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Episode 026 - The 26th Chamber of the Gaijin
10 Plays6 months ago
In this episode, we look at movie news, our selection of martial arts films and a review of Dev Patel's Monkey Man
CREDITS:
Intro clip from Lau Kar-leung's "Executioners from Shaolin" from the Shaw Brothers Studio
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
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Transcript
Courage and Rules in Martial Arts
00:00:19
Speaker
You know, I guess that you would be the only one would dare to come here you've got courage
00:00:39
Speaker
Before you get a chance to fight with me, you must observe our rules and beat these two swordsmen first.
Introduction to Tuitions Podcast and Hosts
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to the Tuitions Podcast, where myself, Sue Fire, along with my friend and canny colleague, Scrumpy, does a film in other media through a decades-long lens of mass media consumption.
Martial Arts Films and Dev Patel's Monkey Man
00:01:07
Speaker
In this episode, we'll be talking through our standout martial arts films, as well as reviewing Dev Patel's Monkey Man. This is the Tuitions Podcast, so snatch the pebble from my hand as we get ready to learn the secrets of Wushu as we begin Episode 2, Series 2.
Kung Fu Movies Discussion
00:01:37
Speaker
We're finally doing the Kung Fu episode. I'm pretty surprised that we went through an entire season without doing the Kung Fu episode. Yeah, it seems like an obvious one.
00:01:48
Speaker
So, yeah, we're going to be going through some of our notable kung fu movies, because my list is not like the top movies. I've not really sort of thought about it that way, but the ones that I'm sort of currently thinking about, really. Or Landmark. Our context, our genesis for this is to talk about Monkey Man, which we both have seen and enjoyed. Correct, correct.
00:02:13
Speaker
the spate of current reviews seem to think, oh, it's John Wick or John Wick action. No, there's more movies than John Wick. Yeah. Yeah. I love John Wick. And John Wick came from, you know, it's got a common heritage in some ways.
Personal Heritage and Movie Trailers
00:02:30
Speaker
But yeah, it is. It is definitely not John Wick. Speaking of heritage, Mike.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yes. Oh, oh, yes. Well, yeah. Well, well, I don't have a Chinese heritage, but I am a quarter Korean and a quarter Japanese. So, yeah, there we go. This is like the Native American episode. We got to do an Irish episode at some point now and just make it complete.
00:02:54
Speaker
But yeah, I thought we'd go through some of the movie news. Oh, yes. And so some of the things that so a few trailers have come out this week. We've had the trailer for Maxine.
00:03:10
Speaker
Yes. And, uh, I almost don't know what to make of it, which makes me happy because it's not like following the pattern of the previous two. Not that there is a pattern between the previous two, because those are two completely independent movies. And it looks like they're doing the same thing here, which is, it looks like now they're getting into the urban like maniac, uh, kind of nods versus Texas, James off or whatever the others might be, or, you know,
00:03:39
Speaker
Teen. Drop it. Yeah. Yeah. But it looks good. It looks good. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing to worry about there as far as no alarm bells going off. No red flags. It looks pretty great. And we also went after someone, one of the more bigger movies.
00:04:00
Speaker
has been previewed, and I hate this title, Joker Foliadoo had his teaser trailer. I mean, I don't know.
00:04:17
Speaker
I think one of my fundamental problems with it, and I think the actors in it look good. I don't have faith in the director, I have to say. I'm not a great fan of Todd Phillips, but Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga look great, but in terms of the writing, and
Directors and Influences in Cinema
00:04:39
Speaker
I might be sort of prejudging this, but it seems to kind of go against the original story.
00:04:45
Speaker
of Harley and the Joker. And that kind of gets under my skin a little bit. And I think also these spinoffs that they do from Batman that kind of ignore Batman, feel a little, you know, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. For the most part, the one I would call out is Margot Robbie's
00:05:11
Speaker
Harley Quinn character is good. Yeah. They haven't really done anything in terms of her origin except for the, her own movie, which I enjoyed. I slept in an airplane, but yeah, I really enjoyed that. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Uh, that one did it right. I think just kept it smaller and worked within its confines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This one, I have zero interest. I haven't even bothered to watch the trailer yet. What did, what did you think to the first one?
00:05:41
Speaker
I love the fact that you never needed an origin story for Joker. Yeah. He was just this force. And there's a reason he could sit there and stand up to Batman toe to toe and take the beating and just keep going. Cause there was something else about him. You know, it was like, was, what was it? We had no idea versus now it's like, he was sad. Well,
00:06:07
Speaker
The Nolan Joker lied about his origin multiple times, so you didn't know if one of those was the true story or all of them were just lies, you know? And it kept that, you know, mystery about the Joker. Didn't define him, didn't put him in a box.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah. And the fact that he's being held up is just like, oh, what a neat character. Like the way these same idiots hold up like Tony Montana interface or something like that. And like, you're celebrating the wrong people. Yeah.
00:06:41
Speaker
Or Walter white, you know, by the end of Breaking Bad, you know, it's like, no, that's not it. You're broke. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty music video of the trailer, but yeah, you know, first movie had some pretty, you know, I mean, cinematography is great. Yeah. Yeah. The production design is great too. I have to say. Yeah. Yeah. Production is great, but all those efforts could have been spent on something better.
