, listen to this clip an decide for yourself. I edited it slightly, just cutting out Jackie’s protestations, but when you listen to it in order I think you get the picture of where the youths training is going to be heading. It certainly isn’t the Karate Kid championships where you fight the Cobra Kai, it’s the trying to recover repressed memory center at the clinic.
So there are some really weak looking thugs in the movie. I assume they belong to a gang or a group or a triad or something, maybe a club. Honestly I can’t say since backstory isn’t really a big part of the writers craft. So Jackie kicks the shit out of some people and the dirty bum pedophile teacher pops up from a bush (literally pops up from a bush) and says ‘Good, he has enemies now, let’s see where it leads.’
What he is thinking? So, not only does the teacher rape little boys, he then hopes that his pupil/victim has people hating him so he can get into fights. This is one fucked up dirty town in China. But the comedy evil guy, well the ladies think he's lucky And how.
What kind of weirded me out, if the implied rape from earlier wasn’t bad enough, was the way the old teacher kept popping out of bushes, the same bush all the time, to comment on stuff. Maybe it was some kind of magic bush that allowed him to follow kids he had raped around, or maybe it was just a camouflage suit that he wore. Either way, the dude was everywhere.
Chinese Kung-fu movies do not do 2 things well in general 1) night scenes, of which I have commented before and there is one in this movie as well as 2) comedy interludes. I have watched some good Chinese comedies, and we have all seen Jackie Chan movies where he was being funny, but back in the 70’s when these things were being made they just didn’t have a very good handle on humour or physical humor or an understanding that cliché’s aren’t really that funny.
The movie does it’s best to create a couple of fights. Of course, any week-end, I could do the same without a script. It doesn’t take much. So all of a sudden the bad guy just shows up and says ‘I’ll fight you tomorrow.’ Jackie then suddenly is practicing drunken style. Why would he change style at the very end of the movie instead of using what he learned from the beginning? No reason, unless he actually started drinking. The when they fight he doesn’t use drunken style, so what was that, pointless. Much like the rest of the story in this movie.
A kung-fu movie doesn’t need a story, just look at movies where they just have some stupid tournament without rules. There you go, movie, with a pretty pathetic, but viable point.
Right before that we have to endure another comedy bit where Jackie fights the fat guy from earlier in the movie. I do mean endure, because the fat guy employs ‘fish’ style kung-fu which has him wiggling a lot. I think Jackie was supposed to show off his prowess here, but he just beats the guy down and I was just waiting for the final fight.
It is done, wait for it, BLINDFOLDED! So we have come full circle. Also the teacher shouts out that this was the guy who killed Jackie’s father. Jackie seems to care about that as much as I do, not that this guy killed my father and I don’t have to fight him. I guess if the guy had killed my father I might take it more seriously, but I guess it wasn’t much of a surprise.
Nearing the final moment the teacher shouts out “The lightening fist! Use it.” Which is weird because at no point in the movie does he learn or use it. But, it sure works out for Jackie, end movie.
Post # 236 Warriors Two
You know those long ‘Begat’ passages in the bible. That’s a great way to start a kung-fu movie. Revealing every person who ever practiced this specific type. Also, it lets you know that the school is on Liu Tzu street. Now that’s details.
The opening of the movie happens on the ‘Eden’ Star Trek set. The original series. It has the tinkling waterfall and overgrown flowers that would be a hayfever sufferers nightmare. Oh, and a guy practicing his Kung-fu smack dab in the middle.
In fact, as the film progresses I noticed a lot of the characters somehow reminded me of Spock, or Vulcans. We then switch over to Sammo Hung who reprises his role as guy who gets called ‘fatty’ by everyone. How do I know this is a reprisal? Because it’s the only role he plays in movies and I am pretty sure this wasn’t his first one.
Fatty, I am sure they said his real movie name, but I forget it, gets into an argument with Big Mouth Ho over who has the superior style of Kung-fu.
I have been in plenty of arguments with guys in my life but really, if I ever met a guy named Big Mouth Ho I would just know not to get too involved with him. If anything, this is not one of those ironic names like ‘Tiny’. A guy named Big Mouth Ho has a big mouth and may very well be a Ho.
Evil bad guy is introduced and is using the bank that he owns to take over the town. Mad power hungry Chinese man, wants control of a whole town to himself. I somehow failed to be impressed by the scope of his megalomania. Most movies have the evil plot taking over all of China, even if all we see is one small town. You, as the script writer, just have to make it a really important town.
A bank clerk, who is called cashier Liu, which is great because you won’t get him confused with anyone else, although he too sort of looks like Spock.
