Edshugeo The GodMoor

Very, very impressive. I envy them.
More stuff and info here.

Official page and one for Loose Cannons.

Even more strange and fun stuff via Ain't It Cool and Twitch.

Labels: Awesome, fun, independent film-making, kung fu, movies, youtube and other video

Warning - It's fucking disgusting! Can't wait to see it.




Hat tip: Kaiju Shakedown

Labels: Anticipay-yay-shun..., japanese, movies, youtube and other video

Iron Man was great! I'm not good at writing reviews, so I'll leave it at that. It was awesome. Can't wait to buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Though if I buy the Blu-Ray, I'll have to wait till I have a player to watch it.

Had to wait over an hour in line for my free comics at Midtown Comics (near Times Square). Not exactly local, but that's where I liked to go for comics before I started relying on Amazon.com for just about anything.

Even though purchase wasn't required, it seemed quite a few people shopped in addition to picking up their freebies (a good thing for the store) which is one reason the line was slow in moving. Another reason - a lot of fucking people on the line.

I too, made a few purchases; The Batman/Grendel compilation (didn't know this was out till recently), the latest Black Panther trade (Little Green Men), first volume of Y: The Last Man (trying something new), a 50 cent preview of Grendel: Behold The Devil, a 50 cent (given free) preview of the new Crisis mini-series called DC Universe 0, which I read on the way home (it sucks, of course) and Giant Robot magazine #53. Hadn't read that in a little while.

I won't go into the free titles except to say I got 27 free comics, which was already compiled by a store worker. Should keep me busy for a little while.

Labels: Awesome, comics, good deal, movies

Around this time for the past few years, participating comic book shops have given away free promotional comics to capitalize on the potential for new customers generated by big budget superhero films like Spiderman, and now Iron Man.

I always, always, always miss it, and I'm always, always, always pissed when I get home that Saturday and find out it was Free Comic Book Day. Except for one or two times when I knew about it, and just had other concerns or things to do.

Well not this time. Grand Theft Auto IV killed my XBox 360, or maybe it was a co-inky-dink that the inevitable (for about 33% of 360 owners) Red Rings Of Death just happened to follow an increasing number of freeze ups I experienced while playing that game. I then put in San Andreas which froze up, and upon re-starting the machine, gazed in horror, upon the three flashing red lights.

It's going back to Microsoft after talking to what sounded like a thirteen year old boy over at support. Now that I think about it, I better make damn sure it's actually going to Microsoft and not some teen-aged hacker who's somehow manage to redirect XBox calls to his house. If he had an Indian accent, I'd be less suspicious. I dunno what their child labor laws are like over there.

Anyway, the point was, I've nothing better to do* so I might as well get some free comics and maybe check out Iron Man, which I was looking forward to seeing for a while now.

*Okay, "nothing better to do", doesn't include a number of things I ought to be doing, but it's gonna be interesting to see how much more productive I become in the next 3 or 4 weeks without the 360. I still have a PS2 and a bunch of unfinished/unplayed games, but I know I won't spend as much time on them. Then again....

Free Comic Book Day

Another casualty of GTA IV/RROD

Labels: Anticipay-yay-shun..., comics, DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER, good deal, movies, PS2, video games, XBox 360

But I do.

Labels: Awesome, comics, death, funny-ass shit, independent film-making, movies, youtube and other video

I wanna see this movie! Like yesterday. Caught the trailer at the beginning of the DVD for Lucky # Slevin (great movie), and assumed it was made for cable cuz I'd never heard of it.

Also assumed it would already be on DVD considering Slevin isn't new (picked up the DVD cheap at the supermarket a coupl'a months ago). It hasn't been released, neither theatrically (for which it was filmed), nor to video and the flick is like two or three years old. Could it be just be bad? Maybe, but that hasn't stopped 90% of the shit that does get released.

It's been through some audience testing, which means it has been dumbed down at some point and that isn't good, but that can be remedied on a "director's cut".

I'm starting to look underground, but so far, nothing.

Killshot features Micky Rourke, Diane Lane, and this guy, Thomas Jane, who looks and sounds enough like Christopher Lambert, that I almost wonder if he really is The Highlander, and that he changed his name to continue working in Hollywood. Hmmm.

