Archive for the 'Movies' Category

As a child I have always loved books and moves involving adventure and martial arts. I loved the swordsmanship of Conan the Barbarian books and the sage lessons of the Kung Fu TV series. Some of the best martial arts flicks are timeless such as Seven Samurai but the theme of all of these wonderful books and movies show how the fighter overcomes overwhelming adversity by focusing his Ki (Qi, Chi).

Well I was asked to read Chambers and I agreed as I’d not read a martial arts book in a while. Let me just say once I started reading this book – I could not put it down easily. I usually take months to read a book (at a few pages a night before dropping off to sleep) but Chambers is a real page turner. I was a bit apprehensive as this looked to be a teen adventure but I was pleasantly surprised that I related well to the characters and the book grabbed my interest from the first couple of pages.

In this post I will review the book (soon to be a movie) and interview the author, Sarah Gerdes.

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As you all know by know – I try to cover the hard hitting issues in martial arts. One such area affecting our national security is how robots, androids, and super computers might be used in future conflicts. I mean are the dogs of war going to be unleashed without using real dogs?

One such movie that explores this idea somewhat is Iron Man! Yes as a boy I used to read about Tony Starks adventures when he put on the suit effectively making him a robot!

In this post I am going to explore robots in popular music, movies, TV and as a replacement for troublesome mates! To start out this humorous litany take a look at this almost top hit song!

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As often happens in my search for exciting topics to write about, I was channel surfing and I came across (by accident) this girl, Dallas Jessup, speaking about a free DVD that teaches girls to stay safe and fight back! I got the web address and checked out the movie here. 

Now I am a big proponent of women’s self-defense and I think any effort to pull together all of the facets in a successful defense are good. The problem with women’s self-defense normally are many girls and women think and feel like they are powerless against a bigger, stronger, and meaner male attacker!

In this post I’ll speak about the fallacy of this view that girls and women are powerless and examine this movie, Just Yell Fire, for you perusal. Here is a quick video trailer of the move. I encourage all to visit the website (http://www.JustYellFire.com) if you have any women in your family (most families have some) that might benefit.

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I had a treat a few weeks ago, as I heard a new movie was coming out called New Moon, by watching the first movie called Twilight. The reason it took so long for me to watch Twilight was because I heard it was a kids movie… you know a love story written around a little action.

Well to my surprise the love story was not too bad and the vampires in Twilight were fun to watch! I also heard the werewolf in New Moon (played the native American in Twilight) was a kid karate champion so I decided to review parts of this saga and the actor Taylor Lautner. Here is a preview of New Moon.

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This is just a quick note that I mentioned Blood of the Last Vampire in my Halloween Self Defense; Vampires post and I just watched it. Boy let me tell you this was a good martial arts flick. The girl in this movie was quite the swordswoman and there was an interesting plot while all of the great rippage happened.

I rented the movie from Netflix after I saw it was one of the martial arts movie choices.

Thats all for now – just wanted to do a quick follow up on the movie I mentioned in the Halloween post.

I was flipping channels the other day and came across an old grainy black and white film on IFC where a martial artist was backed against a wharf and taking on his antagonists! The movie is called Sanshiro Sugata (the Judo Saga) and was filmed in 1943. What caught my eye was how he was dispatching his opponents – by throwing them over the side.

This was reminiscent of when I found the Seven Samurai movie on IFC. As the story unfolded it was apparently about the early days of Judo and its players being challenged by Jiu Jitsu combatants! In this post I will review the movie and speak about Judo’s beginnings as well as my views of Judo as an effective martial art. Here is a clip from the movie as the head of a Jiu Jitsu school faces one of the main Judo players (subtitled in French I think).

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