Tag Archive for 'Tournament Movie Tournament'

Culturology Presents... SUPER FOOT TO HEAD

Published

on August 6, 2010

. 6 Comments

This story requires a little bit of an introduction. As has been hinted at occasionally in previous columns, when I'm not chained to the desk here at AudioShocker Central, painstakingly crafting each week's profound bursts of cultural commentary, I've also been moonlighting on various other projects, one of which was teaching an Intro to Creative Writing undergraduate summer course at a local university. Part of that process, as you might imagine, is that my students write short stories, and then I read them and comment on them, to help them learn their craft. I visited home back over Memorial Day, and had a big pile of stories with me that I needed to read and comment on over the long weekend. I, of course, didn't let any of my family members read my students' work, but my brother Nate did happen to catch the title of one of my students stories. It was called "Foot to Head," which was the best title out of all the stories that had been submitted (though I'm biased, it having been turned in not long after Nick and my Tournament Movie Tournament). Nate asked what it was about, and I told him: it was about an MMA fighter who was training to fight in the championship bout, from a reigning champ who had the clear advantage. A couple weeks later, I got a totally unanticipated email from Nate, which said "I can't quite say how it happened but in honor of you grading all your short stories I wrote you one that I hope can be a sequel / homage / better-than follow-up to one of them whose title I liked. Since I didn't read it you'll have to tell me whether it's actually better though." and contained the following story. The original was a solid tournament tale, so I wouldn't go so far as to say that Nate's is better, but after sharing it with Nick, we decided that we had to give it a home here on Audioshocker, so without further ado Culturology presents Part I of SUPER FOOT TO HEAD...

SUPER FOOT TO HEAD

so a while ago i kicked ass in a mixed martial arts competition, someone wrote about it in a short story called Foot To Head. i never read it cause i dont read about my own fights ... i fight them. but i know that storys nothing compared to the contest i went to last week, where i whipped so many people before i even got there. so check it out.

there were some other fighters but the big ticket item was me versus a guy called Mad Leroy for the division championship belt. Mad Leroy is just this mad, tough, tough, bad dude. he used to be an offensive tackle in this independent pro football league that was illegalized for being too intense, and you know how some guys get a barbed wire tattoo around their biceps, Mad Leroy just fucking wears a piece of barbed wire around his arm. theres rumors that he sharpens his knuckle bones and i still dont know if thats true, but one thing i do know is he is SERIOUSLY HARDCORE. that night i wanted to fight with him so bad.

first i had to get to the venue though. it should have been easy, they set up the octagon in the basement of a unitarian church near my neighborhood just twenty blocks from my apartment. normally i would have walked there but i took my car because it was extra hot that night plus i wanted to save my leg strength. but part of the way there my car got a flat tire, in the middle of this really bad neighborhood. my neighborhood and the church neighborhood are kind of bad but all right, but theres ten blocks in between that are seriously dark and evil, like the worst neighborhood youve ever imagined. FUUUUUUDGE, i shouted, i didnt really say FUDGE but i think my grandma is reading this short story because i told her it would be pretty hardcore. anyway, i said FUDGE, not because i was scared but because the flat tire was fucking up my being on time to the fight. i could have just driven on the flat but i once heard about a sensei who said face every challenge HEAD ON, NO HALFWAY MEASURES and i didnt want to bend the axle. i looked at my watch, which is always right because its a handcrafted old watch i got from an old japanese trainer who was a serviceman in wwii because i seriously beat down his nephew in a fight. the watch said i had exactly fifteen minutes to get to the octagon.

i jacked up my car and already i knew there was going to be trouble, because three street toughs were in an alley giving me the eye, and then the biggest one said to me hey little man, you having some car troubles there. ive got a slim build and i was wearing a baggy shirt but i was ripped underneath that, make no mistake, but they didnt know that. i knew there was going to be fighting cause of this electrical feeling i got. its like my brain came apart from my mind and started doing all these violence equations. two of the toughs started walking towards me on different sides and just as the first guy got too close to me i knew when to kick him in the abdomen so that he rolled over a garbage can and landed on some broken bottles. as part of the same move i wheeled around and hit the other guy with my open hand in his face, hard enough to give him something to think about later, by driving a bunch of his front teeth up into his soft palate. OH OH, LOOKS LIKE YOU FUDGED WITH THE WRONG MAN, i said to the third one, the smallest one, and he just turned and ran back into the alley. it was a blind alley, which he shouldve known, but cause he panicked i guess he didnt know anymore. too bad for him.