Labels: DVD, movies, youtube and other video

Another Leung Tsang* related movie not mentioned in yesterday's post, probably cuz I've never seen it, believe it or not. I'm aiming to fix that. I think Leung Kar Yan is playing Leung Tsang this time. Here's the trailer...



*Spelling varies.

Labels: DVD, kung fu, movies, youtube and other video

Last week I finished watching Real Kung Fu, a 20 episode TV drama series starring Yuen Biao, Gordon Liu, Leung Kar Yan, Lo Mang, Yuen Wah and Lee Hoi Seng.

The story seemed to revolve around an unambitious middle age man (Yuen Biao, who I assume is playing his age) who gets caught up in a murder mystery. When Leung Kar Yan (who used to be nicknamed "Beardy") appears as an effeminate ex-opera performer (and kung fu expert) with asthma, I figure it's just a nod to a character played by Lam Ching Ying in Prodigal Son. Even knowing that Yuen played the lead in Prodigal Son, I thought nothing more of it, since the lead character here seemed completely different.

It wasn't until an article on Kung Fu Cinema about a newer series called Wing Chun, did I start to make a connection. I was still in the middle of Real Kung Fu (from 2005), when I read that Wing Chun (2007) was a direct sequel to Prodigal Son that re-united Sammo Hung, the film's director with Yuen Biao who played Leung Jan.

Soon I'd figure out that Leung Tsan from the series I was watching was the same, though the story was different.

Leung Chan (spelling varies) was a Wing Chun expert from the 1800's/1900's. He taught the man (Chan Wah-Shun) who taught Yip Man who was Bruce Lee's teacher in Wing Chun, which I guess makes him Lee's Grand teacher. Had I not been a kung fu school drop out, I would have known this and not had to find this out on Wikipedia, but there it is.

Here's the trailer for Prodigal Son:



The opening theme for Real Kung Fu:



and a scene from Wing Chun:



The article says that Wing Chun (a 40 episode series) will be released on DVD in May by Tai Seng for a suggested retail price of sixty bucks, but it's available now from YesAsia for about forty eight bucks. Of course, it can also be found online, *ahem*. I look forward to watching it.

Labels: Awesome, downloads, DVD, kung fu, Liu Chia Hui, movies, tv, youtube and other video

Here's a new film premiering in July in China. Starring Sammo Hung and introducing some impressive young talent.



And more about it at Kung Fu Cinema...

Labels: kung fu, movies, youtube and other video

Geert Wilders has had his website, which promotes his anti-Islam film, Fitna, shut down by it's host, Network Solutions. While I don't agree with some of Mr. Wilders views*, I don't like what's going on here. Of course, he can move to a different host, though they aren't the only providers with clauses about "hate speech".

What I like even less is this story (from January) that Network Solutions is registering domain names entered into their search site, to force interested parties into purchasing said domains from them instead of from a (less expensive) competitor.

However, when trying this myself with a couple of bullshit names (soundofnmnmnm, jesusisgoogly), both remained available after leaving and returning to the site. Either they've changed their tune, or have become good at filtering out bullshit names. The latter is unlikely since so many domain names sound silly to begin with (including my own).

Jesusisgoogly might have a couple of decent uses, but I'm gonna pass. As of this writing, though, it's up for grabs.

* www.fitnathemovie.info is still online and was linked above. It appears to be a mirror to www.fitnathemovie.com, though I never saw the offending site, so I guess I can't really say. Supposedly, the fifteen minute film will be viewable there.

Labels: bullshit, Islam, movies, religion, terrorism, World Affairs

I was rooting for those guys back when there was a format war, but now it's a little bit late for them. They're sounding somewhat optimistic. Perhaps they've simply come too far to turn back. I dunno. I don't care.

I'm waiting for either the price of full profile (2.0) Blu-Ray players to come down significantly, or a compelling reason to buy a PS3 (I already have an XBox 360).

In the meantime, I get my HD fix from the occasionally pixelated fare on Cablevision's Voom HD network, and also from downloading WMVHD encodes of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD releases. These look fantastic, and I've noticed no pixelation at all, watching Mr. And Mrs. Smith and almost no artifacts during Appleseed Ex-Machina. This quells my fear that the pixelation which occurred during fast motion scenes on the HD cable channels were due to a limitation of my moderately priced 37" screen. I now know that isn't the case, based on those downloads and from renting Ratatouille on XBox Live marketplace.

