Movie Review -- Full Moon Scimitar

Well, what did you expect?

Full Moon Scimitar is one of the eighteen films that Shaw Brothers director Chu Yuan adapted from the novels of Gu Long over the course of about six years. Made in 1979, it stars Derek Yee (billed as Erh Tu-Sheng) instead of Ti Lung, who was very often the lead in Chu Yuan/Gu Long films at Shaw Bros. It's not one of the stronger films in the series, but that should be expected since Chu had already made at least twelve films of varying quality. Do the math: that's four Gu Long films per year, in addition to other projects, including a two part adaptation of Jin Yong's Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber the previous year. It's a testament to Chu's formula that any of these films display any signs of quality at all, and yet, most of them do, if only in small quantities.

And to be honest, Full Moon Scimitar is one of the more disappointing films for many of us not because it's a particularly worse film than, say, Death Duel (1977), but because of its very particular lack of availability. It was one of the last Chu Yuan films released on dvd by Celestial pictures, but it was one of the first titles that caught my attention when I started looking for films to watch on my newly acquired region-free dvd player. The first three films that I bought were Magic Blade (Chu Yuan, 1976), Martial Arts of Shaolin (Lau Kar-Leung, 1986), and Buddha's Palm (Taylor Wong 1982), and while reading various forums, I found a few mentions of Full Moon Scimitar as well as a poster and lobby card images. The mere image of the scimitar, a crescent moon shaped blade that folds out to make an S-shaped weapon gripped in its center, sent my imagination flying with possibilities for fight choreography. And with Chu Yuan as director, I knew it would have all sorts of weirdly colored lighting schemes and plenty of convoluted plot twists.

Hence, I had built this movie up to a point that it had no chance of meeting my expectations. The same thing happened with Life Gamble, which is actually pretty decent, and would have happened with Clan Feuds had I not already learned my lesson.

Full Moon Scimitar tells the story of Ding Peng (Derek Yee) an aspiring swordsman who gains enough fame to fight a duel with Liu Ruo Song (Wong Yung), who uses his wife's charms to steal Ding Peng's sword manual and defeat him in their duel. Humiliated, Ding Peng takes off, running into Qing Qing (Lisa Wong), a fox spirit whose clan holds the titular Full Moon Scimitar, which Ding uses, along with some trickery that's even more underhanded than what Ruo Song used on him, to defeat Liu Ruo Song in a rematch and then take up a position as head of the martial world, earning the ire of practically every major clan chief or notable swordsman, alienating Qing Qing in the process.

Like many other Gu Long adaptations, the theme of the corruptibility of power gets hammered home in no uncertain terms. That makes Derek Yee's character an unlikable jerk, and all of the characters with only a few exceptions despicable. The "righteous" clan leaders frequently resort to treachery in order to get their way, and their corruptibility extends to protection for members or relatives of their own rank. Their victims, generally speaking, actually deserve the pain inflicted on them, although pretty much everyone in need of punishment gets it by the end of the film. So much like Magic Blade, The Sentimental Swordsman, and Death Duel, the film presents a sadly treacherous, tragic version of the martial world. It must be mentioned though, that a twist in the plot towards the end of the film confuses some of the earlier events in the plot, since it eliminates the justification for certain unlikely supernatural happenings, all of which are filmed in Chu Yuan's usual method, using lots of wide angles and "spooky" green lighting.

But Full Moon Scimitar, for all its formulaic elements and (retroactive) lack of clarity, has some undeniably appealing things going for it. Among Chu's films, I think this one has some of the most consistently good fight scenes. Action director Tong Gaai worked very often on these films, and in some of those others his choreography seems workmanlike, if not bored. The fight scenes here bare lots of his trademarks, like extensive stunt doubling, weird weapons, formation fighting, and acrobatic, dance like choreography. Yueh Hua, Wang Lung Wei, and Norman Chu all have memorable parts, with Yueh Hua stealing every scene he's in as a master swordsman with no need for a sword. And certainly, the number of attractive women filling out the cast doesn't hurt the film one bit.

