Howdy Amigos!
Hope you have all been enjoying your summer. If you’ve been abroad, sipping on the finest cocktails whilst the surf gentle caresses your toes and the sun warms your back, I just wanted you to know that I am insanely jealous and now hate your guts. I’m just messing with you, I don’t really. I’ve had the opportunity to relax and enjoy some different things over the past few weeks as well as make some gains in other areas of my life, but the call of writing has lured me back to my laptop and to present to you all a new feature I shall be introducing.
As some of you reading this may know, i’m a big Martial Arts movie fan. My long lasting love affair began way back in 1991, watching The Five Fingers of Death on VHS with my family one sunday afternoon. I had never seen anything like it before, the intricate combat on display had me spellbound from the superb opening to the bloody, emotion filled climax. From that moment on, I was hooked and I needed more, so to my delight, I discovered that this genre had been going strong for many years. There were literally thousands of titles to choose from and new ones coming around all the time. Though the BBFC had classified these films as unsuitable for my age group, my mum had always allowed me to watch them as long as I did so with her, so we would often pop down to the local video rental store on a Friday night after we finished grocery shopping and select a title for our weekend entertainment. As I grew older and got mine own VHS player for my room, I started borrowing movies from friends at school as well and watching them on my own. The desire to see these superhuman people perform their incredible feats on film became so all encompassing, I began taking class in Wu Shan Kwan and Kick-Boxing just to see if I could pull of the things these people did. I couldn’t, and got my ass handed to me on several occasions, but that’s another story for another time!
I have decided to compile some of my favourite and most notable Martial Arts movies of all time right here on the blog. I hoping that in doing so, I can jog a memory or two from some of you out there and also make some recommendations for some great movies that you may have missed along the way. I’ll be covering movies from the past and more recent times. I will mostly be focussing on movies from Hong Kong and China, but i’ll also include titles from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, France, Indonesia and the United States of America. Even my wet home of the UK has a few offerings that I can also write about and expose to a wider audience. I’ve got a pretty extensive list already to work through, but if any of you have some suggestions to add, please feel free to leave them in the comments below!
Right, i’m off to get started with the 1st title, come back tomorrow and i’ll have some Martial Arts Movie Madness for you then.
PS: Yes, I know the name sucks, but it was the best I could come up with, and besides, this isn’t about the title, it’s about the movies!
Jason P.
Woo Long Talks 