The WMVHD downloads are obtained from usenet (alt.binaries.movies.wmv, alt.binaries.HDTV), saved on a USB hard-drive formatted as HFS+ using Macdrive 7 (I'm not a Mac user), 'cause the 360 doesn't recognize NTFS despite it coming from the same company (Microsoft), and FAT 32 has a 4GB file size limitation (most of what I've downloaded is 8+GBs). The 360 is compatible with HFS+ which is an Apple file system. Hmm.

The only problem I'm having so far, is I can't copy files of folders to this drive if they have Chinese characters in the names, which is the case for some in my music collection.
03/16/08 - easily rectified by right clicking on the drive, selecting "Mac File Names" and "International".

Labels: Anime, downloads, HDTV, movies, music video, PS3, tv, XBox 360

D-Addicts Chinese Series Of The Month for March is the excellent 2006 version of Louis Cha's (Jin Yong) Return Of The Condor Heroes. It's available on DVD in the U.S. as Condor Hero.

I eagerly await the long delayed update of Legend Of The Condor Heroes, which may show up this year.



The Unofficial Wuxia Series Of March are two shows: Young Zhang San Feng and Young Warriors Of The Yang Clan.

Young Zhang San Feng is also known as Taiji Prodigy. This looks promising. Plus, it's Dicky Cheung.




I may skip Young Yang Warriors. I just finished Warriors Of The Yang Clan, and while I thought there was a good story or two there, I was generally annoyed by how badly those stories were told. It was still enjoyable enough to watch and the cast, led by Ti Lung as General Yang Ye were pretty good, as were most of the fight scenes.



The movie Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (starring Gordon Liu and Alexander Fu Sheng) is based on the same legendary family, but was centered around a different son, than that series.





Nah. Actually, I'm gonna check out Young Warriors, too.

Labels: bittorrent, dorama, downloads, kung fu, Liu Chia Hui, movies, Shaw Bros., tv, youtube and other video

Now that it's official that HD-DVD is dead and that Blu-Ray is the victor in the war over next gen movie software formats, what's to be done with unsold players and discs?

Price cuts, of course.

I once thought I'd jump at HD-DVD if the price reached a certain low, but those price drops came only after things got progressively worse for them and defeat almost certain. So, I still held off.

Now comes a rumor that the HD-DVD add on for the XBox 360 will be lowered to about fifty bucks. Close to the $40 I thought it was worth, post format war. Before the end, I would'a considered paying $80. (now confirmed - Feb. 26th, 2008)

I reasoned that I could enjoy a bunch of movies for a while (likely to fall in price as well) and then at some point, take advantage of the notion that the 360 add-on can be made to work on a PC, rip the movies, and eventually burn those to Blu-Ray, once such burners and blank discs became affordable. That's a good plan for those who have already built up a sizable collection of HD-DVD discs (maybe not if their PCs are Mac or Linux, I dunno). Not such a good plan for me. I'd end up accumulating crap, I would eventually have to throw away. Eventually meaning in a year or two. Might not be such a bad thing if disc prices end up being close to that of a rental.

For now I'll continue to buy (and download) DVDs, though not as frequently as before, and maybe slowly start to buy a Blu-Ray disc here and there, so that I'll have a few titles once I get my first player (maybe, ...possibly a PS3, not likely before December).

Prior to getting my first DVD player at the end of 1998 (I think), I made frequent trips to Chinatown and stocked up on VCDs, a movie disc format that never took off here in the U.S., but was very popular in Asia. I was able to watch them on my computer, and knew I would pick a DVD player that would support that format. That allowed me to have a small library (in addition to the first DVDs I purchased) ready. Stephen Chow movies made up a good chunk of that collection. His movies were not as heavily bootlegged (at the time) as a lot of the stuff coming out of Hong Kong in that decade and before, so it was new stuff to me, and a change from Jet Li, Jackie Chan*, Tsui Hark, etc. I almost made Chow's Kung Fu Hustle my first Blu-Ray purchase, but backed out of it. I did order the Dragon Dynasty DVD release of Royal Tramp, which contains both 1&2 (based on Louis Cha's Deer And The Cauldron AKA Duke Of Mount Deer). I haven't seen them since watching those VCDs. Though I recently watched a TV series starring Dickie Cheung and produced by Royal Tramp director/producer Wong Jing.

