Con Report: AnimeNEXT 2008 – Friday

This year my con experience was rather abbreviated and I didn’t feel quite as exhilarated as I have in the past. My favorite part this year was spending time with my friends and making a new friend.

AnimeNEXT is a good-sized con held in Secaucus, NJ. This con used to be held at a smaller hotel nearby, maybe six years ago or so, but now it’s held at the Meadowlands Expo Center. This year, the con took up TWO floors of the Expo Center, and even added the option of picking up pre-reg badges on Thursday, a great idea since the line last year was an hour or so long on Friday morning.

On Friday, I had to go to my cousin’s middle school graduation in NYC, so I didn’t get to the convention until much later in the day (around 4 pm). I went through the Dealer’s Room and the Artist’s Alley/Show (scoping out the competition a little bit, since later I put up 3 pieces in the Art Show). I didn’t think there was anything particularly special about what was in the Dealer’s Room this year (although now it was much more like a market, since it took up almost half of the first floor), so I just bought some manga in Japanese so I could practice reading hiragana and katakana. My friends met up with me a little later and we ate dinner at Nikko Sushi, which has reasonable prices and where I got a beef bento. Then we went to the Holiday Inn to use the bathroom and watch a few minutes of a fandub (best joke: a Chinese character tattoo someone shows that is translated as “Stupid gaijin I take your money”)

We went to Starbucks and I got a Shaken Iced Tea Lemonade – extremely refreshing! Particularly in the hot weather.

Rentrer en Soi performed at the convention, and I’d like to offer a few tips to people looking to see bands at AnimeNEXT. For the past few years, the band has appeared in the large Panel 1 room. The seats in the center are cleared away so the crowd can move in, and people can also stand in the seats. If you’re not that interested in the band, don’t bother getting in line – there has always been room in the past to not only get into Panel 1 but also sneak your way toward the front. Unfortunately, if you’re short like me, being stuck in the crowd is a pain because there are so many tall people around.

So, since my friend and I were with someone who wasn’t particularly interested in the concert – and neither were we – we dropped in after the show had started (surprisingly, it started on time!! and no opening band). Immediately, I was amazed by the crowd’s silhouette against the bright white, smoky lights hitting the stage. They announced the band and the audience erupted, and when the singer came up he screamed into the microphone. Then the music started. Thankfully, Rentrer en Soi isn’t a screaming kind of band, but we only stuck around for 10 minutes or so before leaving since my friend wasn’t having fun unless she was close and our new friend really wanted to leave. I was in the middle on the decision and I sort of regret leaving because our friends who had VIP spots said it was AWESOME but…well…whatever… I’ve never listened to Rentrer en Soi so for the moment, I don’t regret missing them.

We hung around outside for a while and then we went home. It wasn’t particularly eventful, but I had a lot of fun just hanging out and talking. On the way home, the clouds that had been hanging around on the horizon finally came over us and the rain beat down hard enough that we wanted to pull over since our driver could barely see. We saw so many lightning bolts in the sky, including horizontal ones in the distance, that I started to worry we were going to have a repeat of that awful thunderstorm (actually, microburst) that hit NJ two weeks ago. We made it home safely, though, and I crashed into my bed soon enough.

 

Argentina v. USA – Friendly at Giants Stadium

Yesterday was hot and hazy and it poured for a few minutes before my dad and I left for Giants Stadium to watch a friendly between the US and Argentina. I’ve only been to Giants Stadium once before yesterday for a soccer game, when River Plate and the Metrostars were playing. (Actually, there were two games in a row, but I can’t remember who played in the first one we watched). The stadium was packed, with 78,000 people, and ten minutes before the end the announcer said it was the 9th largest turn-out for a game in this league. We had “nosebleed” seats way up on the top tier, but we had a view of the entire field, which was awesome. During halftime, some guy ran out onto the field wearing Argentina colors, and the security guards chased him until one of them tackled him. There was much shouting and cheering.

The game itself was intense. My dad says today’s commentators said it was boring, but I guess the intensity of the crowd made the game awesome. Everyone was shouting and chanting, but there were two REALLY annoying guys sitting next to us. One spent most of the time yelling at the referee, the other one just kept shouting “USA, motherf***ers!” And plenty of people left repeatedly to get more beer and food. As my dad reminded me, there might have only been one goal, and you should have made sure you saw it. But the game ended 0-0.

At the end, though, the best part was when the thunderstorm came. Around the 80th minute, it started pouring. A few people left immediately, but we stuck around. Only 10 minutes left, right? Except 5 minutes of overtime were added. We left completely soaked (no umbrellas allowed in the stadium, and we didn’t have ponchos). Today my throat hurts, but it was really fun.

