Happy G20!

A lots been said about our wonderful G20 weekend. I spent Saturday and Sunday downtown, shooting B-roll for Bluebird. It was a great opportunity for me to capture images of a city under siege, which is sad, but at the sametime, strangely karmic. The film was blessed by a tibetan woman after all. True story. But I digress. I saw some crazy stuff. My thoughts. Everyone failed. Well, not everyone. There were actually peaceful protestors who just wanted to be heard. However, they had trouble makers in their midst that caused some shit and provoked the police. Then the police went crazy. Good times. Either way, the blame falls on the people who decided to throw this shit storm together.

Also, Saturday night, history was made when Fedor lost for this first time. Ever. It was bound to happen. And granted he's really fought no one of real talent for years, he's probably gotten soft. He hasn't been challenged for a long time. And then bam, he falls into a triangle/arm bar twist combo move.

The weekend before I got really sick. I puked my guts out. Literally. For 7 hours. I hadn't been sick like that since we were in China and I got sick after eating sewage. I vomited until there was nothing but bile coming up. And then I puked some more. It felt like my body was trying to expel some demon from my stomach. It went on for hours. I couldn't hold down water for a good deal of the day. But eventually it ended. Obviously, getting sick like that from I have no idea what set off some warning lights. I needed to purge. And purge I have. I haven't had any caffeine since that vomitous day. I've been eating some what better, cleansing my inner workings. Its been tough. I've been going to bed a lot earlier, but feel generally better and seem to have more clarity. Today I worked out, and I felt like I had more energy than I had in a long time. Strange. And not so strange. Perhaps Operation Ivy was right. Healthy body, safe mind.

The Horseman - This Australian flick kicks some ass. From it's description, I was really expecting just another bloody revenge tale, but this film rises above that leaps and bounds. Peter Marshall is astounding as Christian, and his performance is mesmerizing. It also really humanizes him with the introduction of Alice, the young girl who follows him on his bloody rampage, although unbeknowest to her. It reminded me alot of Izo. Christian by the end of the film loses all of his humanity and turns into a rage filled devil, who no amount of punishment can stop. The stunts are spectacular. I loved this film.

The Iceman Cometh (and goeth)

UFC 115 has come and gone in Vancouver. My thoughts:

1) Chuck Liddell looked great. He didn't have a beer gut for the first time in recent memory. And he was fairing very well. Until he got hit. Once. And dropped. He's head can't take a good punch to the noggin anymore. Which is too bad. Not that I'm a huge Liddell fan, because I ain't, but I like Rich Franklin even less, so I was really hoping he would loose. Oh well.

2) Cro Cop won! Yeah! To a Sanshou fighter with no ground skills! To a guy who knocked him on his ass not once, but twice, and just stood there and let him get up. I do like Cro Cop, I love a good head kick, but if Pat Barry actually knew MMA and not just Sanshou, he would have plowed right through Cro Cop in the first round. It was a feeder fight, and fed Cro Cop Dana White did.

3) It was obvious during the pre-lim fights they show live on Spike for free, that they are cutting the fights to show as little contact and violence as they can. I know its a business, and Dana White is trying to make it more legitamized, but there were times when the camera had a perfect view of the action, and then it would cut to angle that made it more difficult to discern what was going on. I didn't dig it.

Blood and Bone - Black Dynamite converted me into a Michael Jai White fan. Sure I'd seen him in a Universal Soldier: The Return, The Dark Knight, Spawn, and the deleted scene from Kill Bill 2, but I was never fully convinced of his martial arts skills nor his on screen prescence and charisma. Until Black Dynamite. Now I can't get enough. Blood and Bone is a low budget film, but the guy who wrote the Big Hit (which I LOVE) and Love and a Bullet, which he directed, starring Treach (BAD!!!), and without MJW, it would probably have been a terrible film. Sure its got Kimbo Slice, Gina Carrano and Bob Sapp, but MJW kicks some serious ass in this film. They change camera formats throughout (you can see this pretty clearly in the making of), and it shows. Some of it looks like shit. Sometimes, when there's lots of horizontal movement in the frame, the image strobes. Some of the acting is awful. But fuck, Michael Jai White is incredible. I will buy this film solely for the guys martial arts mayhem. The end fight is pretty amazing.