Of course, with Blu-Ray's backwards compatibility, I already have a 400+ strong library of commercial (which means I bought, not downloaded them) DVDs, many of which look good to great on my 37". There is also decent hi-def content on cable, and downloadable rentals on XBox Live (which I'm not that partial to).

While I've yet to make the PC to 360 connection work, for the purpose of streaming video and movies from the computer to the TV in the living room, I can connect a USB hard drive to the XBox 360 to play that content. Same with the PSP (music and video, not games). I've not downloaded hi-def content from the web, yet. At least not in the formats recognizable to the 360 (wmv, mp4, avi). But that seems like a possibility.

In any case, I think I shall leave HD-DVD to rot.

* I once read a review of City Hunter (the live action HK version) that stated that Jackie Chan was trying to make a Stephen Chow film (it was directed by Wong Jing, who'd made a lot of films with Chow at the time). Seeing how that movie made a mockery of one of my favorite 80s anime (and not in an amusing way), I was a little hesitant to experience Chow's wackiness first hand. Once I made the jump, I was hooked.

Labels: DVD, HDTV, movies, PS3, wu-xia, XBox 360

"Condelicious, is that you?"


Well, now I'm ordering Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle. It can be gotten cheaply on Amazon. Close to the price of a rental from a few of the 3rd party vendors.

Also on the stupid but probably good list? Kung Fu Panda. It's the sequence with the chopsticks that sold me. I'd sworn off mixed animal CGI movies after Over The Hedge (and all the ones that came before). It was alright, but enough already. However I can't pass on a mixed animal CGI movie with kung fu, can I? Not if there's any actual effort being put in the fight choreography.

And Jackie Chan voices the monkey, though I don't think he can be heard in any of the trailers, yet.

Labels: Awesome, DVD, funny-ass shit, good deal, kung fu, movies, youtube

Old news, but new news to me. And great fucking news at that.
In addition to the releases by Dragon Dynasty and Image Entertainment (not to mention PC only rentals* from Jaman), Classic remastered Shaw Brothers movies will be made available on DVD in the U.S. by Media Blasters.

The titles;

Five Elements Ninjas AKA Super Ninjas!
Heroes Two
The Master
Challenge of the Masters
Martial Club (Oh, Hellz yeah!)
The Deadly Duo
The Brave Archer
The Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
Black Magic 2
Flag of Iron

Great selection of titles. As mentioned in this interview with Linn Haynes, it's a wonder they hadn't been hoarded by DD or Image. Martial Club (sequel to Challenge Of The Masters) is one of my all time favorite kung fu movies. Certainly the best movie starring Gordon Liu Chia Hui and Wang Lung Wei. "Fei Hong! Use your family's kung fu!"

Apparently they start coming out in the spring and will be released one per month, beginning with Heroes Two. No plans for Blu-Ray yet, despite the using Hi-Def masters.

Labels: Awesome, DVD, kung fu, Liu Chia Hui, movies, nostalgia

The Forbidden Kingdom with Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Liu Yi Fei (Crystal Liu) and some unknown (to me) White kid for local (Hollywood) flavor.



I take it that this movie is gonna be acted in English, which may or may not be kinda awkward to listen to, since there's only about one native speaker (I think) throughout most of it. Then again, some Chinese had that issue with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

I'm just gonna hope for the best.

Labels: kung fu, movies, wu-xia, youtube

is really The Banquet which really sucks all kinds of ass just like The Curse Of The Golden Armor did. In other words, I don't recommend it.

Labels: bullshit, kung fu, movies

I like this version better than what was previously posted.

Labels: kung fu, movies, music, Songza

The theme to one of Jet Li's Huang Fei Hong movies (Once Upon A Time In China series), sung by a one time Master Huang himself ( Drunken Master movies), Jackie Chan;

Labels: Awesome, China, kung fu, movies, music, Songza

Labels: Awesome, fun, japanese, movies, youtube

Not this blog. I've just been lazy chillin'.

DRM for music downloads.

The last major label will throw in the towel on digital rights management and prepare to fight Apple for valuable download revenues.

Sony-BMG are dipping their feet in the waters of the DRM free market by starting to offer some of their music.

About iTunes and their competition, it is said;

Still, no service has yet been able to offer DRM-free music downloads from all four major labels. Amazon could yet become a contender.