I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of the crowd and the balloons that were floating around. One long yellow balloon floated onto Argentina’s goal during the second half and everyone started cheering (btw, I ended up sitting on the mostly USA half of the stadium). The wave went around the top tier about 3 times, which was really cool to watch. And the USA fans at one point started shouting, “Estados Unidos” at the Argentine goalie. During Argentina’s corner kicks, too, they unfurled a US flag at the corner. After the game, a bunch of guys were yelling “Overrated” but I thought maybe they might have thought differently if the game hadn’t been a friendly. Still, Argentina made six substitutions, I guess so they wouldn’t wear out their players. There were a LOT of injuries and a lot of fouls during the game, and two red cards, one per side.

Well, a great game. Can’t wait to see a non-friendly, hahaha.

 

The Foot Fist Way

My dad and I went out for his birthday and since we both do martial arts (me: Isshinryu karate, my dad: kempo) we went to see The Foot Fist Way. The only theaters near me that are showing it are in New York City, so we saw it at the AMC on 42nd St. It’s a HUGE theater, with plenty of long escalators and attendants ushering you in and out of the theaters, up stairs, and even down in elevators. It’s twelve bucks a ticket with no student discounts. I didn’t check the concessions stand prices.

The Foot Fist Way tells the story of Tae Kwon Do instructor Fred Simmons and his two lives – the one as a hard-ass Tae Kwon Do instructor, the other as an asshole husband. But when his wife cheats on him, his personal problems start leaking into his life at his martial arts school.

The movie was shot in 19 days with a $70,000 budget, and it shows in the grainy footage and, well, all areas of the movie, but I wouldn’t say that’s to the movie’s detriment. It’s just something to keep in mind, that it isn’t 100% polished. Some scenes could have been shorter, some pauses needed to be longer for comedic impact, etc.

Eh…okay, so I’ll get down to the nitty-gritty. I admit that having my dad around for this movie may have skewed my perspective on how funny it was (you know, sometimes instead of laughing I might have been wondering what he thought of a certain joke and whether I’d get in trouble for it later), but we both generally agreed that it was a strange mix of the funny and the horribly unfunny. A lot of the characters were rude jerks, and Simmons’s marriage problems weren’t as laughable as they might have been.

The New York Times compared it to Napoleon Dynamite and similarly, some of the characters were caricatures, but not quite as abstract as those in ND. Really, I could almost imagine this guy teaching TKD, and I was very, very happy that my sensei, despite being a hard-ass, is nothing like this guy.

So, the movie may not have been as funny as it could have been, but it had that strange oh-my-God-what-are-they-doing-now feeling to it. As a martial artist, I enjoyed watching the goings-on at the TKD school and the occasional fighting (but honestly, when that one guy showed he couldn’t control his violence, Mr. Simmons should have beat the shit out of him). What I missed at the end was a final fight between Mr. Simmons and Mr. Adulterer (or Adulteress, as Simmons calls him) and a little more closure than the final speech Simmons gives that really has nothing to do with anything we’ve learned about the characters. So…maybe the movie finds a good deal of its humor in its irony. The TKD students talk about perseverance and self-control, and the movie is split into sections marked with those headlines – very ironically-titled sections, since Simmons, for example, beats the crap out of a little boy because he thinks the kid’s dad has been messing around with Simmons’s wife Suzie (a perfect mix of the bitchy and the sweetly apologetic).

I still haven’t made up my mind about this movie, so for now I will recommend watching it if you do TKD or another martial art or if you’re looking for a relatively funny film, but try to find it for less than $12 a ticket (which is a ridiculous price for ANY film). Also, please let me know what else you want to know about the film. I’m still torn between saying it definitely wasn’t as funny as pre-release reviews said it was, and saying it was a good short indie film.

 

Currents #1

Just because I like to share:

Current loves:
1. Yann Tiersen
2. Anti-Heroes
3. Photoshop
4. Project Runway
5. Honey and Clover
6. Surprises

Current musts:
1. Prince Caspian poster
2. Michio Kaku
3. Applewiches
4. Basiik hats
5. Rice to Riches/Pinkberry
6. Sleep

Current frustration factors:
1. Capoeira and Mexican music in Peru
2. Emily Gould’s New York Times Mag article
3. Cell phones
4. Time
5. Lies
6. That one crap manga in Shojo Beat…okay, those two crap manga…

 

Chocolate – Prachya Pinkaew’s Touching Martial Arts Film Starring Jeeja, a.k.a. the female Tony Jaa

Directed by Prachya Pinkaew and starring Nicharee “Jeeja” Vismistananda, Chocolate is basically a story about love. Yes, it includes some cool fighting sequences – who wasn’t awed by that scene in the commercial where Jeeja knees someone into what looks like an air shaft? But the sequences are not as hard or as fast as Tony Jaa’s. They felt a tad cautious in comparison and less flowing. Yet not everyone can be Tony Jaa, and I’m happy with Jeeja as Jeeja.