00:07:05
Speaker
Well, I mean, so I was listening to Mark her mode, uh, reviewing, uh, is it the first omen came out this week? And I think his problem was, I mean, he said it was okay. Um, but you know, he said, why does this have to be the omen?
00:07:23
Speaker
You know, that does probably hobbled it because they're the, I mean, he had the same issue that I had with, with this trailer that we're talking about is that it goes against the, it contradicts things from the original. Right. And he's like, well, why, why, why even tie it to the Omen? If you're not going to, you know, keep it consistent. Yeah.
00:07:54
Speaker
Then, was it the Red Band trailer for Boy Kills World? Yes, I saw that. It was exceptionally fun. Yeah, yeah. The Boy Kills World, you know, for anyone who's sort of seen the trailer for our season two,
00:08:13
Speaker
It's kind of given away that yeah, I'm really excited about that. I just think conceptually it is a great idea. I think the one thing that I found disappointing in that trailer is that they only headline Bill Skarsgard.
00:08:33
Speaker
in the trailer, which I thought was kind of a missed opportunity, is to have sort of the double headliner there because the voice is so important.
00:08:50
Speaker
And let's see what another trailer now, this is an interesting one. So it's a trailer I hate and it's been out for a few weeks. And that is the trailer for border lands with Kate Blanchett.
00:09:06
Speaker
And it is a terrible trailer. It is a god-awful trailer. However, some of the advanced word from some pretty reliable sources is that the movie's pretty, pretty good. It's fun. But the trailer just puts me off it.
00:09:26
Speaker
It's the trailers just like an AI generated trailer, you know, right? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's that feel. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's being really passionate, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, somebody else, you know, marketing department gets all of it versus everybody else that's done it. Right. I mean, we miss package.
00:09:49
Speaker
Similarly, in another sort of post-apocalyptic setting, is word of mouth on Fallout. I don't know if you've seen any of the episodes, but I've heard that they are very good, surprisingly good. And again, the trailer just made me kind of shrug and go,
00:10:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's yeah. I played that game, you know But apparently the the the the series does a really good job of Kind of balancing, you know the the lore from the game the the funny bits and the tension and You know scares and whatnot in it and there have been comparisons to the Last of Us series as well and
00:10:35
Speaker
So I'm kind of excited about watching that one. Yeah, definitely.
00:10:41
Speaker
Yeah. And what else do we have in movie news, aside from a bunch of trailers? Um, we got confirmation that, uh, Dune part three is officially in development, though we kind of knew that was happening. That and yes, which is good news. And the dude that wrote the, uh, well, the three part story arc from Andor with the, uh, prison is writing James Mangold's Star Wars movie.
00:11:11
Speaker
Which is, which is great news. There's also, uh, been news that Edgar Wright is working on, uh, uh, an update of the running man.
00:11:27
Speaker
Running Man. Yeah. Yeah. I'm open to that. I mean, Edgar Wright's always worth a look in, you know, I think, I don't think he's completely dropped the ball in any of the films that I've seen him do. It's always been interesting at the very least. Even the first Ant-Man movie, you could see his touches since he had been so involved in that and then got dropped. That was a pity. That was a pity. Yeah. Totally. But you could, there's still some scene,
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah scenes in there where you're like, oh, yeah, that's how you're right. Yeah, that said you're right right there. Yeah, totally It's not wrong it's right
00:12:07
Speaker
And yeah, this Wednesday, I got the chance to go to a preview screening of, I sometimes think about dying with Daisy Ridley. Oh yeah, shot here in Oregon. It looks great, it looks great. But you know, I'll report back next week in terms of how that turns out.
00:12:33
Speaker
And for the last bit of movie news, and we'll go back to Star Wars again, George Lucas is receiving an honorary palm door at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which is interesting. Wow. Maybe it's got a date span on it. Pat his head and give him a sucker. Up to 1981. Yeah. Everybody gets a trophy day.
00:13:05
Speaker
It's an old Scotty and thing. It's like, if you sucked longer than you were good, it means you suck.
Martial Arts Impact and Representation
00:13:11
Speaker
I mean, the thing is, what works better is if you don't suck at the beginning of your career. I think it's pretty normal that people, well, directors tend to fall over at some point. Not all of them. Not all of them. But yeah, yeah, that tends to be the pattern. Especially if they're a mega success. Yeah, just something goes terribly wrong with that.
00:13:37
Speaker
And, uh, I don't know if there was any other bits of news that you wanted to add to, to all of that. No, that's good for me. Uh, we had cinema con this week. So a lot of the nerd stuff is getting updated, but nothing's really been released yet. So they showed the first 10 minutes of this or that. Yeah.
