Last week the podcast crew got back together after a three year sabbatical to celebrate the 400th episode of VHS Massacre/ New York Cine Radio! We reviewed Steven Seagal’s 2009 vampire flick, Against the Dark!
Batman vs Vader: SPB Alternate Ending
The team at Super Power Beat Down just posted the alternate ending to the epic Batman vs Darth Vader battle that premiered a few months back. The first version caused a fairly big stir on the internet due to the ending in which Batman literally gets murdered by Darth Vader. The outcome was decided by a fan vote, which of course set Batman and Star Wars fans at each others throats. In order to appease the outraged Bat Fans, which I count myself as a member, an alternate ending was shot.
In the alternate ending version Batman is victorious. However, I must Continue reading “Batman vs Vader: SPB Alternate Ending”
NY Cine Video: MMA and other Martial Arts
First Workout of 2015
New York Cine Radio: East Bound and Down and UFC talk
I was fortunate enough to start the year off right with the team over at New York Cine Radio. The gang and I sat down and talked about Danny McBride’s East Bound and Down which Tom binged watched over the weekend. Ken and I sparred a bit over our impressions of James Franco’s and Seth Rogen’s controversial movie, “The Interview”. And finally our conversation took a weird turn as we veered into talking about Joe Rogan and Continue reading “New York Cine Radio: East Bound and Down and UFC talk”
Super Power Beat Down: Batman vs Darth Vader
I am probably the world’s biggest Batman fan so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I didn’t agree with the outcome of the most recent Super Power Beat Down fan film pitting the Dark Knight against the Dark Lord of the Sith. However one of the things that really ticked me off was how good the production was for the film. I was visually stunning. It was probably the best fan-film I have seen since Batman: Deadend.
One of the problems that I had with the video is that Bats had plans to the Death Star and the location of a lightsaber, but didn’t come up with a contingency plan on how to disrupt Vader’s force abilities. Keep in mind that this is a man so paranoid that during the JLA: Tower of Babel (or Justice League: Doom movie) storyline Batman developed contingency for neutralizing his closest allies in the Justice League. In the Vader scenario, Continue reading “Super Power Beat Down: Batman vs Darth Vader”
No more excuses
The other day I was talking to my old martial arts instructor, Kyoshi Giles, and musing over the fact that only fellow martial artists seem to understand how getting together with close friends to punch, kick, and stab one another over and over can be a beautiful thing. The camaraderie that can be developed by working out with other like minded individuals is not only fun, but also uplifting. I bring all this up because I had just returned from an early morning knife fighting class at the Krav Maga Federation and was feeling pretty good about getting back into the swing of training on a regular basis.
Over the past year or so I had made a number Continue reading “No more excuses”
Straight out of a comic book!
When I was a young child growing up in Harlem there were very few people that looked like me in the media. And when they were people that looked like me presented in the movies, or on the small screen, they were almost always portrayed as unintelligent or docile. This is the rare exceptions to these rules made a seismic impact on me and many other impressionable black children. Yesterday I saw that one of my earliest heroes as a child, James Milton Kelly, had passed away at the age of 67. He was better known to the world as Jim “The Dragon” Kelly and was one of the prominent stars of the 1970s martials arts and Blaxploitation film era.
Jim Kelly was a martial arts legend to many of the brothers that I grew up around. He inspired many of us to start training in the martial arts just as much as Bruce Lee, and maybe more in certain ways. Being a young Continue reading “Straight out of a comic book!”
RIP Aaron Banks
This is sad news for the martial arts community. Master Banks was a very popular figure in the NYC martial arts scene during the seventies. He helped to pioneer the dissemination of the martial arts by helping to promote the “Oriental World of Self-defense” shows that packed Madison Square Garden during that time. I remember meeting Aaron Banks back in 1973 as my father was signing me up for my first martial arts class. This must have been only a few weeks after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” premiered in the US. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in NYC, that movie had kids dragging their fathers to any establishment that offered instruction in the martial arts. Unfortunately for my father, he was no different.
Aaron Banks was sitting at the front desk as my father and I walked in to Continue reading “RIP Aaron Banks”
Here we go again
It is a damn shame that we are having this discussion yet again today. The murder of 27 people in Connecticut, 20 of them small children between the ages of 5 and 10, once again highlights a unique problem with American society. I have been watching the television coverage for most of the day with a mixture of sadness and calm acceptance of the reality of the world we live in today. I wasn’t sure of whether or not to add my two cents since I have recently become NRA certified with a pistol and have taken up range shooting as a hobby. As a child of the 70’s and a a resident of NYC, where we have some of the most strict gun laws in the country, I would be a Continue reading “Here we go again”