There's not much to quibble about with the "message" either. One can seemingly never remind the world enough of people's inability to resist temptation.

The only thing that actually disappoints about this movie is that it isn't the mind-blowing spectacle for which I hoped. Full Moon Scimitar won't win any new fans for Chu Yuan's brand of films, and in the end it it's a formula film: one of eighteen. Why were so many of these films made in such a limited amout of time anyways? These films were being churned out before the emergence of home video, produced at such a rate that there would always be one ready to premeir as the previous Chu Yuan/Gu Long film was making its way out of theaters. They form something like a serial without continuity (or continence, some would likely say) but with an incongruous amount of effort when compared to most serials, or much of what was being produced for television.

Full Moon Scimitar gives you what you ought to expect. It can't really be faulted for that.

Mtn Dew Game Fuel -- Screw the Dew

I know the title isn't at all clever, but Mtn Dew Game Fuel - Wild Fruit is unworthy of creative insults.

Really, it's shocking that such a product exists. How could anybody produce something that tastes so absurdly bad? The first sip reminded me of babysitting a young relative who made Kool-Aid with so little water that it practically clung to whatever moisture was in my mouth and left my tongue dry and brightly hued. There is so much artificial sweetener in this particular flavor of Mountain Dew, that it actually eliminates every other flavor in your mouth, with an aftertaste vaguely reminiscent of chewing on a plastic bag.

As I understand, this is a re-released, repackaged Mountain Dew "Revolution," one of a few flavors released a year or two ago, none of which came even close to tasting good. The new "Game Fuel" flavors not only taste bad, they've tasted bad for years.

In the past, I've spent hundreds of dollars at restaurants, cooked expensive cuts of beef more or less on impulse, and drove hours out of my way to eat at burger and barbecue joints instead of just stopping at McDonald's. I watch the Food Network. And yet, I never thought the American obsession with food somehow unhealthy. Then Pepsi partnered with Microsoft, and wrought upon the world the abomination of "Game Fuel." The world is a perverse place.

Mtn Dew Game Fuel - Do the Dew Doo

It's a long established stereotype that video gamers, role players and nerds enjoy Mountain Dew to an unhealthy degree. Proof enough comes from Summoner, a game developed by Volition for the PS2, which featured a video in which various characters from the game play Dungeons and Dragons while one particular character whines over Cheetos and Mountain Dew. It's one of the funnier instances of marketing and reality misaligning; Mountain Dew frequently ran commercials with X-treme sports themes, with snowboarders and skaters doing tricks and telling us to "do the dew," while the only people who were actually buying and enjoying Mountain Dew for purposes other than the massive caffeine jolt were guys who lived the exact opposite of an extreme sports lifestyle.

I do not know precisely when it occured, that fateful moment when Mountain Dew became self-aware, but I do know that we felt its effects around September of 2007, upon the release of Halo 3 for the Xbox 360. Myself, RockmanXZ24, Pilgrim, and Waffler proceeded to the local the supermarket, where Waffler purchased a box full of Halo 3 themed Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel cans. We had balked at the thought earlier in the day, and when we actually tried it, balked at the idea that anybody else would actually drink it. Never the less, we consumed every can, albeit over a period of weeks, usually not touching it until several hours into Halo 3 multiplayer or a couple of dungeons deep and a couple of level ups into Phantasy Star Online for Gamecube. It was during one of these marathon gaming sessions that I learned RockmanXZ24 had never drank a Mountain Dew before his introduction to "Gamer Fuel," and this is somebody who owns every Nippon Ichi developed game that has been released in the US (excepting Rhapsody, but we can understand not owning that one).

Amusingly, the marketing had once again failed to match up with reality. By the time that Pepsi co. started making Mountain Dew specifically geared towards nerds, we found out that at least one of us nerds hadn't even bothered to try Mountain Dew before. After that one attempt at fitting the stereotype so carefully researched by the powerful corporate soft-drink entities, I lacked even the slightest wish to drink Mountain Dew ever again. There were a few other flavors that were attached to the label, none of which did anything for me. Apparently the rest of the world felt similarly, since I don't see most of those flavors around anymore, and Gamer Fuel was no exception...