00:14:01
Speaker
So yeah, now we're going to get into our choice of around five of our kind of standout martial arts movies. I suppose the big thing with the martial arts movies that I mean, maybe we just quickly
00:14:19
Speaker
to explain why they're important to us. I mean, for me, growing up, especially coming with from a family that was half Asian, it's like people that look like me. This is cool. And they're not just in the background or.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, even though David Carradine played probably, but I love that series. I really enjoy it. I remember talking about being very young and talking about
00:14:56
Speaker
how awesome it was that he was picking up the pot with the dragons on it with his arms and that was how he had to get out of the temple. You know stuff like that was just amazing and then also all these films having that kind of blend of action and philosophy as well was always kind of cool and I think that was a precursor for
00:15:19
Speaker
Star Wars, obviously, you know, with the Force. In fact, these movies had the Force in them. You know, Force pushes well before Star Wars, yeah? So you had things like that and, you know, visually they were amazing. And if you, I better hold off here because I'm starting to get into some stuff that I need to talk about in the others. But what a bit about you, what was your,
00:15:46
Speaker
But sort of the main thing like growing up it was you know kung fu obviously the show yeah Was big, but also you know we only had Four channels so they would play whatever movies they could get so that involved a lot of like monster movies But also a lot of Shaw brothers stuff Shaw brothers always there was a lot of it because it was just cheap and for you know to get an error and so they watched a lot of
00:16:11
Speaker
Well, marginally good to actually good Kung Fu movies, you know, chop, chop sake. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's interesting you mentioned the Shaw Brothers because in some of the sort of background, I watched a couple of videos just to refresh my memory and some of this stuff. But a guy was going through the history of the Shaw Brothers studio. And at one point he kind of pointed out that it was kind of industrial
00:16:41
Speaker
mass production and he actually sort of said he thought that most of it was garbage and the stuff that was good was accidentally good but I don't quite agree with that because I think there is something honest about churning out a
00:17:04
Speaker
fuckload of movies, um, that they're not, you know, nowadays you'd have a committee kind of deciding the smallest detail about a movie. Um, but this was just as, you know, heart, you know, out in the open, this is what it's about. And it felt very kind of sincere. Uh, and the, the, the closest
00:17:27
Speaker
is a strange comparison, but like Batman, the TV series at the time as well, that they turn those fuckers out in a very similar way. But there's something, there's no pretense to it. Like what you see on the screen, that's it. There might be some good ideas in there, but it's not, it avoids being overproduced, which is something that I think is a problem with a lot of stuff that we have nowadays.
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I would like in the production model more to like Roger Corman. Right. Right. Yeah. Not everything was great. In fact, a lot of it was not great. Yeah. But there were things and again, I don't think it was accidental. Yeah. I would, I would also take issue with that. I would just think some good folks just happen.
00:18:16
Speaker
to get through and to just get their start there and be able to create in that space, because they didn't care who it was. So good, bad, otherwise. So you kind of got everything. Yeah, like you said, it's in that sincerity and they didn't have time or budget to get bogged down in anything it was normally maybe ruin. So they're at least usually watchable.
00:18:42
Speaker
Well, I mean, if it was accidental, then you would probably have even spread against the directors in that studio. But there are some particular directors that consistently were really good. So these were guys with talent, maybe some of the other directors, less so. But yeah, no, there's a couple of great, great directors in there. And I've got a couple of their films in my list.
00:19:09
Speaker
in the regular, yeah. Well, and speaking of the list, you know, like coming to it. So at that time it was Bruce Lee, you know, he was the dominant. Enter the dragon. Enter the dragon, but for me too, we had recordings of Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon. The other two that he made right in there that are very similar, but, you know, the versus Enter the Dragon, which seems to me like the
00:19:36
Speaker
the granddaddy, right? But the others, you know, is just seeing him in action. But then also what the sensibilities are, you know, just what we'd consider the ridiculous for Western audiences in terms of narrative or such are not to them. It's just getting introduced to that and being like, oh, okay. I'm not going to reject it. This is your world.
00:20:04
Speaker
Well, so Enter the Dragon was like the big commercial success, but the Shaw Brothers movies were coming out about a year before that, but they kind of laid the groundwork. They didn't have as much traction, but they were like, wow, never seen anything like this. And then Enter the Dragon was almost like a bridge to all these other sort of great movies. So what was the first one you got in your list?
00:20:32
Speaker
Uh, so the first one was the one, my dad had watched it late at night without me, uh, because again, it was the showing all hours, showing the cheap free content. Sure. It was like, man, there was this one movie where they went and the, the, the stories were minimal. The most of the movies about the trading.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah. And he couldn't remember the name of it. And we finally did. And then we couldn't find it for years. And then we finally showed up when it was 36 chamber of shell land. Right. Right. Which, uh, you know, we found it. Then we were able to do that and watch it together. It was like, holy cow. This is great. It is terrific. I watched it just this week.
00:21:08
Speaker
I got to watch it again a few years back at our local with RZA. Right. Kind of curating the viewing from Wu Tang. Yeah. Yeah. That was a lot of fun too. And that whole, that's a whole other thing with their love of, of the chop sake stuff too. Yeah. Um, there's a whole other dimension to it, but, but so that was like the first one of like that felt like it or the dragon like felt, felt that different. Yeah.
00:21:38
Speaker
It wasn't just the, oh, you've insulted my master. Now there's the rest of the movie's training with this one guy and these weird social interactions within the movie that I don't understand culturally. And then the big boss fight at the end.
00:21:54
Speaker
But, but, but he has to work hard. Do you know what I mean? He, he, he, you know, he doesn't have an easy go of it if like a light bulb moment and suddenly he can do the thing. Um, every one of the, the chambers. So for those who haven't seen it, uh, each of the chambers is a sort of different step in terms of, uh, learning martial arts in this Shaolin temple. Um,
00:22:20
Speaker
And the style of martial arts, it's not just fighting with a stick or something. When he's like, I want to start, he's like, well, I want to start at the top, at the 36th chamber. And he goes in there and it's just the monks chanting, and then they just force push him out of the thing. There's the first push right there. Exactly, right? And you're like, what? You're as confused as he is. You get to learn with
00:22:48
Speaker
him with with the centa that is named Gordon. Yeah. Yeah. And for years, you know, I could only watch the dub version. So I was like, what teacher? Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The same guy doing the voices every single one of those. And of course, you know, the actor, the lead from that movie, I'm not going to. Yeah.