Chocolate’s basic story follows the voluptuous Zin who works for a Thai crime boss. She falls in love with a Japanese yakuza, but her jealous boss promises to hurt her if he ever catches her with that yakuza. Zin sends her yakuza boyfriend back to Japan to protect him. But out of Zin’s affair with the yakuza is born Zen (Jeeja), an adorable autistic girl that takes to mimicking the Muay Thai kickboxers that practice next door. When her mother gets sick, Zen and her childhood friend try to gather money for her mother’s medication by collecting the debts owed to Zin. Of course, no one wants to listen to an autistic girl and her roly-poly friend, so Zen resorts to violence for the sake of her mother.

The storyline is much better than a typical martial arts movie’s. Compare this story of an autistic girl protecting her mother to the director’s previous films Ong-Bak and The Protector with Tony Jaa. I understood Tony Jaa’s quests for the stolen Buddha statue and elephant in each movie, but I won’t deny that people laughed in the theater when he demanded his elephant back from the villain.

The first part of Chocolate, before the fighting started, actually moved me – although I did get a bit antsy waiting for the fighting to start. The beginning has several well-paced and well-placed montages overlaid with sweet, though faintly old-fashioned, music.

Once the movie ended, I realized how much it had relied on family dynamics, and how much I had appreciated watching Zin transform from a seductive beauty to a loving, cancer-ravaged single mother. The heartbreak at the end for me was realizing that Zen was just a girl defending her mother; she never thought of herself as a martial artist.

I would recommend this movie to anyone. I was a little disappointed with the fighting sequences, but I realize that once you’ve seen Tony Jaa fight, even a girl touted as the female Tony Jaa can’t match him. Not so much because she’s a girl, but because he’s Tony Jaa. Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching someone in a dress take out a gang of bullies after catching a knife in her hand, and I hope Jeeja goes on to make more powerful martial arts films, films that address the plot as much as they do the fighting.

 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – Spoilers -

First, apologies for the lack of updates. I took an extra half class the past semester (Japanese!) and that with karate with a general sense of ennui and constant daydreaming and confusion about what I’m supposed to be doing with my life combined to make me not want to write much… now, let’s get on with it:

I think, in a small way, that I grew up with Indiana Jones, watching the movies on TV so often that I didn’t buy the DVDs until only recently. I remember that when I was really little, we went to an Indiana Jones performance at a theme park and I cried so much when the giant boulder rolled out to squish him that my parents had to take me out of the theater. (Now that I think of it, sorry to the anyone I bothered in the audience! lol)

And, of course, I’ve always loved Harrison Ford, especially after Star Wars (the infamous “I know”), and though his voice has that old man gurgle to it now, I still love watching him on-screen. But I knew that the new Indiana Jones movie just wouldn’t be the same, maybe after I read on I Watch Stuff what the running time would be for the new movie. And watching the movie confirmed my suspicion – two hours is much too long for a strictly action movie, especially if it’s Indiana Jones. I think several scenes could have either been cut or shortened.

For example, the chase sequence in the rain forest. Honestly, who came up with the part where monkeys teach Shia how to swing from vines?? Utterly ridiculous and really, not a very Indy kinda thing. And the fencing sequence? Please. That went on too long and I kept wondering why someone didn’t just hit the brakes on one of the vehicles. “Riposte!” Again, please.

At one point in the movie, it hit me that maybe we as a culture are too old for Indiana Jones movies. That thought popped into my head after the movie made some ridiculous cultural conflations, which I guess maybe the old Indiana Jones movies did, too, though I was never as sharply aware of them as I was now: Indy travels to Peru, where the background music is Mexican, and a guy in a Peruvian graveyard does Brazilian capoeira to beat the crap out of Shia LaBeouf. And Indy says he learned Quechua from a guy who was riding with Pancho Villa (why would a Peruvian native be riding with the Mexican Villa? likelier Indy would have learned Maya, huh). Maybe when the original Indiana movies were released, this would have been okay, but now, with such a large hispanic population in the country and such utterly OBVIOUS “mistakes,” I left the theater feeling a bit bitter. Maybe because I’m Latina? I felt betrayed to be slighted by a saga of movies I’ve loved since I was little.

Nonetheless, I was very, very happy to see the return of Marion Ravenwood! I’d always thought she was the best “Jones” girl, though it was a shock to see how much Karen Allen has aged; it isn’t so noticeable on Ford, for me, because I’ve watched him age through movies, but I honestly don’t think I’ve seen any other of Allen’s movies besides Raiders. So, I thought Crystal Skull could have explored the aging theme a bit more than it did. That is, I was a bit touched when Indy’s colleague says they’ve reached the age when life stops handing you things and starts taking them away. I guess a message the movie tries to give is that there’s always something more out there, since Indy finds a son and a wife by the end, and Shia even nearly puts on Indy’s hat.

