Dr. H. and I were supposed to do a tribute to the legendary Tony Scott over the weekend. Alas, because Dr. H never dropped by, the tribute will have to wait. So until he he decides to grace us with his presence, we will have to movie forward with a look at some other films until we get Dr. H on the same track.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Yamada: The Samurai of Ayothaya (2010) and Dangerous this one has choreography for you.
Yamada: The Samurai of Ayothaya is a 2010 Thai action movie directed by Nopporn Watin. The film features renowned Muay Thai boxers Buakaw Por. Pramuk, Saenchai Sor. Kingstar, Yodsanklai Fairtex, and Anuwat Kaewsamrit along with its main cast of actors.
The lead character in the film is based on an actual historical figure Yamada Nagamasa, a Japanese samurai/adventurer who later became a governor in the Ayutthaya Kingdom (1590-1630). Yamada is the true story of how a samurai warrior came to serve as one of the personal bodyguards of King Naresuan the Great. Yamada’s story is laced with beheadings, broken bones and many bloody wounds; however, he was eventually granted a lordship and served as governor of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
The young samurai, who lived during the Edo period, came to be a soldier in the Japanese volunteer regiment in Ayothaya. The higher-ups of regiment were using him as a scapegoat to justify the failure of the soldier’s inability to subdue the Thai. Ninjas try to assassinate the samurai in a dark alley. Vastly outnumbered, the young samurai puts up a good fight but is seriously wounded. Four Thai fighters appear just as the ninja are about to be dealt the fatal blow. The Thai fighters brutally kill most of the assassins while a few escape. In accordance with their Buddhist teachings, they take the samurai to their village, tend to his wounds and treat him as a guest. Over time and under the watchful and wise eye of Sir Monk he begins the road to recovery. The viewer quickly sees that Sir Monk is the people’s spiritual and de facto leader whose wisdom is greatly respected even by the King.
While Yamada recovers, there is another assassination attempt on his life. Though far from healed, Yamada again dishes out some serious punishment on his attackers who must also contend with the village Boxers who quickly arrive on the scene. After the enemy is driven away, the boxers blame and beat Yamada for causing trouble in their otherwise peaceful town. One look from Sir Monk and the Boxers stop the beating and are hauled into the temple to have a serious word regarding their inappropriate behavior. While Sir Monk takes the Boxers out to the proverbial woodshed, he tells them that he and he alone has the authority to kill whitey. An order that will only be issued if Yamada starts to hurt the villagers.
As Yamada recovers, he begins to contribute around the village by doing chores and eyeing their forging process. When he is back in shape, he attends the Boxer’s practice and foolishly challenges one to a bout. The eight weapons of Muay Thai – fists, feet, knees and elbows make quick work of him to the point of embarrassment. One of the boxers suggests that he ask Sir Monk to teach him the techniques of Muay Thai training. These training sequences are set against the beautiful backdrops of temples and lush forests. It is interesting to watch the blending of the Thai boxing style with Yamada’s lifelong samurai training especially when he uses his sword.
Yamada’s martial arts background helps him quickly learn the Thai style and at the end of the training, Sir Monk makes him an officially sanctioned warrior with holy tattoos and all. Sir Monk’s approval permits whitey to join King Naresuan’s personal bodyguards. Yamada sticks out like a sore thumb as a mostly white clean-shaven man when compared to his dark skinned and the crazy hairstyles of his comrades.
Though he has become a full-blown warrior, he is still not fully accepted by the other Boxers or villagers. We start to see Yamada begin the extremely secret process of forging Japanese steel and what are unquestionably the best swords in the world alone since no one will help him. Later we find out that the sword he was forging is for the boxer who has taken extra time to practice with him after hours to help Yamada perfect his skills. Sir Monk is contemporaneously meeting with his top fighters who are preparing to try out to be the king’s guard and battle a rival nation state in a customary contest. Here Sir Monk takes the Siamese warriors to task by telling them (and the blacksmiths) that Yamada is by far the best forger in the village and that his swords (which Sir Monk still has) are the most perfect weapons he has ever seen. As a demonstration of the exquisite artisanship Yamada is capable of Sir Monk throws up a flower petal and as it falls to the ground, it is cleanly split in half when it comes into contact with the samurai’s blade.
The bodyguard tryouts are nothing short of merciless but whitey makes it through—much to Sir Monk’s delight. These tryouts are wonderful representations of this ancient and effective style of fighting. The survivors are sent to engage their Burmese counterparts who have not won this gruesome contest in years. Here again we are treated to seeing Yamada’s deeply ingrained samurai fencing techniques combined with his new hand to hand combat style. I believe that one reason Yamada is so effective with his sword against the enemy is that the natives have never contended with a full-blown samurai using the most deadly of weapons.
After returning as victors, Yamada believe he must bring finality to the Japanese question and returns to that dark alley where he was almost killed, again facing an army of ninjas and the head of the Japanese spy ring that wants him eliminated. He makes mincemeat of the ninjas but is ultimately saved by the fighter he gave the sword to who takes a bullet meant for him—his savior dies at the scene.
Putting Muay Thai fighters and samurais together is a fantastic idea for a movie. It also shows that humans can change and redeem themselves, even in the hands of an enemy. This film is astonishing not only because it shows a path of redemption, but because it features some brutal Muay Thai boxing that is very realistic, striking and primeval: these guys are the real deal champion Thai boxers and I sure as shit would not want to meet them on unfriendly terms.