like i said before, the other guys short story about me was Foot To Head, i dont know why he named it that. maybe because of fighter energy flowing all the way up my body from my foot to my head or something. what i do know is this short story is Super Foot To Head because of the incredibly powerful way i put my foot to that guys head in the alley. imagine if you put three pounds of medium rare ground beef in a hollowed out honeydew melon and then shot it with a shotgun. IT WAS EPIC. when it was over i was just standing at the end of the alley breathing with busted up head meat dripping off my shirt, i was so much in the fighter zone. i looked at my watch, i had seven minutes left til the match. it was just the beginning.

when i walked out of the alley i could smell there was already more trouble cooking, cause there was an eighteen wheeler pulled up next to my car and two crooked truckers were boosting my cars tires and trying to siphon off my gas. i knew from the news earlier that there were a lot of crooked truckers on the streets that night as part of some crime wave so i was mentally prepared for them, though when the first one saw me he threw a tire iron at my head that busted my nose and only added to the challenge. it was a pretty bad hit, it was like watching a pigeon get hit by a car zero inches from my face. but the taste of my own blood only added to my anger and focus.

the other trucker dropped the siphon and came at me, i started out pretty good when i landed clean hits on him with my elbow and head. but then when i was blocking a punch he pulled out a sixteen inch jungle knife from nowhere and with a loud swish he SLASHED OFF the four fingers of my right hand. AAAUUUGGHH POOP FUDGE, i was yelling, and because i was so loud and in extreme pain the guy thought he could get away, but i grabbed his shirt with my left hand and even though it felt like sticking my arm in a garbage bag full of bees on fire i still hit him a couple times in his head with whats left of my right hand. his neck made a crunch sound like when you bite into a fresh piece of corn and as he crumpled to the ground i knew he was probably knocked out ... or worse.

the guy who threw the tire iron now was trying to get back into the truck to escape, unlucky for him im left handed though, i picked up one of the wheels on the ground they had been trying to boost. SUCK ON THIS, i yelled to him, as i chucked the wheel at him and hit him low, right where the gonads attach to the body. i had tried to hit the trucker in the mouth which would have made the suck on this line make sense, but i still horked it at him pretty good, there were pieces of his pelvis bone sticking out the small of his back when i went to make sure he was unconscious from the pain. one problem though, cause of the siphon there was gas everywhere and when the tire bounced the rim sparked on the pavement and VVROOOOM the car and eighteen wheeler ALL BURST UP INTO FIRE. NOOOOO, i said, but i still had to get out of there to get out of the way of the explosion.

now i was going to have to walk to the competition which meant fighting street toughs block after block. i could take them but it was going to be bad, cause now my right hand wasnt good for anything but hitting and cause i got some gasoline on me id have to watch out for fire. worst of all, my japanese watch told me i was already twenty minutes late for the match. i knew Mad Leroy didnt want to go home without a fight either so he wouldnt let the judges call a forfeit right away, still i had to get there quick or hed win the title by default. i thought about a different sensei from the one i talked about before though, he said IF YOU BLOCK MY WAY I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Culturology #62 - Tournament Movie Tournament: The Final Fight!

Published

pete

on March 26, 2010

in Culturology

. 7 Comments

Tournament Movie Tournament FINAL ROUND Bracket:

(If you're not into reading and you want to spoil the match-up, skip to the bottom to see a bracket image featuring the WINNER.)

