Wataahhhhh!

It's no secret that I'm a fairly enthusiastic fan of the martial arts genre of cinema. Typically for me is the general me-ness tendency to love and appreciate all my sub-genre children equally so it's fairly common for me to flit from a fantasy wuxia film, then to a period samurai flick, take in some girls with guns action, and then top it all off with some atypically ultra clean -- and incredibly colorful -- yanggang Chang Cheh type of film. Still maintaining a small degree of humanity buried deep within my mortal shell and after a reasonable amount of experience of dabbling in the genre for a few decades, I must admit to having developed some strong likes and dislikes over the years and boy oh boy have they shifted as time has passed.

Although I do personally have friends that know considerably more than I do, I do think I've gotten enough film time under my belt to have developed a decent knowledge of what's out there. Sure, sure...there still lots to see out there in the big wide world that I know I don't have enough time to watch, that's pretty much par for course in the world of cinema. But since the subject of mostest bestest fights evarrrrrr comes up on a semi-regular basis on chat boards around the net, I thought I'd put in a tiny sample of some of my favorites. If you know me even a wee bit, you probably know that I'm loath to make ranking lists of things especially films and this time it will be no different. They are not in any particular order, and some of these films overall aren't really all that great. But one thing they do share...they have some kind of fighting scene that I really enjoyed. There's always tons that I forget or new ones that I discover on a regular basis. But these are some of the films that immediately spring to mind on that rare occasion that somebody wants my opinion. Here we go!

Oh yeah...click on the pics for the Youtube footage of the fights.

Martial Club (1981)

Gordon Liu vs. Wang Lung Wei

Directed by the great Lau Kar-Leung (Liu Chia-Liang) with action choreography by the same, this is yet another film involving the great martial arts hero Wong Fei Hung played this time by the 2nd greatest film martial artist Gordon Liu (that guy from all those Shaolin films for the uninitiated). Wong Fei Hung is doing his usual wandering around trying to soak up new s+yles to incorporate into his own when he and his opponent are tricked into doing battle with each other at the end of the film. Typical of the way Lau Kar-Leung approaches fight sequences, the combat pushes the story forward and is never there just for show. He also is loath to use wirework so his fights tend to mainly involve quick and precise traditional fighting. Honestly, if I had to pick one fight as my favorite...I would probably go with this one.

Drunken Master 2 (1994)

Jackie Chan vs. Ken Lo

Hey guess what kids? It's another Wong Fei Hung film, this time played with impish vigor by that jack-of-all-martial-trades Jackie Chan. Initially a Lau Kar Leung directed film, he and Jackie had very strong opinions about how to approach the fights and halfway through production Lau left and Jackie took over. The result...MAGIC! I know, that doesn't generally happen but the two worlds of the ultra-realistic clashing with Jackie's over the top shenanigans somehow worked out perfectly as a whole morphing into what is generally considered one of the best martial arts films ever made. Jackie really pushed himself to the limit during this production and it really shows. There are so many great skirmishes in this film that you could show any of them and be happy, but let's just go with the big finish since it's pretty crazy.

Sha Po Lang (AKA Killzone) (2005)

Donnie Yen vs. Jing Wu

Directed by Wilson Yip with action choreography by Donnie Yen, this is the movie in which Donnie Yen really invented the wheel for modern martial arts films. To make a long story short, he began mixing in more realistic moves from the increasingly popular MMA type of fighting with some standard flash for the camera, as well as experimenting with some improvisational bouts and some solid editing. The result was a revolution which launched him into super stardom as Donnie is overwhelmingly considered to be the top movie martial artist currently working. His opponent Jing Wu is perhaps the most physically gifted and talented fighter today who unfortunately winds up in a lot of crap films. But not this time bucko! SPL is a solid movie with some really, REALLY great fights in it. This fatal encounter is one of my favorites despite it not really showcasing the aforementioned MMA s+yle indicated above. Maybe next time?

Angel (AKA Iron Angels) (1987)

Yukari Oshima vs. Moon Lee

Ahhhh the warm nasty '80s. The '80s Hong Kong "B" movie territory could be a pretty brutal place and two of the dirtiest fighters in the business were actually two women by the name of Moon Lee and Yukari Oshima. All too often women are not used particularly well in martial arts films and usually they just kind of throw a few awkward kicks and are then rescued by the tougher manly man. Not these two. Their conflicts with each other tended to shed a lot of blood and generally was only resolved by one or both of them dying terribly violent deaths. Angel contains a personal favorite fight of mine which although all too brief, is amazing in its ability to ramp up the violence so quickly. Watch as Yukari Oshima totally ruins Moon Lee's friend with an horribly vicious choke flip!

Shaolin Intruders (1983)

Derek Yee vs. Philip Ko

Shaolin intruders is really a movie that has to be seen to be believed. It's a completely crazy film that uses every approach in the book to choreographing a martial arts fight -- I guess having six action directors will do that sometimes. Besides just having some really crazy reactions to events in the movies from some of the characters, the film throws everything and the kitchen sink into their fights and it shows. A fine example of mixing down to earth fisticuffs, lightning fast weapon work, wire work straying into the fantastic, and piling in some truly physics defying team defense work that really has to be seen to be believed. Philip Ko and Derek Yee really go to town on each other in a film that truly feels it needs to be more of a spectacle than previous Shaolin flicks.

