Finally, after what seemed like six months of waiting, There Will Be Blood finally made it out to the boondocks that is the east coast, and it was worth it. Daniel Day-Lewis will clean up at the Oscars, and if he doesn’t, I will start my own strike against the Oscars right as the WGA finishes their own.

Since I’m a bastard with little free time this semester that isn’t spent watching movies (I’m not saying I have a lot of free time, I’m saying the little free time I do have I watch movies during), I have obviously not updated recently, and this post will also be a quickie, in that I’ll mostly just post some videos and links and leave the analysis to you the viewer.

Speaking of little free time, writing all those silly little moon language characters hundreds of times kind of sucks, but I purchased a program to help me with memorization and such, though its usefulness is possibly somewhat limited:

iKana

Sadly for you little-endian plebeians (ok this doesn’t work anymore), this software is only for the greatest operating system ever, OSX.

While specifically on the topic of reading Japanese, I have come across a Japanese version of YouTube with less restrictions and more anonymity. And of course, that means more wacky zaniness that you all so desire. This Valhalla for otaku is called NicoVideo.jp. But wait, when you go, you will encounter a wall of hieroglyphics and be utterly lost in all the wavy lines. Never fear, as this thread will tell you how to proceed.

Moving onto another thing I wanted to cover, independent computer role-playing games. Tell me, what comes to mind when you watch the following game trailer?

Possibly the best game ever made, I’d say. AND NOW YOU CAN PLAY IT. Speaking of role playing games, I hope in the near future to have an update covering some of the better independent role playing games available for Mac and PC.

Finally, I’d like to hammer you with three trailers to new and upcoming films that you may or may not be interested in. First, the most promising of these three happens to be, The Forbidden Kingdom.

From watching the trailer, you can immediately see what makes this movie amazing. Yes, the two greatest Asian martial artist film stars to ever grace the shit hole that is Hollywood, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I can’t even express to you how long I have wanted this to happen, and I eagerly anticipate the release of this film. I have my hopes held high for this film, however due to the disappointment that was War, another film that had high potential (Jet Li and Jason Statham), you can’t ever be too careful.

Some quickies include the film Mongol. Looks like it has some potential, it’s opening limited release this June (means I won’t ever get to see it). As one may assume it’s about Genghis Khan and it was filmed in Kazakhstan!

Lastly is John Woo’s Red Cliff, based on the (Romance of the) Three Kingdoms time period in China. Opinions on it are somewhat mixed, depending on people’s opinions of John Woo’s directing abilities. An additional disappointment is the lack of Chow Yun-Fat, who dropped out early on in the film’s production. Ken Watanabe is another great actor who was considered for a role but since them dern Chinese won’t let a Japanese actor play in their movie, another talent was lost.

That’s all for now, perhaps I’ll find time to update before the next full moon.

Pardon the title, I didn’t really put much effort into it. I’ve been busy doing nothing recently, so pardon the lack of daily updates. However, I do hope to get at least a few things done before I go back to school and this site runs out of visitors. Anyway, I’d like to go over a few upcoming film releases, whether they be Chinese cinema or Uwe Boll-like attempts at video game live-action.

First off, I have come across a trailer for an upcoming film called Kung Fu Dunk. This strikes me as interesting because it is a film about a martial artist who becomes a Basketball star. For those of you who are buffs in the realm of Chinese cinema, you may be aware of a similar film by Stephen Chow, called Shaolin Soccer, which was quite good.

Kung Fu Dunk, also known as Slam Dunk, is loosely based on the manga by the same name. One possible criticism of it is that it could be an half-assed attempt to cash in on Stephen Chow’s success with a sports/kung fu mix. As for the cast, it appears that Jay Chou is starring, who some may recognize from Curse of the Golden Flower, where he plays the older Prince Jai alongside Yun-Fat Chow and Li Gong. The director, while I’ve never heard of him or any of his films, has a fairly decent filmography, so they may be set there. All in all, it looks like it has potential, but see for yourself, view the trailer below:

Speaking of Stephen Chow, it looks like the master himself is coming out with a new film this coming year entitled CJ7, or Long River 7 for ‘Mericans. Sadly, it appears to lack any sort of kung-fu, and is instead a sci-fi comedy about a poor laborer who has a few interesting experiences after getting his son a new toy.

Lana Lang => Chun Li

Personally, a genre of filmography that has not been explored nearly enough is of fighting game live-action. Sure, there have been plenty of video game films, such as Resident Evil, Doom, and everything that Uwe Boll does, but I’m talking about films of an entirely different calibre. A film like the fighting game classic, Mortal Kombat. The greatest fighting game film ever made, even better than its abomination of a sequel, and the original Street Fighter with Van Damme. It’s also one of the last films I’ve seen Robin Shou in other than Beverly Hills Ninja. It makes me wonder why he doesn’t get any more work.

