Bruce Lee versus Bruce Lee

I was taking a quick look at Vimeo today and I came across this video which shows Bruce Lee fighting himself.

It is very well done.

Watch it to the end - it is surprisingly moving.

Kudos to all involved.



BRUCE LEE VS BRUCE LEE from Antonio Maria Da Silva AMDSFILMS on Vimeo.

Last Kung Fu Monk

I would struggle to name my favourite movie of all time (I must have a go at tackling that in my blog soon).

But, thanks to a movie I watched part of the other night, I have no problem naming the worst movie I have ever seen.

"Last Kung Fu Monk", as you would guess from the title, is a martial arts movie. And obviously lots of martial arts movies aren't very good. But LKFM lowers the bar to a whole new level.

Not only are the acting, directing, and story awful, but the martial arts are not nearly good enough to save the movie.

And I have to make special mention of the editing. I have never seen anything like it before! People going to film school should be made to watch parts of this movie to see what not to do. It's unbelievable.

IMDB scores it 4.1.Rotten Tomatoes scores it 36%. They are both being kind.

In addition to everything else which is wrong with this movie, I can't accept that a Shaolin Monk could be completely inept at everything except martial arts. How is that possible!

Here's a shot from the movie where our "hero" takes on two girls!

Shaky Camera

I mentioned shaky camera work in my last posting, so I need to mention the worst ever example, IMHO.

I loved "The Bourne Identity", directed by Doug Liman. He held the camera as steady as a rock while Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) was fighting, as so gave us some fantastic fight scenes.

Then along came Paul Greengrass with Supremacy and Ultimatum.

Those movies are great, don't get me wrong, but the fight scenes are rubbish. I hope nobody spent much time choreographing them, training for them, or rehearsing them because you can't see anything. Complete waste of time.

My favourite fight scene is in the American embassy. Here's a (very small, unfortunately) still from just before this kicks off:

The Raid 2 Berandal

Went to see "The Raid 2" last week.

My overwhelming thoughts were:

1) It's long! 2 hours 30 minutes. The showing started at 9 PM and by the time it was over, I had already missed my last train.

2) It's no date movie! It must be the most violent movie I have ever seen,

3) There is little connection with "The Raid".  It picks up after the first movie, sure. And Iko Uwais is still playing the character of Rama. But apart from that...

4) It's excellent. The fight scenes are amazing. The action sequences are great. The acting is first rate. It looks great.

5) It's complicated. There are still a few subtleties I don't get. And the FAQ on IMDB is blank so far.

6) It's very much an ensemble piece. I was shocked from time to time at how long it had been since Iko has been on screen.

7) There a "nods" to lots of other movies and genres. Good fun. My favourite I think was what I took to be a nog to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon just before the big prison fight.

8) I didn't like the fact that the camera seemed to be shaking much more during the fight sequences. I think Gareth Evans and the team were trying to achieve something here. Sometimes it worked, sometimes now.

9) I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

Here is a nice shot of Gareth and Iko:

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II: The Green Destiny

Just found out that they're making a prequel to one of the best martial arts movies of all time: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Apparently it will hit the cinemas next year.

My wife would be very excited but for the fact that there is no mention of Chow Yun-Fat!

The good news is that the following are involved (in order of my importance):

• Michelle Yeoh
• Donnie Yen
• Yuen Woo-ping

The bad news is that there is no mention of any of the following (again in my order of importance):

• Chow Yun-Fat
• Ang Lee
• Jet Li
• Zhang Ziyi
• James Schamus
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Tan Dun

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

The Raid 2

If you're an action movie fan, and you're not excited about "The Raid 2", then check this out:

The Raid

I was surprised to discover that I never blogged about "The Raid" (aka "Serbuan maut" and "The Raid: Redemption").

This was an excellent action/martial arts movie made in Indonesia and featuring Pencak Silat.

The movie stars Iko Uwais who puts in an excellent performance from both the dramatic and martial arts perspectives.

The majority of the cast and crew seem to be Indonesian with the important distinction of the director, Gareth Evans who is Welsh.

The movie was the second collaboration between the two men, the first being "Merantau". The Raid is a huge step up from Merantau - the guys talk in videos available on YouTube about the amount they learned by making the first movie.

In other videos available on YouTube they admit how strongly influenced in making the first movie they were by the success of Ong Bak (the influence is very obvious when watching the movie) and how they wanted to do for silat what the other movie had done for muay thai.

The IMDB ratings reflect the great job they did in going from the first movie to the second: the ratings increased from 6.7 to 7.6.

The Raid is available to watch on Netflix.

The reason I am prompted to mention these movies is that the cleverly named "The Raid 2" is in cinemas now.

I remember blogging some time ago about how much I was looking forward to seeing "Taken 2". Then I had to blog about how awful that sequel was.

Well I haven't been to see The Raid 2 yet, but the IMDB rating is currently an astonishing 8.9! If it stays like that it will be in the IMDB top 10!

So I'm really excitied about going to see it.

Here's a picture of Iko in action from The Raid:

Junior Black Belt

I have been a fan of the martial arts since I was a kid. But, to be honest, I have spent MUCH more time watching martial arts movies than learning the martial arts.

Can you imagine how proud I was therefore the day my son Andrew got his junior black belt! (kids under 12 can only get junior belts with the Irish Kenpo Karate Union)

Here's a picture of him striking a pose shortly after he got the new belt:

Karate Competition

Portmarnock Kenpo Karate hosted the IKKU Junior Kata Championships at the weekend.