Cashier Liu overhears the evil scheme to take over the town so he heads off to tell people. Evil plan error #1, the most common error is to talk about your plans at length, in detail, out loud.
Liu tells the wrong guy and is betrayed and here is our first fight. My favorite is metal bone guy who makes a tinging sound every time you hit him. I don’t know what kung fu he practiced to get that. Short story, don’t fuck with Chinese bank clerks. The only reason he lost was numbers. How Ironic, a bank clerk being beat by numbers.
So Liu has lost, he must then train. Welcome to Liu Tzu street or as it is known Kick ass town. There’s a short side story of getting the master to accept him, but we all know he’s going to, just like we know when the master utters the words ‘Kung fu is not about revenge.’ He is going to die and his new pupil will seek revenge on his behalf.
Is that ironic, because it happens a lot in these movies.
Okay, let’s get to it. TRAINING SEQUENCE, that is. What great filler, where the writer comes up with a move like, say, kick in the ass, and calls it ‘Flying Dragon’. Next time you feel like telling someone you want to kick their ass, instead invite them for a Flying dragon. That’s classy.
Ass fetish.
There is a great mistake in the subs that says ‘What if the enemy licks.’ And since then has had me wondering what would happen if the enemy did lick. Of course I then started wondering ‘What if the enemy is a tall Swedish lesbian with her entourage made up of models from around the world, like a candy selection. What if this enemy comes to me and licks. What if she licks hard, and while licking beckons to her friends because her licking alone is not enough to subdue me, as it would take the power held in a dozen tongues to tame this wild Conan like man.’
Thoughts do tend to wander.
Something I think I have learned from Kung-fu movies is that training seems to consist mainly of hitting people when they are not looking or not ready. I used to do that to this kid in high school. We called him 'Flinch' and he never became a master of Kung-fu, in fact, I think he had to go on Amobarbital to stop the shakes.
Then, and I think this is irony, the master is taken by surprise. You see, because all his training is surprising his student, but then he doesn’t see the attack coming.
To give him some credit, they were hiding behind a really big curtain.
This is where I begin to doubt the kung-fu master. Is he really a master if he didn’t see the attack that was waiting for him? The there is the guy who uses a bear trap on him. A real Kung-fu master would have thought to himself ‘Yeah, that guy brought a bear trap. Perfect, they are now all already dead.’ This guy got his foot stuck in it.
So the rest of the movie has it’s good points and it’s bad points. The good point is that it is a 30 minute fight scene with the 2 students seeking revenge. That may not be what Kung-fu is for, but it sure does seem to get used for that an awful lot.
The bad point in the dark sequence. Please, aspiring action film directors, I know you come here. Do not have really dark fight sequences. The intent is to raise the tension level because even the two fighting can barely see each other, but in reality it is as much fun as watching my fridge.
It makes ice.
There is the obligatory double teaming on the bad guy. I have never been confident with this because of my western background. If it takes two of you to beat the bad guy, then you didn’t really beat him, you just ganged up on him. Maybe it’s the working together, or the revenge.
Post # 235 American Ninja 4
At first I thought they had stopped at the trilogy. Usually when the main actor doesn’t come back for a film and you go ahead and make the film anyway that is sort of the dying song of a movie franchise.
Let me warn you, big black guy did not return for this movie, but both the original American ninja (Michael Dudikoff) and the second American ninja (American ninja eXtreme) did return for this venture. There is also a guy who brings a frying pan into a fight with the local military. That’s the bit that stands out the most for me, the pan and how someone just let that go.
Ninja movies don’t have a lot of integrity. I am not looking for historical accuracy or realistic martial arts, I am looking for silly pulp movie making where people disappear and maybe do some crazy stuff some guy just made up.
I want to see a helicopter explode with a throwing star. That works for me, I want posing and smack talk and some real ninjaing.
I guess what I really wanted was Ricky-Oh, the Story of Ricky. I mean, when your name is in the title TWICE you know you are a bad ass.
What I was watching was American Ninja 4, the Annihilation. I have certain expectations based on a movies title. Something better get annihilated by the end of this movie and it shouldn’t be my will to watch American Ninja 5, which I recently found out existed and downloaded.
Let’s get to the movie. At some point the Ninja Sean from American Ninja 3 went from being a tournament fighter, which made some sense because a ninja would be a pretty good tournament fighter to a CIA agent. I don’t know if the CIA went around to small island tournaments where the local dictator was running things so he could ultimately choose the winner to make super ninja’s and sell drugs or some such crap.
So they have to go to some third world place to do something for the CIA, no one really cares why the ninja is going there, we just want to get shit going on with other ninja. The most useful part of the introduction is that we learn from Sean that red ninjas are the strongest ones. That’s how you get the red suit.
