Word: martially
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...original was a genuine Neo classic. It trumped its nifty martial artistry and digital effects with a theme of self-discovery in the great heroic tradition. So, what did the brothers do for an encore? They spread the sequel over two feature-length films and, with all that time to fill, got a little gassy in their storytelling. The rebel fortress of Zion was a drab lair whose denizens engaged in way too much Jedi Council--style nattering. Then--as if producer Joel Silver had pleaded, "Could you please have somebody hit somebody?"--Reloaded 180'd into an action film...
...martial trilogy needs a climactic battle scene. This one pits the humans against a swarm of the Matrix's sentinels--those metal octopests, those enemy anemones that chased the humans in M1 and M2. They're back in megaforce, forming a snake shape that rears and strikes at Zion. So the human soldiers get outfitted in gigantic robot armor--clinking, clanking, clattering collections of collagenous junk...
...Martial-arts games (like the Street Fighter or Tekken series) used to be the digital equivalent of a cheeseburger--good for a little messy, mindless pleasure but always leaving behind a coat of grease and guilt. Beating your opponent to a bloody pulp by hitting all the buttons on your controller faster than he or she did was hardly something you would call tasteful. Then came Soul Calibur (released in 1999 for the now defunct Dreamcast), the caviar and champagne of fighting games. Its sword-wielding characters preferred fencing to fisticuffs. Combat was balletic and mercifully blood-free...
...elite fighting force to which she once belonged. Once she’s up and about again, The Bride sets out on a mission of revenge against her former compatriots. On paper, Kill Bill: Volume I sounds dangerously close to Charlie’s Angels: there are many martial arts action sequences, all of the main characters are women and one of them is played by Lucy Liu. However, whereas Angels was mindless fun, Kill Bill is a thoughtful and beautiful homage to classic themes and styles while remaining the most fun and exciting film of the year. Within...
...inherent contradiction and irony of those words, even if one accepts Smith’s premise (and I do not) that learning about Western cultures is more important than learning about those in the East, he should realize that in this age of Coca Cola stalls in Bangladesh and martial arts films dominating Hollywood box offices, the cultures of the two hemispheres are inseparable. Furthermore, to suggest that the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi were not the primary inspiration for the political philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. would be to call King himself a liar. Confucius wrote...