Archive for the 'Movies' Category

This is an exciting time for me although some might not understand my attachment to ninja karate turtles that came from nuclear slime in the sewers. When my boys were young they had the Nintendo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle video game, We (yes I said we) watch the cartoons, watched the movie and I even took my boys to the San Diego Sports Arena to see the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live! I found out that the Turtles could also play guitar.

You see I taught both of my boys some karate as they were growing up so having the Turtles as role models seemed to fit. And that Master Splinter always had sage wisdom. Here is on of the trailers of the new movie.

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Fight scenes in movies generally are not realistic, I mean my wife hates watching moves with me as I get mad. I tell her anyone who gets hit with a solid punch first should lose the fight but so often the fight goes on for another five minutes. But this post is not about the normal movie fight but having women in the fight sequence.

As a martial artist I really do not like fighting depicted in a cartoon light. If a movie is going to show a fight scene – it should be close to what would work in real life one would think, unless it is one of those cheesey fighting Masters in the clouds or a fantasy kind of movie.

So I’ll start with a movie fight sequence I like. Then I’ll discuss what some of the problems with the movies and depicting women in fight scenes. Notice that while you may say this sequence is not likely to happen – if it did – it could really work. I’m willing to suspend disbelief to this point in a movie.

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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.