00:23:15
Speaker
Um, we see again in kill bill volume two as well, uh, as, as, as the master again, uh, just being brutal in terms of sort of training. Um, but, uh, yeah, that, that, the movies, the movie's terrific. Um, and yeah, it's, it's the whole struggle that they don't rush it. Um, you know,
00:23:39
Speaker
Because otherwise you would think, oh, I could do that. And then it sort of loses its charm. Do you know what I mean? Because it opens up with them sort of having to run across the water to get to their food on these logs. And, you know, he has to get up in the middle of the night and go practice and practice and practice and practice to get to that point.
00:23:59
Speaker
Um, and you know, and it's, it's so interesting, like from, from our culture to kind of look at some of the training that they do, like the, um, the, the thing with it, they've got this long stick with a weight at the end and he needs to hit the bell and he's like, like, yeah, it's just ringing a bell. Why, you know, but it's, it's sort of brutally sort of bruises, uh, their wrist, doesn't it? You know, they need to be, yeah.
00:24:28
Speaker
So that and the instructor has the hand on the end of his. It's still the same weight, but he uses it to slap them. I love that. Yeah. It reminds me of a scene from Joe versus the volcano. Yeah. Going through and headbutting the bags of sand and then they hit the incense at the end to kind of reorient and then go back through.
00:24:52
Speaker
Yeah, like just keep doing that. So so so the first one I'm going to bring up. So your first one was. Was was 36th Chamber of the Shaolin. That was going to be on my list as well. So that one is from Chie Lang Liu, who is one of the directors who is a bit sort of more macho from the Shaw Brothers Studio.
00:25:21
Speaker
But another one that I like as sort of a counterpoint to that is from a director from the Shaw Brothers studio called King Who, which is a great fucking name. And he started bringing a lot of women,
00:25:41
Speaker
into his films and so my film is Come Drink With Me, which is just so much fun, so entertaining. The pacing of these movies, by the way, are so good, right? Like getting a really good steak that melts like butter, these just
00:26:04
Speaker
You just go through the whole movie without, you know, realizing, oh, right. I've been here for, you know, 90 minutes. It's already done. They're so easy to watch, but it, you know, it's, I wouldn't call it feminist, right? But, you know,
00:26:22
Speaker
because they always drop the ball at the end. Some some man has to come along and, you know, yeah, kind of diminishes things. But but but but they're really strong characters. And there's also a lot of his movies also have that kind of romance element. And that's something that we would see later when we got to
00:26:49
Speaker
another movie in my list, which I'll talk about. But what's your, what's your second one? Um, the second one in terms, and it's, it's, it's kind of kind of martial arts, but it was in terms of what introduced pulled me in and was found important. Kind of where I kind of had the aha moment, uh, to embracing the style was big trouble in little China. Oh my gosh. That's a good one.
00:27:16
Speaker
But it features a love letter. Yeah. And with the white guy is just the idiot who's failing upward. But that's the point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Asians all have their act together and are fighting, you know, these standing battles and everything. And he's just kind of this wild card, which really works. It works so well.
00:27:41
Speaker
But that one was just like people watch it went in blind to that. I had seen some stuff like that with wire work and stuff like that. So it wasn't completely unfamiliar to me. But that level that had just been kind of growing like what become the Hong Kong new wave.
00:27:57
Speaker
like with Zoo, Warriors from Magic Mountain and, you know, that style. Just the batshit crazy. But John Carpenter really pushes the boat out with the colors and the like, yeah, they're fighting with, no, they'll have to clash in the middle of the air and just absolutely amazing. No Asian character in that is really stereotyped too much.
00:28:26
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, no, no, no. At least the main characters. Well, yeah, yeah, the main characters, you know, they're just other Americans, you know, accent, everything, you know, just like, yeah, Jack, you know. I think one of my favorite moments in that film is where they drink the potion and the lift and they're at least like, you know, feel kind of invincible. And like, yeah, me too.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then with all that kung fu stuff. Yeah. I mean, they've got all that kung fu going on. And then John Carpenter goes, yeah, I'm going to notch it up even more and more and more. I'm going to monsters. Why not magic? Why not? Right. And I think visually that one of my favorite things ever is the, you know, in the big
00:29:17
Speaker
the massive hats coming down holding onto lightning bolts. Do you know what I mean? It's just, yeah, that was just so ambitious. And by the way, that's in our, that was in our very first trailer for Two Oceans. And if you think about it, you know, it was so varied, the work that John Carpenter was doing at the time, because I
00:29:40
Speaker
might be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure The Thing was in the previous movie that he'd made, and that had a palette that was quite monotone, right? It was obviously being set in the north, and it was very grounded, and it was so different. John Carpenter was just able to just change directions and do something completely new, and yeah, just awesome.
00:30:07
Speaker
Was it Starman or they live on the other side of that? Which is like changing gears like insanely. I'm kind of thinking maybe they live. But yeah, you know, whether or not it was Starman first or they live, those are two very different movies as well.
00:30:28
Speaker
And you got to throw in Prince of Darkness in there as well. But this isn't a Carpenter episode. We could veer into that very quickly. So my next one is, I don't know if you would call it a Kung Fu movie.
