This Week in Geek (22-28/06/09)

Buys

It's gonna be a Kung Fu summer thanks to Dragon Dynasty's excellent releases. Every time I watch one, I immediately get my hands on 2 or 3 more. This week, I grabbed Vietnamese kung fu movie, The Rebel; Donnie Yen's Flashpoint, and an old Shaw Brothers' film, Heroes of the East, AKA Shaolin Challenges Ninja (see below)!

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: To start with, flipped the first season of True Blood. Now, I have an uneasy relationship with sexy vampire fiction (I despise it), but I was willing to give it a go based on Alan Ball's credentials (American Beauty, Six Feet Under). Had I known it was based on a series of books (how many secy vampire series ARE there, anyway? Sheesh!), I might have skipped it. I'm glad I didn't though. The elements from the books (as far as I can make out from the various commentaries) get sillier and sillier and are by far the weakest thing in the show. The invented characters and situations, however, are my favorites. I found myself much more interested in Tara's demons than in Sookie's (sucky... haha, I get it... yeesh) love affair with a vampire. At least, it knows that vampires are all about sex, and doesn't keep up any pretenses about that, so the world that's created is satirical, which I like. Throw in Michelle Forbes near the end and you've got me for a second season. Still uneasy about liking it, however. In addition to commentary tracks, the DVD has some funny fake ads and television pieces about vampires "coming out of the coffin".

My biggest revelation, however, was Heroes of the East, mentioned above. I thought, hey, why not give an old school Hong Kong film a try to see what they were like. Turns out, it's one of the best martial arts films I've ever seen. Doesn't sound like it when I say that it's The Taming of the Shrew with martial arts, does it? Or that no one dies in the whole picture? And yet it kicks ass 20 different ways. It stars Gordon Liu, lately better known as Pai Mei in Kill Bill, as a Chinese husband whose Japanese wife doesn't care about his stupid kung fu. Through a comedy of errors, he winds up having to defeat 7 masters of Japanese weapons and styles. Pretty great. Watched it back to back even before switching to the commentary track. The DVD also includes interviews with Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan and star Gordon Liu, as well as Japanese weapons demonstrations by contemporary masters.

Books: Finished Blood Heat, a Doctor Who New Adventure from 1993, the first of a 5-part arc in which the 7th Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield are spun into various alternate universes by an unknown hand. In this one, the Silurians won back in their premiere story and the world's been taken over by dinosaurs as the last vestiges of UNIT fight the good fight. Except the Doctor still wants to make peace! A good adventure yarn with memorable set pieces (Benny's not in it enough for my tastes though), but rather dark (a staple of the series). Jim Mortimore's previous novel for the line also had illustrations. I wonder why he gets special treatment.

Twitter: You know, I kinda liked doing quick reviews of comics singles I was reading in my Live Blogs, but I don't like how it interfered with the blog's schedule. Then, I thought, why not join the rank of Twits? So if you'd like to know my impression of the comics I read boiled down to a single pithy sentence, I'll be reading them on Twitter. The link's toward the top of the sidebar, or here.

New Unauthorized Doctor Who CCG cards: 25, all from The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, finishing up that story's cards, at least for now. Next up will be Warriors of the Deep.

Someone Else's Post of the Week
I'm not gonna mention the various celebrity deaths of the week in these pages, but if you're interested in the death of your childhood, how about Topless Robot's excellent review of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen? You don't even have to have seen it to enjoy it.

Comments

Martin Léger said…
Mmmh Kung Fu movies rule!

I keep hearing about the Shaw Bros. and with a quick google search I found out that they have a huge list of movies so I must of seen at least a few.

I dunno which kind I like more the normal kung fu or Super Kung Fu like in Iron Monkey.