The event involved 8 different grouping and the competitors went through their "forms" in 3 different areas.

I helped out by projecting a screen showing what was going on "now" and "next" in each of the 3 areas.

I just used PowerPoint to manage the screen.

In fact there were three slides: one to welcome people to the event; a second to show the activities in the 3 areas; and a third to show the names of the people who came first, second, and third in each category.

This photo shows how the screen looked from the far corner of the hall. Although the photo doesn't show it, it was actually possible to read what was on the screen from that distance.

In future venues it would be nice to (a) be able to show the screen more centrally and (b) to project onto a white wall (the walls look blue in the photo but in fact they are really a shade of green!)

Last DVD purchases

Two of my recent posts have mentioned Bruce Lee and buying DVDs in Xtravision.

To pull these topics together somewhat, my last DVD purchases in Xtravision were:

• Game of Death
• The Big Boss
• Fist of Legend

I already own the following discs starring Bruce Lee:

• Fist of Fury (aka "The Chinese Connection")
• Enter the Dragon
• Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey

Fist of Legend, of course, is a Jet Li movie but it is also a remake of Fist of Fury.

So while these were my last DVD purchases, they will not be my last: obviously I still need to buy The Way of the Dragon to complete my Bruce Lee collection.

It is interesting to note, by the way, that IMDB include Game of Death in the list of movies for which Lee was the writer, producer and director, but not in the list of movies for which he was an actor. 

Sugar Ray Leonard talks about Bruce Lee

It amazes me to realise that I have not blogged about Bruce Lee to date.

Bruce Lee was the most amazing martial arts star of all time. He may never be matched.

Here is a clip from YouTube of Sugar Ray Leonard (another hero of mine whom I have mentioned previously) speaking highly of Bruce:

Master versus Students

In my last post, I had a link to a video which shows what I believe to be the genuine superiority of a master over his students.

The video below shows something else.

It shows how unintended collaboration between master and students can lead a master to believe that he has powers which he does not.

This particular "master" has a rude awakening when he comes up against an opponent who is not a believer.

The quality of the video is poor but still worth seeing:

Kyuzo Mifune - Judo Master

I happened upon the video below while surfing on YouTube one day.

Kyuzo Mifune (who was a 10th Dan at the time the video was taken apparently) fights a series of 7 much younger opponents ranked between 6th and 8th dan.

In each case he allows the opponent to try to throw him at least once before he finished the bout.

The way he avoids being thrown is so brilliant that it made me laugh-out-loud!

The man was a genius.

Apparently the video was made in 1948 and Mifune was 73 years old (although I find it impossible to reconcile these two facts with the report on Wikipedia that he was born in 1883). But his age certainly makes his performance all the more amazing.

The full video is available here.

Best Chinese Martial Arts Movie

I was trying to decide upon the best Chinese martial arts movie of all time (I will look at movies from other countries in future postings).

I thought a good approach would be to use the “wisdom of crowds” as exemplified by the rating system in IMDB.

So if I choose the best martial artist actors and directors, and then get their highest rated movie, I should have a list of the top contenders.

Here are the results (sorted by rating):

Ip Man (2008) – 8.10 - Donnie Yen
Hero (2002) – 8.00 - Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Yimou Zhang
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – 8.00 - Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Woo-ping Yuen
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) – 7.88 - Leih Lo
Kung Fu Hustle (2004) - 7.80 - Stephen Chow
Iron Monkey (1993) – 7.7 - Woo-ping Yuen, Hark Tsui
Enter the Dragon (1973) – 7.6 - Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen
A Touch of Zen (1971) – 7.6 - Sammo Hung
The Legend of Drunken Master (1994) – 7.59 Jackie Chan , Anita Mui
Drunken Master (1978) – 7.59 - Corey Yuen
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) - 7.47 - Yu Wang
The Prodigal Son (1981) – 7.45 - Biao Yuen


So this approach indicates that the top three Chinese martial arts movies of all time are Ip Man, Hero, and CTHD.

I have to admit that I wouldn’t really quibble with that.

Notes:

• “Enter the Dragon” was the top rated movie for a number of people as shown above but I also included their second rated movie to show something more reflective of their own work
• John Woo’s “The Killer” and Wai-keung Lau/Alan Mak’s “Infernal Affairs” came up a number of times in my searches but I rejected them as not being kung fu movies.

New DVDs

I went mad at the weekend and bought myself four (yes 4!) new DVDs.

There are:

1. Ip Man (2008) – IMDB rating 8.1
2. Ip Man 2 (2010) – IMDB rating 7.5
3. Kill Zone(2005) – IMDB rating 7.1
4. The Legend (of Fong Sai-Yuk) (1993) – IMDB rating 7.1

1-3 star Donnie Yen. 2-3 also star Sammo Hung. 4 stars Jet Li.
1-3 are directed by Yip Wai-Shun. 4 is directed by Cory Yuen.
The action director for 1-2 is Sammo Hung, for 3 is Donnie Yen, and for 4 is Cory Yuen.
All four DVDs are from Cine Asia and have lots of extras.
1-3 are 2 disc editions.
3-4 have an audio commentary by Bey Logan (I really enjoy his commentaries and this was a crucial factor in my purchasing decision).

I have already seen 1 and 2 before and I really loved them. Great performance by Donnie and great action sequences designed by Sammo. I was listening to Bey Logan last evening and he said that he had seen action in Ip Man 2 that he had never seen in a move before (he is obviously a great admirer of Sammo’s work).

I bought the four of them for €22 in Xtravision.

I have a lot of enjoyment in store over the coming days/weeks!