milliways_bar | Kung-Fu Movie Night

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Kung-Fu Movie Night

There are two things that Cassie does when she needs to relax - throwing a party and sitting back to watch a martial arts film. Tonight she's especially on edge. There's only one possible remedy.

You shouldn't have trouble seeing the sign.

Martial Arts Movie Marathon:

In light of how awesome the last party I threw was, we're having another one. This one is in celebration of the greatness of the Earth art form known as the martial arts film. It is a noble art form, dealing with the universal themes of vengeance, resistance to unjust authority, being proud of your cultural heritage, the inherent beauty of a roundhouse kick to the chin, and above all else the eternal question of whose kung-fu style is strongest.

We will celebrate by watching three classics of the genre. You'll know they're classics because I picked them. The first film starts at five. Be there.

- Cassie Cage, Master of Ceremonies

Right now she's be moving about the projector room, setting up her 36th Chamber of Kung-Fu Appreciation. It is an ancient ritual that involves booze and snacks.

[[OOC: Thread is now live. Tags are set up so you can comment whenever you wish, so it will be open all weekend. All films are streaming on Netflix.]]

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Cassie steps up to the projector and dims the lights.

"Alright, roll up, roll up!"

She clears her throat and turns to the people assembled at the chairs.

"Anyone who wants to be a master has got to pass through all 36 chambers first. So that's what we're starting with. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. THE great training montage - Rocky Balboa can suck a dick. Hitting play...now."

Edited 2015-10-24 22:09 (UTC)

It doesn't even take until the credits finish for the posing, kiai-ing, an foley noises to start. Cassie spends this portion of the film hushing anyone who might still be talking.

Right now, two pony-tailed men dressed in white are engaged in frantic combat. The fists and swords are flying, and the sound effects are very cheap indeed.

(No need to feel bound to a time stamp with this one. This could apply to almost any scene in any Shaw Brothers film).

Now the wicked tartars are oppressing the townsfolk. They have defeated the noble Han patriot and strung his bloodied form up beneath the public gate.

"A lot of these movies are about facing down foreign invaders," she says, to whomever is listening.

"Death of the hero's father. Drink."

Brother, mentor, or best friend are at least as common, but whatever.

Edited 2015-10-24 22:44 (UTC)

After a year of sweeping the floor at Shaolin Temple, San Te is informed that he could have started training in martial arts whenever he wanted, in any of the 35 chambers.

"Doesn't he feel like a schmuck now."

Edited 2015-10-24 23:06 (UTC)

San Te is effectively baffled out of the mind-over-matter nature of the top chamber. The overseer literally knocks him out of the chamber with a wave of his hand, without even touching him. Serves him right for thinking he could skip to the end. The sutras the monks are reciting make slightly more sense to Cassie, who speaks the original Cantonese.

He doesn't seem to be having any more luck getting over the moat in the bottom chamber. He shows up for lunch late and drenched. So the abbot makes him eat his bowl of rice while balancing on the log in the middle of the moat.

"This shit wouldn't have been out of place on the first day of Q-Course."

Edited 2015-10-26 00:44 (UTC)

As soon as San Te crosses the moat (in high-flying, physics-defying fashion), the abbot breaks up the bundle of sticks they've been using as a stepping stone. Now they must support their weight on the small individual logs.

"The plate sinks in water, just as the logs you stepped upon."

He then skips the dinner plate across the water.

"I keep the plate in motion, balanced. Power takes you forward. Firmness balances the boy. Uniformity of mind focuses power."

"Soon as you make it through one goalpost, they move it higher."

San Te makes it nonetheless. One down, 34 to go.

The next chamber involves hauling heavy buckets of water with arms held wide, with sharp blades strapped to the biceps which stab the trainee in the kidneys if their arms fall.

"Shaolin strength training is all fun and games until someone loses a kidney and bleeds out through his dick," Cassie says.

Thirty-third chamber. Another test of strength, this one featuring a bell hammer with a very long, very flexible handle. The hammer itself weighs twelve times as much as it otherwise would. San Te must ring the bell every time the overseer hits his wood block.

"I had a friend who tried out for drumline once," Cassie says. "The test might as well have been this."

After numerous repetitions, he collapses to the floor, grasping his wrist in pain.

"Gotta go to failure, bro."

The next chamber is the room of mirrors and flame. San Te is seated at the center of the room with two smoking hot sticks directly next to his head. He must keep his eyes on a swinging flame without moving his head.

Once he has succeeded, he must attack every mirror that shines with fire. Naturally, a bright ARPy synth bloop indicates when he sees things.