This is Pete, back at the helm again (though Nick and I are still tag-teaming on the post (a big thanks to Nick for all his work on the bracket images for the entire tournament)), typing directly into the "Add New Post" box of the back-end of AudioShocker. I'm so grateful to Nick for his help during this tournament, in fact, that I'm even letting his alteration of my column numbering scheme stand. What a whirlwind tournament tournament it's been! Just a couple of weeks ago there was a pile of movies all out there, fighting in their particular styles, but now we're down to a veritable Thunderdome wherein two movies enter, but only one movie leaves. Let's take another look at our finalists:

Bloodsport

It should surprise no one that this movie made it to the finals. The clear number one seed, Bloodsport is the heir-apparent to its own throne. Stripping all the unnecessary plot away from it's father-film Enter the Dragon, Bloodsport in a way really defines what the tournament movie is all about. It's about humans fighting as if they were cocks. And its about aggrandizing the myth of the star. Bloodsport, along with Kickboxer, made Jean-Claude Van Damme's career. And resident JCVD-expert Nick will confirm that the Muscles from Brussels never did better than his first real vehicle, Bloodsport. Additionally, the information that appears on the screen at the end of the movie introduced America to the-man-the-myth-the-legend Frank Dux, kumite motherfucker (or pathological fight-liar), giving Bloodsport a claim to verisimilitude unlike that of any of the other tournament movies we watched.

The Karate Kid, Part III

No one should question The Karate Kid's appearance across the mat from Bloodsport here in the final. You can question whether Part III is really better than the original. In the end, it boils down to this: while the original movie is perhaps a better movie over all, and a truly great sports movie, the final chapter of the trilogy is the better tournament movie. And you might balk at even that, since the tournament figures more prominently in the original than in Part III. But look at two crucial aspects of Part III's tournament structure that make it unique:

-- Conflict between the student and the master. In all the other tournament movies, the protagonist is out to prove the validity of his or her fighting ability, and almost always to pay homage to the training of his master. There is typically some kind of fighting-centric lesson learned (embrace all styles, there's always an out, etc.), but in KKIII, the lesson that the master is trying to impart -- that you don't have to fight at all -- is ignored and railed against by the student. The master still turns out to be right in the end, but not before having to acquiesce to the student.

-- Training with the enemy. In no other tournament does the protagonist go out and train with the bad guy. Terry Silver is an absolutely fantastic villain (B-movie stock, for sure, but nonetheless) to train with. Terry's Quicksilver Method, pernicious as it is, has remained in my own memory ever since I first saw this movie back in 1989.

These points alone show the worthiness of Part III to be in the finals. But also, the fact that the movie features two grown men trying to terrorize an (ostensibly) 18-year-old kid's life is absolutely amazing. Their entire goal is to put Cobra Kai dojos all over California, and that's about it. Efficient, gripping, amazing.

THE FINAL FIGHT

Before finally declaring a winner here, the committedly culturological side of me also needs to point something else out: Bloodsport appeared in 1988, The Karate Kid, Part III in 1989. This is no coincidence. At the root of all the American-learns-Asian-martial-art (and I use "Asian" here fully aware of the ridiculousness of the notion that we can use a single word like that to describe the great variety of cultures in that part of the world; I use "Asian" here in line with the way it's actually used in movies like Bloodsport) plots is the cultural need to come to terms with the three consecutive wars that the US waged against various Eastern foes (Japan, Korea, Vietnam), ending with the ruination-machine that was the Vietnam War. I've discussed this before, in the JCVD roundtables, so I won't belabor the point, but these movies represent the end of the span of years that Hollywood spent trying to come to terms with the Vietnam War. Most people really see this work being done by movies like Rambo, and the even-more-archetypal Missing in Action, but the tournament movies (and movies like Kickboxer) are on the same arc, if perhaps in a slightly subtler way (that's right! who'd've guessed it, that anything about a tournament movie could be subtle).

And The Karate Kid, Part III, as a decade-ending, trilogy-concluding, B-movie cashgrab, represents, in many ways the end of the Vietnam vet as karate expert genre. John Kreese and Terry Silver, buddies from the same platoon in 'Nam, help each other out, though they've both clearly been heinously scarred by their military experience, having been driven to severe mania and psychopathy. And they're terrorizing a kid that could have been their own son, had they not been stuck in a jungle halfway across the globe. Daniel LaRusso represents everything they hate about America: a spoiled kid who didn't have to fear the draft, never had to fight for his country or watch his buddies die, and -gasp- has befriended an actual Asian. And, to my mind, all of this shines through the movie despite its melodrama.