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Boxer From Shantung (1972)

Chen Kuan Tai vs. Everyone

Hoo boy this one's a doozy. A tragic film in which a superior fighter from the country tries to clean up the gangs and ends up corrupted himself. A truly stunning end fight that, although not technical or stylistic, is amazing just for its sheer unworldly brutality as the protagonist is mortally wounded and yet succeeds in killing an entire room full of people. It's a long clip that I had to attach two bloody videos just so you could watch it, but despite what you might think just keep telling yourself -- "he's going to kill everyone in the room". You might think he's going to die -- many times in fact -- but no...he will keep going until everyone is DEAD! Really epic and bloody carnage here folks.

Edit - The second part has been removed from Youtube unfortunately. :( Oh man it was awesome too...he takes down the bloody staircase and collapses the second floor and then rams an axe into the falling mob boss. Good stuff!

Yes, Madam! (1985)

Cynthia Rothrock & Michelle Yeoh vs. Dick Wei & Chung Faat

Ahhhh we're back to the dirty '80s with Michelle Yeoh's first leading role and directed by that madman Corey Yuen. Although fairly cheesy, this film is has those typical early Hong Kong action film moments in which you'll find yourself often wondering..."did that stuntman just die?". Yeoh is teamed up with Cynthia Rothrock and if you've only seen Rothrock's U.S. action films then you're in for something of a surprise as you'll get to see what she can do with a good choreographer. Watch her do the splits going backwards up against a wall!

Fist of Legend (1994)

Jet Li vs. Billy Chow

This remake of a Bruce Lee film was initially met with much animosity in the Asian sector as you just don't remake the movies of a beloved icon like Bruce Lee. After some time has passed and heads cooled down, people realized that the film was actually very good with some great action direction courtesy of the legendary Yuen Woo-ping. Despite Woo-ping's tendency to at times abuse the wire work as it were, in this film he was relatively reserved and typically just used it to enhance the generally down to earth fisticuffs. A pretty solid film overall with a great end fight. The English dub unfortunately had some problems with adding words that weren't there and changing some of the dialogue quite a bit for no discernible reason. Weirdos.

The Victim (1980)

Leung Kar-yan vs. Chang Yi

The Victim is one of those great old school meets the new school type of affairs in which all hell breaks loose. There's so much talent in the action directing department that it's hard to know where to start. Most of it was done by the great Sammo Hung and he really managed to get the actors to push themselves well past their limits. Nowhere is this more obviously displayed then in the final fight with the awesome Leung Kar-yan taking on some minions...and then the dreaded Chang Yi. Really the fight is both brutal and yet beautiful to watch in some of the long sequences of lightly edited hand to hand fighting.

The Millionaires' Express (1986)

Oh just...everybody vs. lots of folks

This is just a fun, fun, fun, kind of film! Sammo Hung thought it would be great if he could get ahold of almost everybody he ever worked with and put them in one big pseudo-western film full of ninjas, confederates, kung fu masters, trains, and lots of guns. This clip is near the end in which everybody from every faction just starts fighting each other for all the different things that they want. Pretty much every person in this film, no matter how small the role, is a martial arts movie celebrity so it's pointless to list them all. Another great use of Miss Rothrock in a short but sweet fight with Sammo Hung and the great Yasuaki Kurata vs. Richard Norton. Oh...also miss Yukari Oshima shows up to kill Richard Norton in just the most awful way possible.

Grahhhrr! There's a new species of Dinosaur in town partner, and his name is Eodromaeus! His name means "Dawn Runner" and it is thusly named because the creature lived around 230 million years ago which places it a bit before the ascension of the dinosaurs as the dominant species on Earth which we all know lasted quite a long time. Standing around just below the knee level of a human, Eodromaeus was around 4 feet in length and looks to be quite a speedy little devil. Miraculously, the skeleton of the Eodromaeus is almost 100% complete which is an incredibly rare event in itself, but considering the small size of the dinosaur and the rather delicate nature of his frame it's an amazing find. Even more amazing is the age of the dinosaur of course and the curious nature of some of the features on the Eodromaeus raises more questions than it answers.

Originally mother Earth had a different plan and the earlier proto-mammals and giant insects were the dominant land species and their plentiful numbers kept the lizards and early dinosaur-like creatures from making much of a strong presence. But then the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event happened (more dramatically known as The Great Dying) and quite a number of large mammals and insects were wiped off the face of the earth allowing the reptiles to flourish. Curiously, some conjecture that forcing the mammals into the background may have been the major factor responsible for the now typical mammalian features of being covered in fur and possessing a high metabolism as most now had to exist as creatures of the night. But you know...blah blah blah, theories theories theories, life goes and and continues to do funny things in order to survive.

Although for now the Eodromaeus is cl@ssified as a firm ancestor of the eventually giant and quite terrifying theropods such as the Allosaurus, Deinonychus, and or course the Tyrannosaurus Rex, some unusual features had some proclaiming it to be a possible ancestor of the giant long-necked sauropods. Although Eodromaeus possesses typical razor-like incisors of a carnivore, it also possesses some rather blunt teeth in the back typical of your usual plant-eating herbivore. But after the full skeleton was fully examined it seems clear to most that the dinosaur shares far too many bird-like features commonly found in later theropods and modern day birds resulting in it taking the place as an early line to those eventual terrors of the Cretaceous Period. Yet what about that odd mixture of teeth? Some have put forth a reasonable theory of the Eodromaeus as an omnivore which was likely predominantly a predator, but could live off of some plants as was needed for survival or certain specific dietary needs. Sounds reasonable and is also pretty darn interesting.

