Category Archives: movies

Sharknado: or, the Rock Band or Cheesy Movie Game

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Somebody on Facebook made an offhand reference to Sharknado the other day.  I had no idea what a “Sharknado” could be, except the mind-numbingly stupid idea suggested by the phonetics of the “word.” It turns out that is exactly what it was. Despite the fact that sharks exist in places like Florida and tornadoes exist in places like Oklahoma (not a lot of overlap there), the movie is about tornadoes that pick up sharks and throw them through the air at unsuspecting people. (The sharks are, of course, still alive and hungry contrary to everything we know about biological entities that get picked up in twisters.)

I once wondered why the “Sci-fi” channel changed its name to the “Syfy channel.” I now know that it must have been the threat of false advertising lawsuits that spurred this change. (Of course, this doesn’t explain why the “History channel” isn’t the Sasquatch Alien channel.) Sci-fi is short for science fiction. Let’s break that down. First, the reference to “science” means one would expect some speculative universe which is constrained by scientific laws–either the laws of physics as we know them or some reasonable set of scientific principles by which a universe could be held together. It is not a magic universe, as required by Sharknado. The target demo for science-fiction is geeks and nerds (said in the most complimentary sense of those words)–in other words, people who overthink (or, at least, think.) The target demo for Sharknado seems to be pubescent boys failing science and in need of an opportunity to masturbate to Tara Reid.

Second, fiction is a creatively-engineered story, and I’m not even sure Sharknado qualifies on this front either. The creative component seems to be limited to cramming two things that terrify people together into one word or phrase. This may work in some cases, such as with the term “divorce lawyer.” However, the two concepts that one smashes together have to have some credulity as a unified threat. The fact that motherf#$%ing Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t save Snakes on a Plane, should have made this apparent to all.

As a thought exercise, let’s try some examples:

1.) Which of the following terror-inspiring dualities are devices around which a movie plot could be built, and which are just awesome rock band names?

a.) Clown-Pirates

b.) Hobo-Scorpions

c.) Black Mamba-Teen Driver

d.) Bear-Proctologist

e.) Spiders in a Tuk-tuk

f.) Karaoke-Mugger

g.) Robo-gynecologist

h.) Newborn-Arsonist

i.) Mother-in-Law / Attorney-at-Law

j.) Anthrax-blizzard

By the way, if the Syfy channel comes out with any of the above movies or series, please shoot me an email so I can claim my Executive Producer credit. It’s more likely this will be the starting line up for Lollapalooza 2025.

Bear with bubbles

The Good and Ugly of Olden Times

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This was posted in my martial arts blog, Jissen Budoka, as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about Japan’s past recently. In my spare time, I’m working on rewrites for a novel in which 14th century Japan features prominently. Being my first foray into historical fiction, I’m finding the need to go back and do a lot of research about the time because the quick and dirty draft I wrote needs a lot of gussying up. I just finished reading Charles Dunn’s Everyday Life in Imperial Japan,  which is about a later period but one which would have shared much in common when it comes to everyday life. Presently, I’m reading The Taiheiki–which is about the 14th century, but which blends fact and fiction.

Doing such research encourages one to consider what it meant to live during that time. We all build constructs of the world to adjust for our limitations in knowledge. Some of these constructs hold up better than others, but they’re all simplifications. When one reflects upon a time before one’s experience–and particularly regarding a place with which one has limited familiarity–there are two major forms of fallacious reasoning that can take hold:

1.) The Golden Age Fallacy: This is the thought that everything was better back in the day–back before humanity started slouching toward craptasticness.

2.) The Outhouse Fallacy: This is the idea that any society that couldn’t manage indoor plumbing couldn’t possibly be worthy of emulation.

Of course, these simplifications are both true and false in some regard, and–as absolute statements–are absolutely false. The truth is something more like what Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested in Self-Reliance. Emerson described society as a wave, receding on one side as quickly as it advanced on the other. In other words, changes maybe seen as progress, but they also bring about the destruction of valuable knowledge. In martial arts terms, the spear becomes obsolete and the art of spear-fighting dies.

LastSamuraiThe movie entitled The Last Samurai revolves around this premise. Of course, in Hollywood fashion the forces of modernity are made entirely villanous and our heroes, the samurai, are entirely virtuous. In a way the movie is perverse in that it suggests we root for the medieval approach over our own.