In the same way, Frank Dux represents the military veteran that has found a better way to survive the US's war history. He not only convinces a master to train him in the ways of the East, but then goes there and wins (this arc being made even clearer with the chanting of "The White Warrior" in Kickboxer), and then beats the Asians at their own game.

So the winner is...

There really is very little at stake in the Karate Kid, Part III. Sure, it sucks for the baddies that their t-shirts all get thrown back at them, and sure, Daniel LaRussa has managed to stick up for himself yet again, and maybe all us viewers learned something along the way as well. But Frank Dux in Bloodsport is fighting on behalf of an entire nation. Even though the using-the-kata-to-win ending of KKPIII is awesome in its purity (and has better final fight music), nothing can top the final fight of Bloodsport, the quivering of Jean Claude Van-Damme's not-yet-ravaged-by-fame face, the mighty power of his punch. However, if it came down, out of all sixteen of these tournament movies, to which movie I'd be most likely willing to watch at any given time, I'd have to go with The Karate Kid, Part III, because it really is the most entertaining of all these movies, the most re-watchable, the most useful as a pop-cultural reference. Is that enough, though, to grant it victory? I don't know...

thus...

The grueling battle ends with victory for: Bloodsport!

Tournament Movie Tournament WINNER:

Culturology #61 - Tournament Movie Tournament: Round Three!

Published

nick marino

on March 19, 2010

in Culturology

. 5 Comments

Tournament Movie Tournament ROUND THREE Bracket:

(If you're not into reading and you want to spoil the match-ups, then skip to the bottom of this post for the FINAL ROUND bracket image.)

While I'm yet again posting this week's tourney entry, don't worry -- your ROUND THREE battle descriptions are written by your regular Culturologist, Pete. He's done watching the Pirates train for 2010, but the training camp was so bad that he's locked himself in his apartment to weep tears of desperation for the rest of the weekend.

Now on with the action:

Enter the Dragon vs. Bloodsport

Location: A bloody tournament mat in front of an audience of angry martial artists

A lot of people probably expected this to be the pairing in the FINAL ROUND of the tournament -- the mentor becomes the student, the student the kicker-of-ass. The model of the tournament has been around for a long time, historically, but it wasn't until Enter the Dragon that the tournament really came into its own as a movie plot. And so few movies since have done any better. This tournament alone featured several contenders that were really just pretenders. But then, back in those magical mid-eighties, a plucky young gymnast from Belgium wandered into a studio exec's office in Hollywood, did some impromptu kicks and splits, and Bruce Lee's greatest rival to date was born. Fitting then that the enemy in both of these movies is that baby-faced beef-cake Bolo Yeung, with all of his inexplicable arm pumping and presumably unambiguous steroid abuse.

The message of both movies is simple enough (and more Bruce Lee's than JCVD's): be open to all forms of martial arts, use your enemies methods against them, and do not trust your vision. There's plenty of arguing to be done about these movies (since they're also both exploitative and occasionally racist in their own ways as well), but we're here to answer one simple question: did Bloodsport do the tournament better than Enter the Dragon? And the answer is yes, yes it did. Bloodsport strips away so much of the unnecessary aspects of Enter the Dragon. There's no secret island, no despotic ruler, no heroin, and no slaves. Our protagonist's only goal is to win the tournament -- the only goal that a tournament movie needs!

And speaking of protagonists, as awesome as Bruce Lee is and crazy his legend, can it really compare, for sheer entertainment value, to that of Frank Dux? Did Frank Dux ever actually compete in the Kumite, let alone win it? Was he ever really in the military? Critics may gripe into the ages, but in the end, Dux's megalomania combined with Van Damme's own egocentrism give Bloodsport the extra mystical edge to take it over the top in defeating Enter the Dragon.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Bloodsport!

Redbelt vs. The Karate Kid, part III

Location: A hushed stadium full of captivated Southern Californians

Redbelt's advancement into the final four really makes a lot of sense. Coming from the well-written-by-a-well-respected-filmmaker camp of movies otherwise unfamiliar to this tournament, no one could really compete with its sharp sense of pace, crisp dialogue, and thoroughly developed main character. But now the fights have gotten serious, and can a movie about a man who doesn't want to fight really stand up against movies about characters that want to fight?