Some other notable features is that Eodromaeus possesses a rigid tale and a rather unique pelvic structure which is fairly common for a theropod. But it also possesses large air sacs in its neck bones which could have helped to regulate breathing, but I have a hankering it could just be a tool for good old sexual display as sexual activity betwixt dinosaurs tends to be the most obvious things that scientists tend to think about last as try to reason out the biological function of every feature on a creature. Pretty keen eh? Yeah, yeah, I know...perhaps not particularly interesting to a lot of folks, but I'm an old dinosaur nerd so thanks for putting up with my ramblings.

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Unless you're fairly well versed in the world of silent cinema the name Lina Basquette is not likely to sound familiar to you. Even if you are, it's highly likely you many not know of her as she only has a couple of films of significance and even those are generally considered to be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things cinematically speaking. In fact it's almost more common for people to be aware of her deep connections to many of the biggest folks of early film history as well as her rather tumultuous life-s+yle resulting in 9 unsuccessful marriages two of which tragically ended in her being widowed. No, she wasn't a suspected black widow you conspiracy ninny! Still...why a Basterd you say?

Lina Basquette was born Lena Copeland Baskette in San Mateo, California. She started training in dance at an early age and ended up getting a movie contract from Carl Laemmle (yes...that Laemmle) at age 8 when he saw her dancing at the San Francisco World's Fair. She made a number of movies for about 7 years and even managed to garner some lead roles going into the early '20s. She abandoned the movie career for a couple of years when she became involved with The Ziegfield Follies where she changed the spelling of her name and was billed as "America's Prima Ballerina". She was in fact an incredibly good dancer and the legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova attempted to get Lina as her protégée a couple of times, but alas Lina's mother was a dominating force and very much wanted her daughter to become a star. It was a decision that broke poor Lina's heart.

At age 18 Lina fell in love with 38 year-old Sam Warner (y'know...one of them Warner Bros. brothers) and they married. She began working in films again but in two years time her personal troubles would begin with the death of her first husband and the horrific experience of having her daughter taken away from her. She turned to the hard partying life-s+yle of the jazz age to drown out the bad voices and began her series of problematic marriages.

During this highly tumultuous period of Lina's life she made her two most well known films. One was Frank Capra's The Younger Generation (1929), and the other was The Godless Girl (1929) directed by the great Cecil B. Demille. The Godless Girl was to be Demille's last movie for Pathe and his last completely silent film. The Godless Girl was an insanely over the top two-pronged attack of a film On one hand it was based on the life of Queen Silver and the recent trouble in Los Angeles over Atheist groups at high schools clashing with fundamentalists. But the real meat of the film is the remaining 3/4 of the movie after the initial clash results in an accidental death and sends the two ringleaders to an incredibly harsh juvenile detention center. Here the film becomes a rather shocking expose on some very real problems in the system at that time in America's history. Despite the early period of the film, neither side is represented as "right" or "wrong" and in fact things twist a bit as the atheist comes to accept God and the bible thumper slowly rejects the idea of a just God under the extreme and constant nature of his torture.

The film was a terrific failure in United States unfortunately. The Jazz Singer (1927) had already ushered in the sound age and as the movie companies scrambled to meet up with the demand, the idea of an epic silent film just seem out of place and too creaky and quaint for a then modern audience. You would have thought that the subject matter alone for the late '20s would have garnered it some sort of notoriety resulting in some decent business. But alas it was not to be. It was noticed however, but not where anybody expected it to be noticed. It was this attention that resulted in Lina Basquette doing something that perhaps no person has ever done.

The movie may have been a failure in the U.S., but when the film made it overseas it ended up being wildly popular in Austria and Germany. Lina and company began to receive fan letters from high officials from Germany and many ones from Adolph Hitler himself. They spoke of her starring in a great new film industry that they were starting up in good old Deutschland and in 1937 she was invited to a grand party held in her honor which, not really knowing anything about them other than being the heads of state, she decided to attend. Unfortunately she did not properly grasp Hitler's level of attraction towards her and he really attempted to get to know her. Her reaction?

"But he had a terrible body odor; he was flatulent. The man repelled me so much. But he had a sweet smile, and above all he had these strange, penetrating eyes. I do remember thinking, 'Oh, here's another actor - look at the gestures, the way he's using his eyes."

Soon after that is when a highly significant event occurred that Lina chose not to speak of except to close friends for a number of years. After the horrific result of Hitler's rampage across Europe became clear she was embarrassed to even mention it as she didn't want to be associated with the likes of him. What happened? Well...apparently Herr Hitler became a bit too aggressive with his amorous advances towards her and Lina had finally had enough. Then she did it. She did something that oh so many wish they could have done.

Thank you for reading.

The name Anna Kournikova instantly conjures up images of a her on a beach lounging around in a sexy bikini, wearing a variety of outfits for a Maxim photo-shoot, or the myriad of lascivious photos of her floating around the internet bent over or leaning forward during a tennis game in an attempt to maximize the intense sexuality that revolves around her. It's almost bizarre that it's not as easy as you would think to find good action pictures of her actually playing in tennis tournaments. I know, I know...you say that I should expect this because isn't that what she's known for? Isn't she the tennis star that was never good at winning anything so she cashed in on her good looks receiving more attention than she deserved? Why yes it is true she eventually rested her money laurels on her amazing good looks, but it's not true that she wasn't ever good at winning. In fact she was a champion.

