Saturday, June 14, 2008

When your computer's on the fritz. . . post youtube clips of movie fight scenes:

first off: a while back, I had an interesting comment conversation with someone using the moniker livewithpassion: livewithpassion, do you still come by here? If so, please contact me at the e-mail address mentioned later in the post: I have a proposal that might interest you for a post I'm working on.

I'm trying to set the threshhold: see, my computer's on the blink, and the problem is on the main board, and I have to decide how much I'm willing to pay for repairs, before I decide, "aww screw it" and get a new computer instead --

because you know, if I pony up and repair, it's cheaper than a replacement, but I still have a two-year-old laptop that's known for having main-board problems. . . then, my coworker Josh explains how somewhere between eight or twelve months from now, solid state hard drive technology's going to enter the market, which gives you hard drive storage without moving parts, which also means without generating heat, or needing a fan, and burning energy -- it'll be a space and energy saving option that will probably lead to a whole generation of smaller, way cooler computers, so if I buy a new computer now, I'll miss that boat. . .

I'm also thinking, if I have to get a PC that uses Vista (which girlfriendoseyo absolutely despises on her laptop, and which I've found annoying and ungainly as well) it might be time to try out a mac. If any of my readers are mac users (I'm especially interested to hear from anyone who's made "the switch" who'd like to answer a few simple questions on usability and cross-compatibility (it's hard to find stuff online that doesn't boil down to promotional materials), I know the basics about PC vs. Mac, but I'd love to hear from you: drop a line at roboseyo [at] gmail [dot] com

meh.

John from Daejeon let me know that Errol Flynn totally owns Luke and Anakin Skywalker, Yoda et. all from Star Wars, as well as the man in black, inigo montoya, rob ray, the highlander, and captain jack sparrow of cinema swordfights-in-recent-memory fame.

I'll let you judge for yourselves.

the climactic duel from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) -- this guy had some real swordfighting skill. With the long camera shots, there's no faking!


from Don Juan - 1947 - nice layered fight, incorproating swords, knives and swords, and then knives


my other favourite recent sword duel:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: I love the variety of weapons wielded, the dialogue, and the fact it's the two most badass ladies I can think of in movies (with apologies to Kill Bill: the too-fast video editing in that movie made it hard to tell whether Uma Thurman really had combat chops, or if she was just faking; there's no faking the way these two ladies move in the longer shots (though yeah, there's a little wire work)... and even a little physical comedy at 2:20!



also for your consideration:
jackie chan in his prime, vs. 6 time world kickboxing champion Benny Urquidez before he had to fight with ladders to get laughs, and hid the fact he's aging: (note the candles at 1:20) (also: 3:33 - lol)


Another beautifully choreographed fight scene for your enjoyment


Jet Li, from "Hero" this one is amazing AND beautiful.


Thailand's Tony Jaa, from "Tom Yam Goong" or "the protector" -- this entire scene is one continuous shot; no fakers allowed! Unbelievable. he also does all his own stunts. Good movie, with the goofy running giggle that his most often repeated line is "Where is my elephant?" (his pet elephant/companion was kidnapped by the baddies)


for most action heroes, they film, and then speed up the film when they edit the movie, so it looks like the actor is moving faster than he really is. For Bruce Lee, he moved so fast they actually had to slow the tape down in order for people to actually see what he was doing. The man was unbelievable.



hope you enjoyed my little "combat greatest hits"

-roboseyo

5 comments:

melissa v. said...

hey, I switched. LOVE THE MAC. Have not had probs. WORTH THE EXTRA MONEY imo. Brent would argue the extra money statement, tho he prefers the mac too.

Roboseyo said...

my main mac question is simply this:

i have a bunch of writing, stories and poetry, that are saved in MS word format. . . will I import them into mac's word processor and have to reformat them entirely, because the line spacing, columns, etc., are all gummed up?

also, if anyone mac-ing in Korea is reading this: how easy/hard is it to get the mac operating system installed in, or switched to English, if I buy one here in Korea?

thanks for the tip, Mel: I mentioned this to my friends last night, and BOTH of them told me they'd switched in the last year, too.

Rebecca said...

Hi! I switched to linux after trying Vista -- no more black screens in a while, though we had one once at the beginning, so it may have been a different part. It worked great because my email/web/office software was already open source (Thunderbird, firefox and Open office), and those are all available for linux as well, so I didn't even have to switch programs. But I can't tell you about Word import.

melissa v. said...

i think mac fixed all word import probs, but you'll need to double check that with s/o who knows software better than i do...i've not actually put it to the test!

gordsellar said...

Robo,

You should try search Metropolitician's site. He's a big mac fan and probably wrote about it.

I also use Linux (Ubuntu) and feel like essentially it's worth the extra hassle of command line diddling occasionally. (Beats paying extra money, and I feel like I understand my PC better too.)

Robo, you write poetry? Stories? You're another of us? Now my curiosity is piqued.

(I, too, migrated over from mac LONG ago and still have poems and some story drafts where the formatting is screwed because it was done on a Mac -- even if it was MS Word on a Mac.)