One of the oddest things that this movie brought into my life was it was the third time in three days I heard the word PONGO. First, it was a Japanese person’s nickname, then it was one of my co-workers dead dog and finally it was the ruffian rat boy in the movie.
But what is PONGO really, is it some Japanese animal zombie that assists ninja CIA agents? Be fucking interesting if it was, but nope, Pongo is a little bitch with a poor accent coach.
That’s about all the plot we get through before Sean gets caught by the bad ninja guys with his new love interest. The only thing I have enjoyed about this so far is his pretty horrendous comment about her figure.
After 44:41 the original American ninja enters to try and save the second American ninja which sort of implies that Joe is the better American ninja. You know I am hoping that they are going to fight. Why bring two acting powerhouses together if you aren’t going to make them kick the shit out of each other.
They do, but then ruin it by having Sean actually be a guy disguised as Sean so they can allow him to lose, but strike two for the second American ninja because now he is unofficially Joe’s bitch.
Joe rarely talks throughout this movie. It was either a conscious choice on the part of the writer because he knew that Michael Dudikof can’t act or they were trying to make him tough and mysterious. I somehow doubt it was the latter as they stuck him in the Peace Corp.
Joe somehow figures being a ninja isn’t enough to save the other American ninja so he goes to the reject cast of Mad Max for help.
Then comes the ritual that makes little or no sense to me but seems to happen in movie worlds again and again. Often to join a gang or gain their respect you have to fight and beat their best member. I have many reservations with this initiation system. Mainly that if I beat the very best guy in a group that means that every other member within the group will suck even worse. Is this the kind of team I want on my side, the team that I could beat all by myself.
I also have a problem with increasing membership. The guy who started this gang (I am assuming he is the leader) would most likely be the first guy in the gang and therefore was beaten by every subsequent person who joined the gang. That guy, the leader, must really suck ass. Especially when I look at some of the standing strands of spaghetti that are hanging around in the background.
How does this group increase by any size at all because once you have one fairly good member you aren’t going to get any more members joining, so the upper limit would be about 12.
This happens in other films too where you actually have to kill the best guy to prove your worth. I have never gotten past the awkward logic of this one because you would continually be losing your best members and replacing them with, more than likely, injured newcomers.
Well, pass over that and lets get back to the flimsy story here. An epic battle ensues between mad max and government ground forces while Joe does some ninjaing into the complex. He changes black suits 2 or 3 times and eventually fights the fake second American Ninja and arrives too late to save the hostages. Oh, there were some other hostages.
Another problem I have with this movie is that the American Ninja V2.1 does little to nothing to actually try and escape, which I believe makes him the worst movie ninja ever.
Everyone has been loaded outside in faux Chinese coolie getups to be burned to death. Joe comes outside in a zippy yellow ninja suit and has an odd stand off against the cartoon character ninja who has done little but an obstacle course and kill one of his one minions so far in the film.
This is the climatic battle, but really, I forget that except for the time when they stand looking at each other and making gestures I used to make up when I was 12 for ninjas. Then they fight and Joe walks away. He barely speaks a word and the American Ninja Jr. jumps in with a ‘He doesn’t say much, but he gets the job done.’ Kind of quip and the awesome end song rolls as Joe walks amongst dead bodies.
American Ninja 4 Bonus Pics:Please wait while all the images load.
And finally, the single greatest image I have ever lifted from a movie. The most horrendous travisty ever visited on mankind.
Post # 234 City Ninja
I downloaded this from a public domain site, so you know that’s high quality when no one wants to fight for the copyright of a movie. I spent a lot of time to watch City Ninja, basically the whole length of the film, and I still can’t seem to figure out who was who in it. I could try and say that was the fault of the translation, but I bet it pretty much was a mess in Chinese as well.
City ninja starts off in Hong Kong, 1940, with a white guy. And everyone speaks English. Sure this movie is dubbed, but that means everyone was speaking Chinese, it just didn’t feel right. That and the guy wasn’t dressed like he was in the 40’s at all. Lobo comes in at the end of the fight, takes a necklace off the dying guy, a bunch of ninjas appear and he runs away.
Who the fuck is Lobo? Damn if I know. It was a feeling a got very comfortable with by the end of the movie.
As I watch these movies I am often asking myself how deeply should I delve into the plot points of a movie. The last time I was in 1940’s Hong Kong and I met a guy who was being chased by ninjas who offered me a necklace with his dying breath I pretty much said ‘Yer on yer own.’ Left and had some Chinese food. You see, people just don’t get involved, and they certainly don’t take on 4 ninjas for a stranger.
