Brief Note...

I've not been working on a new post lately, which will surprise the few people who regularly read this site, likely to marvel at my dedication to writing so poorly so often. No doubt, those who have read since the beginning will wonder why I haven't posted my opinion on those ugly set pics from Shyamalan's upcoming The Last Airbender, an adaptation of an animated show from American cable television with a strong flavor of Eastern mysticism and martial arts, and a certain inclusion in my series of reviews on "Hollywood's Kung Fu Movies."

Well, the reason is two fold, and it relates to the direction this blog is starting to take.

I actually started writing a new blog post about stupid people on the internet, after one particularly stupid youtube user (who has an incongruously large amount of subscribers) responded with some mildly amusing barbs after I trolled one of his crap-tastic videos. I found myself unable to articulate my annoyance with this guy, and really wanted to write an entry on the IMDb boards for Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian, in which nearly every thread has some mention of the size, shape or general doability factor of Amy Adams' butt. While Miss Adams' ass is, in some scenes, a significant part of director Shawn Levy's mise en scene (often the best), these threads are definitely prime examples of the internet plus stupidity. But even the amusement of that waned quite quickly, and the less tasteless observations of that failed post reproduced here, where they are not the sole point.

I am not generally pleased by writing about things that I hate. The process of gathering my thoughts and expressing them in a semi-coherent manner drains me of any enthusiasm when it comes to the writing process. Since the results are neither impressive, nor relevant to anybody, there is no reason that a blog post should be painful for me to write, nor any reason I should spend undue time on one that would likely fall on deaf ears (was anybody ever convinced of anything they didn't already know or believe by a blog?). I do plan to use that particular youtube user's video for an upcoming post, but it will not be directed specifically at him, although he certainly has earned a dozen such polemics with his incredibly self-righteous and alarmingly self-defeating arguments.

Aside from my growing distaste for my own negative writing, I've found that reviewing the obscure films that I collect is far more gratifying than complaining about the mundane, obviously crappy assortment of... well, crap that's cluttered my blog this month. I've actually gotten a bit of traffic of my Thrilling Sword, Warriors of Virtue, and Child of Peach reviews, if Google Analytics can be trusted. This is a very promising sign. I would not mind one bit if my blog became a minor resource for fans of martial arts movies (truly comprehensive knowledge of the genre is too much for any one person, even though there are many who come close. I suggest the FLK Cinema forum for a friendly community with a wide knowledge of the genre's most disparate elements), or even for novice fans wanting to know more about the many unusual films that have been made over the years.

I don't expect to become competition for any of the other already great websites out there -- Hong Kong, Asian, and general film websites are a dime a dozen, as are book review sites and restaurant blogs. I hope that what I do write about will prove both unusual and weird enough to attract a more regular audience. There's plenty of people who have given their opinion on J.J. Abram's recent Star Trek film, just as there are plenty of people who have given their opinions on Gran Torino. There's far less information available on such films as, just for example, The Dwarf Sorcerer -- an amusing 1970's wuxia shenguai film from Taiwanese director Chui Chin-Hong heavily derived from Japanese films like Watari and Torawakamaru.

In the near future (hopefully within the coming weeks) I plan to review Chui Chung-hing's 1990 fantasy freak-fest, Twelve Fairies, Gene Wolfe's nearly forgotten juvenile historical novel (that was badly mislabled as epic fantasy) A Devil in the Forest, and Stephen Teo's much needed genre survey, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Intermittently, I'll try to figure out a way to write an article on internet stupidity without engaging in it myself. Maybe that thing called "quality" will deign to make an appearance.