00:30:50
Speaker
but it definitely has its roots in kung fu, and that is Gareth Evans' The Raid, which, and by the way, last week we were talking about The Apostle, and I completely forgot that Gareth Evans did that movie as well.
00:31:12
Speaker
Um, but yeah, the raid, um, was, I mean, if you ever get a chance to read about the story of how he made that movie as well, you know, he's just Welsh filmmaker. He doesn't have a great deal of money and he goes to Indonesia and he makes the raid. It's, it's pretty wild. I mean, I don't know what your thoughts are in the raid.
00:31:37
Speaker
Um, well, both the raid and read two, I adore, absolutely adore because it was again, that same sort of, uh, pushing the goalposts. Right. Um, around because then it's, you know, and I like the raid and then the, uh, version they basically made for, for, uh, the movie dread, dread movie, which was basically the raid. Yeah. Which was basically the raid. Yeah. It was fantastic.
00:32:06
Speaker
which was fantastic, but it did bring to the table that sort of time warping
Excitement for Gareth Evans' Projects
00:32:11
Speaker
drug that people were taking, and they did that so well. It was so good. Plus, he never took off the helmet. Yeah. Very critical. But yes, the raid, very much when I was thinking of Monkey Man and the movies that inspired it, it was clearly the raid. It was very much, obviously, Patel's a fan.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then Gareth Evans as well has another movie in a similar vein coming up with Tom Hardy, Forest Whitaker and Timothy Oliphant. And the premise is that a drug deal goes wrong.
00:32:55
Speaker
And a detective must fight his way through a criminal underworld to rescue some politician's child while, you know, untangling the city's dark web of conspiracy and corruption. I mean, Tom Hardy in a film, like, you know, in the vein of the raid. Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm there. I'm there. I'm there. So that sounds like a lot of fun.
00:33:26
Speaker
What do you have next?
Crouching Tiger and The Grandmaster
00:33:28
Speaker
Master of flying guillotine. Ooh. I've not seen this one. I've not seen this one. Not only is it one of the big ones, it's one that kind of gets into that super violent. Right. Before it was just like, oh, they're just punching. No, this one they're ripping off heads. He has a guillotine that flies that he throws on a chain.
00:33:52
Speaker
And then there's a whole the other big thing about this movie the whole middle segment where they're trying to He's trying to forget the plot. It's totally because it doesn't really matter but they're trying to get Find their target. They don't know who it is. So they host tournament
00:34:08
Speaker
of fighters, and the fighters that are in that are basically characters from Street Fighter, or what will become Street Fighter. So, you know, there's the Indian dude with the extra long arms and stuff like that, and all that's in it.
00:34:24
Speaker
And it's wonderfully insane. And you know, it's that same Asian, Hong Kong, you know, chop sake thing that I love of like, Oh, you're supposed to be old and wise. So all your hair is white and your eyebrows are really long. Right, right. But aside from that, you're still youthful. It's obviously a young guy.
00:34:46
Speaker
Um, yeah, that one is, uh, that one just blew me away. Just the level of action and how much action is in there. And, uh, they don't bog it down. They know what they've got. They don't bog it down in the story at all. Right. Right. They just let it fly. And it's also got that mean, uh, streak to it that.
00:35:05
Speaker
A lot of the films do, and will come up, I think they capitalize later in the new wave, in Hong Kong at least, in terms of sort of a sinister, rather than just like, oh, I'm the evil local politician, or I'm just supposed to be the bad guy. Yeah, amazing. I'm gonna have to check that one out. Oh yeah, that's great.
00:35:23
Speaker
Um, so I'm going to kind of cheat in this one just to save a little bit of time. So we've got plenty of space to talk about monkey man, but, um, uh, next one is Ang Lee's, uh, crouching tiger hidden dragon. And, uh, in addition to that, uh, the grand master, um, which is, uh, Oh,
00:35:51
Speaker
God, why am I forgetting the director's name? Grand Master, which is... This is embarrassing. That's the one done yet, right? That's right. Well, Grand Master... Or Tony Leon. Yeah. So what these two films have in common are they're, again, they have that kind of underlying sort of love story in it.
00:36:22
Speaker
And the Grandmaster, I'll just sort of point out, has an opening that is clearly inspired by the opening shots of the 36th Chamber of Shaolin, where you see him in the water. There's lots of rain. And again, they've taken something that already exists.
00:36:47
Speaker
and in the Grand Master is Wong Kar-Wai, Wong Kar-Wai. Just pushes the envelope in terms of the visuals on that. So, you know, there's rain, but there's a lot of rain. And what I loved about it were
00:37:09
Speaker
these shots that he does in the grand master, where he kind of slows time down and you see their feet just pivot ever so slightly. Right. And it, the experience is just something else. And then like I said, just having sort of this context of this, uh, kind of, of love story going on, just like with crouching tiger and hidden dragon.
00:37:32
Speaker
And then both these movies as well have veterans from the classic 60s and 70s Kung Fu movies in there as well. So you've got that heritage going on. But yeah, I think they were so ambitious.
00:37:47
Speaker
creating art house kung fu movies, you know, um, and I, yeah, I could watch those again and again. And it did, did kind of open the door to a certain part of the Western population that were a bit snobbish about kung fu cinema at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Snobs. Yeah. So yeah.