Lobo then takes on 4 ninjas, or 8, because when he hits them they explode into a puff of smoke, so I don’t know if it is the same ninja coming back or a new one, still, he was doing it for a total stranger, so Lobo is a pretty good guy. Last time I asked a favor of someone I didn’t know I got 3 stitches, and that wasn’t what I needed help with.
What would have happened to the ninja legacy if Lobo had been something of a pussy? I chose not to dwell on it either.
The white guy who just died comes back in his karate uniform and fights 4 ninjas…in the afterlife or something. So I guess the afterlife is pretty much identical to his regular life, which sucks if you were muslim and expecting a boatload of virgins, but is pretty good if you were an atheist and were expecting jack. Then we jump ahead to Hong Kong 1985. I tell you, 1985 rocks as champion boxer guy has a party.
A white chick then takes off her dress and picks up a shovel. I shit you not. She then asks the boxer to sign her ass. I have never been to a party with chicks with shovels.
Wang Lee, the champion boxer guy is so good at boxing the 'Boss' asks him to run his new club for him. With management skills like that you know this guy is going far. Boss see's a girl wearing a necklace and says to an underling that he must have it at any cost, so they call a Korean. People get down on Koreans all the time, but if you have lost something you know that Koreans are the people to go to. I once lost my keys and this Korean guy walked into my house and just, like, walked straight over to where they were and gave them to me and left. I didn't even know this guy.
We are now 13 minutes into the movie and I have lost track of who anybody is, if a Korean were here I am sure he could tell me who was what, but unfortunatly I was alone.
I know there is some clumsy love triangle going on, cause there is this woman in a shower and then the same woman watching some porn. I think this was a more risque film for the time as it basically has a fight, some nudity and then another fight.
I know, it sounds good, but really, starving children could have used the film for clothes or something.
The Korean guy then gets killed in a bar without having done shit, he kind of sucked.
Jimmy is told to get 1/2 the necklace back from the bald headed gang. A great opportunity for men who are prematurely balding, which sometimes is a social issue. Rarely do they get to be really tough
Well, until they all get killed by one guy. So that gang kind of proves bald men are pusses.
Who is Jimmy? Yeah, I fucking know.
The foreigners kidnap Wang Low and start asking him questions but the whole time one of the gang has his hand over his mouth, thus defeating the purpose.You think one of the other members of the gang may have mentioned that at some point.
Since there has been some violence we need to see some sex so the boxer has sex with the bosses wife on his workout equipment.
A) I am hoping he wipes them down before using them again and
B) This goes on for far far too long.
At some point Jimmy got the necklace and there is a fight so we have to have more sex.
This seems like a good idea until you realize both the fighting and the nudity suck ass in this movie.
Jimmy kicks a sniper off the roof of the building, the bosses wife informs the boxer she is pregnant and I am wondering what all this has to do with the fucking necklace. Why does anyone care about it all?
I'll give you a little spoiler, you never find out.
Also, where are the damn ninja's?
Another guy is introduced who sits on people. That was funny. He's not a ninja though, so when the pregnant chick gets shot I am thinking we are one cast member closer to the end of the movie.
Sometimes movies do that to you. I remember a group of people watching the film adaptation of Barnaby Jones and cheering whenever someone bought it because we were getting closer to this painful epic being over.
Jimmy's girl gets kidnapped. Here is the difference between Chinese kidnappers and everyone else. They pull her out of the shower and dress her in something frilly before tying her up and threatening to kill her. One of the bad guys says "Let's take her for a spin." Which I took to mean rape her, but then they tied her to a table and actually spun her around for a while.
Sure they were going to rape her after that, but at least they gave her an enjoyable playground ride before they did it.
Jimmy finally starts fighting some ninja's. He eventually starts having a fight in the mandatory warehouse and finds his girlfriend was at some point transferred to a box.
Sure it's great for storage but I don't think it was healthy, oh, she's dead.
Jimmy then dies too.
The boss gets shot by his assistant.
The boxer gets arrested.
If this movie was some kind of morality play I would have to assume it was saying crime works out if you get other people to do the dirty work for you and kill you boss and you'll get to sleep with a dumpy Chinese chick.
Is that a moral?
It is sort of the message I took away from it.
Post # 233 American Ninja 3
I have to be honest, I have watched this movie 3 times and I still don’t really know what is happening in it. The reasoning was known perhaps only unto the author and his secret ninja society. Maybe you have to be a member of this clan to understand this movie.
Let me try to break it down. The plot borrows heavily from the first two movies in that there are many ninja’s that are in the employ of an evil guy. The first movie had the ninja’s smuggling weapons, the second the creation of super-ninja’s through ‘Biological stuff’ and this movie combines them both with a virus that makes super ninja’s that will be weapons. But not really.