When considering feudal Japan, Golden Agers point to it as a time during which virtue was paramount, craftsmanship was exquisite, and much culture flourished. They are right; but don’t set your time machine just yet because Outhouse Agers are also correct when they say that it was a time during which most of the population had no rights, wars ravaged the country, and in which farmers were not allowed to partake of many of the products they produced–but rather had to feed and cloth their families with inferior substitutes.

One should be careful to neither romanticize nor vilify the samurai. We should keep what is of value of the old ways without being a slave to the worst ways of our predecessors’ nature. One shouldn’t abandon everything old on the assumption that by definition everything abandoned to the past is refuse.

BOOK REVIEW: World War Z by Max Brooks

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie WarWorld War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

World War Z, as the subtitle suggests, is written as a series of interviews of key (or in some cases typical) people involved in the Zombie War. The viewpoints addressed include various political leaders, military service members of various branches and nations, strategic planners, doctors, and even civilians caught up in the diaspora that resulted from the plague.

The approach of the novel is unusual. To the degree there is a lead character, it’s the UN employee who conducts all the interviews. However, we don’t experience the interviewer’s story arc and are left with very little insight into this individual. Rather, the story is a global arc of mankind’s experience of zombies from “patient zero” through the clean up in the years following the war. And, it is a global tale. The stories of these individuals take one to places like Chongquing, Meteora, the Amazon, Barbados, Johannesburg, the Alang ship breaking yard (an excellent choice for a post-apocalyptic setting, I must say), Denver, and even onto a ballistic-missile-toting submarine sitting on the ocean floor.

Where Brooks’s book excels is in making one think, and in that regard it does an excellent job. This isn’t about edge-of-the-seat adrenaline injections to which most Zombie book authors aspire. I don’t deny that there are emotional parts to the book, but the tension is reduced by virtue of being a collection of survivors’ tales. That is, we know the story-tellers survived more-or-less intact. Also, because of the intrusions of the interviewer and the authenticity of responses (some are more skilled and open story tellers than others), we never lose sight of the fact that this is a couple of people talking war stories.

That being said, we take a cook’s tour of gut-wrenching food for thought over the course of the novel. Consider a government that abandons its citizenry, and even uses some as bait to help save others. Brooks tugs at the readers’ heartstrings through an interview with a K-9 soldier who describes the role of man’s best friend. Brooks portrays the best and worst that mankind has to offer–as one would surely expect to experience them in such a world gone wrong.

I must admit, some of the topics may be more interesting to me as a social scientist than they will be to others. One interviewee discusses the mismatch between job skills needed and job skills available in a rapidly evolving post-apocalyptic landscape. This speaks to present-day society as much as it does to a dystopian future. The author devotes an interview to questioning the man responsible for reestablishing trust in the dollar in an economy that has by necessity reverted to barter. There is also discussion of revolutions in governance that find their catalyst in the Zombie War. There are intriguing turns of events such as the makeshift flotillas of U.S. citizens converging on Cuba because Fidel’s authoritarian regime was uniquely prepared to close itself off during the earliest days of the outbreak.

With the movie coming out this Friday (June 21), I will say that I can’t see much in common between the book and the trailers for the movie that I’ve seen to date. However, I can imagine the movie being an extension or outgrowth of one of the many vignettes expressed in the book. This is not to say that the movie will be bad (or that it won’t be), but if one sees the movie one will still be left with impetus to read the book.

I enjoyed World War Z because it makes one think–a feat that isn’t the strong suit of Zombie literature.

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5 Classics of Martial Arts Cinema

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Martial arts cinema ranges from the horrible through the campy to the excellent. There is one ever-present risk facing this genre. That is, like porn, movie makers may conclude that viewers aren’t watching for character or plot so they might as well just focus on the action. When they do that and then they blow the action– well, that’s when it’s painful to watch. By numbers, most of this genre probably falls into that category. However, sometimes they get it right.

Of course, it’s not always clear what should be categorized as a martial arts film, given many cross-genre romps. The Matrix is science fiction, but it’s also a kung fu flick. The Bourne trilogy films are spy thrillers, but their characteristic gritty hand-to-hand combat sequences are integral to the films. I’ve tried to focus on films that one would unambiguously categorize as martial arts cinema (though anything by Kurosawa is likely to be considered mainstream cinema.)