So far, there are two candidates that could possibly fill this gap: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and Tekken.

Regrettably, both are still early in the production phase, and little is known about either of them. As for Tekken, all that is known is a 2009 release, which will be directed by Dwight H. Little, who’s resume includes among other things, such blockbusters as Halloween 4 and Free Willy 2.

Only a little more is known about the also 2009 release film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. With action director and cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak at the helm, this film packs a lot of ass-kicking potential. Which it needs, with Chun-Li’s transvestite-like thighs.

Until recently, the real debate was on who was going to be Chun-Li? Well that was recently revealed to be Kristin Kreuk from Smallville. I think the real question is, who should play Cammy? Of course, I’m only assuming that Cammy will even be in the film, but you can bet your bottom doll hair that I will be disappointed if I can’t see some blue British leotard action. I even slaved for like five hours over this picture:

I picked two possible candidates, Christina Ricci and Jessica Simpson. I think that either of them would be an ideal choice. Christina Ricci, though not normally blonde, could fairly easily portray Cammy, as seen from her performance in Black Snake Moan. However, Jessica Simpson would also be a good choice, for obvious reasons (not to mention she said she was going to possibly do a nude scene to “gain respect”). We can only pray that this movie will be R-rated. Also, hearing her attempt at a British accent would be Oscar worthy, in my opinion.

I slaved over /a/ and photoshop to bring you some Christmas cheer.

You’ve seen the show, now here’s the live action movie: Be a Man! Otokojuku The Movie.

The manliest show in the history of animation is now coming out in a live-action version! Hopefully someone subtitles this because this is a movie you will not want to miss as long as blood flows through your veins and testosterone powers your hair follicles.

What anime has evolved into.

Recently there has been an influx of anime to live action films in production. Right now there are two major live action films on the horizon: Dragonball and Speed Racer.

First off, lets talk about Dragonball. As amazing as I’m sure this 100 million dollar film will be, I have a slight inkling that it will be somewhere between a gargantuan and a titanic flop. Why? Because despite what they may think, this film is about 10 years too late. I’d like to say that I see on average fewer shirts with flames, wolves, or flaming wolves on them, which can only mean that those who did watch the show have now grown up into neckbearded college students with interests lying in more “elegant” shows (see image).

Justin Chatwin: Goku

Nonetheless, I could be wrong about this. Perhaps a new generation of Dragonball fanatics have emerged, and somehow this movie will turn a profit. Indeed, let us not forget that this film is based off of Dragonball, not DBZ. Therefore, Goku is a little prepubescent douche accurately portrayed by Justin Chatwin.

I hate to admit but this movie does have potential. Somehow they’ve strong-armed Chow Yun Fat to play Master Roshi, as well as blackmailed Stephen Chow into producing it. Additionally, all of the fight scenes are going to be choreographed by a true chi master. Finally, you can bet your darn tootin’ ass I’ll be at the first showing if they decide to include this Emmy-nominated scene from the original show:

Well, that’s enough on Dragonball for now, you can find out more at their official blog: Dragonball Movie Blog.

The second major live action film coming out next May 9th is Speed Racer.

This will be awesome because of the following:

Wachowski Brothers are directing (Matrix, V for Vendetta)
John Goodman as Pop Racer, Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer
Matthew Fox (from Lost) as Racer X
Christina Ricci (Black Snake Moan, Grindhouse) as Trixie
Silly Monkey (hopefully)

Anyway, all that mixed with awesome racing car action means that this movie will be FUCKIN’ TURBO.

Other live action films in the works:

Battle Angel - A live-action version of Battle Angel Alita directed by James Cameron! Maybe John Connor will survive the fourth Terminator and make it into this one!

Neon Genesis Evangelion - I can only ponder as to how amazing or amazingly bad this may probably not ever be.

I’ve also come across two other films, that though they aren’t live action remakes of anime, they will kick enough ass to make you not really care any more:

The first is called Ninja Cheerleaders, which looks promising, kind of a chimera of several different straight-to-tv movies.

The second is one that I am personally anticipating quite a bunch, The Machine Girl. It looks like Kill Bill but about 30x more awesome and infinity times more drill bra.

Pardon all of the Youtube embeds, I’ve actually installed a plugin that should let me stream my own videos but I decided to try waiting until I’ve tested it out.

By the way, sorry for the huge break in between updates, I’ve been busy recently, but I hope to make up for it over the rest of Christmas break. However, my upload kind of sucks so I may just try to catch up rather than do any major uploads until I get back my university connection! Also, if there is anyone who wants to write for the site, feel free, just contact me.