If a store becomes a popular place to shop, then of course it makes sense to have your music available there, if you can. However, it isn't necessary for the consumer to have only one website to get all our downloads. It's not like having to travel a few miles to another store. Most of what I buy comes from eMusic, everything else is either "found" or bought on CD, though that's more of a rarity for me nowadays. Though I still think 99 cents is too much for a MP3, I have come close on a couple of occasions to buying music on iTunes (Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon) and Amazon (a compilation from Nine Inch Nails, Still), both of which are priced at about eight bucks. And both DRM-free.

If, as a record company, one doesn't like iTunes, there's no reason why Sony, Warners, or any other big company can't sell DRM-free music on their own sites, as long as they aren't stupid about it (there was that Sony site a while back that only worked on Internet Explorer). Plus they would make whatever change that would normally go to iTunes/whoever.

Also Dead?

HD-DVD

As prices started to come down, I came close to getting an HD-DVD player, but came to my senses. Now it appears that Warner's is supporting Blu-Ray, leaving HD-DVD with about 30% of the Hollywood studios on their side. A while back, I was rooting for HD-VMD, but they were a long shot even before the price drops.

Folks are declaring the format war over, though it might be best to wait and see. Also Blu-Ray player prices are not where they need to be, yet. Especially for full spec players. Many of the players on the market only contain few of the features of the Blu-Ray spec. Typical of Sony in the last few years to release hardware that does a little bit of what it's supposed to do. Some would say, all it really needs to do is play the movies. Sure, if it was a machine costing less than 200 bucks, but right now they're much more expensive than that.

PS3 is still a non-issue for me. I'm not exactly starving for games for my XBox 360, so until Sony's "superior technology" actually does something interesting on the gaming front, I'll have no need for it.

Speaking of the XBox, I rented the movie, Ratatouille from XBox Live last week. I was curious as to what Hi-Def content looked like on the console, especially since the sizes of their movie files (4-6 GB, generally) would fit on a standard dual layer DVD. The resolution of Hi-Def on XBL is 720p vs. 1080i for most hi-def on Cablevision (sports on cable tends to be on 720p, though). The movie looked very good and I noticed no quality difference between this and a movie on Hi-def cable. Except for the lack of pixelation. There was none of it during Ratatouille. On a hi-def channel on cable, there's plenty of it during fast motion action, or during scenes that contain flickering lights. I initially thought this might be a limitation of my relatively cheap Olevia TV, but I doubt that now.

I'd been using HDMI on my Xbox and component cables on the HD cable box/DVR. The tv has only one HDMI input. Today (Jan 5th '08) I switched the HDMI cable to the set top box and watched a little bit of Yuen Wo Ping's Tiger Cage 2 (which was on the DVR) and noticed an improvement on motion scenes. Just a tiny bit of pixelation in one scene and they (the pixels) were much smaller. It was a worn film print, so I wasn't able to notice any picture improvement, and more time will be needed to see if HDMI really has reduced the pixelation issue. Jury seems to be out as to which is clearly better, but it seems to depend on the equipment. I may have to get an HDMI switch, but I'll wait till I get a Hi-Def player of some sort. Now to see if the XBox 360 suffers from component cables...

I won't be downloading much in the way of movies from XBL, though. 480 points, translates into about six dollars and change, plus tax. I didn't time the 5 Gb download, but it took a while.
Downloading to hard drives is great for rentals, but bad for owned content (and the only good use of DRM). If they bring it down to 3 bucks, I'll do a lot more of it.

Standard DVD still wins. Until a decent Blu-ray player (not the half ass shit that's out there) hits at 300 bucks and below.

Labels: kung fu, movies, music business, PS3, technology, XBox 360

Lot's of Katsu Shintaro's famous blind swordsman (and masseuse), Zatoichi showing up on the Kung Fu HD Channel over the past couple of weeks or so, and for a little while longer. Seeing how often they repeat movies, I'll have some time to catch up. I usually catch a flick already in progress, but I've caught a few of these already and they're just great.
Katsu in this role is a lot like Peter Falk in Columbo; kinda clumsy and sloppy looking, but still cool, because unlike the characters around him, we know about the badass lurking beneath the surface.

The second film looks much better than it did on DVD, but that's because the dvd was downright crummy. I didn't check the first which I also have on disc. So far, all of the samurai flicks on this channel have used decent film transfers. Some of the kung fu movies as well, though some of the lower-lower budget stuff (Bruce Li, etc.) was obviously deemed unworthy of re-masters.