We've all heard the jokes time and time again. To wit: Jay Leno - "Anna Kournikova is apparently dating singer Enrique Iglesias. You hear this? Said in the paper he had three tennis courts installed in his house so that she could practice. And today she said, 'Practice, what's that?'"

Oh my how wonderfully witty. :roll:But it's not that Leno is unique in this regard, it's practically impossible for the subject of Kournikova to come up without a standard reference to what a crappy tennis player she is. Considering how much smaller the audience is for the sport of tennis in general, this perception is sad to say taken as fact to the general public. Yet somehow this seemingly awful player that only had her inherent hotness on her side managed to kick and claw her way up to be the #8 player in the world. Furthermore she managed to stay in the top ten for a couple of years and stayed in the top 20 even after injury began to chip away at her endurance. Do you have any idea how many professional players wish they could ever crack the top 20 much less the top 10 in their lifetime?

A lot of Kournikova's perceived failure as a tennis player comes from her not being able to win a Grand Slam tournament -- U.S. Open, The Australian Open, Wimbledon, and The French Open -- these are the biggies and despite getting close a few times, she's never quite put one away. She racked up a number of wins over a lot of very talented opponents and managed to stay ranked very high as she put in good numbers, but eventually her game just wasn't perfect enough to consistently beat the top 10 folks enough to claim the ultimate prize. Yet...what you say if I told you she did win a championship and in a Grand Slam tournament -- twice in fact? Whaaaaaaa? I didn't know that? Indeed you don't because it wasn't in singles, but in doubles.

Don't let anybody tell you differently, double tennis is taken very seriously by tennis players especially these days. Although it doesn't get as much attention that the solo tournaments do, the players involved in them are deadly serious and a lot of solo champions (such as the Williams sisters) work very hard to improve their double play so they can win consistently. The groundstroke issues in Kournikova's game that could be exploited in solo play by the top players meant little in doubles as her aggressive baseline skills as well as excellent ball control were greatly amplified by the different dynamic of this type of tennis game. Teaming up with Martina Hingis, Kournikova managed to win 16 tournament titles including two at the Australian open and were ranked as the #1 doubles team for almost two years. In mixed doubles (playing with a guy) she also managed to get into the finals of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Gosh...that really sounds like a big plate of failure to me. If you knew somebody that achieved even half of that, would you consider them a failure?

So where does all this come from? Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and more sex and the aggressive marketing of it by the Tennis folks. She came out of nowhere and was so incredibly gorgeous that people just couldn't get enough of her. The more photo spreads that Kournikova did, the more tickets she would sell for her games and boy oh boy did the Tennis higher ups like that. People were talking...about TENNIS! You had to be there but good golly it was crazy as people would file in incredibly early just to watch her practice in her...um bicycle shorts. Which were snug. :oops:

But eventually foot and back injuries began to take their toll and as Kournikova began slipping too far to statistically make it into the Grand Slam tournaments, the officials began kinda sorta squeaking her in quoting some arcane numbers as a sort of dark horse player hoping she could hang in there as long as possible. Because you see, when Kournikova played they sold 30% more tickets. That's a lot. But eventually this built resentment and as she began to lean more heavily towards modeling the backlash perception was that she was a failure.

So here we are all learned up and everything. I'm not even a Kournikova fan and yet as a casual general tennis fan it's always irked me every time I hear yet another joke about what an awful player she was as it just seems so petty and...well ignorant. I guess it's just so much easier to believe somebody that pretty is a failure as it assures the ugly folks such as myself that all is well with the universe. These days she still plays a lot of celebrity matches as well as charity events and just recently at the 2010 Wimbledon she even teamed up with Hingus once again for an invitational and won. So if you've bothered to read this at all, at the very least the next time you hear one of those jokes you can think back upon her 16 professional championships and state "That's funny, I remember her being a champion".

Ahhhhh....Christmas and donkeys, they go together like bats and Hallowe'en, turkey and Thanksgiving, and alpacas and Arbor Day. Why when I was a child, it seems like you couldn't go down the street without running into a festively decorated donkey cart pulling a load of presents. Or perhaps I'm just filling in the fuzzier parts of my childhood which really seems more likely now that I think upon it a spell. What's was I talking about again?

*takes medication*

Right donkeys and Christmas! As I was quickly bobbing around the other day fixing up a few of the Xmas holiday special profiles at Screened so they weren't so empty and graphically fuzzy, I ran across a special involving a donkey. As I looked it up on the electronic playground for more info, I began running into more and more books, movies, and songs with donkey/Xmas themes. Some of these I had forgotten about as I haven't done much by the way of Xmas-y type of activities for quite some years.

But a great deal of them were completely unknown to me and they intrigued me enough that I spent probably what one would describe as a bit too much time into the wee hours of the night checking these out. Titles such as Dominick the Christmas Donkey, Saint Francis & the Christmas Donkey, The Christmas Donkey, Clopper the Christmas Donkey, Ruben, Grandpa's First (yes...you guessed it) Christmas Donkey, all kept me busy for a while. But of course the most fun were the forgotten animated specials that an appropriately named user at Youtube, Donkeylongears, had uploaded in their entirety. Behold the glory of my donkey Christmas gifts!

The Small One was a short film designed to run with the 1978 theatre re-release of Pinocchio as it took place during December. Although I'm sure I attended the showings during that particular run, I had absolutely no recollection of this short film. I was mighty delighted to see that it was directed by a young Don Bluth ( Secret of NIMH) and he actually contributed a couple of the songs including the pretty one used in the credits intro.

