Word: martial
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...moviemakers and movie stars. All were in their 30s when they made Raiders. Now Spielberg, Lucas and Ford are, respectively, 61, 64 and 65. And don't forget two other crucial collaborators, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn, who have given all the Indy films their cheerfully martial sound and cut-to-the-bone fury...
...from a clever screenplay by ex-King of the Hill writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, is a tribute to the literally hundreds of '70s Hong Kong martial arts dramas that flooded Saturday-morning U.S. TV in the wake of Bruce Lee's success with Enter the Dragon. The plot, of a laggard who undergoes rigorous training to become a great fighter, is familiar from many Jackie Chan films, including the one that made him a star, Drunken Master. Fans of Chang Cheh's Five Venoms movies will have no trouble spotting this movie's Furious Five: the Crane (David...
...Chan's confidence was well placed. Directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne may have an unhealthy fondness for humiliating physical humor - there are more sight gags of fat creatures hurting themselves than in an entire run of Super Bowl commercials - but they are essentially respectful toward the conventions of martial arts films and the Zen spirituality underlining them. Once Po stops tripping over things and devotes himself to the exhausting curriculum devised by his Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), the movie shifts into high martial-arts gear, with some sequences so smartly thought out and spectacularly executed that they might have been...
Before Mamet disassembled me, he arranged for me to get an hour of training at Street Sports in Santa Monica, Calif., where for seven years he has been studying Brazilian jujitsu, a type of martial art that involves very little punching and kicking but a lot of rolling around on the ground and touching in ways that made me, if this is possible, uncomfortable while getting beaten up. Five students--all of whom act in his new film about ultimate fighting, Redbelt--took turns pummeling me under the instruction of Mamet's trainer, Renato Magno, who told me later...
...There is, however, one difference between writer-director David Mamet's film and other fight game tales; it is not about boxing. It is about a mixed martial arts, combat that involves elements of jiu-jitsu, kick-boxing and the many other weird ways men have devised to do great bodily harm to one another. That gives Redbelt an original edge that somewhat separates it from the boxing genre. This advantage is greatly enhanced by its protagonist, Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is excellent in the role). Mike is a black belt jiu-jitsu instructor, running a none-too-successful...