Bits 'n' pieces

-
Not much news happening in entertainment land at the moment...

There's FINALLY a release date in South Africa for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie: 5 October 2007!

And speaking of 1980s cartoons receiving a 21st Century revamp, brace yourself for GI Joe. According to Aint It Cool News and SuperheroHype, The Mummy and Van Helsing director Stephen Sommers will be in the director's chair.



So, with Sommers directing, what can we look forward to? I'm expecting non-stop action, cheesy acting and plenty of CGI wizardry. But considering how damn lame the above cartoon GI Joe intro looks (I used to watch the show but honestly can't remember it now), well, Sommers is probably the perfect director for the job.

Personally, if I was making the film, I'd pump up the macho posturing, fist pumping and patriotic flag waving to Team America's tongue-in-cheek proportions. "Yo Joe!"

Otherwise, in an unrelated note, my most recent Take 2 order finally arrived yesterday. It included some DVDs for my sister, and Paul's anniversary gift: Volume 1 and Volume 4 of the Collected Penny Arcade comic series, in print form. Why Volumes 1 and 4? Well, because it was our 4 year anniversary last Friday.

For myself, I ordered a copy of Civ City: Rome. I'm not much of a management game player, but I liked the Ancient City setting of this one, it received good reviews and it had a budget price. Plus, it should make a nice change of pace from World of WarCraft's quests and combat.


I also bought the (finally) available Volume 2 of Royce Gracie's Ultimate Fighting Techniques, sub-titled Fighting from the Bottom. I just had a skim through it last night, and it's incredibly impressive. I've become something of a collector of the Invisible Cities Press Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu series - I now have 5 - and this is the first one I've bought that includes a number of escapes (from guard and mount), all chronicled in detail. It's about bloody time!

Plus , there are a number of tips to help the practitioner improve certain staple techniques. I can already see that this attention to detail will help improve my technique once I sit down and study it properly.

Comments

slideyfoot said…
Yeah, I've been looking for a well-regarded book and/or DVD series purely on escapes, but not found an obvious one yet. My main focus since moving up to the advanced class (and therefore getting my arse kicked even more thoroughly) has been on escapes, seeing as I'm normally stuck under mount or side control anyway. So, would be good to have some supplemental material, in addition to the advice I get from my instructor and people I roll with.

For the moment, will be going through my xmas presents: The Guard and to a much lesser extent (just the basic bits, like the start of the half-guard chapter) Mastering the Rubber Guard.
2:05 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

-
Image
As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider , the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise . Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude. We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms. Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution. Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the ov...
Read more

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Queer Icon (Part 4)

-
Image
Part 4: The mystery of Lara Croft’s sexuality “Now what’s a man gotta do to get that kind of attention from ya?” – Larson Conway (Tomb Raider, 1996) Despite being an icon for many queer pop culture consumers, Lara Croft’s own sexual orientation remains ambiguous. Outside of the Top Cow comics and live-action films – where Lara is blatantly heterosexual, with a fondness for slightly scruffy bad boys (who keep betraying and hurting her) – the character comes across as primarily asexual. Kurtis Trent is the only male figure who even comes close to being a love interest in the game series. Lara's apparent sexual disinterest is despite the adventurer appearing very sexually attractive herself; a figure of desire with bee-stung lips, voluptuous breasts, toned stomach and impossibly long, athlete’s legs. Yet Lara is never dominated by sexual yearnings or romantic affections. She is very much in control of herself at all times. It’s worth noting, however, that over time th...
Read more

Ladies I Love: Part 2 - Rhona Mitra

-
Image
Following on from the first post in this series , you may realise that I have a very definite type. Anyway, today we profile model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra . This 36 year old Briton is of English, Irish and Indian descent. You'll have seen her pop up on the big and small screen multiple over the past decade and a half, although Mitra's claim to fame is that she was the second ever model (some say first if you rule out "unofficial"  Nathalie Cook ) to play iconic video game character Lara Croft . From 1997-1998, Mitra could be found in PR material, as well as at trade shows, events and conventions as a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Tomb Raider 's kick-ass archeologist lead. There have been many official Lara Croft models over the years , but as far as I'm concerned Mitra remains the best. In my mind, of all of them, she most closely resembles the video game character in terms of facial features. Plus she comes from money and had a rebellious boarding...
Read more