Although not an original Disney story, I was surprised that they stuck with the original story idea of the donkey being an old, worn out animal as opposed to a cute little critter typical of the Donkey/Christmas sub-genre. I guess the boys in marketing weren't really looking to push this which may be why it's fairly unknown despite it being Disney and a Christmas short. It's hand animated and a little sad as the young boy desperately tries to find a good owner for Small One instead of selling him to the local tanner for his hide. Who will give such a worn out donkey a chance?

Released that same year in 1978, The Little Brown Burro (or The Little Christmas Burro as it was changed when it was released onto VHS) is an odd little short hailing from the cold Northern country of Canada. The focus is on a particularly diminutive little burro who actually really, really wants to get a job where he can prove himself as a very hard worker, but because of his short stature nobody will give him a chance. He picks up a mouse companion who for some reason is terrified of water, and together the both of them run around the desert looking for somebody who will become his proud owner. Very cheap and at times quite ugly animation s+yle and techniques kinda puts this feature on a low peg. But despite the often distorted look of the animation s+yle which often make the characters look completely stoned, the burro does manage to look incredibly cute at times.

Now we are on to Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey the one that set me on my journey. Yes folks it's Puppetoon time up in this here stop motion animation house! It's another Rankin-Bass production (of course) although this film is decidedly a lesser feature in terms of production quality. Aping the plot of Rudolph quite a bit, the donkey in question has long ears which constantly get in his way and makes him a poor worker for his harsh owner and when he is thrown out he has to discover that his perceived handicap has a very special use. Where it strays incredibly away from the Rudolph template is that in the first 10 minutes Nestor is thrown out into a raging snow storm to die. His mother breaks out and tracks him down and shields him from the storm with her body, but by doing so she dies and Nestor awakes to find her dead body covered by snow and he is left lost and alone in the snowy wilderness. So yeah...happy times. It's no wonder this one stuck in my mind as a child. Thanks for the trauma guys!

Anyhoo...Executing serious damage control, the movie quickly teams him up with a guardian angel who informs him that God does indeed have a plan for him and EVENTUALLY life won't seem like the most painful thing in the world to endure. Despite its lesser quality, the film is still a nice short despite its harrowing intro and the incredibly WTF that makes no sense post manger coda slapped onto it. Honestly though, a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that NESTOR THE LONG-EARED DONKEY IS THE CUTEST THING IN THE WORLD! OH MY GOD HE'S SO DAMN CUTE!

AHHHH! JUST LOOK AT THAT FACE!

Well I hope somebody enjoys any of these despite my rantings. Anybody even remember any of them?

Title - 2010: Moby Dick (2010)
Director - Trey Stokes
Country - United States

Whether you love them or hate them, you certainly have to hand it to the folks over at Asylum for being quick as lightning to capitalize on any tiny invention, discovery, or even internet meme that they come across as an excuse to churn out yet another monster film again and again. This time out it was the mid year discovery of a new type of ancient whale which was a distant cousin to the modern day sperm whale. But this whale was a wee bit different in that not only were its teeth much larger, but it was double-jawed which meant that it had teeth in its upper jaw as well. This obviously meant that it was quite a vicious hunter and no doubt an apex predator at that time. Of course there was the small problem of the actual whale being only 50 feet in length, but you don't think the folks at Asylum are going to let something like that get in the way do you? A vicious 50 foot long ancient predator simply isn't enough --- let's make it 500 feet! And thus it was so!

We are quickly treated to some character back story as a young late '60s Ahab has his first run in with the mighty white whale and loses his leg in the process. As the credits roll we get a nice montage of headlines in which Moby Dick appears to have developed a rogue wave type of myth about him in that his attacks are known by hardened sailors, but it's not something they discuss or put in reports and so the general public doesn't really know about. After that reading between the lines bit of exposition is handled, the movie switches to our non Ahab required female protagonist Dr. Michelle Herman (Renee O'Connor), a marine biologist who specializes in cetaceans and has made large strides in deciphering their speech patterns. As if Asylum knew that I was watching this purely based on Miss O'Connor's presence, she gets things rolling by establishing her character's ocean cred whilst wearing a bikini top. Why thank you very much Asylum!

Before you even begin to make fun of the oddly green-screened inserted seagulls, a mighty submarine pulls to the surface and plucks both Michelle and her assistant Pip (Derrick Scott) from the ocean and presses them into maritime duty. There they eventually meet the now captain Ahab (Barry Bostwick) who currently pilots a nuclear-armed submarine that he has personally designed to be more powerful and more capable than any sub in existence. Of course he's also kind of an incredibly obvious wacko which makes you wonder how he actually remains in command but there you go, trying to apply logic again in an Asylum film. He lies to everyone aboard his ship and intimates that they have full military clearance to go after Moby Dick as, due to the massive increase in modern radar irritating the crap out of whales (actually that's a real fact), Monsieur Dick has gone on full rampage and is pretty much kinda killing everything he comes across. But sadly Captain Ahab does not have clearance and in fact the military folks up high think he's the one that's gone rogue and is attacking everything. What a dilemma!