Political Themes in Martial Arts Films
00:38:14
Speaker
Um, the other, for me, that was big in terms of what it pushed and what it introduced and married are the, uh, well, started with the once upon a time in China films, but the Wong Fei Hong character, um, which Jackie Chan would also play. Oh, good job. As, uh, well, any, you know, Jackie Chan's a whole other thing. The Kung Fu is, is more stunts than the Kung Fu.
00:38:43
Speaker
Necessarily. Very chaplain-esque as well. What's that? Very chaplain-esque, you know. Yes, Keaton, Chaplin, all that. Yeah, very strong in that tradition.
00:38:55
Speaker
and very excellent, but in terms of kung fu stuff, the first two Once Upon a Time in China films with Jet Li just going nuts. I mean, you could just see they were just like, hey, I bet you can't do a fight scene on scaffolding. It seemed like a dare each time they were upping
00:39:17
Speaker
What they could do kind of like you know what other franchises model now be it you know Bond movies or Fast and Furious or something like that where they have to keep The same sort of things in play but keep upping like, you know, what if you drove, you know off the birds Khalifa Khalifa or whatever, you know, yeah Something like that with but the action and then also the political ties especially
00:39:44
Speaker
with the Hong Kong cinema that was starting to transition. They saw the writing on the wall of 1999 looming and the lease reverting from Britain back to China. And so they were trying to embrace more traditional Chinese values, heroes, those sorts of things. And to me, in terms of what they
00:40:05
Speaker
but what I could get at and what I could see, Jet Li did a lot more of those kind of roles, especially with the famous Doctor. And the action scenes are exceptionally well done. I mean, the movies are fun, but the action scenes are top notch, like top tier in terms of the genre.
00:40:29
Speaker
Definitely definitely just running it. We're kind of maybe three more minutes. So I'm gonna be very quick on this one and Again, and by the way, I'm just gonna point out like pushing the envelope You can't just sort of push the envelope and then it's gonna be good and I would cite the kind of fast and furious series, right?
The Fast and Furious Series
00:40:50
Speaker
Like I
00:40:50
Speaker
We're going to drop a car off the top of a building, but in part 12, we're going to come from space. You know, it's like, okay, that, you know, you can push it too far to the point where it's very silly. I haven't seen a one of them, but that wasn't, I, that's all I needed to know. No, I've not seen a single Fast and Furious movie.
00:41:13
Speaker
We put the quarantine of COVID to good use and watched all of them. Now we're fans. Interesting. As is Christopher Nolan.
00:41:24
Speaker
I have, okay, I'll consider it when I have time. I have a great big list of stuff I need to watch.
The Matrix's Impact
00:41:33
Speaker
But yeah, the next one I'll just sort of mention is Matrix, the first Matrix and the experience of going to the cinema and seeing for the first time the kind of
00:41:45
Speaker
360 freeze and cycle around them and then let the motion go again. That that effect is just fantastic and brilliant. And I love the first movie. It's the only one in the series that I, yeah, it should have stopped there. It should have stopped there.
00:42:07
Speaker
And they got Yin Wu Ping. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Titan of everything we've been talking about. Exactly. A lot of these, you know, use different directors, producers, what have you, but they had the same fight, because they needed to churn them out quickly and people knew that they were doing, you had a lot of the same fight choreographers and stuntmen.
00:42:29
Speaker
and it shows, it's so good. It makes it almost confusing sometimes, because the story is so minimal and everything just kind of looks the same, even though it's awesome. Which one was that one? They did this and not that in this order. Yeah, they got lightning in a bottle, I think, with that first one. It was very
The Team-Based Approach in Martial Arts
00:42:54
Speaker
good. What's your last one? Last one's going to be five deadly venoms.
00:42:58
Speaker
Very good. Do you know what? I think it's named differently over here. Really? Yeah, because I think I've seen that one recently. I'm trying to remember. Let me distasteful venom. I'm trying to put it in the bridge. Five deadly poisons. I'm not sure what it is. Not so pleasant afternoons. Five Santi times five unhealthy venoms.
00:43:28
Speaker
Just because that one did the the group thing and that group Ended like working up together in different iterations and a lot of movies right right the idea of the team Yeah coming together who all had different? Specialty specialties mm-hmm. You know hello GI Joe cartoon right? And it was just
00:43:55
Speaker
That's a good point. So I like the ones that sort of bring a group together and it's something that they should do more often in movies is that where none of them are perfect, but they're perfect together. Or, you know, we talked sort of about women being represented in quite a few of these films as well, but also sort of disabled people. And just my sort of bonus one, I suppose would be the one armed swordsman.
00:44:25
Speaker
Crippled masters. Yeah. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Yep. Yep Which again calls it out right in the title, but yeah label list, but you know, hey They'd saved the day They do the cripple was it crippled masters or a crippled Avengers? There was probably both right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a thousand of the Shaw Brothers movies. So yeah One was successful then another hundred
00:44:52
Speaker
The hobbled ninjas probably exist. We could just randomly come up with names. The depressed swordsman. Yeah. Cool.
Review of Dev Patel's Monkey Man
00:45:03
Speaker
Okay. Sorry, that's you Jimbo. And we are coming to the Two Oceans review of the week. Incoming transmission. Two Oceans.
00:45:23
Speaker
Wow. And we're doing monkey man this week from dev Patel.
