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.

Love to hit stuff? Bokken at great prices.

What a great theme for a zombie movie! A virus gets out and infects people and Alice (Milla) has to save the day! The second movie Alice has to fight to escape the city against monsters and zombies. A kind of complicated plot is evolving in this action packed thriller! Here is a brief look.

There were some really cool fight scenes in there! The third movie is Alice (Milla) going after the evil Umbrella Corporation. Again if you missed this flick, take a look at this trailer!

The new super zombies this this movie are great! Alice (Milla) has to use all of her cunning to try and outsmart the Umbrella Corporation. The ending left an opening for more movies and guess what? There is a new Resident Evil coming out in 2010! Here is an interview with the writer at comic con.

Wow! Alice (Milla) is coming back and in 3D! The monsters sound like they are going to be cool and I am looking forward to even more exciting fight scenes. I found this Maxim photo shoot from 2008 that was shot after giving birth to a baby girl a year earlier. One of the reason I loved the Resident Evil and Ultraviolet movies is Milla’s martial arts fight scenes! Take a look at the video and she mentions her love of the martial arts.

Well I can hardly wait to see what is next in the Resident Evil; Afterlife movie! I hope you enjoyed this brief look at Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil movie series.

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.

The bride was vicious fighting her former deadly viper assassination squad teammate, Hanna. I really liked the sword play but did not think too much of the wide (cowboy style) punches that were so easily blocked! Oh well – as I said, suspend disbelief.

The fighters in this movie seemed to use indiscriminate striking a lot. I liked that the bride plucked out Hanna’s eye during the sword fight. That brings me to an interesting point about real self-defense, you should use whatever weapons or openings that are presented!

When I was young, I used to drink hot chocolate or later coffee. If I was ever threatened, my first planned move would have been to toss the hot drink into the attackers face and then take them out!

Back to this movie, the one scene that was surreal to me at the time was the bride vs Gogo. I had a step-daughter at the time who wore the school uniforms and was trying to imagine how a sweet little girl like that could be so mean! I was totally taken aback by this attack in the move.

Gogo was played by Chiaki Yuriyama, who really pulled off the sweet school girl until she started swinging her ball. Now I do think that girls can pull of an attack if they need to and weapons can even up the score some.

Well the bride finally get around to tracking Bill down and gets down to business. Here is the final fight scene in volume 2.

The bride killed Bill with a 5 point exploding heart technique. Well let me just say that this was a fitting end to these movies but lets talks about this a bit. When I was a kid I used to hear about the touch of death or vibrating palm techniques. I then heard that masters could pull a heard out of a body while it was still breathing and show it to the dieing man! I also heard that the karate yell could be practiced to kill small animals!

Well let me just say karate is not magical but peoples belief systems can be. What do I mean? Well if you believe in something enough – it can be true for you. I did a previous post on, “The death touch!, Does it exist?” where I examined this phenomena. Just as in this movie, it seems to me if something like the death touch is real – it would have to be among people that believed in it.

I hope you have enjoyed my quick overview of the Kill Bill movies and if you have not yet seen them – go rent the movies and enjoy a good flick!

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!

That was a great kick! I remember the first time I threw a kick on another guy. I did not have any formal training at that point but I had read some books. A kid that took lessons from Adams Kenpo Karate, asked me what I would do if someone attacked me. He knew I did not have any formal lessons.

It was kind of funny but he got back in a rear horse stance and put out a couple of half-fists with a growl! I stood their in my neutral stance with my hands at my side and then lifted my knee to deliver a fast snap to his knee! He yelped in pain and rolled around for a while.

Let me just say I am glad it did not go any farther as I did not really now anything at that point. Billy Jack did a good job of demonstrating some good karate skills that motivated me to see how one could use a karate self-defense! Later after watching the Kung Fu TV series, I took lessons at my high-school (Issian Ryu, and Chito Ryu). Later I took Lima Lama from the base karate club and finally ended up signing up at Tracy’s Karate in 1974/1975 (my first Orange belt certificate is dated 11/5/1975). Here is a home music video of Coven’s, “One Tin Solder” song.