I also, admittedly, display several of my own biases. I prefer films that avoid over-the-top superhuman choreography. I don’t want to say that I prefer realism. None of it is realistic, but there’s a vast difference between Jackie Chan’s choreography and that of The Curse of the Golden Flower. Still, I do include Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Hustle, which both rely heavily on wires and superhuman feats. I also like period pieces as opposed to modern-day films. Of course, characters with charisma also get my attention, but I don’t think I’m unique in that regard.

5.) Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon is Bruce Lee’s last film, and features Lee as a Shaolin practitioner cum secret agent. The film reminds me of the Ian Fleming novel You Only Live Twice in that it’s about a person being tasked to infiltrate an evil mastermind’s sprawling lair not because it makes logical or reality-based sense, but rather because the proposed infiltrator is just that damn good.



4.) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

This is undoubtedly the most critically acclaimed of the films on the list. It was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 2000, and while it did not win in that category, it did take four Oscars that year. It’s in a class of film that includes Curse of the Golden Flower and Hero that are known for stunning cinematography and historical settings. (Unfortunately, these films are also marked by an insanely excessive use of wire-work for my taste.) This film includes a romantic component as well as the fight to possess a sword called Green Destiny. As is mandatory for Kung fu films, there’s a martial arts master whose death must be avenged.



3.) The Legend of Drunken Master (aka Drunken Master II)

Jackie Chan plays a bumbling young man who is, ironically, a master of Kung fu when completely inebriated. The plot revolves around a mix up between an agent who is trying to steal a valuable artifact and Chan’s character who is trying to smuggle ginseng to avoid paying duty on it. Incredibly, the artifact and ginseng are packaged identically, and the thief ends up with the ginseng and Chan’s character with the artifact. It’s Chan at his best, with all the comedy and creative choreography that one would expect.



2.) Hidden Fortress

I’m not including this just to prevent a Chinese sweep. (On that note: I’ve heard the Thai Ong Bak films are quite good, but I haven’t gotten around do seeing any of them.) Anyway, there are some excellent Japanese period films that involve many combat sequences that are not over-the-top. Of course, Akira Kurosawa dominates in this realm. There are other Kurosawa films, such as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, or Ran that could equally well be included. Hidden Fortress is probably best known to American movie buffs as a major influence on George Lucas in the making of the first Star Wars film. Hidden Fortress is a about a General (played by portrayer-of-samurai-extraordinaire Toshiro Mifune) who must escort a princess and her family fortune cross-country to safety. Of course, as in every hero’s journey, there are many challenges to be confronted.



1.) Kung Fu Hustle

This comedy is set in the gang-ridden slums of 1930’s Shanghai. A tenement complex is assailed by the gangs. However, the residents offer some surprising resistance in the form of unexpected apartment-dwelling kung fu masters. Unlike Jackie Chan’s down-to-earth comedies, this one is almost cartoon-esque. It features a cast of anti-heroes that keeps the film interesting, and the protagonist has a strong narrative arc.

BOOK REVIEW: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

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SolarisSolaris by Stanisław Lem

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solaris is the  best known work of the Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem. It’s the story of the planet Solaris’s super-intelligent ocean and the humans that are observing it from an orbiting space station. Scientists discover that the ocean is intelligent because the planet orbits two stars, and the ocean must redistribute itself as ballast to keep Solaris from flying off out of its star systems.

Having had no luck in learning about this ocean, the scientists begin more invasive operations–bombarding the ocean with electromagnetic radiation. The ocean then begins to project human beings into the space station, using blueprints in the minds of the scientists. Each of the scientists begins to see, and eventually interact with, someone from his past. Each “guest” is physically indistinguishable from the person in the respective scientist’s past, but the simulacra are “off.”  These simulacra stir up bad memories.

The most extensive interaction we see between a crew member and one of these manifestations is that of the protagonist, Dr. Kris Kelvin, and his ex-wife. Dr. Kelvin is a psychologist and is the most recent crew edition. (The novel actually starts with him as a new arrival, we learn of the earlier incidents as he does.) His “visitor” is the spitting image of his wife, a woman who committed suicide after the couple broke up.

