Kung-Fu Cinema: gaining momentum

A little while back I decided that I wanted to get into kung-fu movies.  Straightforward enough...yet deceptively complicated, because damn there are a lot of them, released under numerous aliases and with various crappy original language and dub audio tracks.  I started here, an article I found very helpful as a primer...the legend continues, as they say. Keep in mind that I'm speaking about these films from a perspective of almost no prior knowledge and experience.  So far I'm just working with what Netflix has available...

First up, 1978's Drunken Master with Jackie Chan.  Being such a novice, only Jackie Chan's later work in American action films (read: Rush Hour series) was familiar to me.  This movie was one of his first films, and was basically my first introduction to his body of work as a martial artist. Jackie Chan is the "Harlem Globetrotters" of Kung-fu.  There's a sizable element of slapstick comedy in this movie, present in almost every fight or training sequence.  Much less serious than the previous films I watched...but in a very satisfying way.  Jackie is an almost freakishly talented acrobat, and there was a lot of really nice fighting choreography in this film. 

The story follows a young rapscallion (Jackie Chan) who displeases his father so much that dad hires a legendary bad-ass oldman (who loves to booze) to train the shit out of sonny for a year. Son is reluctant at first, hates training, etc...then eventually comes around. The B story has this villain named ThunderLeg (with some killer 'Vince Noir' hair and a 'stache worthy of its own melon stand) who enters the picture and kicks a bunch of ass.

Drunken Master was a lot of fun to watch.  I would definitely recommend it.  It's sort of long, but it's got quite a lot of cool hand-to-hand fighting with an element of sillyness that I dug and they touch on a bunch of different fighting styles (drunken style, obviously, or stuff like monkey style and also this one style where a dude has a really hard skull and just rams people with it like Juggernaut) and it has a bunch of creative but comical training sequences. I looked around for a sweet clip of the movie, but the only decent one I could find was the final fight scene...and I figured you should have to work a bit to see that.

Iceberg Movie Rating = 46 out of 50 ways to leave your lover.  Extra points awarded for hilariously brutal training exercises.

Next up I watched Master of the Flying Guillotine. Netflix bills it as a favorite of Quentin Tarantino and "the most notorious weapon to ever appear on film".  The weapon being referred is pretty gnarly (see picture on the right). This old blind dude with some future classic eyebrows throws this "hat" on a chain at you and it hooks onto your skull. Then he gives it a Duncan tug and your dome done been shuck clean off the stalk, jellytoes.  Not exactly a guillotine, but you get the idea.  This movie reminded me a bit of Enter the Dragon as the premise in both movies is a big fighting tournament where a bunch of dudes from different lands come to compete.

The titular character is an assassin hunting down the "one-armed boxer" who took out his two proteges. My careful research tells me that this is actually a sequel to a 1971 film called The One-Armed Boxer, which sets the stage for this one and is also written, directed by, and starring Jimmy Wang Yu (aka the "one-armed boxer")

I feel like they were really stretching their wings with this one on the special effects front, from the numerous decapitations to guys with Dhalsim extendo-arms and on to dudes fighting each on top of a "forest" of upturned swords.

Check out the trailer:

This was a cool one...not as satisfying as Drunken Master or 36th Chamber, but worth watching for some of the odd weapons and fights.

Iceberg Movie Rating = 75 out of 99 red balloons

Coming Soon:

Kung-Fu Hustle

Legendary Weapons of China

Record Review Time Machine! Bob Seger - Stranger in Town

It's been established: I love old records. I know track numbers, album chronologies, and who played what solo where and the circumstances under which they played it. I will now focus that love into writing recommendations and reviews about albums that came out when "pitchfork" was still primarily known as a tool of satan and when, in most cases, I was yet to begin taking poops and breathing air.

This week I'm recommending a classic rock gem from 1978: Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band's Stranger in Town.

First off...just dig this album "art".  Seger looks so darned huggable, more cuddly than Aslan/Jesus or any single Gummi Bear.  Even the most liberal among us feels the urge to yell "get a haircut, hippie" but he definitely doesn't look one ounce of dangerous.  It's difficult to believe that this shot would ever have seemed fashionable, even in the Super 70s.  Cover photo gets 2 out of 10...but don't let that dissuade you from the highly accessible piano rock that awaits you inside the sleeve.

Bob Seger is burned into your consciousness, whether you like it or not.  Somewhat quietly, perhaps even sinisterly, a couple of his songs have slipped in and been played on repeat in your brain. The one you most definitely have an opinion about already is "Old Time Rock and Roll" because of its association with the underwear dance scene in "Risky Business" and the overflow of parodies that followed. Despite being overplayed, it's a quality jam that I've always had a fondness for.  Simple tune, simple message, and an awesome execution.  It's actually a cover of a George Jackson song that Seger didn't think much of: he released it as the fourth single on the album, and even though he rewrote everything from the original except the chorus lyrics, he was in a hurry and didn't bother taking writing credit.  Boosh.  Not only did that mistake cost him tons of dough...but he wasn't even able to control how it was marketed and that's how it ended up burrowing so deep into your ektochrome like those Wrath of Khan bugs that zonk Paul Winfield and Walter Koenig.  So you don't want need to hear that again, nor judge this album by that track.  Forget I mentioned it.

But besides that--it's quite possible that this record passed right through you like Ghost Dad at the multiplex. Time to right this wrong, dudes. Stranger in Town starts off with "Hollywood Nights", the best driving song this side of Golden Earring's Greatest Hits.

"Hollywood Nights"

Way to lead off with a bang, Seger.  Archetypal tale of "midwestern boy goes to Hollywood and becomes disenfranchised" with lots of backup singing and "huuuhh-ing." Instant classic. Swaggertown, USA. 

Throughout the record, the Silver Bullet Band sounds tight and Seger's writing is poppy and accessible with a particular affinity for piano (think E Street Band in the Born to Run-era). For a kid raised (30+ years late) on Creedence, this was right up my alley when I discovered it earlier this year. Seger is half small town and half Detroit scuzz. Less squeaky clean than the Boss (Nebraska = exception) but just as firmly rooted in the screen doors and thunder storms that Springsteen pines over. Add to that some Michigan-area Motown influence (sweet female backup singers and nice horn arrangements) and a little extra soul from the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm section (who play on several tracks). On top of all that he writes a hit song about California, like he's trying to cover all four american compass directions.

The other standout track is "Still the Same," a mellow but catchy ballad that follows "Hollywood Nights". The melody really snuggles in between the sideburns and sticks there indefinitely.

"Still the Same"

I guess these (three) must have all been singles in their day...so you've probably heard all of them on rock radio at some point.  This was probably the case with me, hence their seeming so damned familiar.  I picked up the vinyl (for something in the neighborhood of 4 bucks) and put on Side 1 like 50 times in the first month I had it.  The second side doesn't really kill it as hard, and there are a couple of bland tunes on it...but the good definitely outweighs the bad. Seger rocks. Just ask Metallica.

Naturally, I quite like all the records I'm going to talk about here, so instead of rating these on a standard linear system, I'll instead be likening them to the career trajectories of actors who appeared in the 1986 film Stand By Me.  By that scale, I rate Stranger in Town as a solid Corey Feldman: i.e. peaks a little too early but leaves behind a really solid body of work (the burbs, the goonies, etc...), despite being later tarnished by drug addiction and/or whoring out of his brand via reality TV, or in this case numerous Ford commercials featuring "Like a Rock"

Kung-Fu Cinema: one man's quest for knowledge

A little while back I decided that I wanted to get into kung-fu movies. Straightforward enough...yet deceptively complicated, because damn there are a lot of them, released under numerous aliases and with various crappy original language and dub audio tracks. I started here, an article I found very helpful as a primer...the legend continues, as they say.

As per the "Gateways to Geekery" article above, the first movie I watched was The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with Gordon Liu. I had gotten myself pretty immersed in Wu-Tang Clan's 36 Chambers album last year (hip hop still presents an almost wholly undiscovered frontier of music for me, and this is the very first hip hop album I embraced fully). The Wu is obsessed with kung-fu movies, and they sample them all over their record (as well as discuss them in "sketches" and name their group/album/selves after them).

36th Chamber of Shaolin was truly awesome. I would recommend this flick to anyone who's even vaguely interested in action sequences, training sequences, or film-making generally. I was quite taken with it right away (as my first movie of the genre) but also can now look back after having watched 5 or 6 and definitively say it is a quality piece of work. You can get that shit on Netflix so do it. In quick summary, it's set in 12th century(ish) China and everything is pretty fucked in Gordon Liu's little village so he hightails it outa there and winds up learning kung-fu from the monks of Shaolin on top of a mountain. Awesome line early in film, upon realizing that some jerk-face badasses are brutalizing their little town, one of Gordon's friends says "I wish we had learned kung-fu instead of studying calligraphy". Nice foreshadowing.

Something like half the movie is him training through the 35 chambers (training sequences of great variety and increasing difficulty). It also has that really sweet martial arts-movie theme of doing a bunch of training stuff that doesn't seem to have any direct connection to fighting...like when Danielsan gets all huffy about sanding the deck and Miyagi's like, "i've been training you all along, son: recognize" and then starts punching him. Eventually, Gordon invents and masters the three-section staff and creates the 36th chamber (the goal of which is to train the populace in the ways of kung-fu)..seriously boss hog. A must see.

Here's some Wu-Tang to get you in the mood:

"Shame on a Nigga"

Movie Rating = 36 out of 35 Chambers of Shaolin

Next up I watched the 5 Deadly Venoms. Kill Bill owes a pretty clear debt to this one about a "sick-ass clique" of 5 fighters who train in five different styles (centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard, and toad) and call themselves the "Poison Clan". Thing is some are bad and some are good, and they all trained with masks on all the time so they don't know who's who out in the world.

I think the concept was pretty cool, and the finale 5 guy free-for-all fight scene is pretty good, but in general the film's execution is only so-so. This one's way more violent than 36 Chambers as well, there's use of an Iron Maiden at one point. Decent, but 36 Chambers set the bar pretty high...although extra points cause one of my favorite Wu tracks samples this movie's English dub ("Toad style is immensely strong and immune to nearly any weapon...when it's properly used, it's nearly invincible").

"The Mystery of Chessboxin'"

Movie Rating = 28 out of 40 ounces of malt liquor (extra points awarded for reminding me of Wu-Tang.)

Next installment of Kung-Fu Cinema:

Drunken Master

Master of the Flying Guillotine

Steely Dan at the Beacon NYC (7/31/09)

Last Friday night Steely Dan killed it in New York City during one of a slew of shows they're doing across the country where they play entire albums live and/or do some fan internet set-request thing.

I got really excited when I heard about this little tour which they've dubbed Rent Party '09 even before they announced which albums they'd be performing (or where) and I knew I had to make it to one of these shows.  Thankfully, they opted to do my personal favorite record, The Royal Scam. Unfortunately the closest they were coming to my San Francisco apartment was LA, and the Scam show was on a Monday down there...which seemed unreasonable on a number of levels.

Instead I decided to pay an exorbitant amount for a plane ticket, fly to the East Coast, do a little family visiting, and hit up the NYC show with my old friend and desert island Royal Scam concert buddy, Phil.

The Royal Scam (1976) is, to me, the quintessential 70s guitar record.  All Steely Dan records have blistering solos and complicated changes making use of weird jazz substitutions and augmented 13 chords, but this one stands out as being particularly guitar-volutionary. The solos are mind-melting.  I discovered this one back in college.  It was my second Steely record (after Can't Buy A Thrill) but this one struck me square in the spank and I was in love with the Dan from that point on.

On to the show itself on 7/31/09:  It's no secret that the dudes in Steely Dan (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen) are sort of uber-dorks (which I'm totally into) and though I'd seen some DVD stuff, this was my first time seeing them live.  They're a bit goofy, but their arrangements are rad as hell.

Fagen looks something like a vampire doing a Ray Charles impression, with the dark sunglasses and a flappity flap muppet jaw, but he (still) sounds unbelievable.  "Sign in Stranger" was a real stinger, with Fagen brutalizing the verse licks and the piano solo.  

Here's the album cut, which is already really amazing:

"Sign in Stranger"

I had heard they had to cancel the show two nights prior because of Fagen having some voice-loss issues, so some people were saying he was taking it easy on Friday night...but I didn't really notice him holding back.  That said, he's got three really spot on females backing him up throughout so I suppose it may be difficult to tell...but basically it didn't feel like anything was missing vocally.

The show in general was murderous, but one truly bizarre thing that happened was this: Becker and Fagen got up and left the stage for "The Fez"  They just got up and walked off and the remaining band played the tune all the way through.  I'm not up on all the Dan lore...but apparently Steely Dan simply does not play this song. It was slightly disappointing because "The Fez" is maybe my second favorite track on The Scam (after Kid Charlemagne) but even stranger is that this live arrangment was really only lacking Fagen's vocals over top of the chorus (there is no verse), a part which is also covered by the backup singers. So in reality, the song didn't change much at all, although they definitely rocked it out a lot less than the songs that bookended it.  Still, with no concrete explanation for all this, I am pretty puzzled as to why the boys refuse to perform this.  As my friend Tom pointed out, since Becker and Fagen are the only two official members of "Steely Dan," I did not see Steely Dan play this song.  Dig the Vegas synth...

"The Fez"

After that though...they carried on shooting silver-chocolate arrows of medical grade thorazine directly into my A-frame and the rest of the night was amazing. "Green Earrings", "The Royal Scam" (the song), "Aja", "Home At Last", and "My Old School" were all highlights.

Finally, a word about guitar-playing wizardry:

There were three (awesome) guitar players on stage.  There was Becker, a hired-gun younger dude (name=Jon Herington), and legendary session player Larry Carlton.  Carlton was the special surprise for the night...he only played a couple dates this tour and he's the actual soloist on a bunch of The Royal Scam record, notably playing the solos on "Kid Charlemagne", "Don't Take Me Alive", and the song "The Royal Scam".  The hired-gun young guy (who Fagen introduced as the musical director - i.e. dude's in charge when Fagen/Becker don't make rehearsal, which I'd reckon is pretty often) was really good.  As in, his technical prowess was at a very high level...and he played most of the solos direct from the records as written with a bit of stylistic fiddling.  Becker: same deal; really skilled, played the solos, and improvised well through maybe 15% of the songs...but he was mainly backing up the Gunslinger.  Then there's Larry Carlton.  It was really a treat not only to see this guy play...but also to be able to compare him directly to these two other beasties on stage at the same time.  Carlton is a technical monster as well...but to my mind his individual style really surpassed the other two guys by a mile.  I mean...listen to the Kid Charlemagne solos from the record (which were takes 2 and 1, respectively, of his guitar track).  Mythical shit going on here, enough oatmeal to choke a hippo.

"Kid Charlemagne"

Killer show all around.  We were among the youngest gents there and it was definitely worth our effort.  Super 70s lives on.

Note to Walter Becker:  strongly recommend keeping the soup-cooler permanently closed while on stage.  I'm sure you have tons of other strengths, chief (see above-referenced guitar playing), but please let Donny do both the talking and the singing...