One opening scene of the move showed the town rich guy had arranged a hunt of mustangs so he could sell the meat for dog food! Billy Jack came to save the day. This movie was about standing up for what was right as much as it was a protest movie. I too remember the days of horse meat dog food and wondered why laws were passed to outlaw the practice. I don’t like to see animals suffer any more than I like to see people suffer.

There were some tough scenes to watch in the move and in the end Billy Jack was holed waiting to die. Luckily for us he made a deal and went on to create more movies on this genre. I came out of the move much as I did from the Rocky series – fired up and ready to learn how to fight like that!

So in real life one has to pick their battles but one should also take a stand and fight for what is right – however you chose to do so. One of the hardest things you might have to do someday is come to the rescue of another in the time of need. Self-defense training is one way you can prepare.

I was reading the other day on the Black Belt Mama blog about a post entitled, “The Trouble with Getting Involved” where she had to interceded on behalf of a college kid getting beat up surrounded by a crowd of people! That was the right thing to do but it was not an easy thing to do. Sometimes doing the right thing is not going to be easy.

Back when I still owned a karate school, I was kind of the go-to person whenever trouble started on our block. One evening my two neighbors started arguing about what, I cannot recall. Things were hard and both of them were out of jobs. Well soon to my surprise and in front of their (and all of the) families, they pulled out crow bars out of their trunks and started to swing on each other!

I had just been like all of the rest of the onlookers, thinking that one of them might start throwing punches and it would soon be over but crowbars in front of me? I jumped in between them without thinking because this was unacceptable to me. I was not going to stand by and watch my neighbors kill each other! Luckily for me they respected me enough to stop and knew that I could probably stop them if I wanted. Things turned out ok.

So I can stay that movies like Billy Jack were a turning point for me. I started thinking that sometimes yes, one person can make a difference. Hopefully your challenges in life will not be nearly so dramatic as Tom Laughlin’s character, Billy Jack had to face but I hope that you too can rise to the situation if needed someday.

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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. 

I guess I am easily amused! Did you see the crossing guard bit? Real life cops might like to dispense justice in the same manner but they are bound by laws and rules. The bad thing about the rules is it favors the criminals.

Any good martial artist can attest to their ability to rapidly take advantage of someone stepping into their distance albeit a officer trying to lawfully dispose his or her duty. What I am talking about is stepping next to another person and getting sucker punched (meaning the bad guy strikes first)!

What martial arts taught me way back when I was a green belt was the first one that connected with a powerful strike (hand, foot, knee, elbow…) and followed through – won the fight easily. Before I took karate I did not know that and thought it was safe for cops to grab and handcuff a bad guy.

I am happy to see cops using tasers more and more nowadays because I see that as a safe choice for a non-compliant person to be taken into custody. When I was younger I wanted to be a cop but later saw the true danger cops faced every day and decided against it. As a private citizen I do not have to get right next to someone that is aggressive. Rather I can step back and tell the guy to stay out of my face! If he tries to attack I can take him down but a cop might not have that luxury.

I kind of got off on a tangent but this is why I think many cops might like the idea of really getting the bad guys. It is a fun diversion to watch a show like Sledge Hammer was and suspend normal rules. I hope you liked this glimpse of Sledge Hammer and my view point of the logical difficulties of being a cop dealing with trained fighters. I’ll do a post later to point out karate and police work in a future post. 

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.

It is always kind of fun to watch young people excel at karate. In this case a young girl has seemingly some great kicks. Here is what youtube user, FriedDragonFish says about this video she uploaded:

 ”The current wave of female focused martial arts films – Fighter (Denmark), Coweb (Hong Kong), Chocolate (Thailand) – now has a Japanese entry in the field. Its titled High Kick Girl and the young starlet is Rina Takeda. Like the others Takeda can really fight, in this case the discipline of choice being karate. The first teaser has just arrived on the scene and, yes, she kicks rather high.”

 

As with most karate moves one has to suspend belief but that is par for the course. Why when I saw Steven Segal taking on a bunch of bad guys on a aircraft carrier – that was suspending belief. From this little preview it seems more realistic than most karate movies. If anyone gets a chance to see this flick – let me know how it was.

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. 

