Archive for the 'Celebrities' Category

I would guess that just about everyone that likes action movies has heard of the Resident Evil movies with Milla Jovovich!  I was first introduced to Milla Jovovich while watching, “The Fifth Element” playing opposite to Bruce Willis. I was amazed watching her back then as a fairly new actress.

Milla Jovovich started out as a modeling and then expanded into acting and music.  I reviewed her in Ultraviolet in 2007 here and have since watch the three Resident Evil movies. In this post I will highlight her three Resident evil films and offer a glimpse of the new Resident Evil Afterlife movie coming out in 2010. Here is the trailer of the first movie.

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A couple of the great flicks I’ve seen were Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2! I really enjoyed the gratuitous violence the bride (Uma Thurman) extracted against her former assassins buddies! The story line is about an assassin leaving her former boss/boy friend – basically quiting the assassin business and getting married to lead a normal life. Well Bill (David Carradine) and his assassins showed up at the wedding and left the bride on life support. The movies (vol 1 & 2) are the brides revenge!

 While I had seen some strong female movie roles – I had not to this point seen so much violence by women in a move! I think this is due to Quentin Tarantino’s vision of bringing back the blood and gore back into movies. You really do have to suspend dis-belief watching these movies because like the typical karate flick, you will see fighters flying through the air – perpetuating the myth that karate fighters are somehow bigger than life! Watch some short sequences from these movies and I will discuss how women martial artists can fight today.

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I was in High School when this movie came out, Billy Jack. I remembered it as one of those old hippy-indian protest films but just watched it again here. At the time I watched the movie, the USA was in a time of turmoil on many fronts. I used to watch the evening news and heard the body count of the day in the Vietnam war (or the second Indochina war).

While I did not get into the politics of the whole war – hippy thing as I was a military brat, I did notice how people treated the veterans poorly at the time. Let me just say that the military is never the problem. An old saying I’ve heard and still rings true today is that old men make wars, and young men fight them. I am happy today that message seems to be understood.

As I was watching the movie I realized why I liked it – there was a former Indian Green Beret that was trying to protect the reservation, Indians, and hippy school from the bigoted local towns people. It made for some interesting situations where Tom Laughlin had to use his Hapkido skills! I’ll examine some of my fist attempts as self-defense and how this movie highlighted some of the reasons a populace has to learn self-defense. Here is a quick clip of Billy Jack’s famous kick!

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I ran into this old 80′s TV series on YouTube the other day and thought I’d share it you. David Rasche played in Sledge Hammer! Quoting Wikipedia, Sledge Hammer TV series is about:

Inspector Sledge Hammer of the Los Angeles Police Department is a violent, sadistic, insensitive, yet oddly likable detective. His best friend is a .44 Magnum with a customized grip featuring a drawing of a sledgehammer. Hammer sleeps and showers with his gun, and even talks to it. Hammer believes in shooting first and asking questions never. In the pilot episode, he deals with a sniper on a roof by blowing up the entire building with a rocket launcher, then turns to the uniformed cops on scene and says “I thinkI got ‘em”; he also mentions that his favorite charity is “Toy Guns for Tots”. Hammers father was Jack Hammer, a legendary carnival trick shooter whose repetory of shooting tricks included catching a bullet in his teeth, which saved his son’s life in one episode. His mothers name was Armin Hammer.

His partner, Detective Dori Doreau (played by Anne-Marie Martin) has some karate skills evidenced by the perfectly executed chicken kick the the best of Sledge Hammer part 1. Inspector Hammer does what normal cops might like to do sometimes but cannot. He is kind of a funny Dirty Harry. Here is a clip I found. Afterwards I’ll examine police work a bit as it relates to self-defense and why cops use more non-lethal weapons today. 

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I just saw a preview of this Japanese move entitled, “High Kick Girl” on youtube. It seems to be a story like the karate kid where a girl this time has to over come some adversity. Anyway here is a preview of this as Rina Takeda seems to have some good karate skills.

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Liam Neeson’s movie, “Taken” is a story about his daughter being abducted in France for the prostitution underworld and how he attempts to get her back. Here is the summary from IMDb:

 The seventeen year-old Kim is the pride and joy of her father, the retired agent Bryan Mills that left the secret service to stay near Kim in California. Kim lives with her mother Lenore and her wealthy stepfather Stuart; she convinces the reluctant Bryan to sign an authorization to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. When they arrive, they share a cab with the stranger Peter and Amanda tells to him that they are alone in Paris. When Bryan succeeds in contacting his daughter, she tells that criminals have just break in the spot and they are kidnapped by an Albanese gang of human trafficking. Bryan promises in the phone to kill the kidnapper of his daughter and immediately travels to Paris to find Kim and chase the criminals. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

While this movie is not par for my usual commentary (there are fight scenes) but being a step-father of an 18 year-old-girl, I see the same patterns of reckless behaivor as the girl in this movie. Girls today (as well as boys) think they are invincible and nothing bad will ever happen to them! Well in most cases they are right but as a parent I do worry about the times they are wrong. I will examine the plot of this movie and examine common dangerous behaviours as well as ways to mitigate risks. And yes I will review some of the fighting. Here is a trailer of the move. 

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I don’t know about you but I have watched some martial arts flicks and only liked about 30% of them. Too often you will find stick banging for every punch and kick (to make noises for the kicks and punches) or the karate fighters flying though the air (like superman) to fight. One movie I could barley sit through was “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”  Well I will not bore you with a review of this type of film. I just watched the movie on IFC entitled, “Seven Samurai.”

This was a movie about some poor farmers dealing with raiding robbers. The village farmers had to decide what to do the next harvest because they knew the 40 robbers were coming back. The village elder told the farmers to seek samurai that were hungry (because the farmers did not have anything to pay) to save the village from the robbers! I will speak about the movie and tie this movie into modern self-defense strategies. Here is a trailer of the film.

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