Until last night.

With Waffler, RockmanXZ24, Pilgrim and I all in the same place for the weekend (an unusual enough occurance), Waffler brought something to help us celebrate: bottles of newly re-christened Mtn Dew "Game Fuel," the Horde Red edition. Now featuring a World of Warcraft theme and a title lessened a single letter, Game Fuel is exactly the same as it was two years ago. It touts a "citrus-cherry" flavor that tastes not only artificial but completely awful. Most shockingly, Game Fuel now has two flavors: Horde Red and Alliance Blue, reminding one of the heinous Energy Potions that I complain about so often. I've only tried Horde Red so far, but as I remembered, it's disgustingly sugary and caffeinated to a likely unhealthy degree.

Back when Mountain Dew was the unnoficial drink of nerds, there was certain ironic affection that I couldn't help but have for it. Now that I see orcs and night elves and Master Chief emblazoned all over it, that irony is gone. Now it's just gross. A google search for "Game Fuel" brought me to an online promotion for World of Warcraft, and that just makes me hate that game even more.

Cherry and citrus are two perfectly acceptable artificial flavors that simply shouldn't mix. Soft drinks and video game promotion are the same. Spelling words without vowels is jst pln stpd, and I have a feeling that I'm probably going to try the Alliance Blue Game Fuel tonight, out of some combination of fleeting interest and masochistic glee.

Review -- Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition by Stephen Teo

When I first started this blog, it was to fulfill a requirement of a media studies class that I was mildly excited over. The class centered around a paper that would examine a cultural trend or artifact of the student's choosing. I chose kung fu movies, and the paper I wrote (the name of which I don't recall) attempted to reconcile the seemingly nationalistic impulse of martial arts films with their popularity among western viewers, particularly urban, African-American audiences. The professor graded my paper an "A-" which means it was good enough for an undergrad media studies course, but I was thoroughly frustrated with finding basic data on ticket sales and distribution records for many of the films I wished to talk about. I don't plan to write academically about my favorite much-maligned film genre ever gain (unless I get paid); learning how little of the basic information about the films that saw release in my own country had been recorded for posterity discouraged me greatly.

It is with that knowledge that I say Stephen Teo's monograph of the Wuxia genre, from the conception of the term to the present trends among Mainland Chinese film makers, is an excellent resource for the history of the genre, as well as topical and retroactive critical appraisal. Exhaustively researched, filled with anecdotal information about the earliest Shanghai produced films and their reception by audiences and the intelligentsia, often painfully academic, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition is not bathroom reading.

Given the general lack of academic writing on the genre as a whole, and partly because of the constraints placed on the author (which he discusses in the epilogue) this book is a bit dry and to the point. If you're not one for scholarly reading, you might want to have Wikipedia open and ready to look up such concepts as "self-fashioning," "historicist," "orientalist," as well as more common terms for film criticism (auteur, mise en scene, etc). Teo does not write a journalistic survey of the genre, he writes a narrative of its evolving relations between nationalism and transnationalism, masculine and feminine emphasis within the genre, and (to a lesser degree) auteur film making as opposed to generic film making. Covering eighty years worth of genre movies as they were produced over periods of war and economic upheaval, a goodly portion of work is evaluated for a single book, with only a single chapter on the kung fu genre deviating from the central, specific history of the wuxia film "to suggest a less than smooth development of the martial arts cinema..." (p.81) That suggestion is a very wise one that justifies the inclusion of a chapter that breaks the chronology built by each previous chapter.