Labels: Awesome, HDTV, japanese, kung fu, movies, youtube

Pretty much what I've been doing for a while. This is like my theme song. Comes from a relatively recent album by Sparks, called Hello Young Lovers, which is badass in a Bohemian Rhapsody meets Meatloaf, though not really kinda way. I thought those guys were just a new wave group from the eighties, but there's way more to them than that. I vaguely recall an old Saturday Night Live appearance, where I thought the keyboardist was named Roland because of the prominent logo on the instrument. I also recall they had the movie rights to Mai, The Psychic Girl, and they were gonna make it a musical directed by Tsui Hark. The idea frightened me at the time, but now I wish it got made. Wonder if they went ahead and wrote any songs for it.

I'm still digging Bad Brains' Build A Nation. I used to like the idea of Bad Brains more than I did their records. Now they've made a album worthy of a Punk/Reggae band, though now it's more heavy rock, than punk, in my opinion.

Video Games.

Played through Me And My Katamari on the PSP. The controls are painful compared to We Love Katamari on the PS2, but I love the 8 bit version you get at the end. Sorry if that's a spoiler. Also love the theme, Katamari on the Funk. I doubt I'll get the 360 version (Beautiful Katamari) unless it's cheap and I have nothing better to do, which, I guess, is inevitable. Starting Killzone Liberation on the PSP. Demo was cool so I picked this up a week or two ago (I know it's been out for a while).

Still have to finish We Love Katamari on the PS2. I want to be done with all my games on the PS2 and then say goodbye to them. There's a bunch. I'm bad at finishing games, but lately I'm a bit more into it. Having the XBox 360, it would be easy to move on, but I can't. I won't. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a birthday present dammit! So was Dynasty Warriors 2, I think. And I just bought two or three PS2 games like 6 or 7 weeks ago (Shadow Of The Collossus, Socom II - Socom was used - 5 bucks, and one other?) in addition to a few other decent titles just sitting around like War Of The Monsters. So I will finish them and maybe pass them on to friends.

Finished BioShock and Halo 3 on the XBox 360. Bioshock is the better of the two games, though I've yet to try out the online multiplayer function of XBox Live. I actually let my free one month gold membership lapse without trying it out. Wanted to be a better player first. I can barely shoot straight even at this point, but I'm gonna join up next week or so.

I also play various demos, or Burnout Revenge if I want a quick gaming session. I just bought The Orange Box, primarily for Portal, but it includes Half Life 2 and Team Fortress. Looks like fun. Haven't opened it yet.

Movies.

Transformers was fun, but got annoying during the second hour (I think) with the comedy bit with them searching for glasses while the robots try to hide from the parents and the big bad government goons showing up. Turned into E.T. for a little bit. I was never a fan of the cartoon, though the animated Transformers: The Movie was pretty decent.

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang was awesome, though. Picked it up at the supermarket a while back for six or seven bucks and finally checked it out. Funny as a muh-fug. Really looking forward to Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

Also went to see Jodie Foster's Death Wish movie, The Brave One. I liked it. Not great, but good enough. Really looking forward to seeing Terrence Howard in some kinda armor in Iron Man or maybe it's sequel.

TV?

Finished Heavenly Sword, Dragon Sabre (2003), which finishes up the Condor Heroes Trilogy, though it's not really a sequel, in my opinion. In the order I watched them, this followed the 1983 version of Legend Of The Condor Heroes and the 2006 Return Of The Condor Heroes (simply called Condor Hero in the U.S. release).

After the 2007 Legend Of is released with subtitles (fansubs perhaps), I may revisit the trilogy, following with the anime version titled Legend Of but which is actually Return Of (I have some but not all of this series) and then cap it off with the 1986 New Heaven Sword And Dragon Sabre. I also have a few volumes of the comic book adaptations of Louis Cha's novels. Legendary Couple by Tony Wong is based upon Return, and Heaven Sword Dragon Sabre was adapted by Ma Wing Shing. Both were published in English by Comics One, which went out of business before completing either story.

I've got Heroes stockpiled on my cable DVR, but haven't watched any of this season, yet. I will soon.

