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Welcome to the About Martial Arts Weblog
Welcome to our new Weblog! What's a Weblog, you ask? A Weblog, or "blog" for short, is simply a short log of cool places around the Web, with some pithy commentary or snide remarks attached. Every other week or so, look here to see what weird, cool martial arts stuff we've dug up around the Web. Remember Technique of the Week? Well, look for it here, as the "Technique of the Every-So-Often".
Two Turntables and a Microphone
Bruce Lee and Hong Kong cinema are now mainstream pop culture. So is techno dance hall music, with Moby's tunes in all those commercials.
So what better way to combine the two than to make an interactive art piece? Faster than you can say, "You've got chocolate in my peanut butter!", some enterprising designers in Germany cooked up the "Kung-Fu Mixer". This Flash art piece lets you mix your own Bruce Lee multimedia fight scene, as part of the ongoing Web serial, "I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives."
Link: Kung-Fu Mixer
Bruce Lee Documentary
Did you see John Little's documentary on the making of Bruce Lee's movie, "Game of Death"? American Movie Classics (AMC), recently aired "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey" on cable in the U.S.
Penned and directed by the Bruce Lee historian, John Little, the two-hour documentary covered Bruce Lee's rise to American TV fame, and his disappointing reception by most of Hollywood, until the success of his Hong Kong movies.
The best part of the documentary is the restored footage of the final fight scenes from "Game of Death". These scenes, where Bruce fights his way up a pagoda's levels versus hapkido grandmaster Han Jae Ji, Dan Inosanto, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, were the only parts of the movie that actually featured Bruce Lee.
You know the story. Lee died before the rest of the movie could be completed, and the producers released the movie with cheesy stand-ins--even a paper cutout of Lee's face--to fill out the rest of the story.
What John Little's restoration shows us are the two other guys Bruce brings in with him into the pagoda--these two characters were cut from the released movie. The fight scenes really take on a whole new dimension. For example, Ji mops up the floor with the two other guys, tossing them around with hapkido throws that you never saw in the released movie.
If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out, even if only for the restored fight scenes. Fantastic.
Compare Prices: "Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey" DVD
Compare Prices: "Game of Death" DVD
Pilots Get their Guns
The U. S. House of Representatives recently passed bill H.R. 4635, the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act. This bill would let all 70,000 commercial aviation pilots in the US voluntarily carry firearms to protect the aircraft's flight deck. Pilots would volunteer for a training program, including unarmed and armed defensive tactics training, to become sworn "Federal flight deck officers."
The bill received surprisingly positive support, even from noted anti-gun representatives. The Bush administration is opposed to arming pilots, though, and the eventual passing of the act is uncertain.
As we find out more about the bill, including the type of martial arts training pilots will receive, we'll let you know here.
Link: H.R.
4635