In spite of his excellent scholarship, exemplary conveying of oft forgotten or simply uncommonly known historical facts, and consistent explanations of the wuxia genre, I must qualify my recommendation of Mr. Teo's book with more than a general warning to those who wouldn't want to read such an academic text in the first place. Firstly, Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition is not a comprehensive study. I recall very well approaching the end of the chapter 4 "Rise of New School Wuxia," waiting for a bit of analysis on the films of Joseph Kuo and Tien Peng and other Taiwanese films, and finishing the chapter only to find that there wasn't any. I quickly finished the following chapter on King Hu, thinking that his relationship with Union film company might segue to a discussion, however brief it might need to be. Once again, I was a tad disappointed. I also hoped for a bit more information if not critical discussion of the Cantonese language serials (although there is a great review of Ling Yun's 1964 Buddha's Palm series) and some of the more notable wuxia shenguai films, like Monkey Goes West (Ho Meng Hua, 1966) or even The Eight Immortals (Chan Hung-Man, 1971). The author explains in the epilogue that he wished to include more of Taiwan's Mandarin language cinema, but could not due to considerations for space. He also makes mention of the unavailability of extant film texts in some of the genre's more distant corners, which many a collector can relate to.

Also for those looking for observations or reviews of specific films, directors, or stars, this book is probably not what you're looking for. Stephen Teo explicates even directors like Chang Cheh and Chu Yuan in generic terms, and only King Hu receives treatment as an auteur. (In one amusing paragraph, however, Teo reviews most of Chang Cheh's more noteworthy films in short sentence fragments, which usually do convey the best aspects of each) And while many films are discussed, this is not a book of reviews.

There are other minor quibbles. I disagree with Teo's assessment of Zhang Yimou's Hero. I think he over-interprets symbolism in King Hu's films (see his King Hu's A Touch of Zen). I also think that the kung fu film is more important for American audiences and don't feel like the chapter he includes is necessary, although Teo has just reason to include it.

All that said, this is an unprecedented English language resource for those interested in the history of the genre, particularly its roots in literature and the lost films that can only be researched obliquely through reviews and articles written by people who have seen them. I'd recommend it to those who are willing to read an academic, scholarly text, and even to those who aren't interested in scholarly reading but wish to know more about this unappreciated and misunderstood genre of film.

Book Review: The Devil in a Forest by Gene Wolfe

"Deep in a forest wilderness lay a village so humble, so insignificant, that only a handful of people knew it existed -- yet it was here that a mighty battle was waged in the endless struggle between Good and Evil."

This is the blurb on the back of the Ace Science Fiction paperback for Gene Wolfe's 1976 novel The Devil in a Forest. From that needlessly effusive set up, one might suppose it to be the starting point to the sort of epic fantasy stories that lines the shelves of bookstores with volume upon volume of goofy color illustrations and prose that would be utterly embarrassing to read out loud. (There's another printing with a description that's even more misleading) The closest Wolfe has come to writing that sort of fiction is The Wizard Knight -- which boasts the unusual quality of having a most conventional fantasy plot which in no way reads like conventional fantasy.

The Devil in a Forest isn't actually fantasy at all, but historical fiction. And rather than "a mighty battle [that] was waged in the endless struggle between Good and Evil," the conflict is a vortex of people and cultures that was the Medieval age; the story follows the tribulation of a small village caught in the center of it. The seemingly random murder of a traveling salesman by notorious by Wat, a notorious bandit, sets the ordeal in motion. The villagers attempt to bring Wat to justice themselves, only to fall victim to Wat's scheming just as soldiers are dispatched to the village to look for and arrest Wat. Wat, in the mean, is hiding out with char burners, themselves outlaws of a sort; and the meddling of Mother Cloot, a genuinely sociopathic witch, only causes the villagers more grief.

The story is told from the perspective of Mark, a young man without family, clearly searching for a male figure to emulate. Candidates include a soft-spoken, dangerously strong blacksmith, the local clergyman, Phillip the skeptic, Wat, and the thuggish soldiers that occupy the village. Mark struggles to make sense of his situation -- Wolfe makes much of Mark's intellectual ambition, quite notable coming from a peasant -- eventually reconciling the hard truths that he experiences first hand with the beliefs of the abbe, and the coal burners and even Mother Cloot.