I think.
You see, the actual explanation is a bit fuzzy. There is a virus, that I am sure of, and there are some guys who magically grow clothes, and they want to inject the virus into the strongest person they can find so as to test it, but they never actually say what the results are or what they are supposed to be.
I don’t know if these are plus points or minus points for the movie, but we might as well finish off the compare and contrast section.
Same music. The same fucking music on the same fucking casio by the same guy who must have reamed off 200 hours of this stuff on a loop somewhere and called it a career. Here is a sample from this movie, which was the whole of the soundtrack from American Ninja 2
Movie takes place on cheap tropical location, again, most likely Cancun, which is supposed to be a tiny island nation.
The first American Ninja had a tiny backstory, this one has a tiny backstory.
Big Black Guy returns, only he appears to be bigger.
The American Ninja is not THE American Ninja but apparently just a member of new class of American Ninja. Michael Dudikoff for some reason thought this movie wasn’t up to acting of his caliber and passed off to David Bradley.
This movie actually contains a few Asians. They did make sure they got small asian chick to be the bad guy, but small asian chick isn’t very good at karate or kick-boxing which is actually a bit of a problem for a movie kind of based around the kicking theory.
This movie again has no asian ninja’s to speak of, but there is little black guy ninja who is freakin’ awesome compared to everyone else in the movie. I know you think I am being sarcastic, but his skill level is well beyond that of anyone else who has been cast in this film, including our star, New American Ninja Guy. Luckily the movie maker guys think we aren’t paying very close attention because they kill him and bring him back about 3 or 4 times.
Best decision made by the director. I am thinking of starting The Little Black Ninja Guy From American Ninja 3 Fan Club, or TLBNGFAN3FC.
We could make stickers that say that. It would sweep the nation.
The back story is that Shawn’s dad gets killed by an evil scientists henchman during a holdup. Yep, when science turns to crime you know a whole lot of bad things are going to happen. Since dad is dead Shawn get raised by his dead fathers amazingly ghoateed trainer who turns out to be a ninja and put Shawn through a rigorous training montage.
If my dad got killed I probably would have been shipped off to my racist Aunts house and been so emotionally damaged I would have committed petty crimes until one went wrong and I was arrested during a drug raid at a friends house. After doing a dime in the pen I’d be released under heavy parole and spent the rest of my life trying to get ahead in my dishwasher job, once again being forced to turn to crime to survive. Not much of a movie though.
The completion of the training involves the putting on of a necklace, which never again figures in the movie.
We are brought up to the ‘present day’ which is always a problem for me because present day is 2005 and it looks an awful lot like 1986 in that there movie. At a secret lab which is only sort of secret because the Cobra has decided to put his logo over every flat surface in the joint, Cobra, who is called Cobra for no apparent reason other than when he was 12 he was in a gang with 2 friends and an asthmatic who called themselves ‘The Cobra’s’ and thought that was cool but all they really did was scratch c couple of cars. Either that or he was a big G.I.Joe fan.This is the scientist/criminal from the start of the movie.
He is giving a speech to non descript military people from ‘dark colored’ countries who obviously support terrorism about how there will be no more ‘inefficient hijackings, no more bungled kidnappings or mistimed bombings. Now terrorism can be scientifically focused to be more efficient.’
He has made a new virus. He doesn’t explain what it is supposed to do or how it will fix all these things, but everyone looks happy, so there you go, smartass.
The virus has to defeat the strongest human, so they have a martial arts competition to bring strong people to the island. This is the first thing that has made sense to me so far and I am feeling more relieved at this point.
We get our introduction to Shawn’s fighting prowess at the competition. Let me let the announcer bring the action to life for you;
‘Shawn Davidson appears to be taunting Joe Simpson by remaining still.’ Or maybe he doesn’t know what to do. Just a thought.
Later that day Shawn see’s his master get kidnapped, which is pretty sad if he is supposed to be some kind of ninja master, but it is here that we are introduced to the Little Black Ninja Guy.
After Shawn completely fails at saving his master the best set of dialogue in movie history is spoken.
The put the lab and the master together and have to break in so we get not only one of the gayest ideas in the movie but also a ton of padding. This film steals and idea Ator had in Cave Dwellers and gets a glider to sneak in. If you are stealing ideas from an Ator movie (there were 2) you should give up movie making.
I am sure this was cheap, you don’t see the actors, it’s all done with overdub and I bet prop gliding was someone’s hobby.