Although 2010: Moby Dick fares a bit better than some previous Asylum films in that it does deliver a bit in the monster destruction department, it makes some rather bizarre choices especially in the final act that basically sink whatever fun you were having initially. The acting is also a bit wild and wooly throughout the movie despite having a decent array of actors. Renee is fine in her role but they foolishly give her almost nothing to do once she's aboard the ship. Bostwick chews up his dialogue with crazy abandon, but the dialogue is just so awful his crazy speeches just come off far too silly, and not in a ironic nudge, nudge, wink, wink kind of way either. Surprisingly the main core of supporting actors are all pretty darn good and actually helped a great deal to make some of the clunky dialogue go down smoother. But man oh man, when you switched scenes to the Naval bases things got so ugly and uncomfortable at times that you swear if you stood still and listened hard enough you could hear somebody, somewhere shouting "the producer's brother is on! the producer's brother is on!". Yeah...it's pretty bad.

The effects are typically pretty cheesy for this level or production but at least the creators threw a bunch of stuff out there and let it explode and/or get eaten. Sure all the airplanes and ships looks like funny toys making little cartoon splashy splashes everywhere, but hey we're just here to have fun kids! But once the film gets into the final act for the big showdown things get so totally bats*** crazy that even a hardened bad monster movie watching pro like myself was questioning just what exactly was happening on screen. Did that 500 ft. whale just sneak up on them while they were standing on the shore? Did that whale just fly over the island? Was it jumping maybe? Where did it come from? Did she just out run a multiple nuclear warhead explosion that actually vaporized the entire island and the surrounding water? WHY IS THE WHALE WIGGLING LIKE THAT OVER AND OVER?! MAKE HIM STOP!

So anyhoo...rating or recommending these types of films is obvious very different from your normal kind of cinema endeavor. If you watch this kind of stuff regularly and like it, you will probably enjoy a bit of 2010: Moby Dick, but you will quickly tire when not very enough happens and the ending gets really bizarre and incredibly unsatisfying. They do commit some of the usual modern day monster movie sins of killing too many interesting supporting characters just to up the body count so that by the end we really just don't much care what happens. But that's basically this movie in a nutshell, in the end you just won't care.

Incidentally, for some odd reason the creators of this film decided to cut out the tiny scene of Renee O'Connor's Ishmael character representative Michelle clinging for dear life to the boat that she was piloting when Ahab initially picked her up. The boat's name of course "The Coffin". Get it? Of course this little literature joke explains the odd choice of the name when you see it at the beginning of the film and why Ahab decided to stow it aboard...somewhere, just so they could end on this shot. But since they didn't include it I suppose it's just another lost opportunity. Until we meet again, adieu for now Asylum you big goofs.

Title - Tiny Furniture (2010)

Director - Lena Dunham

Country - United States

Trailer

A starkly honest but often frustrating examination of the often confusing world and mindset of a post college graduate as she attempts to come to grips with the reality of the state of her current life. Described as partly autobiographical, Lena Dunham the writer/director of the film also plays the main character Aura who represents a specific character trait of the creator taken to the logical extreme. To further blur the line of reality, Dunham has also cast her real life mother and sister play themselves in the film and she has used her Mother's actual Tribeca loft as their home in the film. While eventually this helps to further cement the realistic nature of their interactions, initially it seems a tad contrived.

The movie starts off a little awkwardly as Aura (Lena Dunham) arrives home after a long journey and seems to be immediately out of sorts in her own home. He sister Nadine (Grace Dunham) immediately resents her presence and begins barking out the current house ground rules with regard towards her ownership and responsibilities. Her mother Siri (Laurie Simmons) does nothing to refute her sister's claims and seems to regard her return with a somewhat detached interest as she busily goes about her in house job of photography.

The initial conversations between the three (although specifically involving her sister), seem particularly contrived and seem to be working much too hard to be as cool and clever as possible and it feels a bit strained and awkward. There's even a Coen Brothers type of a character absurdist running joke initially as whenever Aura is looking for some kind of supply her mother simply tells her it's located in a particular "white drawer" - cut to a shot of Aura standing in front of a wall of monochromatic drawers that are pervasive throughout the loft. While at first this feels like a joke fallen flat, it does demonstrate how out of sorts Aura feels in her own household and how much of a disconnect there is between her and her family.

Once Aura starts trying to create some sort of life for herself and starts mixing it up with other characters then the movie really starts to spread its wings. Although the film is ideally an exploration of a directionless graduate fully realizing the gravity of their situation but doing everything in their power to avoid the harsh reality of it all, it does so in measured paces. There's no attempt to tie together plot strings and develop characters to a dramatic or life-changing conclusion which may be frustrating for many viewers. But what it does focus on is the dreary quotidian existence of unmotivated youths down to the tiniest bland detail as they focus only on the immediate.

Although Aura makes some attempts at starting a life, these attempts are deliberately feeble and short-lived as Aura becomes frustrated that she is not receiving any kind of immediate gratification that it's obvious she feels she deserves. She even makes a stab at having a big vocal outburst indicating her frustration and painting herself as the victim, yet it all rings knowingly false as all Aura does is make repeated excuses to retreat back to her mother's womb and a childhood safety zone that no longer exists. Dunham creates a character that increasingly becomes unlikeable but yet manages to stay vulnerable enough that you feel like you can't completely give up on her. Honestly there are several moments in the film where I wasn't sure if I wanted to slap her around or hold and comfort her.