00:45:29
Speaker
Not the special song of the same. No, although I wish they would have played that. Um, yeah, I think this is another landmark, uh, movie in the genre. Um, what were, what were your thoughts? It was so good, wasn't it? It was brilliant. I knew it was going to be good from the trailer and it was better than because there's the whole social, political, religious cast.
00:45:59
Speaker
All these layers. Layers that aren't belabored. They all serve together to inform the greater story.
00:46:10
Speaker
And he doesn't rush it. Like, he takes his time in the first hour. And he's been- He's obscenely confident. And as a director, but as a character in the movie, you feel that he is vulnerable. He's on a mission, but again, I think we've referenced this in some of the Shaw Brothers movies, is when he starts out, he doesn't have it together. He's tough.
00:46:37
Speaker
But he just gets beaten and beaten and beaten. So by the time that you get to the point in the movie when he starts to kind of go after people, you don't feel he's invincible. And I think it's one of the things that made the first Die Hard movie so good was, you know, stuff like he walked on glass and stuff. And then there were times when he was despairing and thinking, I'm not going to get out of here.
00:47:03
Speaker
And that's what really makes the movie is, you know, a feeling that, you know, everything's at stake and he's not like an invincible, unstoppable force. That and what is a force for?
00:47:19
Speaker
You know, for vengeance. Yeah. But become he has to learn that isn't powerful enough for what he has to do. It's not going to get him what he wants to do. Exactly. Yeah. And well, he changes what he wants to do. Right. He realizes there's a commute. There's other people that need a champion. Yeah. This was so much like Reeves recent Batman entry.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah Yeah, and then by the end he's not yeah, he's literally leading people through water, you know leading his people through the divided waters Yeah by the end of it, you know, so Okay, we'll give this we both loved it. There it is for those who don't want any spoiler spoilers go away now Now we get into this you should be seeing it already. You shouldn't see it already
00:48:09
Speaker
real spoiler territory and and and i was delighted because as i've got a movie subscription and this week's film is monkey man so i'm gonna go see it again um uh so it'll be quite interesting to to kind of watch it having having seen it once but man that that that and he had such hell making this movie and
00:48:33
Speaker
It's like the COVID hit in the middle of it. He breaks his hand and his foot and they got to go change country. And he loses his entire crew, has to find another crew. But you cannot see that in the movie. We had to shoot some stuff on his phone.
00:48:58
Speaker
Right. Right. In the movie. And I'm like trying to watch the whole time. I'm like, I can't see it. It's amazing. It's it's so he shot the bit, you know, in the the the what do you call it? The tuk tuk that he's sort of driving at speed through the streets is is he had this idea of a view from the mirror kind of looking back and it was just sticking his phone to that. And yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker
You mean to Nicki Minaj. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And yeah, it's it's it kudos to Jordan Peele as well, having the good sense to produce this as well. But, you know, OK, we we talk about the directing, but also the acting from from Dev Patel as well is
00:49:56
Speaker
Well from everybody. Well from every, the casting is fantastic as well. Um, but, but, but Dev Patel, um, and this is the big one that's coming out over here is next bond. End of story. There it is. Um, and I mean, because as, as, as such a huge percent of our population in the UK,
00:50:19
Speaker
is of Indian heritage. He is actually British. So any talk about getting an Australian person or another person to do it just feels like it's time. I think he would be a great pond. But yeah, yeah, it's...
00:50:39
Speaker
Fantastic movie. And I think one of the things that we were talking about earlier is this comparison to John Wick isn't really... It's weird. It's two different branches. It's that same thing we talked about earlier.
00:50:56
Speaker
that the laziness, the sort of rubbernecking on reviews, that somebody says something like, oh yeah, I'm gonna latch on that music, you know, rather than trying it. Because it's like, oh, John Wick's an action movie, therefore this is an action movie, we enjoyed both, so therefore there's your collusion. It's like, look, you can enjoy them both, they are both action movies, but they're very different in terms of their action.
00:51:18
Speaker
and what their faces are and who they're looking at and whose shoulders they're standing on. Again, no disrespect to John Wick and they do the name call in Monkey Man, I thought was nice to John Wick. Yeah, they do. It's not going to be that kind of movie. It's kind of like Raimi tearing the picture of Jaws.
00:51:37
Speaker
the poster of Jaws in the first Evil Dead movie saying, that's not horror. This is horror, kind of thing. And I think that's a lot of it. So in terms of what clearly Patel was a fan of or had a diet of, the stuff I saw in there was, again, like the new Batman. We talked about the raid.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah. There's a lot of jam in there. To me, because the way with using, like when he has the whole fight scene in the, the fight scenes in the kitchens. Yeah. In the industrial kitchens and that sort of thing. It's very Jackie Chan. But there was one scene where he's like, he's up on the bar and he's fighting the guy and the bar's all backlit and stuff. That's straight out of forced engines.
00:52:25
Speaker
The Chuck Norris movie where he has the front of the neon big neon sign. It's this great scene and movies good, but too, but you know, it's Chuck Norris. Well, you know, the originally so Deb Patel, also as a writer of this movie, when a Neil Blomkamp to direct it and Neil Blomkamp said, why don't you do it yourself?