Now we are properly introduced to the hot asian chick who a) can’t fight and b) isn’t hot and c) has some hair that is always standing straight up and d) could have been easily replaced with an actual hot asian chick which at least would have been fun to watch as she stumbled through her bad martial arts.
Shawn is captured while invading the lab, so we know is has to be the worst ninja ever, because this is twice he has gone out to do something and twice he has messed it up completely. Not even in that real ninja way of tricking them into catching you so they will take you to their headquarters because Shawn then sits in a cell for a while.
Chick and sidekicks team up to save Shawn who has now been injected with the virus to ‘prove it’s effectiveness.’ But still I don’t know how it will fix kidnappings. Then Shawn is taken to a boat for absolutely no reason other than to change sets for a while.
We learn the hot chick is a master of disguise and was pretending to be the ninja master to lure Shawn to the lab.
Shawn doesn’t get the vaccine in time and instead flexes it out of his system, which is something I am going to try next time I get the flu.
Cobra presses a button and the naked guys who have been standing around for the whole movie and giving off a really gay vibe turn into red ninjas and attack Shawn, but face it, if a guy can flex a virus out of his body he can kick the shit out of homosexual ninjas. You know, I think I saw that porn.
End movie.
But that isn't all, at the end of this movie you get the greatest closing theme ever written in movie history. Turn the speakers up and watch the women flock to your place when their ears perk up at the sound of this song.
you are going to get so much play.
Post # 232 American Ninja 2
American Ninja 2
The Confrontation
I wondered how this movie got it’s name because for a ninja movie, a movie based around the concept of people fighting and confronting there doesn’t seem to be any real central Confrontation as compared to other movies of such an ilk where people go around confronting each other all the time.
Confronting your ass with my foot.
This movie opens with a long motorcycle shot, which is great, if this were a movie about motorcycle racing or stunt riders or a motorcycle gang or something vaguely associated I would say great opening. BUT IT ISN’T, I want brutality and people wrapped in black executing innocent people for looking at them wrong, not the pudgy cousin of the producer riding a motorcycle in bad shorts in Cancun.
Yeah, we are filming in Mexico again, I figure, or maybe a Caribbean island. Somewhere where the drinks are cheap, because that’s the only way any of the people in this movie could convince themselves that this was a good career move.
Turns out the three relatively out of shape guys are supposed to be off-duty marines. This really changed my image of what a marine is. I had this weird idea that Marines were trained to do something, you know, slightly more active than holiday. I had imagined that they would be sort of, you know, fit.
Ok, so there is a fight and the thugs are introduced, who then open a back door and some ninja’s come out.
I am getting a funny feeling here that something isn’t right. Maybe it’s because the ninja’s were IN THE BACK ROOM and NOT FIGHTING.
This sure isn’t shaping up to be much a ninja movie if all they do is wait in back rooms for Australians to do all the work. I suppose this could be the Clan of the Back Room, which is an offshoot of the Clan of the Standing Next to the Truck from that last movie.
Some other things I noticed: the Thwack sound in this movie is a lot more Thwacky. That can’t be bad. There is also something hunting around in the back of my head, another element out of place here.
Ok, so the Heroes arrive, excellent. Dudikoff looks at a note and then says ‘This must be the place.’ The fact that this is where the airplane has landing apparently wasn’t enough of an indicator for our hero, but moreso, I am wondering what the note says. Airport? Island? Movie set? This is more intriguing than the marines getting kidnapped by ninjas.
Oh yeah, the marines from the bar were taken away by ninjas, except for the skinniest marine of all, he was guiltily in on the plan and will no doubt die later in the film as retribution. Call it a hunch.
Dull stuff happens, we get briefed along with Hero guys. 4 marines have disappeared. A kid who saw them said men in black suits were responsible. So now the military has a ninja expert squad.
An excuse is needed to get the guys out on the beach and finally into a fight. Thank god, it’s been, like 17 minutes since this thing began. Unfortunately、or very progressively, we are now introduced to the gayest ninja ever. So Dudikoff runs away. That might seem strange to you but everyone knows that gay ninja’s, with their ‘unorthodox’ style, as it was put in The Story of Ricky, are the meanest ninjas of all.
Hell, they’re gay and they’re ninjas.
During this fight I started to get that weird feeling again, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Still, there was something odd about these ninjas. Then the black guy started joining in the fight as well, so I was distracted for a time with his bulging bits, of which there are many.
Okay, so they escape by jumping into a boat that is way way too far away, but sure. Then the evil ninja guy reveals himself. Reveals himself to be Mexican. Now it has hit me, none of the ninjas in this movie, so far, have been asian. Never mind Japanese, I haven’t even seen a Korean, Chinese or even Thai ninja.