With a character like Mark as the protagonist, it should come as no surprise that The Devil in a Forest reads like Wolfe attempting to write juvenile fiction. As such, it's very well done, if perhaps a bit too subtle for young readers and a bit too simple for the more sophisticated (I wouldn't describe myself as sophisticated, but I guessed the identity of a mysterious noble before he was even introduced). It's also a nice antidote to the poisonous sort of fiction that broadly portrays the pre-Christian Europeans cultures as pleasant, peaceful matriarchal peoples brutally oppressed by the no-good, patriarchal Medieval Church. The Church was not exactly all cuddles and sunshine, but may we all get over the romanticizing of people who ritually murdered young women?

On that selfish note, I'll simply say that The Devil in a Forest is very enjoyable historical fiction.

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.

Pirate Game Review -- Final Fantasy X

It's nice to be surprised by a game that's better than it has any right to be. In the case of Final Fantasy X: Fantasy War, it quite literally has no right to be, because it's a pirate. I first saw a video of this on the now defunct CrashManExe Youtube account, which had a semi-regular series called "pirate rom hunt," which featured a number of wacky pirates from various companies. Final Fantasy X caught my attention by not only looking quite nice (especially in comparison to the side-scrolling Famicom and Game Boy Color pirate games that were featured) but also looking like it would be fun to play.

Having actually played it, now, I wish that Square had actually thought of making a side-scrolling Final Fantasy brawler for the Game Boy Color. This is easily the best of the pirate games that I've played. First off, the graphics are actually quite nice. The animation is surprisingly fluid, the character sprites look more or less like Final Fantasy characters, or at least Final Fantasy characters from before Tetsuya Nomura ruined the series and Square (I'm only bein half-sarcastic here) . The backgrounds are colorful, if not especially creative. I do like the boss stages, in particular. They look like you're running around in space with the big crystal in the background. The enemies are a bit confusing though. Antlion is there, but otherwise, the enemies are a boring bunch of skeletons, goblins, and slimes, with Frankenstein's monster being one of the bosses. The soundtrack, I've been informed, was ripped almost entirely from the GBC remake of SNK's King of Fighters '94. It sounds pretty good. The music in pirate games made by Waixing and Shenzhen can only be described as insidious pain that infects through the ear.

As for the gameplay itself, it's mediocre by the standards of professionally developed titles, but very good for an unlicensed Game Boy Color game. You walk your character to the right and attack the enemies that come onscreen. There's a jump button that you'll never use; pressing on a direction twice will cause your character to run and attacking while running will cause a lunge attack; pressing down-forward like in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat will get your character to perform a special move. Your character levels up after killing enemies, which will increase his stats, although the only stat that really seems to increase much is the health bar. There's four characters to play as, a fighter, mage, thief and chocobo. I like the fighter best. The chocobo is awful, I think. The game gives unlimited continues, which makes it pretty easy to breeze through if you've got no pride.

All of these features are pretty standard beat-em-up features. If Square had actually made a game like this, they could have added character or even party customizability (multiplayer would be fun) and weapon upgrades to go with it. Given what they put together with Dissidia: Final Fantasy, I could see them incorporating customizable move sets as well. Square Enix should make this game on the DS or PSP in 2d, with wi-fi play. I could actually see it looking not unlike Odin Sphere or Muramasa: The Demon Blade, possibly giving it some solid old-school appeal that Sqare Enix -- in spite of being a company with over twenty years of contributions to video game culture and millions of die hard fans -- usually lacks, even in their most "fan service-y" games. If they don't like the idea of making a new Final Fantasy themed beat-em-up, how about making one with the "Mana" series? Those games have sucked for years now.

But since that will never happen, Final Fantasy X: Fantasy War is a good enough substitute. The GBC cart used to be pretty common on Ebay, but seems to have been snapped up by most of the obscure video game collectors. Most people will experience this game through emulation, which also makes it a free alternative to the game that Square Enix will never bother making (even though they should). Kudos to the developers of this particular pirate game. It's awesome.