Ninja Assasin Review

I had the pleasure of seeing Ninja Assasin the night it was released, and I have to say it was exactly what I was expecting and hoping for. The film tells the story of Raizo the ninja (played by South Korean pop-star Rain) who is on a quest for revenge (of course) against his former ninja confederates and his master.  The story is pretty much irrelevant just making excuses for people to be chopping each other up with the energy of a nuclear powered quisinart.

The two western main characters "Maslow" and "Mika" were pretty much completely irrelevant and worthless which is the main problem with the story, of course their interpol connections make them very handy for calling in shuriken-fodder for the evil ninjas which is the only reason I can even see having them involved in the plot at all.

Prepare to not care about this person

 The action in the film however is superb, with excellent stylization, top notch effects, and buckets upon buckets of gratuitous blood spraying out everywhere. In case you had trouble understanding the last sentance

DO NOT see this movie if the following things disturb or offend you:  Peoples' heads being chopped off, people being chopped in half, peoples' heads being chopped in half , people getting sharp objects thrown into their eyes/ every painful area of the body, people being stabbed in the neck, people being stabbed in the femoral artery etc, etc. In fact this movie was so completely filled with great gouts of viscera that I almost felt guilty for enjoying it, like I should have been horrified by the level of carnage.  Maybe I should also point out that Raizo is the most hardcore of all the ninjas, and yet at the end of the movie even he looks like this: 

 On another note, this movie used CGI created blood effects, and were actually successful enough that I didn't feel that it detracted from the exploitation grindhouse-y feel of the movie.  The movie also featured several really cool ninja weapons; the following clip features two of them Raizo's whip blade and Takeshi's dual sided Katana:




Of course if you have trouble suspending your disbelief you may have problems with this movie, It isn't the greatest plot to begin with, and on top of it the ninja's do have full-on magic powers, like limited teleportation and the ablity to heal wounds by chanting some magic words and making crazy magic hand gestures.  If you are the sort of person who is going to sit in the back of the theatre and say "That wouldn't really happen in REAL life" you are going to be sorely disappointed because realism is not what this film was going for. 

In all I give the film a solid 8.5 decapitated ninjas out of ten. 

Air Force Ones, and Square Horse Tongues: TheFREEhoudini by Themselves

Ok folks here is a real treat for this review, this Album theFREEhoudini by Themselves is the third album from the Anticon collaboration between Dose One and Jel.  This Album is exciting for several reasons, not the least of which being that it is in fact, free, and features such icons as Aesop Rock, and Oddnosdam, Yoni Wolf and Dose working together as cLOUDDEAD for the first time on a record since their breakup.  However this isnt just a bunch of ambient noise with weird lyrics...

...Ok a lot of it is ambient noise with weird lyrics but lets break it down a bit and I will tell you why this album is great and why at the bottom of my page, you should click the link and download this thing immediately.

 So the first thing about this particular album is that if you want it for free you will end up with a single forty minute long track, mixtape-style.  The beginning of the album is a little rough if you are not into experimental hip hop. Of course Dose's rhymes are well crafted and trippy but you would be forgiven if you fast forward to about 4 minutes in where Aesop Rock makes an appearance spitting possibly what might be the sickest shit I have ever heard from him, of course it helps that he has a great driving beat behind him pushing him forward. In the end once he finishes and Dose comes in you start to wish that he had a longer verse but thats going to be a recurring theme in this album.  Luckily right after this short excursion we are led directly into another song, this time featuring Buck 65 a canadian MC this time backed up by a funky sounding beat involving some sort of Bari Sax or similar instrument.  After the song featuring Buck 65 we are treated to a short freestyle by Dose backed up by yet another excellently crafted beat.  By now we are about 10 minutes and 30 seconds into the album, and brace yourself for another mind blowing guest appearance in the following song this time by Sole.  This time we are treated to a low pulsing beat while Sole spits rhymes that while excellent and experimental, also seem to be flavor injected with a little throwback to gangster rap attitude. Sole's delivery is really intense, in-your-face, and again you will be wishing that his appearance was longer.

After Sole we're given another song with Dose that takes a more experimental tone,  following which you can hear a chorus singing about "Air Force Ones, and Square Horse (hoarse?) Tongues, which devolves into a trippy super fast and oddly punctuated song, not one of my favorites on the album but the intro is strange enough and intriguing enough to make it worth a couple listens. After the aforementioned crazy spazz out Lionesque makes an appearance, spitting out a good track with a nasally voice, not one of my favorites but definitely worth hearing a few times.

Now at about 17 minutes into the album you will be hearing another freestyle by Dose, followed by after which there is a song that is just too crazy for me,  at this point I usually fast forward to about 21 minutes in where you should hear a slow methodical rap by D-styles lasting for about 1 minute after which a fast techno esque beat starts with more crazy rhymes by Dose.  If you are like me the crazy techno esque song is probably not your thing however from this point onwards theFREEhoudini is pure gold.

At 26 minutes a song comes in with a nice slow and harmonic track, these are some of the most interesting and intelligible rhymes on the whole album designed to invoke imagery in your head, I recommend listening to it when you have time to devote to just listening.

Next is Dose and Jel with a song that kind of sounds like some sort of populist anthem however I haven't really been able to decipher any actual message from it since the rhymes are so quick and almost sound like they are just vowel sounds rather than words.  After this song Dose chops it up with some intense rhymes over a trip-hop sounding beat that really just needs to be heard to be understood.