Audio Books.

eMusic has a audio books subscription service separate from their music downloading site. I joined, but will probably cancel after my second month. Listened to After Dark by Haruki Murakami and started A Briefer History Of Time by Stephen Hawkins. The first was a novel and was a breeze to get through, despite some audio glitches here and there. The second, not so much. Though meant to be lighter reading (listening) than Brief History, it requires a bit more of my attention than I can give it during a morning commute, or while shopping. I have to take a different approach, and will, later.

My previous experience with audio books was limited to Al Franken's Lies and The Lying Liars That Tell Them. A great audio book, but I didn't hold it up as an example of the medium, because it's a collection of funny stories delivered by a comedian who knows well how to perform his work. I've been told that normally, one should avoid audio books read by the authors themselves. Consider Al Franken an exception to this rule.

Comics.

Blood Sword back issues and the new re-translated, digitally enhanced volumes (Chinese Hero - Tales Of The Blood Sword). I'll talk about those another time, but I'll say the new volumes are great, mostly.

My creative endeavors?

All I do now is dick around, but when I get back to recording, I'll use the Vox page to blog about it rather than only using it for audio links and writing a separate blog.

Labels: comics, dorama, DVD, kung fu, movies, music, music video, PSP, tv, video games, wu-xia, XBox 360, youtube

Watch the trailer here (thanks Hud) or download it here and convert it to your favorite device.

I'm sooo on that, by the way. I'm even gonna buy the action figures (assuming they don't suck. They can't, right? Right?)

Labels: downloads, movies

I'm kinda excited about this half of the Grindhouse double feature from a little while back. I struggled to maintain consciousness during Planet Terror, the first half, directed by Robert Rodriguez, and even lost that struggle a couple of times. But I did enjoy Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's car chase drama with Kurt Russell.

A lot of people are bitching about the two films being released separately on DVD (this should'a been mentioned in the ads for the film - more people would'a gone to the theatre), and before I saw it in the theatre, I did too*. Now that I've seen both films, I only need Death Proof. However, I don't need Death Proof with any missing reels, nor with the fake scratches and faded film effects. Since they're doing away with the Grindhouse concept (the name appears on the cover: Grindhouse Presents...), might as well treat this as a general movie release.

One review on Amazon claims that the "missing reel" will be included, but other places I checked indicate that this will be the case with Planet Terror. Maybe it's true for both. I'll wait for an actual review of the disc before making any purchase.

Kill Bill is another story. That should be a single release with a crap load of extras. I saw both at the theatre, but passed on buying the DVDs. I downloaded them instead.

Labels: DVD, movies

Batman's origin often comes to (my) mind whenever the Ku Klux Klan and/or Birth Of A Nation is being discussed and vice versa. Last week, a 1911 entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica was discussed on the Undercover Blackman's site and this passage caught my eye;

“[The Ku Klux Klan] began in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a social club of young men. It had an absurd ritual and a strange uniform. The members accidentally discovered that the fear of it had a great influence over the lawless but superstitious blacks..."

There's a famous line in Batman's origin where he says something along the lines of "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot" just before a bat inspires him to go out in public dressed up as a guy in a cape and tights.

I first* made the Klan/Batman connection, after seeing a documentary on TV (I was probably flipping channels) years ago which included a clip from Birth Of A Nation, where there's some guy chillin' on the lawn somewhere and he sees a couple of Black kids playing. Soon some other kid comes up with a sheet over her (his?) head who scares the crap outta the young ones. This gives the guy on the grass an idea and the rest you can figure out.

Bob Kane was Jewish, I think. Bill Finger, I don't know much about. They're not likely to be big fans of the Klan, but by some reports, BOAN was a box-office success equivalent to a film making $300 million, in today's dollars. A lot of people saw it.

Still, maybe it's a stretch. Though, I always wondered if the fact that superheroes are largely an American phenomenon had to do with the fact that we actually have masked vigilantes in our history seen as heroes in the decades leading up to the early years of comicbooks.

Speaking of Batman, I came upon this "remix" of Detective Comics #27 a couple of days ago, following a link on James Hudnall's blog (the second one). It's called Dusk-Man. I thought it was pretty funny.

*I'm sure I'm not even close to being the first one to think about this. I was referring to the first time it occurred to me.
About three years ago I noticed an ain't it cool news talkbacker used the phrase "Birth Of A Notion" in a thread about the then upcoming Batman Begins. And certainly, connections between the Nazi's raping of Nietzsche's Ubermensch ideas and Superman (created by two Jews) has been brought up time and time again.