The novel plays with an intriguing question. What if a person you loved and lost came back from the dead, but you would only be able to experience them as they existed in your mind? In some sense, they’d be more real to you than the actual person. But you’d know they were just a fabrication, and you could never learn anything new about them. At first Kelvin rejects, even banishes, his wife’s doppelgänger, but when she inexplicably returns he finds it hard to maintain his distance.

I enjoyed this book. The translation seemed skilled to me (though I don’t read Polish, and hence didn’t read the original.) I’d recommend it.

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There have been three film adaptations of this novel. I haven’t seen any of the movies, but this is the trailer for the most recent one. The trailer emphasizes the love relationship more and the sentient ocean less than the novel (though the interaction of the protagonist with his imagined wife is central to the work.)

I Always See the Wrong Movies: or, Post-Oscars Watcher’s Remorse

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The one Oscar-Winner I saw

The one Oscar winner I saw

I only watched part of the Oscars last night. At some point I realized it wasn’t worth continuing. I see about three movies in the theater per year, and rarely are any of them Oscar material. At 10:00 pm all I had to show for watching was the chorus of the ditty “We Saw Your Boobs” echoing through my brain.  (Damn you, Seth MacFarlane, for that catchy, clever, melodic jingle that still runs like a gerbil in the rodent-wheel of my mind.)

The three movies I saw in the theaters last year were: The Avengers, Dark Knight Rises, and This is 40. The first two will no doubt convince you that I am a 12-year-old boy trapped in a middle-aged man’s body, and the last will convince you that I have poor judgement. (This is 40 had its humorous moments, but there was far too much screaming for my taste, although we did see Leslie Mann’s boobs– damn you, again, Seth MacFarlane.) I saw another half-dozen 2012 films on long Korean Air flights, but these were equally lowbrow titles (Men in Black 3, Prometheus, and Brave– the latter at least won an Oscar during the hour and a half I was watching, I think it was for Best Animated Makeup Artistry.)

I’m not altogether lowbrow. I will see most of the big winners eventually, when they finally make it to basic cable. For example, I watched The Hurt Locker on Saturday, just one day before the Oscars. So I am only three or four  or five years out of synch.  The Hurt Locker is a particularly fine example of going the other way because I understand its distinction is being the lowest grossing Best Picture winner ever.

This year’s Best Picture Argo is definitely a film that I will see in the next five years–barring Zombies, the apocalypse, or a Zombie Pandemic Apocalypse. So there’s a 60% chance that I’ll see it. The Iranian hostage crisis is one of the first historical events that I remember seeing on the news first-hand. Had I been in the country when Argo came out–I might have seen it in the theaters, but probably not.

Part of me thinks that I should grow up and start watching the “right” movies.  However, part of me says, “wait, there’s this one day a year when everybody is talking about these movies, and the other 364 days  they are talking about Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers“  So in some sense, I already am watching the “right” movies.

BOOK REVIEW: Eclipse of the Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

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Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Bas relief of Siege of Eger

Eclipse Of The Crescent MoonEclipse Of The Crescent Moon by Géza Gárdonyi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is the English translation of a volume originally written in Hungarian and titled Egri Csillagok, i.e. “Stars of Eger.”

Historical fiction works best when the event it’s built around requires no fictitious embellishment to fascinate the reader. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon takes place during the 1552 siege of Eger. During this siege, 2,000 Hungarians held off at least 40,000 Turkish invaders for over one month. (In the book the Turks have a two order of magnitude advantage.) The Turks retreated despite having had superior armaments as well as a massive numeric advantage. It’s the perfect underdog story.

Reading a purely historic account would be interesting enough, but Géza Gárdonyi creates value-added by imbuing his characters with depth, particularly his lead Gergely Bornemissza. There wasn’t much known about Bornemissza. He was a minor character in history compared to Eger’s commander, István Dobó. However, his expertise in explosives did play a role in this Hungarian success story.

The book begins when Bornemissza is a young boy. He and a girl named Éva are captured by a Turk. The couple escapes and manages to free others. They later elope to avert Éva’s arranged marriage. They have a child who is later captured by the same Turk who had captured them.

A major subplot is a trip made to Istanbul in the heart of enemy territory to attempt to aid in the escape of Bornemissza’s  adoptive father.

The book is well translated and an engaging read.