I just saw this movie and was right there with Liam in taking action to get his daughter back! This movie was a kind of James Bond version of going after the bad guys and to be honest, like most movies – very unrealistic. Ok suspending disbelief for a moment let me review what I saw.

First off the girl came off as a normal 17 – 25 year-old-woman. She only saw the fun part of the trip and while she was more cautious than her girl friend – they gave personal information to a total stranger. A girl/woman should trust reasonably instead of just going for it – meaning if they should have insisted on a cab at the airport and gave a cell phone number and agreed to meet at a mutual public location if they really wanted to meet up with some boys.

So getting on my high-horse, and as it so often happens, a wild friend can get other friends in trouble. I am not saying I know what to do about it other than the money bags (parental units) should insist on some common sense approaches to traveling like going with a tour or the other family’s parents. I guess I am over the hill talking like this but a parent will always worry about their children and teaching them to take reasonable precautions should be an achievable goal.

Now a little bit about the sex-trade going on the world over, this is very sad and often overlooked by polite society. It runs the gambit from work offers for women in poor parts of the world and then they (the women) find the “job” is actually at a brothel, to the obscene practice of troupes that win battles – taking the women for their own personal pleasure! There are runaways, immigrants, and yes probably still the kidnapping for girls all for black market human trafficking operations. Here is a video overview of the problem in the USA that appeared on the O’Reilly Factor.

After watching the O’Reilly Factor segment I really think that many girls can be at risk if their family support system is not functioning. If you want to learn more about the problem, the link referenced on the factor is here.

I do not want to ever be in the position that Liam Neeson was in this movie because as you may well know – it is far easier to prevent than to fix bad situations! Sure Liam was able to transition some spy and hand-to-hand combat skills to find his daughter in this move but in real life – that would not have happened. There are lots of real cases of women trafficked and most of these women will not find a “hero” to come and rescue them.

So what do I think? I think this was a great movie as a person that likes to take proactive steps to prevent bad things from happening. I also think the movie points out how safe preventive measures can help women from becoming targets – everything from creating a stable home environment for your daughter to teaching her how to interact socially reasonably and yes of course – learn Self-Defense!

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.

After watching this movie with subtitles (normally I don’t like subtitles) I was surprised of the wisdom demonstrated by the samurai in defense of the village. An aging samurai figured out how to defend the village and enlisted assistance from other samurai.

The leader (Takashi Shimura played by Kambei Shimada) and his group of seven, went up against 40 horseback raiders (5 to 1 odds). The samurai only had a couple of advantages, 1) preparation and 2) surprise.

The samurai figured out the defensible space in the village and devised a plan to save those areas. The fortified some outskirts and flooded other perimeters. What was left was to be where the main fight would occur. Watch this movie for truly timeless fighting tactics and think about how you can use some strategies for your self-defense.

Surprise was important because the robbers did not think the farmers could mount an effective defense. This led to some recklessness on the part of the robbers that allowed the samurai to win some early key battles. The villagers were also enlisted in their own defense by key samurai. The samurai trained the villagers how to fight as a team and follow instructions.

The two key advantages the samurai had – you too have! Preparation and surprise! What do I mean? Why if you start planning how to defend yourself by taking a self-defense course (at a minimum), buying some mace, window locks, in-home weapons (I like baseball bats near doors) you will have a plan (made some preparations).

Stratigy means planning how you are going to stay safe while jogging or going to the store late a night. My wife and I are sorry we bought my wife’s daughter an iPod Mini. The day after Christmas she went out walking with the ear plugs in. She did not particularly pay attention to which side of the street she walked on and she even cut into a field and up a trail into the countryside.

Her response to her mom and I speaking to her about safety has been to either give us lip service (say ok and then do what she wants when she is out of site) or point out that all of her friends [are as reckless] do it too! Well she is 18 and mostly away at college so I cannot change her mind so her mom is going to have some sleepless nights.

So you, unlike my step-daughter, can employ some basic strategy to keep your self safe. If you need help figuring out what you can do (learn self-defense, prepare, and carry mace – place weapons around your home) – please check these safety tips from the Women’s Self Defense Institute.  

Now prepare a strategy, make a plan and use surprise to your advantage like these seven samurai did in this great movie!

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