Labels: comics, funny-ass shit, movies, society

Archive.org makes a number of public domain titles available for viewing and download, as well as other media with various copyrights and whatnot. I'm not sure this movie belongs here, but a number of films like this tend to show up on supermarket and discount shelves from multiple dvd labels, so the copyright on the English version is probably not being enforced at the moment.

I haven't seen this one, yet, but it looks entertaining by the looks of the first few minutes.

You can stream it here, or download the mp4 which may or may not work in your portable media player. I haven't tried it in my PSP, yet.

Enjoy...

Labels: downloads, good deal, kung fu, movies

Yikes! Got a heads up from the Undercover Black Man that the recording in question is Albert Brooks, not Nick Nolte, and as a result not quite as funny. A link to an interview with Mr. Brooks is posted in the comments section. Cue my own Krusty groan. My apologies to all, especially to Mr. Nolte and his family.

Back in the early nineties, James Brooks shot a musical called I'll Do Anything. The cast, which included Nick Nolte and Tracey Ullman sang and danced to songs mostly written by Prince. Test audiences weren't crazy about the result, and the movie was re-edited into a dramedy. I saw it on cable years ago and didn't think it was that bad of a movie, but I always wanted to see the original version out of curiosity. As a Prince fan, I'd be compelled to purchase a special edition DVD with the musical on it, if it were ever made available.

A non-Prince tune stayed in the film and the lyrics to Don't Talk To Strangers was used as dialog (or was it the other way around?).
A number of the songs appeared on the bootleg Platinum, and then (3 songs) on The Vault: Old Friends For Sale (officially released and excellent). Don't Talk to Strangers was covered by Chaka Khan on Come To My House. The Prince version of that song and I'll Do Anything hasn't been released officially, I think.

Recently, 30 Years Of Unreleased Funk Vol. 3 appeared on usenet. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet (and may be missing a track or two), but I jumped right to the I'll Do Anything tracks, particularly the one's with Nick Nolte. Man, it would be tough to try and sell this soundtrack. He even does a Krusty The Clown like groan somewhere in there. Using the mug shot pic above will probably seem like a cheap shot till you hear this tune... (took that down out of fairness)

I'll Do Anything - Nick Nolte Albert Brooks

I'll Do Anything - Prince Demo

I'll Do Anything - Prince from Platinum

The above are megaupload links. I don't know how long they'll last...

Labels: downloads, funny-ass shit, movies, music, oops, Prince

I can't believe I have the Kung Fu Channel. In HD even. I'd noticed a couple of new HD stations a couple of weeks ago, but never fully explored what was available. I was flippin' channels a little while ago and found something called The Samurai Saga (haven't watched it yet), an old Japanese film with subtitles. The channel ID puzzled me.

"KFUHD? What's KFU? Wait...

No way! No Fuckin' Way!"

So I check online, and yes Virginia, there is a Kung Fu channel (766 on IO in Nassau County, NY), and I got it (along with some other stuff) without even asking. Me so happy.

I know it won't be perfect. For instance, they're showing The Defender instead of it's original version, The Bodyguard From Beijing. There's sure to be a fair share of crap (sometimes I like crap), but there's also a bunch of flicks listed I either haven't seen, never heard of, or have seen, but never on a decent DVD. Awesomeness.

Shit. Am I gonna have to get a Tivo-like box?

Labels: good deal, HDTV, kung fu, movies, tv

Swiped from Kung Fu Cinema;

007.06.26 | Upcoming | by Mark Pollard

This news is a month old but definitely worth mentioning. Wong Kar-wai has been hard at work re-editing his sole wuxia film ASHES OF TIME for a big-scale re-release. Back in May it was announced that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired what is now tentatively known as ASHES OF TIME REDUX for distribution in the U.S. It has also sold to several European territories at this year’s Cannes.

Originally released in 1994, ASHES OF TIME is Wong’s loose adaptation of wuxia author Louis Cha’s “Legend of the Condor Heroes.” It stars some of Hong Kong’s hottest talents of the past 30 years including Tony Leung, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, and the late Leslie Cheung. Wire-assisted action choreography is directed by the great Sammo Hung. Award-winning cinematography is provided by Wong’s long-time collaborator Christopher Doyle.

The o