And finally the ending song which reunites Dose, Yoni Wolf, and Odd Nosdam as cLOUDDEAD, the rhymes are well thought out, Yoni's verse opens the song with slow, well articulated rhymes, after which Odd Nosdam uses his wizard like DJ abilities to create a chorus out of the spiced together verses of Yoni and the upcoming Dose verse.  Dose comes in after the chorus with more excellent rhymes, however the delivery is not as good as Yoni's. After this verse Odd Nosdam yet again pulls out a masterful chorus that has to be heard to really be appreciated... In fact you can here it right now:

If you want to download theFREEhoudini, and I strongly suggest that you do, it is available here: 

http://www.anticon.com/thefreehoudini/

Blood: The Last Vampire

I rented the newley released dvd of "Blood: The Last Vampire"  this weekend and gave it a spin, this is what I thought:


As you can see, the movie is based on an anime which was popular enough in Japan to spawn multiple manga books a video game and an animated series called Blood+.  I honestly don't have any familiarity with the source material so I can't speak to what they are like however I can say that this is the type of film that while it was enjoyable I will probably never revisit for another viewing, unless its on cable and nothing else is on. 

The only thing that this film did right really was the violence, there were some good fight scenes, decapitations, and Shogun Assasin esqe scenes where the protagonist single handedly takes out dozens of enemy combatants with impunity.  There were a few scenes that captured a few of the signature visuals that make anime so famous, however these are few and far between and fall short in capturing whatever type of stylistic feel the director was after. 


In short, this:

Just does not translate very well into this:

Despite some sweet violence making this movie at least marginally entertaining.  The flaws were many, first off all the CGI was garbage, everytime the enemy vampires/demons were generated by computers they looked like absolute shit. Furthermore all the gore was done in CGI which is a trend in hack and slash movies that I really do not approve of.  This movies' action looked to be influenced by Shogun Assasin/ Lady Snowblood era exploitation samurai films, and half of what gives japanese grindhouse flicks their style is the blood that looks like bright red acryllic paint spraying out everywhere, not some weird chunky burgundy computer vomit like what they used in this film.

Another thing that I really didn't like about this film was all the anime cliches that permeate it, first of all the protaganist is a teenage girl who somehow is the most badass force on the planet.  Ok I am sure the first time that was done in an anime it was a total mindblower, but now it is just played out and not even close to original.



Something that I find confusing about the movie is that it is called "The last vampire" however the word vampire is never used in the entire film, Saya hunts demons, and while on the back of the box it says that the main character Saya is a "half-vampire" the movie refers to her as a half demon, or a demon with a human soul. This leads me to the next huge cliche that kills this movies cred for me:

The Half Vampire. The Half Vampire or Dhampir if you enjoy some folklore, is probably the most overused concept in the entire universe of vampire fiction.  You have D from vampire hunter D, another highly popular gothic style anime, Nahuel from the forth twilight book, Blade from the films and the Marvel comics,  Alucard from Castlevania, Rayne from Bloodrayne, and the list goes on and on.  Ohhh a half-vampire half human what a new idea, oh wait it is a hackneyed piece of trash writing convention that has a deus ex machina effect in explaining how a diminutive Japanese teenager can be the ultimate badass savior of humanity.  Its rubbish. 

Alucard: A totally badass Dhampir from back when it wasn't such a common convention.

There are also alot of other little problems with the film that just detract from the whole thing for example: The film is set during the vietnam war, however you will forget completely about that, I have no real reason why the writers made this choice, possibly because during vietnam there would be alot of english speakers in Japan and the film is mainly shot in English, the choice is still completely arbitrary though because the vietnam era has little to no effect on the story whatsoever, the soundtrack tries to pump out some late sixties classic rock to set the mood but gives up halfway through the movie and the production values for the most part are so dark and modern that you will completely forget the era the film was supposedly shot in.


In all this movie had good action, poor acting, hackneyed and cliche story elements and just never really came together to make a lasting impression.  The anime may be able to bypass the fact that the half vampire is played out, or that the teenage girl protagonist is played out by using cool visual effects and stylization, but the live action film did not make a good faith effort to replicate the stylistic elements that anime and manga are known and made popular by. The final verdict:  wait until this ones on the sci fi channel.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant.

A couple of days ago Danielle and I went to go see Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, as a compromise because she wanted to see "Couples' Retreat" and I wanted to see "Zombie Land" I was not very excited about this movie however I figured even if it was terrible it couldn't be worse than the alternative.

I was pleasantly surprised by this film. John C. Reilly is always at least marginally entertaining, and he really appears to be enjoying his role as Crepsley the vampire. Chris Massoglia does a good job playing the reluctant vampire-to-be Darren Shan, the only character that didn't really do it for me was the obnoxiously mysterious Mr. Tiny played by Michael Cervais however it may have been how the character was written as opposed to how he was portrayed.

The story follows a teen aged boy as circumstances force him to become a vampire set against the backdrop of a war between vampires who don't believe in killing their victims and vampires who do kill their victims, also called the vampaneze. 

The one thing that really grabbed me about this film was how the vampires were stylized, their powers are a little different from what they can do in most popular fiction. This is also why Twilight was so popular, however Cirque Du Freak appealed to me where Twilight could not, probably because it isn't completely retarded.  Despite being a movie aimed at young adults the flm had some really cool action scenes, with vampires fighting each other with their razor sharp and indestructible claws and super speed, there is also a scene where John C. Reilly and his evil counterpart have a knife fight, throwing and catching the same knife at each other several times while they slowly walk towards each other, this scene in particular struck me as really cool. 

To make a long story short I think this film was very entertaining and I reccommend that if you don't see it in theatres you at least rent it.