00:52:52
Speaker
So there's, there's, uh, yeah. So there's thanks to Neil Blomkamp to actually, uh, getting a dev Patel to even consider directing it, uh, by himself and getting, uh, Charlton Copley involved, who is, you know,
00:53:10
Speaker
Small role, but it's fantastic in it. He's perfect. I mean, the casting is really, really good across the board. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's fantastic. And the look of the thing as well is right. I mean, he brings a lot of these is Bollywood elements. He doesn't try to westernize anything. It's all just feels very rich and you feel like you're there. The location, even though I think they filmed part of it in Indonesia. But, you know, yeah.
00:53:40
Speaker
But also the change in locations. And the tone from beginning of the movie before, and again spoilers, before he gets so injured that he has to be resurrected, if you will. And the movie changes tone there as well.
00:54:00
Speaker
And I think also the fact that you get that sort of introduction to the kind of openness of Indian society to kind of transgender, even though the police are kind of freaked out by them, but then you have them.
00:54:19
Speaker
kicking ass and pardon us. This movie, uh, that isn't just you know, standing up and like, Oh, he's going to be Robin Hood for the, the trans community, the, the open gender or the, you know, that sort of spiritual thing.
Cultural and Character Depth in Monkey Man
00:54:33
Speaker
Oh no, they're going to come in. They're armed. Yeah. Like when they came, they show I'm like, who are those people showing up? It surely is not them. You know, again, Western sensibility. So surely it's not them. They need the saving. Yeah. They're the feminine. Yeah. Yeah.
00:54:47
Speaker
It's like, nope, not at all. Oh, my God. You know, even as we're talking here, I'm just remembering other other Kung Fu movies. Yeah, we're going to we're going to end up needing to do another episode because I'm starting to remember stuff like Kung Fu Hustle. You know, I was just going to say, I watched Kung Fu Hustle again last night because I wanted to have it fresh. And the whole like the whole arc of the main character is the same.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah. That he becomes what his potential is supposed to be after the attorney. And the line that the priest, I guess, lack of better term, gives him is that the telling him he's carrying the pain, the pain's going to stay with him until it has taught him everything he needs to learn. Yeah.
00:55:37
Speaker
which was great, was a great idea for how you deal with that kind of trauma and pain and sort of thing as well. But, you know, when he sets that aside, you know, at the end, he has that whole, when he's in the ring and he has the fights in the beginning, keeps seeing his mom and everything's all confused for him and he keeps getting the shit kicked out of him because he's not clear. But he keeps getting out. He doesn't see her. He sees his buddy.
00:56:01
Speaker
You know that's on the run because of what he's done and all that, you know, and he sees the people out there Yeah, that's what and that's when he also starts to act more like a monkey right in his chest. He's clapping the granny. Oh, that's so crazy I was yelling at him. I'm like in the theater. I'm like really some okay. I
00:56:21
Speaker
And he changes the, uh, the mask. Yeah. Yeah. Comes, you know, the new iteration and you know, that whole, when he takes on the guy that kicked the crap out of him and one punches him. Um, it also sort of point out the, um, like, like we talked about the 36th chamber of Shaolin and you see all of this training in there.
00:56:47
Speaker
The training scene in Monkey Man is wholly original. It's amazing. It does harken back to some of that stuff, but it is terrific how that's done. Well, in context, they give it with the magician in the drums. And he introduces the male and female voices, and he's doing the different things with the drums to give them that. But that's what he's doing in the training. He doesn't say it.
00:57:12
Speaker
but you carry that from that previous scene to be like, this is, you know, mother and father feeding you this, you know, this is heritage feeding you this now. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you're not just a, you know, angry young man.
00:57:25
Speaker
He's channeling all these people, this history and all this other stuff. And that makes him so powerful. Exactly. That's what gives him the strength to see it through to the end. Amazing. Great. And I think we're just about to reach time, but yeah, go another 60 seconds, go for it.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yeah. Had Middle East meat sharing in the theater. Yeah. A few others as well that, you know, just got it. And yeah, that's all I'm selling it to them. Like great action movie, but also about more about than what it appears.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you sort of the best, the layers is a huge thing. And you sort of think about a Godzilla movie. And, you know, we had Godzilla minus one not very long ago, and that did something else very similar to this in terms of taking this genre that usually doesn't have the depth of
00:58:33
Speaker
And it works, you know, because that also builds up. There is a, you know, like Monkey Man, you know, the scenes in the ring. We do get a glimpse of Godzilla at the beginning of Godzilla minus one, but that first hour man is used to kind of set things up and make you really care about the key players in the movie, the people in the movie.
00:58:58
Speaker
And that's really the biggest thing that I would allow for this comparison to John Wick, is that there's a very human character that's not a psychopath, that's not muscle-bound, steroid-free, whatever, or driven by some other agenda.
Cultural Representation in Media
00:59:15
Speaker
He's just trying to live his life, and everything is conspiring against him, and he just wants to put a stop to that, and he'll do whatever it takes.
00:59:25
Speaker
for however, how far that goes to put a stop to it. Yeah. Uh, and, and speaking about sort of trans characters, um, just have to flag this up. Cause we both winched about this one, uh, rightfully so. Windging about winders as a Julia Garner playing the silver surfer for Marvel's fantastic four movie. And yeah, people just going crazy or
00:59:59
Speaker
But yeah, and so I don't know what we're going to do next. Maybe have a little bit of a break from the Kung Fu one, do part two later in the year, and I'll report back on sometimes I think about dying and we'll see how that goes. And yeah, I think...
01:01:01
Speaker
Two oceans.
01:05:20
Speaker
Two oceans.