Marine Corps, but during the Gulf War had been “shot up,” and, because he had some shrapnel lodged behind his eye and in his back near his spine, he had left the Corps, to become a teacher. I remember when Captain Garrison Daniel introduced himself to class, telling us in a sentence how he used to be a fighter pilot in the U.S. One or our prompts for the class was Joseph Mitchell’s Mazie, and we were supposed to write about a ‘character’ who had left an impression on us. Later, in a college writing workshop based on Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Studying Okinawan karate with an ex-Marine Corps pilot who was a substitute teacher at our school. School–I believe it was my friend Brett who first introduced me to the film, after we began I didn’t come across Jet Li and Once Upon a Time in China until later, when I was in high Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me? Bring da mutha If what you say is true, the ShaolinĪnd the Wu-Tang could be dangerous. Shaolin shadow boxing and the Wu-Tang sword style. In middle school, I got ahold of Wu-Tang’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and I was like, damn, what kinds of kung-fu movies have I been I said Karate Kid or Van Damme or Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal. Growing up, a lot of the martial arts movies I knew were these eighties American action flicks, like My memory is kind of weird (dyslexic?) like that, where I’ll have these vivid memories filed under the wrong One inch punch training with Pai Mei in Kill Bill.īut when I was looking for the clip of Jet Li’s one arm pullups, I remembered that was Fist of Training montage, wax-on-wax-off in Karate Kid, Jean Claude Van Damme’s splits, and of course, the I was going to talk about training montages, Jet Li’s one arm pullups, the Rocky IV And both films are fascinated with training, the lineage ofĭifferent fighting styles, the modern vs the ancient, technology vs tradition. Both films contrastĬlashing cultures of the nations in conflict. Nations embroiled in conflict that threatens to break into all out war. Both are essentially action movies centered on hand to hand combat between representatives of I was going to make this elaborate argument framing Once Upon a Time in China as a sort of sister film to Rocky IV. When we do Once Upon a Time inĪmerica, I am sure I’ll end up writing about A Bronx Tale instead. Were all about another Jet Li favorite of mine, Fist of Legend.
This week, I got 90% through writing remarks about Once Upon a Time in China and realized they I had mis-remembered the content of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for that title. Some remarks that I realized at the last minute were actually about the wrong movie. When I selected Once Upon a Time in the West for film club a few weeks ago, I prepared
#ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA SERIES#
Tonight, we are continuing (what will be an extended) series of “Once Upon a Time …” films. Kortina #020 // Once Upon a Time in China Pre #020 // Once Upon a Time in China - Oakland Film Club