So it makes perfect sense to then go downtown and beat up the Aussies. Sure, he was lured there by the guy who is going to die as retribution for his betraying his friends, but it’s always good to see Australians get smacked down. Hero goes and talks, but before we even get to the first plot point the Aussies burst in.
After this fight we learn that the bad guy is called ‘the Lion’ and he owns Blackbeard Island. Apparently we just slipped into a Hardy boys mystery. The mention of ‘biological stuff, man’ made me sort of cringe. That is such a cop out in any movie, seriously, biological engineering is responsible for almost every movie made since the year flipped to 2000. Oh yeah, the guy dies, probably karmic retribution for betraying his friends.
The captain says ‘Ninja’s, Drug pushers, what is this?’ The answer, my friend, is ‘Basically the same plot as American Ninja 1’, then he says ‘This is really starting to get on my tits.’ For some reason, that was one of the most satisfying lines of the movie, probably because it rings so true. It does get on your tits, it really does.
The new love interest enters, with bigger hair and tighter pants and a couple of years on the girl from the first movie. I’d say the lower budget is now starting to show. She is introduced so she can be kidnapped, which she promptly is.
Uh, back to the same bar for another fight with the same extras. At least there is happy congo fight music to lighten the mood. The big bad ninja guy shows up and demonstrates his true prowess by beating up the smallest of the Australians. Wow, now that’s great, beating up a guy who has already been beaten and is relatively tiny.
The bad guy comes back, after some juvenile humor and says ‘That American Ninja, he fights like a tiger.’ Which really gets on my tits. So let’s go find the girl, because the lame love subplot is really important, maybe it’s biological stuff. He finds her by just asking and is finally attacked by ninja’s in the middle of the day in the middle of the town. That way you don’t have to pay for lighting.
Now we go through the driest 5 minutes of the movie. This is the story as told by hair chick. First off, no one cares anymore, not that they did in the beginning. There is supposed to be some kind of mystery here, but the deepest anyone gets into it is ‘biological stuff’, which could be fungus. This is also the tacked on romance subplot, which kind of makes me wonder how involved I am supposed to get with this story as Hero McJerkFace obviously up and dumped the chick from the first movie as soon as the credits rolled. (One point for me predicting that one)
Okay, so lets go assault the bad guys stronghold. There is some kind of Dungeons and Dragons nerd convention going on, but really it is supposed to be really powerful criminals congregating over some new illegal thing, you can tell because some of them are sporting sunglasses.
The main badguy, whose name I never really caught, he might be the lion, or that might be his ninja henchman guy, whatever. With all the money and science stuff that is going on he offers his clients the ‘ultimate protection of a super ninja’.
A super ninja.
Did no one baulk at this? What adult would actually say ‘super ninja’ with a straight face? Ok, so they are super ninjas, not regular ninjas, super. So lets demo them.
They go through a pretty crappy kata routine and then the Evil Mexican Ninja steps into the ring.
I became a little befuddled here. You see, the guy is trying to sell these ninjas as super and worth an assload of money. Then he sends out his non super ninja who proceeds to kill 26 of them.
Twenty freakin six.
Everyone looks duly impressed.
Excuse me, seems we have confused the word ‘super’ with ‘disposable’. If I was a super villain at this geek off I certainly wouldn’t drop any coin on a ninja that hits the ground faster than a British member of Parliament paying 200 pounds an hour for his dominatrix.
Sorry, got a little off track there. So when the guys are looking impressed or making astonished noises I am wondering if they are watching the same show I am. From the looks of it, they are watching something from Thailand involving ping pong balls.
The science guy also said that the super ninjas muscles and sinews would be replaced by steel. Now if I am correct, and I am because I checked, steel isn’t actually the best choice here. In fact, every one of these guys would die the instant they were taken off whatever machines are keeping them alive at them moment. Basically this is the same thing that keeps bugs from getting giant size like in other movies. The skeleton couldn’t support the weight and these ninjas would collapse in on themselves.
Although that might explain the fact that 26 of them got killed by one guy.
Seriously, 26. Think about that for a bit.
So, lets finish this off, the American Ninja starts his final dramatic assault by sitting down.
Yep, that’s American Ninja stylee. He has a quick flashback to the first movie, when he still had a potential career in movies and poof, changes clothes from a black ninja uniform to a black ninja uniform with a kicky red sash.
Good for you American Ninja.
Four marines that were kidnapped get saved and the following conversation ensues;
“Where does this door lead?”
“The arena.”
Then they go in.
If I had been there I might have added these lines;
“Arena? What kind of arena?”