As for The Karate Kid, part III, we have a major dark-horse here. The original Karate Kid is one of the great sports movies of all time, undeniably, and a great tournament movie. But the third installment is just so amazingly over-blown that it deserved to represent the trilogy here in the final four.

Where Redbelt represents the reluctant fighter, KK3 shows us the over-anxious youth (played by a no-longer-youthful-looking Ralph Macchio) who wants to fight, wants to defend his title, despite being urged not to by his calm-minded mentor. But this also sets up the major aspect of KK3 that gives it additional interest in this tournament: the hero trains with the enemy! And the insidious "Quicksilver Method" is an absolute classic, even if most people have never even seen the film.

"You can't stand, you can't fight." The Karate Kid, part III sweeps Redbelt's leg, breaks its shin-bone in two like a piece of lumber.
"You can't breathe, you can't fight." KK3 punches Redbelt in the chest, breaking several ribs.
"You can't see, you can't fight." KK3 punches Redbelt in the face. Redbelt, its nose now broken, is blinded by its own blood.

But, of course, now the The Karate Kid, part III has that poor guy's blood all over its sweatshirt.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Karate Kid, part III!

Tournament Movie Tournament FINAL ROUND Bracket:

Be back next week to see who's declared THE WINNER!

Culturology #60 - Tournament Movie Tournament: Round Two!

Published

nick marino

on March 12, 2010

in Culturology

. 5 Comments

Tournament Movie Tournament ROUND TWO Bracket:

(If you're not into reading and you want to spoil the match-ups, then skip to the bottom of this post for the ROUND THREE bracket image.)

Pete's off watching the Pittsburgh Pirates training somewhere in Florida, so I'm forced to fill-in as this week's Culturology blogger. Just to spite Pete for having fun in the sun and ditching us, I've deviously taken it upon myself to switch Culturology over to the "#00" system instead of the "000" numbering. MUWAHAHAHAHA! SO DEVIOUS!!!

Now on with the tourney:

Enter the Dragon vs. The Quick and the Dead

Location: A secret Wild West desert island manufacturing compound

Herod and Han both laughed maniacally as the battle began. Their arrogance, however, was quickly their undoing as they realized that the real fight was between Bruce Lee and Sharon Stone, each waging their own cultural war. "Who will win?" they wondered. Will The Lady snap action movie gender stereotypes in two or will Lee break down the wall holding back Asian actors in Hollywood??? Unfortunately, the battle didn't last long enough to dig deep into issues of nationality, gender, and representation -- even a moron stuck in a room full of mirrors knows that the "art of fighting without fighting" is too groundbreaking and original to be topped.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Enter the Dragon!

Bloodsport vs. The Quest

Location: Vietnam

Jean-Claude Van Damme, glistening in the moonlight, stepped forward into the ring to face his cloaked opponent. He braced for the fight as his attacker threw off his cloak and revealed himself to be... Jean-Claude Van Damme!?! Shocked and confused, 1980s JCVD pushed through the pain of training and prior defeat to land a single, staggering blow against 1990s JCVD. Somewhere in the crowd, Ray Jackson could be heard yelling, "He just broke the fucking world record!" while Roger Moore was busy crying as the bookie collected on his large debt (hint: he took Moore's career).

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Bloodsport!

Redbelt vs. Sidekicks

Location: Houston, Texas

A most unorthodox fight indeed! People paid good money to see a battle to the death, but instead all they got was Chiwetel Ejiofor screaming something over and over about how there's always an escape while Chuck Norris was busy combing his hair and signing autographs off to the side. However, as Norris' ego grew more and more menacing in size, Ejiofor landed an unexpected roundhouse kick and knocked Norris senseless. Norris was defeated so quickly that the audience wasn't even sure if he was ever there to begin with...

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Redbelt!

The Karate Kid vs. The Karate Kid, part III

Location: Reseda, California

Just like the night's earlier bout between Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jean-Claude Van Damme, it looked like the older film would easily best its younger opponent. Iconic? Check. Memorable? Check. Inspiring? Check. On the books, the original Karate Kid looked like the safest bet. But that was before Terry Silver and John Kreese decided to join in on the action. Suddenly, the tables turned as a more mature Danny and his two new companions thrashed younger Danny and his high school angst. The picture soon became clear: superior storytelling and better antagonists were more than a match for the original installment. The threequel was triumphant!!!