Shia as Mutt. He wasn’t bad. In fact, my favorite scene in the film was the greaser-jock fight. So Shia wasn’t bad, he was just given some bad scenes (the monkey swinging, the fencing) and a bad nickname. But in the end, he was forgettable. As was the movie in general, I’d say, except for the resolution to the Indy-Marion romance, and…the lead-plated refrigerator. This I will not spoil. It was probably the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in any movie. It probably shouldn’t have been done, to tell you the truth, but in a small way, it was worth it just to contemplate the utter improbability of it.

I know my reviews tend to meander, so I’ll try to sum up. This is a watch-able movie. Please, PLEASE try not to ask any questions of it. I think it may have more holes in its reasoning than any other Indiana Jones movie. If you can suspend your disbelief – and I mean really suspend it – you’ll have a blast watching this. Otherwise, you’ll value the movie for a few refreshing and interesting scenes (I loved the search for the box at the beginning), and then wish they’d cut the rest.

 

The Foot Fist Way

A new movie called The Foot Fist Way is coming out soon…. I’m really excited!

WARNING: FOLLOWING LINK IS FOR A RED BAND TRAILER. DON’T WATCH IT IF YOU’RE NOT MATURE ENOUGH.

Favorite quote:
(On Tae Kwon Do) “It’s the best of all martial arts.”
“I hear jiu jitsu’s really good for balance.”
“No. Jiu jitsu sucks.”

Hahahahaha…

(P.S. Before anyone mistakes my meaning, I am indeed aware of jiu jitsu’s amazingness.)

 

Song of the Day #15

Time
Tom Waits

A beautiful, slow, quiet song. Not as oddball and clanging as some of his other songs.

 

Learning how to fall

Updated: 8/1/08
One of the most essential things you can learn in a martial arts class is how to fall properly. I didn’t think I’d be able to remember all the rules in an actual falling situation, but last Saturday proved that with enough practice, you can save yourself some serious injury.

Some things to remember when falling:
1. Don’t let your head hit the ground. This is the most important thing you can do. If you’re falling backwards or onto your side, tuck your chin against your chest. Falling forward is different – turn your head sideways so you don’t smash your face onto the ground. And catch yourself on your forearms – it hurts like hell but it’s better than catching yourself with your nose.

2. Don’t try to break your fall by putting just your hands out. You might break your wrist. If you fall sideways, slap the ground with your arm out to that side at about a 45 degree angle with your palm down so you don’t break your elbow. This will absorb some of the impact into your arm. If you fall backward, use both arms to break your fall. Remember: do not use just your forearms for sideways/backwards falls, or just your hands, because you may break your elbow or your wrist.

3. If you fall backwards, round your back. I don’t know if this is a steadfast rule, but it’s saved me some pain.

4. Practice and have an instructor look at your falls. It isn’t enough for me to just tell you these things. Your body has to get used to it, you have to see what it looks like yourself, and you have to get used to trusting yourself during a fall. If you’re afraid or you panic, you will probably mess up, so practice the falls on a mat or other soft, safe surface. And have an instructor help you.

How learning how to fall saved me:
In the most embarrassing fall ever – honestly, I haven’t accidentally fallen in soooo long, not even when the sidewalks were coated in ice – I fell after doing an exaggerated roundhouse kick through a kicking pad (trying to build on advice my instructor was giving me) and just fell onto my side. I didn’t remember ALL the rules of falling – heck, I fell on instinct alone, and somehow, I landed on my side, chin tucked, with my arm out. One problem: I had my arm rotated so my elbow “hit” the ground, but my arm was straight so my forearm took the bruising. Now all I’ve got is a nasty bruise and a sore shoulder, but imagine what might have happened had I not been taught how to fall. A broken elbow, maybe (I had a LOT of momentum), or whiplash, or a concussion if I hadn’t tucked my chin.

So, the moral is, take it easy, and learn how to fall.

 

Step Up 2 the Streets

Watch the last half hour. That’s it. Otherwise, an extremely predictable movie. I could write pages and pages on why the main character doesn’t seem like she belongs there, why (as my friend noted) her speech at the Streets is ridiculous because it’s basically in defense of middle-class America… It’s really a terribly plotted movie, with some neat dances thrown in at the end. You don’t care about the characters much, except Moose, and I spent most of it wondering why there aren’t any movies about latinos/blacks that don’t up the whole racial thing. I mean, please. The white girl who definitely does NOT look like she knows what it’s like to live on the streets. Really, a terrible movie. Just watch the last twenty minutes.