“The one where most of the ninjas hang out and they do a whole spanking lot of killing. They had to throw down sawdust to soak up all the blood.”
“Oh, let’s go this way then and not go in there.”
“Good thinking.”
After they go in there is a big fight where 2 marines that were saved die. 50% is obviously still pretty good in American Ninja land.
The climatic fight between MexiNinja and the American Ninja occurs. Best part for me was when MexiNinja produces the ninja sawed off shotgun harking back to the NinjaLaser of the first film. I mean, he pulled that thing right out of his ass.
That’s some good ninjaing.
Then it ends, the American Ninja wins. Hooray for Democracy!
Pat from the Past:Re: the Times Tables link:
Just trying the figure out the ramifications of a zombie vampire (or vampire zombie for that matter)
Would it suck the blood of the undead? or need to eat vampire brains? or need to suck blood out of normal people's brains? If it turns into a (zombie?) bat, would its missing limbs also transform?
Would the creature have been a zombie first that became vampirized, or a vampire that was zombified? I mean the latter I can see -- zombie cracks open crypt and snacks on a vampire -- but the former seems a little, well, desperate on the part of the vampire. I mean, how down and out would a vampire have to be to go after a zombie? Pretty darn down, I'd imagine.
The mind reels.
Post # 229 The Carrot
Yesterday I went into a public washroom. Not how I like to start most of my stories, but sometimes it has to be done.
As I settled into my personal business I noticed a small shelf in the corner, for putting essentails for said operations since facilities do not provide the basic necessities to aid in post event clean up. Often people leave the wrappings of tissue packages etc there and no one really notices.
On this day I saw a carrot. A relatively fresh carrot. This carrot had been half wrapped in paper towel, the thicker end. The holding end.
It hadn7t just been wrapped all willy nilly. The edges were folded in. This was wrapped with care. This was wrapped with a purpose.
But at the same time it hadn't appeared to have been bitten or otherwise employed in any way. You can understand I was hesitant to touch it considering my setting. So it sat there as I sat here and we stared at each other. The carrot staring back at me in a very carroty way, which is to say in a way that mocked me.
So I finished my personal business and get up to leave. I couldn't help but lean in a little before I exited to see if there was any evidence as to the intended purpose of the carrot.
I found none, so I was left with my imagination.
That is probably a worse fate than whatever actually happened to the carrot.
To me there were only two options. The gentleman wrapped his carrot for a very proper snack in the toilet, or he was going to put up his butt.
Either way, something disturbed him and he had to leave his carrot behind. It must have been something big. add comment to post #229permalink
Pat from the Past:Is that thing available in North America? Right now my son has to dance with the Roomba. Not the same.
Peter:I don't think they actually make the voice activated R2 D2 anymore. I got this one for my wife for her birthday (she actually liked it). I got it through a dealer on the internet. I can tell you it was designed for the North American continent because my wife doesn't have that much of an accent and R2 sometimes understand what she says.
Post # 227 Thomas the Czar
My son has taken an interest in, like most little boys, big things with engines. Being in Japan the first obsession is trains. He also, early on, discovered on demand media through the internet. In this manner he was able to begin watching Thomas the Tank engine. A children's show about the oppression of sentient machines on a mythical island where every industry seems to be mainly dependent on the rail system. This would indicate to me that the rail system of the Island of Sordor is a front of some kind for organized crime.
Upon watching hour after hour of the show I came to a sudden realization that sentient trains are reckless jerks. They spend a goodly amount of their time insulting, teasing, haranguing and ostracizing each other. Their biases generally are based on class or racism (the green trains think they are better than the blue ones, the red is better than green etc. The large express engines look down on engines of smaller stature.)
They crash on a frighteningly regular basis and to such a degree that the mortality rate on the train lines must be particularly high. The fact that the government has not stepped in with regulations would also indicate some shady dealings between the rail officials and civil servants.
I would ban Thomas from our household, but for all the evil it seems to spread, it does keep a kid quiet. add comment to post #227permalink
Pat from the Past:My kid is obsessed with "Yo Gabba Gabba". Google it.
Post # 226 Judo Welcome Back Hands
I got sick last month and had a wicked fever that hit 40.5 degrees celcius. For my American audience thats "Learn Metric Farenheit". The malady itself knocked me out for a week, but I had a slight fever for 2 more weeks after and didn't go back to judo because I didn't want to have a fever and get my ass kicked. What happens when you do things like judo is you body adjusts for it, in judo specifically you get calloused knuckles from grabbing the other persons judo suit and trying to get him to part with his attachement to gravity.
If you don't do it the callous' get soft and weak, LIKE YOU DO. so when I went back this was the pleasure I endured for my little holiday:
