Everybody is - Kung-fu fighting

Kung Fu Panda – the Review

Let’s face it. I’m a sucker for a martial arts movie. Unless there are any blood, violence against women, completely implausible and unnecessary love sub-plot, goofy special effects, people yelling “Aii-yah!”, and/or the inclusion of a white dude just to make the flick acceptable to a wide audience. As if white guys are the only ones going to the movies. They don’t go to the movies, Mr. Mitchell. They download that sh*t through Netflix.

Naturally, my persnickety tastes make it a bit difficult to settle down and enjoy a movie about the mystical ways the cryptic people of the mysterious east kill villains and villagers alike. Oh sure, I like Hero. I probably would like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon if I ever saw it, and I’m sure I would enjoy Enter the Dragon if I could remember it. But when it comes to hard-core knuckle-busting, vein-popping, wise-cracking, zen-finding awesomeness, I want to see the kind of badass I know every red-blooded American kid wants to see.

A panda.

If I have to watch Jack Black do anything besides play the guitar, this is what I want to see him doing. Hiding behind a big mass of furry black-and-white loveableness, encouraging us to believe that underdogs can come in all shapes and sizes, that fat can be a defensive mechanism (I believe penguins and seals knew that a long time ago), and that if you believe in yourself and work out for a couple of hours, you can take on Shere Khan. Mowgli should have tried some dumpling recon.

So what else does this entertaining and extraordinarily beautiful piece of cinematography and comic book elementals teach us? What can we learn from a kids’ movie?

Plenty.

First off, there is a lot to be said for Capital Punishment. Let’s be honest with ourselves – sure, Po got to figure himself out and become a Kung-Fu master (is it Kung-fu? Kung fu? I should do more research, but I’m won’t until I get paid to do this). In the meantime, however, the villagers were displaced, the village (thousands of years old, and just reeking classical architecture) was partially destroyed, and a score or more lives were lost at that prison out of which the tiger escaped. I know they are just government employees, but still. They’re endangered rhinos. How many more have to die before we say, enough! Let’s just Wu Shi Pinky Hold his neck over a chopping block and save the citizens the extra taxes.

And Rhinos do die when you throw them over cliffs, and when huge stones crush them to tiny leathery pieces. Do not pull that “it’s a kids’ movie” crap on me. I know how physics and anatomy work.

Oh. My. Ga-. Kids are starving in China and they just threw away that last dumpling?! Those wasteful bastards!

Everyone in China speaks excellent English. Except for Oogway. “Noodles. Don’t noodles.” Yup. He went to my English class.

Damn. Captain Hook’s got some moves. Even after his unfortunate reincarnation as a chipmunk.

Ultimately, though, Kung-Fu Panda asks some really important questions. For instance, is Jackie Chan cooler in monkey form than he is in real life? Is adoption such a dangerous topic that even noodle fowl won’t address it? And if you come across one endangered animal beating the crap out of another endangered animal, are you obligated to intervene and violate the Prime Directive (not to mention breaking the fourth wall)? Or do you make some popcorn, pour a bottle of pijiu, tell the kids it’s non-alcoholic, sit back and watch the extremely unlikely demise of Ian McShane at the paws of Jack Black? Decisions, decisions. Thank goodness, I love Kung-fu.  

なになになになに。。。oooh! Godzilla!

I'd never seen the original Godzilla (ゴジラ) and I had no intention of watching the new one.
Then something broke inside of me and I got homesick for Japan. So I figured a ticket to a 3D flick, albeit deathly extravagant, was cheaper than a flight back to Osaka. And for the record, I don't like 3D. If I wanted 3D entertainment, I'd read a pop-up book.

But I went. And I enjoyed it.

It was Memorial Day, and I can think of no better way to celebrate the brave men and women who defend our country than to watch them do their trained and proficient best to master that which cannot be cowed by human forces. Because like it or not, doing your best against an insurmountable foe is a part of every person's life, and unfortunately a not unknown occurrence when you defend your country and your country's allies against all comers. I salute you, and thank you.

Because I know that if San Francisco is attacked by anything more ferocious than a five-year-old waving daisy-chains and spitting antibacterial spit-wads, nobody is gonna save us except the U.S. armed forces. No way are those Silicon Valley nerds going to pick up anything except their iphone so they can twitter "OMG. Obese Non-vegan stamping through the Financial District. IDK what 2 du. #theGoldenGateisFallingDown."

Thankfully, I know in the event of alien or prehistoric invasion, we can rely on one or two megastars to give us something to feel emotionally invested in while a plethora of expendable, face&name-less extras sacrifice themselves for that weekly paycheck. Nobody we love dies, but we still feel the dramatic impact of all those sad - wait. Did the dog make it? Tell me the puppy outran the tsunami!

And I love me an international cast that is easily recognizable because of their English-language movie credits. I mean, sure Ken Watanabe had only one face through the whole movie, but it has so much depth and expression of shock and awe that one believes he could have produced any facial expression and be convincing with it - if only the director had asked him to. Good thing he was in the picture at all, because otherwise we would have forgotten that Gojira was originally a Japanese monster. Not a native Californian. (Nobody is actually from here after all.)

Now, don't get your prehistoric panties in a wad. I liked the movie. Way more than did my dad who complained that it was too cheesy and hokey to hold up to canon (which, as far as I can tell, is so solidly cheesy as to produce lactose-intolerant farts in the most die-hard dairy consumer).

What did I learn from Godzilla? The new one?

Westerners don't understand Japanese houses. Juliete Binoche wears shoes inside a very traditional-teki house. Go back and check. I promise I heard her heels click on the wooden hallway floor right before her kid got disappointed because dad hates getting old and is too obsessed with mothra look-a-likes to care about homemade birthday banners.

Americans are the only ones who care about spousal relationships. As far as I could see, there was only one lady who died in the whole thing and her husband would just not let the damned dog lie. But apparently all the Japanese widows whose husbands gave their all for science were content to just pick up their pension checks and not launch an inquiry. What could two or three hundred of them do to demand answers anyway?

Remember when I said you should never live in New York because of all the super-hero destruction? Don't live in San Francisco either. If you must live in the Bay Area, go to Morgan Hill. Godzilla ain't gonna rampage that far down 101.

Come to think of it, San Francisco is an incredibly hilly city. It's famous for cable cars and Lombard street, but the real thrill is driving up any one of those mini mountains in a convertible and looking out the back. Makes you think Christopher Nolan wasn't making stuff up in Inception. So I imagine that Godzilla is going to return to the sea to nurse his aching calves.

Prehistoric monsters, after sleeping for millions of years and osmosis-ing nuclear energy, will still find a mate before I do. And have millions of creepy-crawly glow-in-the-dark babies. Not that I begrudge them the babies.

Of course, they will also be ravaged by a lizard-lion-eagle-looking beast. Okay, we'll call it even, Mr. and Mrs. Muto.

Prehistoric monsters eat nuclear warheads like a rich teenager pops painkillers. And probably washes them down with vodka-and-Pepsis. Some people will do anything for a high.

The Olsen twins got mighty tall overnight.

If you are going to evacuate your city, consider your enemy. All of those monsters wreaked havoc on downtown and the financial District, but nobody made it out to the neighborhoods - Sunset, 19th Ave, etc... were all safe. And while this is surprising, because you can walk the whole of San Francisco in a few hours - so Godzilla could monster mash his way through in a matter of minutes - it is also comforting to know that Hollywood only hates businessmen. With a passion. Thousands must have died.

The ultimate point of Godzilla, however, seemed to be that humans do not do anything to alter the course of the natural world. We might mess around with our little toys and cause mild destruction to each other, but it takes a big dog to show us that when it comes to full-scale catastrophe, we still piss like puppies. We don't make tsunamis, earthquakes, or wrecking balls that can do so much damage to the world we live in (there's a Miley Cyrus joke in there, but I refuse to encourage things like that in writing - so just fill in the blanks for yourself) as one bent-in-on-itself claw from a generic-looking giant insect.

Of course, we don't do a whole lot to help either. As far as I can tell, if you had left the humans out of this story completely, nothing about the outcome would have been altered in the slightest. It would have played out the same way. We just wouldn't have been around to see it.

Star Trek: To Absurdity and Beyond

I am a trekkie. Not one of those crazy ones who follows William Shatner around asking him to recite the Prime Directive. Although I do know the Prime Directive. And I have read "Get a Life!"

But I'm not a psycho.

I like my franchises (francheese) to be age-proof and creative - which is why I tuned out half-way through Voyager - and I appreciate Mr. Junior Abrams' modern take on a time-traveling pre-quel-assic. He could have done a lot worse. Look at Star Wars. Or The Hobbit. Or Star Wars. (Please, not Star Wars...)

Still, the hokey alarm was a-wailin off the hook last night as we made our uber-critical way through Star Trek: Into Darkness. Basically, the Federation is attacked by Wrath from Fullmetal Alchemist, Spock and Uhura (Ohura? Ohara?) play house, and the other characters run around yelling, except for Sulu who has the good sense to stay seated. There was other important plot sh*t, but I don't know what it was.

Oh yeah, the blond chick takes off her clothes as a fan-service. It didn't advance the plot, but I'm sure it

When the credits started to roll and T asked us, "what was that movie about?" the resounding reply was "Sherlock expanding his range." (Or "Pissy Sherlock", was the condensed version according to Nate.)

So a few things I learned from this pre-quel that weren't covered by Cinema Sins:

Federation uniforms used to look a lot like German SS officer uniforms. I don't want to draw any parallels between the Prime Directive and the Final Solution, but I think I saw a few extras goose-stepping around in the middle distance.

It is dangerous to be an ethnic minority in Hollywood. The black dude was the first to go. More than that, his daughter was really almost the first to go (or maybe she really did die, I didn't watch too closely)! Not only is it murder to be black in the land of skinny blonds, but it is no longer safe to be a minor.

Speaking of almost dying, if they sneaked a damn tribble reference in so that we could see how Harrison's blood cells reproduce, what low and dreadful canon-insulting thing are they going to slip into the next one? And if Harrison's blood brings dead things back to life, wouldn't it be too much for a little kid, or a tribble for that matter? I mean, they just figured out the dosage of valium needs to be
adjusted depending on how many chromosomes you have, so the same must apply to children and rodents. What happened to genetic-specific medicine? Is that an idea that just dies out in the next two centuries?

Extras are a dime a dozen on the Enterprise, but there were quite a few that surprised me, including the gaggle of women with the myriad of hairstyles on the bridge. The Federation is basically a really fancy military, so along with uniforms come regulation haircuts - I bet you cannot buzz your head, I am sure your bangs cannot impede your vision, and while we're at it, blue shirts don't work on the bridge. Come on, people.

And Kirk's hair always looked like he stepped out of the shower and ran Bed Head gel through it. And a bit of lemon juice to keep his highlights up. I bet it's because he is the captain. The captain's hair always looks barber-shop-exiting immaculate. Just look at Picard or Sysco.

And just for fun, did anybody else cheer, "Run, Fat Boy! Run!" when Simon Pegg dashed across the cargo bay? Because I did.

Alright, that's all I got right now.