Needle Through Brick

[Drunk Monk]

This one is for Greg as he falls down the IC rabbit hole. There are two indie martial arts documentaries that are outstanding. Both have won awards in international film festivals recently.

Needle through Brick is well worth your attention. I just saw it last night for the first time and was very impressed. I know one of the main subjects, Eric Ling, professionally. He was trying to get me to go to Malaysia for some time. http://needlethroughbrick.com/

The other The Real Shaolin by a personal friend, Alex Lee. I met him at Shaolin years ago, when he was beginning the project. He used to live in L.A. but now I think he's living in Shanghai. http://www.realshaolin.com/

These two have set the bar for martial arts indie docs.

Another doc of interest is The Empty Mind. I saw this years ago and at the time, I liked it (haven't watched it since). There's one huge section of B.S. there that undoes a lot of the film and it's very surreal from my personal perspective, but you won't notice it unless I tell you as it's happening. This company has done several more docs. I saw Masters of Heaven and Earth but wasn't as impressed. Some of the other titles look intriguing. http://emptymindfilms.com/

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Now I am sad. Who's idea was it to put the bar that high?

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

As part of my education, I bought this film. I was really happy when it ended in only sixty minutes because it seemed much longer than that. It was a very depressing film if you think of these great martial talents marginalized in Malaysian society. But were there talents that great? Aren't there hundreds just like them still in China? (Thousands Millions?) And the fact they were teaching kids at the end and weaning them off Wushu kind of undermines the point that their Culture is being lost. If you want to promote your culture shouldn't you just promote your culture? And the fact they don't get any government support is a bad argument as well. Why does the government need to support this?

I feel better about the construction of the film in a Schadenfreude way, too. When I saw the trailer I saw all these great shots of Malaysia. Fortunately, those few trailer shots were the only good shots in the film. I guess when they went to shoot, they decided they didn't need any lights. And if they were in Natural light, they shot with the sun behind them so the participants were completely in shade and you couldn't see what the hell they were doing. Pretty low production values for an award winning film. I might be overly critical and hyper-aware after seeing so many cinematography videos over the weekend.

I did like the old Master who smoked and drank Foster's through out his interviews. That is Kung Fu.

[Drunk Monk]

You bought it? You can watch it for free online.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51192">http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/s ... hp?t=51192</a><!-- m -->

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Very sad. but moving on. Time to look at more crotches. Iron or otherwise.

[Drunk Monk]