Aura's lazy but somewhat desperate attempts to make both financial and social connections are as awkward and ill-conceived as they are sad. They speak volumes not only about her character's plight, but about her generation's frequent sense of entitlement as they want to be recognized and heavily rewarded for accomplishing at time the most mundane things. A particularly defining character is Aura's hopeful but apparently completely sexually disinterested boyfriend Jed (Alex Karpovsky) who is paraded around by himself and others as an incredibly important Youtube star. Despite the fact that he is supposedly in town being courted my several networks for a production deal, he is apparently homeless and uses all the negative guilt trip lines he can think of to bully his way into Aura's place when her mother and sister are out of town. Despite his horrific behavior, Aura continues to think positive thoughts as she assumes a person so creative must be a worthy catch.

Aura's other boyfriend hopeful is another example of how the film castigates the typical naive twenty something cultural ideal. Although Keith (David Call) is just a grumpy cook in an small but trendy dining establishment, her old childhood friend Charlotte (Jemima Kirke) immediately ascribes a possible cultural superiority to him simply because she's seen him reading books of philosophy. But in the end Keith turns out to be just like everybody else that just has some immediate needs and looks to others as sources of quick gratification. Despite being originally presented as something of a train wreck, Charlotte is oddly the only one that seems to be somewhat grounded and calls the bulls*** as she sees it which comes to an incredibly funny conclusion when she finally encounters Jed the Youtube star.

Overall I found it to be a satisfying but somewhat frustrating journey as the film merely presents to you an important but unremarkable portion of a character's life. The importance is not profound, but the journey needed to be made in order for the character to eventually develop. Although it's not entirely clear if the events that unfolded will have a serious affect on Aura, one would have to imagine that it would as the emptiness of her life at the moment is strongly mirrored in the notes of her mother's diary - a woman whom Aura holds in high esteem. A very interesting film, but the lack of a typical plot structure and character development may be off putting for some.

Recommended.

So an old friend of mine called me up and...huh? Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving and all that for those of you that partake in turkey/ham day and all its trappings both joyful and, considering that it generally involves a lot of family, rather trying. For those that don't generally speaking it's a happy day off except for those in the "movie industry" which in this case means theatre workers who sadly have to work Thanksgiving and Christmas because so many people insist on going to the movies because both holidays typically involve large family get togethers and after a couple of hours of that going to the movies is a great activity to do "together" that actively involves ignoring the people you're with which makes it strongly compelling but it's still wrong because all you're doing is insuring that theatre managers will never close their doors allowing their employees to enjoy the holiday as well which means you're actively destroying another's holidays when you go and thus you should avoid it BECAUSE FOR GOD'S SAKE I KNOW YOU ALL HAVE TOYS, GAMES, AND MOVIES TO KEEP YOURSELVES OCCUPIED BECAUSE IT'S THE BLOODY AGE OF BLOODY CONSTANT ENTERTAINMENT SO STAY HOME YOU INSUFFERABLE PRATS!

*deep breath*

But I digress. Or to be more precise, digest - something I did quite a lot of in fact. Yes...quite. I apologize for that last sentence. But after that - DANCE! - as well as quite a bit of jumping, yelling, swinging and all manner of rather alarming and loud movement was employed as we had a rather full night of Kinect oriented activities ahead of us which went on for so long that I'm fairly certain we burned off every calorie that we took in during the preceding dinner. Oh right the dinner! Thanks for reminding me!

It was rather traditional with turkey, stuffing, whipped potatoes and all manner of pretty tasty things that I won't mention because damons only eats the aforementioned tasty items with great vigor and then has seconds of those same items further insulting the offending non tasty food items that he won't touch.The meal was prepared by my old friend's wife, who did an awesome job, as well as her sister No. 2... or was it No. 4 (she has a lot of sisters and they all have the same name so they refer to each other by numbers "No. 2 called", "No. 3 is running late", blah blah blah) as well as my friend's mother who took me in oh so many years ago when I was young and my family had abandoned me to the streets. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a Thanksgiving so it was a rather nice surprise.

As I mentioned earlier, we all went Kinect crazy and were mighty sore and tired afterwards. We played Dance Central, Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, and a demonstrated a little Kinectimals for his wife Ming. Dance Central was by far the best as it very accurately captured everything you did and involved the entire body so which made it rather challenging at times. I insisted on dancing to the now cl@ssic and highly respected street anthem "Crank That (Soulja' Boy)" by the esteemed modern poet and composer Soulja' Boy because it's the silliest thing I could think of doing. Yes folks...I did indeed Superman dat ooooooh so many, many times. Of course No. 2 got the highest rating as she is a professional dance so...duh, but my 2 star accomplishments proved you don't have to be good to be entertaining.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! :)

There are times when you are confronted with things that just appear to make no sense. Oft times, these fits of confusion are just a temporary state as you quickly realize that it was just a trick of your brain misinterpreting shadows into a familiar but incorrect form or the hidden nighttime mountainscape that caused the distant lights of planes to appear as if they were suddenly disappearing and reappearing. But sometimes the confusion lingers despite repeated viewings as you try to desperately reason out the logic of it all. There has to be a reason for this conflicting conundrum...right?! WHAT MUST IT MEAN?! IT MUST MEAN SOMETHING?!

As we've learned time and time again from over the top conspiracy theorists and religious extremists, this can be quite dangerous territory as all too often odd things just happen and have little to no real meaning behind them. As the great humanist Homer Simpson once said in response to his wife attempting to encapsulate the morally ambiguous landscape of an odd set of recent events in their ever tumultuous lives, "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened".

