months ago i put on my netflix list the film shaolin against the lama. i remember it from when i watched it as a kid & for some reason it has come up in conversations recently, probably because of it's cool arse title. i even did a pretty extensive google search trying to find it but to no avail. last weekend amidst my mail came my netflix films & there it was! unless i am in the mood to see something specific i have found that it is a nice surprise to get an unexpected film from netflix from my 300 strong list. this was an extra special surprise!
first off, it's a bootleg. some scenes not only did not any of the characters centered, you sometimes could only hear them when they were not on the screen. also the bad dub was laughable. i checked the set up but no! there was no subtitle option, sometimes that hurts. the outfits were reminiscent of solid gold dancers or early space films. their hair was definitely of the time. but it is kung fu, without wires, without jumpcuts. these guys were really doing the double backflips & everything else you see. the fight scenes were good, better had there been no sound effects added in. i found it definitely entertaining, even if too long. it was nice to see the shaolin monks fight! it was also great to see that they were hot-headed & that they disobeyed their abbot from time to time. quan tuo & i laughed whenever they said amituofo! the monks said it slowly, dragging out each syllable. it's better if you also bow a little bit too but don't take your eyes off the person. there were definite moves we have learned with sifu in the film: fanyao, yangshen yunshou, some level 2 moves i don't know the names of (yet). i noticed the mabus & gongbus were not low at all - perhaps because it's harder to get up faster being that low. oh & the main villain did all the iron body stuff that sifu does. i learned that there cannot be a complete iron body that there is definitely, somewhere, a weakspot. good to know! we enjoyed it such as it was.
also in the end i wasn't sure why it was called shaolin against the lama, it should have been shaolin & the lama against the black faction but it is not a cool enough title. i guess when you experience something when you are young, you cannot help but be a tad disappointed in the revisiting when you are older. things aren't so grand, or large, as you remember. it's all perspective.
say it with me altogether now: ohm mee toe foe!
first off, it's a bootleg. some scenes not only did not any of the characters centered, you sometimes could only hear them when they were not on the screen. also the bad dub was laughable. i checked the set up but no! there was no subtitle option, sometimes that hurts. the outfits were reminiscent of solid gold dancers or early space films. their hair was definitely of the time. but it is kung fu, without wires, without jumpcuts. these guys were really doing the double backflips & everything else you see. the fight scenes were good, better had there been no sound effects added in. i found it definitely entertaining, even if too long. it was nice to see the shaolin monks fight! it was also great to see that they were hot-headed & that they disobeyed their abbot from time to time. quan tuo & i laughed whenever they said amituofo! the monks said it slowly, dragging out each syllable. it's better if you also bow a little bit too but don't take your eyes off the person. there were definite moves we have learned with sifu in the film: fanyao, yangshen yunshou, some level 2 moves i don't know the names of (yet). i noticed the mabus & gongbus were not low at all - perhaps because it's harder to get up faster being that low. oh & the main villain did all the iron body stuff that sifu does. i learned that there cannot be a complete iron body that there is definitely, somewhere, a weakspot. good to know! we enjoyed it such as it was.
also in the end i wasn't sure why it was called shaolin against the lama, it should have been shaolin & the lama against the black faction but it is not a cool enough title. i guess when you experience something when you are young, you cannot help but be a tad disappointed in the revisiting when you are older. things aren't so grand, or large, as you remember. it's all perspective.
say it with me altogether now: ohm mee toe foe!
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