For The Emperor!

Blood And Boobs!

I'm a fan of the TV series, Game of Thrones, on HBO. I haven't read the book it was based on but the story seems intriguing.

But one thing that bugs me is the "blood and boobs" approach the series has. If we aren't treated to a scene of grisly violence, it's a scene of gratuitous sex. Now I understand that this is "adult" stuff and that stories in realistic medieval settings aren't all meadows and sunshine but come on, it's going a bit overboard. In episode two of season two, they went with three sex scenes in a row! One of which, a guy got a BJ in the most casual way you can imagine. He got his winky whacked when he wasn't even paying attention. Maybe it just happened and he was powerless to stop it.

Now in episode 4, we're shown scenes of depraved torture and killings. Heads on spikes! Rats boring holes through people's chests!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not sensitive to violence. I'm not some precarious, prudish protestant prattling on about prolific and promiscuous penile penetrations. I just feel that sometimes the producers are telling us that we're stupid and that we can't focus on the show if there aren't any tits or cool decapitations or something. A lack of faith of the audience or the material? Anyway it's just my opinion. It's just that I thought the book was more classy or something but I never read it. Maybe the book had sex and stabbings on every other page?

Maybe this blog needs some boobs.

Jaco Pastorius - Donna Lee

Yamada: The Samurai of Ayothaya (Part 2)

So the storytelling was bad but at least the action is good, right? Well, the fighting had its share of problems.

First of all, if you were to judge the fights on choreography alone, the fight scenes in this movie are excellent. However, the fights suffer from excessive post-production special effects overdose.

The fight scenes have this weird thing going on where they suddenly speed up the frames and fists move into a blur as if our eyes cannot even see the inhuman speed of their punches. But then sometimes it goes slow-mo on particularly juicy hits and then abruptly goes normal again. Now these camera tricks are fairly common but its so horribly done in this move. The speed up and slow-mo effects happen in the same scenes. There's no seperate shots or scenes and it really bothers me because it messes with the flow of the fight. What would have been awesome fights turn into extremely fake looking fights where the action is normal then goes fast then normal then slow then normal again.

Speaking of fake, the special effects other than speed tricks also suck. Take for instance the ambush of the poor Hongsawadee raiding party. Every time Yamada swipes at the enemy, there's a highly audible "Tsching!" sound. Despite being a common movie convention, the "Tching!" sound is usually for when blades are drawn so we can tell that it's fightin' time. Sheathes are usually made of wood or leather so realistically, they don't make that sound but we're so used to it now. But here, it's worse because every single time Yamada slashes a mook, it goes"Tching!". Swords don't make that sound when they hit soft, exposed flesh you know. Have you ever heard kitchen knives go "TCHING!" when chopping a piece of meat? To make matters worse, they use the very same "Tching!" sound over and over again.

There are also poorly edited low quality blood splatter effects. It's too obviously CGI. In some scenes, Yamada impales them straight with his sword and the effects showing the sword sticking out the other end looks incredibly fake. I know it's all fake but this really takes me out of the movie. I can only suspend my disbelief so long before all the fake blood splatter and the "Tching!" drives me nuts.

This movie is The Last Samurai meets Ong Bak right? Well, Ong Bak was a lot grittier. This movie lacks grit, that's the problem. It just looks too fake.

Goddamn it.

More Popcorn

Yamada: The Samurai of Ayothaya

What a disappointment. I was expecting this film to be mindless action. The premise itself led me to believe that this would be a movie with balls-to-wall fighting with people getting elbowed in the skull but even this film failed at that.

But first let's get to the story. Normally a story this simple shouldn't be a problem. Japan was an ally in ancient Thailand. Yamada was assigned to investigate a mysterious group of people that's been causing all sorts of trouble. Coincidentally, this mysterious group are all dressed like stereotypical ninja. I wonder who they could be? Yamada discovers it's been his own people all along and is betrayed by the Japanese villain. Yamada is rescued and nursed back to health by the Ayothayans, specifically the King's royal guard. He discovers how magical their culture is, how awesome Ayothaya was, yadda yadda yadda. Then combining his samurai skills with his new Thai martial arts, kicks ass for justice. The End.

My problem with this film is not with the plot but the way it was told. Let me enumerate:

1. Alas Poor Villains

So the Ayothayans are at war with the "Hongsawadee" I think. Why? In the movie, no explanation is given for why they hate each others guts. All we're told is that they're bad and that they deseve to get stabbed in the face with huge knives. Why are they fighting? Is it a territorial dispute? Did one of them do something bad? Is it a religious war? I guess if you're Thai, the target audience, you wouldn't need an explanation since it's your history but for non-Thai, some explanation would be nice.

Also, the Hongsawadee are made to look like total chumps. The Hongsawadee are noticeably more savage in appearance compared to the noble Ayothayans. There's this scene where our heroes ambush a Hongsawadee raiding party by the river and it was just a massacre for the Hongsawadee. It was ten minutes of the Ayothayans kicking the Hongsawadee's asses so hard they were wearing them for hats! The Hongsawadee barely got a damned hit in. Our heroes were practically untouchable. I ended up feeling sorry for the poor villains/jobbers. Fights shouldn't be this one sided. I mean, we have to feel some suspense right?

2. Cultural "Wanking"

This has got to be my biggest problem. There's just to much cultural wanking going on around in this damned movie. What is cultural wanking you ask? Think of it this way. You know how old propaganda films insisted how awesome America/USSR was? You know how films with samurai in it always go to great lengths to show how awesome they were and how cool medieval Japan was? I call that cultural wanking. It's just mindnumbing posturing on how an ancient culture or even modern cultures are vastly superior, cool and totally badass.

You know, this movie is described as The Last Samurai meets Ong Bak. So for the story bit, let me talk for a moment about The Last Samurai and how cultural wanking was done there.

In The Last Samurai, a filthy, alcoholic, American white devil played by Tom Cruise is captured by the Japanese samurai he was supposed to help defeat for the modern Japanese government. While in captivity, the white man learns how perfect old Japan was. He learns how honorable and disciplined the Samurai were and ends up fighting for them in the end. God, I hated this movie. First of all, it may surprise you to learn that medieval Japan wasn't as idyllic as the movie would have you believe. Medieval Japan was a fucking hellhole with feudal states going at it in a whirlwind of blood and carnage. Newsflash! Samurai were assholes. There were noble ones sure, but on a whole, the civilian population were terrified when they came a-knockin'. Also, Samurai were pedophiles. Bet you don't remember Ken Watanabe raping a young apprentice in The Last Samurai, huh?

In The Samurai of Ayothaya, there's way too much wanking. Ayothaya is portrayed perfectly. The King's royal guard are all mohawked, invincible, shirtless ubermensch. Yamada almost instantly learns Thai martial arts and is respected. They all exchange remarks on how great their cultures are while cheesy inspirational music plays in the background. But the worst is yet to come when they return Yamada's katana to him. They remark how COMPLETELY OTHERWORLDY AWESOME the Katana is and how the blade can cut ANYTHING. Give me a fucking break. To drive home the wanking overload, a leaf falls on the katana's edge and is cut neatly in half. Barf.

That's it for now. Tomorrow, I'll write about how great the fight scenes were and how they totally blew it.