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Karate Kid, part III!

Tournament Movie Tournament ROUND THREE Bracket:

Be back next week to see which movies clobber their way into the FINAL ROUND!

Culturology 059 - Tournament Movie Tournament: Round One!

Published

pete

on March 5, 2010

in Culturology

. 9 Comments

Tournament Movie Tournament ROUND ONE Bracket:

(If you're not into reading and you want to spoil the match-ups, then skip to the bottom of this post for the ROUND TWO bracket image.)

Enter the Dragon vs. DOA: Dead or Alive

Little known fact about Bruce Lee: he was also a champion beach volleyball player (and if you told him you were looking for a slightly more "mature" attitude, his pectoral muscles would inexplicably swell to three times their normal size). Facing this overwhelmingly talented, distressingly busty version of '70s icon Bruce Lee, the shiny, comfortably 21st Century characters of DOA didn't have a chance. "Based on a video game?" scoffed Lee, "Ha. Ha ha hahha haha ha."

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Enter the Dragon!

Battle Creek Brawl vs. The Quick and the Dead

Two wildly different versions of the West butted heads in this instantly classic match-up: a shanty-town were all the citizens like to stop-and-stare from time to time, and a Texas that is populated almost entirely by burly men. And those burly men were quite good at hugging each other and getting angry, but, well, they just couldn't do much against gun-slinging A-list Hollywood actors. Staring down her gun at a critically wounded Jackie Chan, who knelt bleeding on the ground, pleading for her to take pity and just end his life, Sharon Stone snickered and walked away, leaving Chan's barely breathing body to be picked at by the vultures that were swooping lower and lower.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Quick and the Dead!

Redbelt vs. Bronson Lee, Champion

The exploitation wizards that came up with Bronson Lee had no idea what they were in for, going up against David Mamet's well-dialogued Redbelt. Who'd of thought that one of the all-stars of contemporary theatre would also be a macho douchebag who was way into MMA? Bronson Lee didn't, and not only did he get his ass-kicked, but he was talked out of ever bothering trying to act again. Insult to injury, my friends, insult to injury. Perhaps either Charles Bronson or Bruce Lee would have stood a chance, but poor B.L. never did.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Redbelt!

Sidekicks vs. Bloodfist

This was one of the toughest matches to call in the whole first round, because both of these movies are so... uh... good! Bloodfist fared well in the early goings, as it took immediate advantage of being readily available on DVD to control the early goings of the fight. But once Sidekicks realized that its cult status, being available almost exclusively on hard-to-find VHS tapes and bootleg DVDs snapped out of its racist day-dreaming to conjure an early-nineties Chuck Norris that was still more or less in fighting form. And also, Joe Piscopo beat Billy Blanks in a swimsuit competition. Sidekicks sneaks into round two! It might just be worth watching!

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Sidekicks!

Mortal Kombat vs. The Quest

The longest, knock-down drag-out fight of the first round. Mortal Kombat came out waving around it's many shittily-animated arms, claiming re-watchability, and a superior level of Enter the Dragon knock-offery. But then Jean-Claude Van Damme ran around with some kids, took off his shirt, and did a split, and everyone in the audience, Christopher Lambert included, swooned. This one will be debated into the ages. Was it a fair fight? Were the judges biased by a bizarre, unhealthy fascination with the Muscles from Brussels? Are they rejecting all video-game based tournament movies until Marvel Vs. Capcom finally gets greenlighted? The world may never know.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Quest!

Bloodsport vs. Best of the Best

Come on people. Bloodsport wins. Duh. Bloodsport won with its eyes closed.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: Bloodsport!

The Karate Kid vs. Never Back Down

One of the greatest sports movies (let alone tournament movies) ever made faces it's most successful (and not all that successful, at that) knock-off. There may well have been things about the 2000s that were okay, but Never Back Down wasn't really one of them. No contest. Way to go, Daniel-son.

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Karate Kid!