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TODAY’S RANT: Viral Video Advertising

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I recently saw this posted on Facebook. I, being a doofus, believed I had stumbled upon the black box recording that would show archaeologists the moment it all went sour for the human race– the dawn of the rise of the apes. As soon as our self-aware brethren learn to take our technology and use it against us, we are surely doomed. Being damned dirty, the apes will own humans. [Participle dangle intended.]

Of course, I felt compelled to do a Snopes check because– believe it or not– sometimes people put things on the internet which are fake. I know, I know, hard to believe.

It turns out the video is a piece of viral advertising for the next Planet of the Apes movie. “Lesser” primate use of technology is still about right here:

Viral advertising is the latest craze. One leaks intriguing footage onto YouTube and doesn’t label it or say what it is.  Then you hope a bunch of schmucks fall for it, and they will– because that’s the defining characteristic of we schmucks. It’s tautological.  This kind of video will stick in one’s mind and get more media attention than would a regular trailer.

The problem is that movie-makers have the ability to make really convincing fakes. (That’s what they do.) My well-read reader will certainly have heard of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds incident. People who didn’t hear the beginning of the broadcast, which was formatted like a news bulletin, freaked out about the alien invasion. Some people jumped out windows (why, I have no idea. I don’t think they thought the value of that through.) Some people fled to Canada (assuming, of course, that the aliens wouldn’t be interested in that icy wasteland.)

My problem with all this isn’t that people are duped; it’s the “boy who cried wolf” effect. One day when we’re under attack by aliens, apes, or artificial intelligence, people are going to be like, “Dude, that’s a really convincing looking ray-gun… NOT!”

TODAY’S RANT: Continuity Gaffes

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For those unfamiliar, a continuity gaffe is a mistake in a movie in which something that shouldn’t change from one instant to the next does. They result from movies being shot over many days in an order unrelated to how the film unfurls before the viewer. Take an example, say a brawler is wearing a green shirt, they cut away to the other fighter, but when they flash back he’s an orangutan in a bikini. If it’s still not clear what I’m talking about, the YouTube clip below shows a horde of gaffes from the first Star Wars trilogy.

Now, from the title of this post, you probably think that I’m some sort of obsessive-compulsive nerd who catches every little niggling mistake in a movie. To this I say, I wish! I’m a not-the-least-bit-compulsive nerd. I don’t catch any movie continuity gaffes– not a single one. Sure, I can see them when they’re circled and the film is run in slow motion, but otherwise I’m clueless. This has made me wonder if there isn’t something defective with my brain. When they are pointed out they seem pretty glaring.

What really bothers me is not that I never catch a continuity gaffe in a movie, but rather that I catch them in my real life all the time. I’ll distinctly remember setting my keys down on the valet, but after a thorough search I’ll find them in the freezer. I’ll remember having written a paragraph, but when I come back to my laptop I find nothing but the cryptic message, “xzsawrwddd&&ppPPP.” I’ll put down Shakespeare’s Sonnets and when I pick the book back up, it’s a James Patterson novel.

I’ve developed two competing hypotheses to explain these gaffes. First, I’m in the Matrix, and Mr. Smith is corrupting the code. Second, my secretly super-intelligent cat is fucking with me.

BOOK REVIEW: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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The RoadThe Road by Cormac McCarthy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sparse and haunting.  The Road is about a father and son walking cross-country in search of a safe harbor in a post-apocalyptic world. The story pulls one in and leaves a tightness in one’s gut. Every person the duo comes across on the road must be treated as a dire threat, making them each other’s only thread of connection to humanity. One particularly powerful moment is when they get to the ocean and see nothing but ghost ships lolling in the water. To reach the end of the road, the end of one’s world, without a flicker of hope is crushing, but they make a left turn and keep going.

McCarthy uses description in vivid flourishes, but it’s the spartan dialogue that really creates the tone. I was distracted by the lack of quotation marks and dialogue markers at first, but with only two speaking characters McCarthy’s approach works just fine. One soon gets a feel for the unique voice of each, and then the minimalist approach works.

McCarthy cuts away everything that is non-essential. Some of these non-essentials, like names, we so take for granted that their absence helps create a somber tone.

If you don’t like sad stories, this one won’t be for you. I found the ending to be tragic, but some may see it as hopeful.

I haven’t seen the movie, but from the trailer and what I’ve heard, it’s a bit different. Hollywood not willing to take the risk of stripping it bare.

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