"THE SYNTHESIZER REPRESENTS EYESIGHT."

This training is nothing if not sensible, so the next chamber is the hitting-your-head-against-a-gauntlet-of-probably-concrete-filled-bags-and-lighting-incense-for-the-Buddha chamber.

She turns to whoever's sitting next to her. "You laugh, but hitting your head against a concrete sack and hotboxing in front of a Buddha statue has to be at least one person's idea of a good time."

On the bright side, the monks promise San Te that the next chambers involve actual training with fists and weapons.

Edited 2015-10-24 23:30 (UTC)

Now begins the actual kung fu part of the kung fu training. They practice their techniques in ways that are probably more cinematic than practical, and they learn control over their polestaffs by turning tiny pinwheels with them. Our hero is making his way through in record time.

It's awesome. Whether you're from a universe familiar with Chinese martial arts or not.

San Te loses two challenge fights against a more experienced monk. But he's able to turn the tide when he devises a new weapon - that old Hong Kong staple, the three-segmented staff.

"Behold the power of my giant nunchaku!"

For his victory, San Te is given the opportunity to be the overseer of any of the 35 chambers. He instead requests to be put in charge of a new, 36th chamber in which laymen can train to defend themselves. Say, against foreign invaders.

The abbot feigns outrage, and surrepitously sends him away from the temple to "collect alms," wink wink.

"Go collect the shit out of those alms, San Te! Rip those alms's throats out and shit down their neck! Make those alms regret the day they were born! Respectably, praise Buddha."

San Te confronts the officer who killed his family. There's a frenetic battle in a graveyard, and San Te and the Han general are victorious. San Te can't kill him - he's a Buddhist. But he doesn't have to stop the other guy from killing him.

"That's a pretty weak-ass loophole, but eh. Whatever."

Edited 2015-10-26 00:33 (UTC)

The next target is the general in charge of the forces in Canton. He recruits people from the town to fight against him and his lieutenants. After several more battles, the general challenges him to one final fight to the death upon a verdant hillside.

The General fights skillfully, but he is no match for San Te and his three-segmented staff. San Te returns to Shaolin to establish his 36th Chamber.

Cassie smiles as the film ends. "Still holds up."

Gyda watches the whole of the film, glad she's able read the subtitles. Watching the man who turns out to be the main character is like reading a hero on the sagas, only instead of monsters or gods, his challenge is the tests.

She could understand the lesson of balance. In battle, footwork and balance could mean all the difference between keeping alert or falling and leaving one's self vulnerable.

"You'd have to be as light as that to walk on those logs." Maybe herself, some of the shield maidens and Athelstan, but she couldn't imagine some of the men back home doing that.

Gyda only read the bulletin board because she recognized Cassie's name being spelled out. Thanks to her reading, she had an idea of what movies were, but up until now she'd never had the chance to watch one.

So she's seated in the projector room, a drink and bunch of snacks in front of her as she watches, because clearly that's the proper way to go about this. The start of the movie reminds her too much of what happened in Kattegat, so even as San-Te makes it to the temple, she's already rooting for him.

She's also very glad she's learned to read, or she may've not understood half of what's going on in the movie. Half, because the motives of revenge are clear enough in any language.

Though it's still strange to watch a story with monks fighting. That certainly wasn't the case in England.

Cassie had actually agonized a little over this second choice. It's a real challenge picking just three movies to show people. So many styles, nationalities, and periods to choose from.

But in the end, she's doing this for her own pleasure and relaxation. She's going with one she grew up on and hasn't seen in a while, in a language she knows. She's sticking with Hong Kong.

"Right, this next one's from the nineties. It's got Jet Li in it and it's brutal as fuck."

She hits play.

The opening credits roll.

"Oh, man, Golden Harvest, are you serious with that Papyrus font?"

"Yeah, sound footwork is one thing, that's something else."

Beat.

"Mind you, I've seen people do more incredible things than that."

The film doesn't waste time. In the very first scene, Jet Li takes on a racist Japanese gang and ruins their shit.

"Nice," Cassie says, as he breaks one of the gang member's legs. "Take it to those Black Dragon fuckers."

He looks swift and elegant doing it, too.

Edited 2015-10-25 01:57 (UTC)

"So stories and poems say." She's mostly focused on the screen and not Cassie. Even she knows you don't talk loud during good parts: back home, that could attract violence.

She watches as the students go through trail and error before making it. There's a part of her that both hopes and dreads that watching this would give Cassie ideas. "They have to make it eventually, otherwise the rest of the story would get boring."

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Kung-Fu Movie Night

Film #1: The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

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Film #2: Fist of Legend

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