Over the Top vs. The Karate Kid, Part III

We've met many people over the years that have claimed to have been entertained by Over the Top, but we don't really believe them. Meanwhile, KKPIII is a much better, way more over the top B-movie than Over the Top. It's not even time yet, in just the first round, to even sing the full praises of The Karate Kid, Part III. A sleeper candidate? A wildcard? Could be, could be...

The grueling battle ended with victory for: The Karate Kid, part III!

Tournament Movie Tournament ROUND TWO Bracket:

Be back next week to see which movies fight their way into ROUND THREE!

Culturology 058 - Tournament Movie Tournament!

Published

pete

on February 26, 2010

in Culturology

. 6 Comments

Here at Culturology, Nick and I are getting a jump on the NCAA's upcoming March Madness by hosting a tournament of our own. What better kind of tournament than a tournament tournament? So check out the bracket below (click to enlarge) and make your choices! Then tune in next week to see how the first round plays out.

The ROUND ONE contenders:

Battle Creek Brawl: They tried to make Jackie Chan famous right after his brief appearance in Enter the Dragon. Despite flashes of his amazing charisma, it would take another decade after this movie for Chan to make it big (as big as Billy Kiss from Pittsburgh).

Best of the Best: Eric Roberts leads a team of American characters in a charge against a superior Korean Taekwondo team.

Bloodfist: Low budget fighting in the Philippines that spawned eight sequels -- more than any other movie on this list. With Billy Blanks!

Bloodsport: Jean-Claude Van Damme in the role that he never bettered, in his first and best movie. The clear favorite in the tournament.

Bronson Lee, Champion: What do you get if you cross Charles Bronson and Bruce Lee? A motherfucking champion, that's what.

DOA: Dead or Alive: Like Enter the Dragon, but with volleyball.

Enter the Dragon: The original. But is it the best?

The Karate Kid: One of the truly classic tournament movies, even if it's not as intense as the more adult fare of Bloodsport or Enter the Dragon. But can 1984's favorite plucky New Jerseyite win a whole tournament tournament in 2010?

The Karate Kid, part III: The oft-overlooked final chapter of the original Karate Kid trilogy. Most people think it went right from KK II to The Next Karate Kid, but first the Karate Kid and Mr. Miyagi had to take on some seriously menacing Vietnam veterans.

Mortal Kombat: The entirely watchable first foray into franchising the iconic video game into a filmic empire. One of the many Enter the Dragon homages in the tournament. With Christopher Lambert!

Never Back Down: Karate Kid, reinvented for douchebags in the 21st century.

Over the Top: Sylvester Stallone never speaks above a whisper (he must have been really tired when they filmed this) in this B-movie, truck-driving, arm-wrestling, father-son-bonding classic.

The Quest: Jean-Claude Van Damme is a street fighting stilt mime scamp (possibly some sort of weird child labor offender... or fetishist), forced to escape New York City and stow away on a cargo boat, where he proceeds to get caught, get saved, and get sold into martial arts slavery in Thailand. Also directed by JCVD.

The Quick and the Dead: Sam Raimi's dolly zoom wild west classic. Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone, a young Leonardo DiCaprio, and guns! What more could a tournament movie need?

Redbelt: David Mamet loves MMA. Who would've guessed? Clearly the artsy-fartsiest of the movies in the tournament.

Sidekicks: A very special vanity project for Chuck Norris, but is he really in this movie, or just a figment of our overactive imaginations?

That's the list! So now go, download the ROUND ONE bracket, and play along to see if your picks move onto ROUND TWO next Friday!

AudioShocker Podcast #109 - Pejoratively Yours

Published

nick marino

on December 8, 2009

in Music

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AudioShocker Podcast #109 [ 46:49 ] Play Now | Download

Our podcast crew is all yours as we talk about Jean-Claude Van Damme in Replicant, the Harry Potter movies as modern classics, the upcoming Tournament Movie Tournament (!!!), Jingle All the Way (overrated), Supernova (underrated), DOA: Dead or Alive, Grammy Award nominees including The Ting Tings and Booker T, Cudderisback by Kid Cudi, Nick's guitar spotlight spectacular featuring Dennis Coffey, Roger Troutman, and Rodrigo y Gabriela, Lady GaGa's The Fame Monster, and the Annie Award nominees including Cloudy and Mr. Fox.