This movie did a fine job with what many might say was an interesting, though not epic, historical story. I recommend this film to anyone (that means you Dangerous) who is interested in the choreography of martial arts, as it is real and something I have not seen before. Watch and if you don’t like it let me know why.
A Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) a Movie that is as funny as Kentucky Fried Chicken is Delicious.
Anyone who has seen So I Married and Axe Murder remembers the father’s claim that Colonel Sanders put some mysterious chemicals in his chicken “so that you crave it fort-nightly.” I could not agree more nor could agree more that A Kentucky Fried Movies is dollar for dollar one of the funniest movies even made (the film had a total budget of $650,000 and made millions).
A Kentucky Fried Movie consists of largely unconnected sketches that parody various film and TV genres. The movie’s longest segment (and main feature) satirized an early, yet classic, kung-fu film: Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon; its title, A Fistful of Yen, refers to A Fistful of Dollars. Parodies of disaster films (That’s Armageddon), blaxplotation (Cleopatra Schwartz) and softcore porn/women-in-prison films (Catholic High School Girls in Trouble) are presented as “Coming Attraction” trailers to the martial arts classic. Many other sketches spoof TV commercials and programs, news broadcasts, and classroom educational films. The city of Detroit and its high crime rate are a running gag portraying the city as a literal Hell-on-Earth; in “A Fistful of Yen,” the evil drug lord orders a captured CIA agent to be sent to Detroit, and the agent screams and begs to be killed or castrated instead of that.
“The popcorn you’re eating has been pissed in…film at eleven.”
—Kentucky Fried Movie’s TV anchor
What does this movie really mean to me? Simple. At some point in the early 1980’s, the clamps went down on American Studios and they lost their balls. The American movie system began to bow to special interests and censor itself away from nudity, confrontation, and anything else that might slightly offend anyone. Films that would have been seen as ‘for adults’ in the pre-ratings-happy 1970’s were suddenly not acceptable for release in the 1980’s, as studio executives clamored for the baby market and shied away from anything that might get mommy writing a letter to a sponsor.
Then came the 1990’s, where the studios claim that they’d reversed the trend, with “outlandish” comedians like Adam Sandler, Martin Lawrence and anyone else who ever lugged a cable on Saturday Night Live. Oh how Sandler’s wacky Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore re-captured the truly satirical and gritty humor of Animal House or a Kentucky Fried movie—anyone comparing the two genres of films who would say these movies are in the same league is nothing short of a fool. For those of us lucky enough to know what real guerilla comedy was all about, recall the outrageous humor that the Zuckers gave us back when there may have been rules, but no one paid attention or nobody cared, are now we are tortured with crap like The Waterboy and Deuce Bigelow that are somewhere along the level of animal shit on the comedic evolutionary scale. Then, with 2000, came the evolution of a new, lower life form: Tom Green. Fellow readers, we’re going backwards, and if you want to see the standard that we were at back when comedy that was pure, offensive and was freely given to those looking to take it, then The Kentucky Fried Movie is for you. Whether you have to stay up late to watch it or get the DVD I suggest you do it, you will not waste 90 minutes of your life whereas watching “Deuce Bigelow” or “Beverly Hills Ninja” you will.
That is what I think anyways. Your thoughts?
Elizabeth Olsen in “Silent House” (2012): Keep Quit If You Are Asked to Watch It.
This was one of those rare movies that is so bad I don’t even know where to begin. It’s the acting, it’s the writing and it’s directing that makes this movie the blemish on mankind that it is. The story, at times, makes no sense, nor do the actions of the main character, Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen of the Olsen twin’s fame). The fact that someone approved the making of this movie, and that people actually got money to make it, is an outrage surpassing the 2008 financial bailout.
Taking its elements from a 2010 Uruguayan film, The Silent House story is pretty basic – which makes sense for a movie with only a few characters and an especially limited scale. We are forced to follow leading-lady Sarah (Olsen) through “a tense,” and at times “horrifying,” ordeal: Sarah, along with her father, John (Adam Trese), and Uncle, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens), is in the process of fixing up the family’s dilapidated vacation home, in an effort to make the property more attractive when they attempt to sell it. Sarah begins to hear mysterious noises in the upstairs portion of the house, and when she and her dad attempt to investigate the sounds, it quickly becomes clear that they are not alone – nor are they safe. Whether or not the alleged “true event” inspiration of the film ever actually occurred remains unsubstantiated (and was a point of contention among fans of the 2010 Uruguayan film); however, “based on true events” or not, the fundamental storyline is inadequate within the confines of the 88 minute timeframe.
The only interesting part of this is movie is that film was shot in “real time.” Due to this unique nature of the film’s presentation they had to use as a single take methodology, the production crew ran into several technical issues while filming, mainly surrounding lighting issues and mobility around the house. Since the movie was filmed in 12-15 minute takes, there were several occurrences where entire sequences had to be thrown out and re-done repeatedly due to lighting problems or missed cues. It also created a Blair Witch Project type of effect where the camera was bouncing up and down and twisting in all directions—it was like being on a bad roller coaster.
To be frank, I cannot write any more about this movie because it was so bad I had to turn it off. As I have mentioned before, my threshold for bad movie pain the legendary, this film, however, was the Chinese water board torture of movie watching. Its plot is thin, its acting is wretched and the writing seems like it was created by 100 monkeys chained to typewriters. Remain silent if you are asked to watch this movie and exit as quickly as possible.
J.P.'s I'm Outta Here Movie Thoughts 