The Blogboard Jungle

"Wanna Fight?"  Only God Forgives reunites Ryan Gosling with Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn and there is a lot of familiarity with the visuals and story flow. If you saw Drive you can expect a lot of the same story telling pace in this film. Very slow, to the point of getting annoying, then very interesting. Visually from beginning to end the movie is beautiful, especially the color mix with interior shots in the clubs. Goslings character Julian owns and operates a Muay Thai club (Muay Thai is Thailand's style of kickboxing). The trailer led me to believe this was going to be a martial arts based drama or action flick that had me so excited for it I wrote about it before . While it did lack in the martial arts, there is still plenty of violence in this film mostly from one of the other characters in the film played by Vithaya Pansringarm who must have been some kind of Muay Thai icon by the way he moved in his fight scene with Gosling. If you read a synops...

    The banter between these guys is pretty funny.      There are movies that come out with barely any marketing or warning that we find ourselves going to see (or at least I do), films like  The Other Guys and Cop Out that critics hate on, don't do well at the box office, and are reported as failures the week after they release and don't get put in the top 10 for the weekend it came out.   R.I.P.D is one of those films that share the company of the other two films mentioned according to a lot of box office reports.  You know what else those films have in common?  I like them. R.I.P.D stars Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges in this supernatural buddy cop movie, that has plenty of laughs to keep you entertained.  It's a horror/comedy that doesn't take itself seriously at all and in my opinion Ryan Reynolds always shines when he does any form of comedy.  Jeff Bridges does his Rooster Cogburn remix in this film as they play tw...

   Floyd Mayweather Jr. won the award for "Best Fighter" at the ESPY's on Wednesday night this week.  The name of the award used to be "Best Boxer" and was changed in 2007 according to an article on Sherdog a prominent Mixed Martial Arts web site.  If a boxer is going to win it though shouldn't the title of the award match the sport? The definition of a professional fighter has changed since the emergence of the Martial Arts sport known as Mixed Martial Arts becomes increasingly popular.  With its popularity, rules and regulations comes restrictions as to who can fight who.  It's not like the first UFC where there were no rules and a boxer could test himself against students of another discipline.  For the record, boxers did not do well in that event.   Regardless, those days are gone and both boxing and MMA are regulated bonafied combat sports that have their own respective pound for pound best in their class.  Mr. Mayweather most d...

This movie was the bomb, that's where Jaeger bomb comes from. ;)      This movie is what summer movies are supposed to be about, big crazy special effects, mixed with some comic relief, followed up by a huge clash battle at the end.  It has all the ingredients of old school Robotech, Voltron, Godzilla plot lines my generation (generation X) grew up with, even those that grew up with Power Rangers the generation after me will find something to enjoy in this film, all the good stuff from what I just mentioned without the cheesi-ness.      I know Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy fame is supposed to be the protagonist in this film but I  found myself to be drawn to Idris Elba's character more as I found his back story most interesting.  Most of the main characters have a good back story drawn up for them so I'm sure you'll find your favorites as you watch it.  That's enough about the human actors though, lets get to why we re...

     No one really wants to see The Lone Ranger .  That's what I have been reading about a lot this week, how despite the films star power, (which is what Johnny Depp seems to represent) the film did not do well on its opening weekend.  There is a baseless theory I have (baseless because I just thought it up), and its only something I noticed with Disneys last flop John Carter which was actually pretty good but never got a chance.  It's their logo, the Disney logo attached with the title seems to be the equivalent of attaching M. Night Shyamalans name to a project, its box office poison.    The Disney logo is something I associate with all their animated classics when I was a kid.  Talking animals, singing, falling in love with things that can only be made possible by some spell or wish and other kiddie fantasies.  That is what that logo makes me think of, if I had kids it would still be an eye catcher for me.  I don't have ...

     Having been on the hunt for horror anthology films one that was recommended was The ABC's of Death , a film that takes one letter from all the letters in the alphabet and makes a horror short representing the letter. Twenty six film makers, twenty six short stories relating to some kind of death.  While many of the stories were culturally diverse, that may be the reason this one is a thumbs down for me. Most Magnet films are ok...this isn't one of them.     There are very few stories that stand out since they are all very short, some are animated most are live action and not more than ten minutes long.  How they got the ideas for the letters each director was assigned is something you'll have to look up on line, the only stand outs for me really were the letters A and C but you can judge for yourself if you're looking for something to watch.  The ones from Japan were almost all perverted and those film makers seemed to use this project...

     If you are a martial arts movie fan than you know the line in quotations after the name above, and you know the name.  Jim Kelly played Williams in Enter the Dragon , in my opinion the greatest martial arts film with great martial artists in it. Characters like Black Dynamite and Afro Samurai always make me think the creators of these characters must have had Kelly in mind during their inception of these newer characters, caricatures of Kelly at his best.     Holding a black belt in Shorin-ryu Karate he was a world champion competitor and awesome athlete in general.  For me, his scene against Han in Enter the Dragon is very symbolic of the mental struggles many martial artists have when it comes to competition and winning or losing.  Han asks him how he deals with the possibility of defeat and Kelly's character tells Han he does not waste time worrying about being beaten, when Han asks why he responds with; "I'll be too busy looking ...