Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Wax on, Wax off


I was hoping to do this post in the style of the Star Wars introductions, where the text disappears off into the nether reaches of the galaxy. Came across a website the other day where you could put your own text in and it would do that for you. Visited it today and Lucasfilms have asked for them to take it down. Arses. The website in itself was infinitely better than Star Wars 3 - Whatever the fuck it was called.


:Sulk:


Anyway, on a shit movie tip, last week my sleeping patterns were very much disturbed by illness and on Saturday night/Sunday morning I found myself watching the Karate Kid. On Youtube. All of it! It was kind of fascinating in a couple of respects. Firstly, it came out when I was 12 and at the time was AMAZING. It obviously isn't amazing now but it really is incredible how BAD it is. For non-Americans growing up watching Hollwood teen movies, High Schools really are fascinating places. Are they really in any way like how they are portrayed in the movies? The 'popular' kids, proms, jocks, everyone driving their cars to school (or getting pulled behind them on a skateboard), everyone being really horrible to each other etc? It's a fascinating world to a 12 year old English kid. Then throw in Karate....OH MY GOD. He wasn't bad at football either. Interestingly all the women, or rather girls, are all really plain, and as for Ralph...I think he was as skinny as me. I never tucked my tops in though.


The other thing that is now funny is the Japanese bits of it.....cue mystical oriental pipe music, wind chimes and the like. Oh god. I suppose it's not even worth thinking about but it's all there bar the cherry blossom (Bonsai do the job admirably though). Just another little chapter (well more like footnote) in Western cultures mystification of Japan, with a bit of help from Japanese culture's mystification of Japan. Completely irrelevant but funny all the same, seeing it after all these years. Now, I wonder if Karate Kid 2 is on YouTube....

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