When the rebellion rolls around, you'd better sign on board for the
big win, because if movies have taught us anything it's that the
renegades always win.
Why? Point to their energy and idealism, sure,
but the real reason the rebellion always triumphs is that they've got
all the hot chicks.
How can you lose when you've got Princess Leia and Trinity on your
side? You can't, that's how. Your side could be hurling pine cones at
their TrampleBot 9000 and you'd still come out on top. This week,
Martial Arts Month takes us to 2006's The Rebel, where the bad
girls are as deadly as they are pretty.
In 1922, Johnny Nguyen is a member of an elite Vietnamese force
trained to stamp out anti-colonial rebellion. But he's grown weary of
the bloodshed on both sides, and when his unit captures Thanh Van Ngo,
the daughter of the rebel leader, he seeks redemption by helping her
escape back to her father.
While some martial arts films are little more than a string of fights
glued together by a few scenes of men yelling at each other about
revenge, The Rebel goes the opposite route. In placing its
story of love and betrayal front and center, it's a welcome surprise
whenever a fistfight breaks out to interrupt the drama.
Not to say the clobberings are infrequent. And rather than more kung
fu, The Rebel's leads practice vo thuat, which I believe is
Vietnamese for "I am now going to use my kicks and elbows to reduce
your skull to a coarse pink mush."
Explosive and torque-heavy, this
style is less about precise blocks and strikes and more about breaking
your arm in half and then kicking your head into low Earth orbit.
Yet all this power barely dents Dustin Nguyen, Johnny Nguyen's
partner-turned-nemesis. The dude's skin can stop steel blades, adding
a small but curious supernatural element to what's otherwise a pretty
realistic action movie.
The upside to dealing with a guy who's almost invincible: when you
finally figure out how to kill him, it's invariably rad as hell.
Sweet as this is, the movie isn't without flaws -- its plot isn't
terribly original, it sometimes veers towards melodrama, and while its
characters' relations to their parents are interesting, it feels as
though director Charlie Nguyen doesn't always have a firm grip on
their meaning.
But it would be worth it for the little-known fighting style alone.
With solid drama and some menacing villains to back that up, The
Rebel offers a new look at an established genre.
I would have to say the creepiest thing about viruses is some people don't consider them to technically be alive.
That makes them kind of like bizarro zombies. Well, except I guess bizarro zombies would be more like corpses that come back to life and restore brains to those who've lost them, such as flat tax advocates. Or maybe they would just eat our feet instead? I'm a little confused about how this bizarro stuff works. Point is, it's not very cool when you have to fight something that can't be killed because it has no life to be killed. Also there are hundreds of millions of them inside you.
I’m always raving about Redbox and how awesome they are with deals on renting movies…well, this week is no different!
Monday, 8/15 thru 8/24, Redbox is giving out daily discounts on movie and game rentals! From your cell phone, text DEALS to 727272 every day thru 8/24 for a new discount code you can use at any Redbox kiosk that day. Your discount will be anywhere from 10¢ to $1 off a single rental!
Head to a Redbox kiosk, choose a rental, select “check out” and then select the “promo code” option. Remember to return the rental the following day to avoid a late fee. Find out more at Redbox.com .
Sometimes, all it takes to kick a movie up a notch is to change the setting.
Take werewolf movies. You know what you are getting with a werewolf movie. Lots of shots of the moon. Ghouly old forests filled with mist and moss. And a small village full of tight-lipped locals who are so damn rude they don't even warn the tourists about the high risk of getting devoured by night-monsters.
Pretty tired, right? But what if this was set on the moon itself ?
PULLMAN -- In midafternoon of a hazy day on the Palouse, it got to 93. No, that's not how many points Washington State ran up against Nevada-Las Vegas in the second football game of the season, it's a weather reference.
But there was some suspense about that, because the Cougars were so dominant, some wilted students departed early for the campus watering holes and statisticians researched those when-was-the-last-time numbers.
WSU rocked the Rebels 59-7 to go 2-0 and get its fans to dreaming, no matter that they don't have their first-string quarterback and that they've played two opponents who were completely outclassed.
Malian president grilled by angry army wives on TV
As Mali's army confronts attacks from ethnic Tuareg separatists, the country's president is battling some tough critics: the wives of military personnel who grilled him for nearly two hours on state television about the government's failure to put down the rebellion.
Print
Email Story