Then of course there's just plain crap. The kind of crap that results of just too many variables and an author's desperate attempt to bring together a rather large amount of disparate elements and tie them all up in a neat box. But if the very elements themselves are rather odd concepts to begin with and require a rather weighty back knowledge as to how they all relate to each other, the quicker you bring them all together the more confusing they will get. Of course as an author you could easily make the meaning behind everything ambiguous in the extreme in order to brush away any obvious elements involving gaping plot holes or character logic -- hello Mr. Nolan. But sadly many are not that clever.

And so with that let us read a fine piece of traditional typical gobbledygunk comic book nonsense.

Ahhhhh yes...it all makes PERFECT sense now. Thanks for clearing that up for us Supergirl! Sad so say, if one has been reading comics for a few decades this actually doesn't seem as initially insane as most people probably would. In an odd way it is sort of comforting to old time comic book nerds I suppose as goofy stuff like this sort of puts a wall between us and...the others, those unclean ones that couldn't imagine how sexy Galactus initially looked in his cosmic short shorts that he originally graced us with. Although this bit of summation of dialogue is quite convoluted and crazy, it sadly doesn't doesn't eclipse the mad genius of writer Bob Kanigher. He does crazy better than anybody and he's very direct and to the point about it.

Say...like the time Wonder Woman and her military boy toy Steve Trevor were traveling through time once again and Steve ran into a bit of trouble with his his...equipment.

That's right folks, the gun full of bullets wouldn't work simply because it hadn't been invented as of yet. Perfect.

Who would even have the guts to right that kind of crazy these days? Everyone's so wrapped up in their attempts to justify their crazy scenarios and failing so horribly to convince their audience that it's all somehow possible. Perhaps there are times when it really just doesn't matter and nobody really cares all that much. Just get on with the crazy and show me dinosaurs stomping around eating people and battling giant apes. I don't care where they came from.

And thus I center you back into reality with a more typical sexualization of Supergirl courtesy of Miss Bianca Beauchamp.

I love you latex Supergirl, because that's all just so incredibly impractical and yet you just don't care.

MOVIE REVIEWS

I'm been off and on trying to track down this film, and finally I was in the right place at the right time and talked to the right person who quite literally handed me the film. Here's what I thought of the whole shebang.

Title - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Director - Jaromil Jires

Country - Czechoslovakia

Trailer

A visual treat for the senses, Jaromil Jires' film is chock full of dreamy imagery presented in a fairy-tale atmosphere full of sexual wonderment and hierarchical confusion that is so compelling it will stay with you long after despite the film's fairly short running time. Based on the surrealist novel Valerie a tyden divu, the film is the exploration of a young woman named Valerie who has just entered puberty and notices that suddenly, along with the help of a pair of a supposedly magical pair of earrings, that everything and everyone she thought she knew are suddenly so very strange and frightening...and yet also very compelling.

Despite its surrealist origins and underpinnings, Jires has built a solid foundation of allegorical imagery that is so consistant it makes the film feel highly focused as to what it is trying to express. This is in spite of the fact that the allegories attached to the symbols are constantly shifting and changing both with and against Valerie's prevailing mindset creating a constent situation in which Valerie's perception of things ebbs and flows as she takes in more information from this new and at times disturbing world of adulthood. This transition from childhood into adulthood and the confusion that sometimes surrounds it is the core of the film and although the imagery shifts quite often, the film takes great pains to explore as much of Valerie's psyche as it can.

But it's not only Valerie's psyche that is explored, but the very foundation of trust that can be undermined and the confusion that can often result as children grow older. This is expressed not only through Valerie, but her relatives and the people that she has long considered trustworthy. Vampiric figures are featured heavily in Valerie's world as once trusted friends, relatives and clergymen seemingly become inhuman monsters preying on others in ways that are sexual or quite often revolve around simple controlling power struggles. Not only is Valerie awakening sexually, but the reactions to her awakening are often disturbing as she suddenly finds herself the subject of wanton, leering and unwanted sexual advances. Her reactions in turn cause her to become blamed for the actions of others despite her obvious innocent nature.

The hypocrisy of people's reaction towards Valerie is another large theme heavily explored and considering the political climate of a '60s era Czech Republic it's not hard to see the political parallels inherent in the film's messages. Expressing social outrage through art is common and burying it deep within the context of a fairy tale is a time honored tradition. The political and religious leaders in Valerie are common sources of distrust and ever changing alliances as they devilishly slide with ease from being a source of comfort to be a great source of terror.

Despite the heavy nature of the symbolism contained within the film, it still manages to stay focused on the continuing exploration of Valerie's strange new world. Despite all the terrifying changes and people, there are also constant sources of great comfort as Valerie begins to accept her maturing body and mindset. She blissfully wanders through the countryside enjoying the sensual touch of nature as she seemingly begins to feel a strong connection with it as her body grows fertile. Although her body is ripe and often the object of lust, the beauty of the world around her lets her know that it's all perfectly natural and a normal state of being.

The film is beautifully shot and almost every scene seems like a carefully crafted painting. Although this is quite often due to numerous exacting set designs on part of the film's creators, the natural surroundings of the countryside feature heavily both symbolically and literally as sources of great beauty and are used to great effect. Although the film has heavy sexual overtones and explores a great many aspects of Valerie's burgeoning sexuality, it never seems crude or forced and seems almost innocent in a way. Overall it's a very rich visually sumptuous delight whose images will stick in your head for years to come.