FILM REVIEW: The Legend of Chun Li

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li Street Fighter The Legend of Chun Li is a 2009 action film based on the popular Street Fighter video game series by Capcom. It stars Kristin Kreuk as Chun Li and was released on February 2009.

PLOT 
While a teenager, Chun-Li witnesses the kidnapping of her father by wealthy crime lord M. Bison. When she grows up, she goes on a quest for vengeance and becomes the famous crime-fighter of the Street Fighter universe.

WHY DID I CHOOSE IT 
I was a pretty huge Street Fighter II fan as a kid, for me it was a great leveller when me a fat kid with asthma could own the older kids and that was when they had the game to practice on and I only came over every now and then to play it. I kept up through the various versions for awhile and I even watched the Street Fighter movie with JCVD (a crime against fandom) and the short lived animated series as well as the few anime movies.

WHAT I THOUGHT 
I only heard about this movie recently somehow I managed to miss the buzz of this film when it first came out especially in the light of knowing that I didn’t miss the film versions of King of Fighters and Tekken. Quick review on those KOF burned my eyes and made me bleed from my ears, Tekken was like a C movie with ok fight choreography.

The first thing I should probably talk about is the film compared and contrasted with the Street Fighter 2 mythos/canon. Overall it works fairly well while pertaining to the Chun Li stuff, it could have happened that way as we don’t get a lot of insight into what she was doing before the spiky wrist bands and the hair buns.

The plot is passable I would say in the top third of action films, as a person who reads a lot of books I never had a time when I shouted “What the hell are you doing?” at the screen which is something I often do in my head when reading certain books. The only question I have is the theme of the movie itself which just serves to say revenge is cool. Not a lot of films generally go that way and the ones that usually do tend to be in a foreign language.

The choreography and the fight scenes are pretty impressive, yes I’ve seen better but generally that comes with a lot of effect and special camera work, this stuff is fairly straightforward with some wire work which thankfully isn’t relied upon. Kristin Kreuk definitely impresses in this role I definitely wouldn’t wanted to be an overly aggressive paparazzo on one of her bad days.

Something you should be aware of is the level of blood and gore I watched the unrated version and if you get that one be prepared for at least some minor eww moments. So if you thought Mortal Kombat was a fine example of a video game to movie conversion then this movie is worth taking a look at.

Design Work

So apparently I am a man of many talents some of which include being able to kick your ass on the N64 wrestling games but also stretch into doing a little design work every now and then. So in actuality I probably do quite a bit of design work but as most of it would be directly for past jobs I don't have access to the files anymore so below I have a few examples of stuff I have created just for fun. The first two are connected to Edition the podcast about friendship and really require you to have listened to that show extensively to get the references the third one is for a cool blog that I do some work for. Hope your weekends are interesting.

Questions? Comments? Hit the relevant button and get typing you know you'll hear back from me.

The Week That Was

Things have been reasonably busy with 2 job interviews to prepare for and attend. As of writing this I have heard from the second of the two interviews attended and it was unsuccessful. Yeah it brings you down but there isn’t a lot more that can be done other than moving onto the next attempt.

TV News

So The L.A. Complex has 2 episodes each airing this week and the next to finish out the season. I checked out this week’s offering and was blown away by them. The thing about The L.A. Complex for those of you who know it is that it can be a little downbeat and even depressing a lot of the time, the first few episodes of the first season are good evidence of this. I really hope that there will be a further season especially with some gossip that Alicia (Chelan Simmons) might be back steaming up our screens.

I am definitely looking forward to next week’s final episodes.

Haven is BACK! The first episode was a bit below par if you ask me though especially as I remember its beginning, aka the end of the previous season’s finale being very different as in Wuornos fired a shot which got removed in this episode. Other than that the idea of aliens and the ultimate reason for their appearance seemed a little weak. The rest of season trailer at the end though showed that there was some serious plot development coming

That is all for now keeping it short as hopefully there should be some major news early next week. Also look forward to a post right after this one showing some of my attempts at poster design.

Syfy and Sci-Fi Movies

So over the last few days after the death of my gaming laptop I have found myself watching a few more movies than I normally would.

Quantum Apocalypse is just one of the seemingly dozens of disaster themed movies or which I have watched a fair few. Generally Syfy-created movies are mediocre but rarely bad in my opinion they just don't have the budget to do the actual Sci-Fi stuff like with aliens you see or stuff set on alien worlds that is when the movies start to fall on the wrong side of cheesy, their disaster stuff is generally pretty good.

For me though the real reason to check it out was that it featured an appearance of one Gigi Edgley who I first saw on Farscape as Chiana. Now it may surprise you to know that I tend not to film-stalk the actors and actresses I like the most, one because even on an actor by actor basis that can become a WHOLE LOT of movies and also simply because just because I like the fan oriented image of that person doesn't mean I'll love them in every role and I am very picky on films.

Anyway before I get into THAT let me just say that the movie was pretty good held my attention and didn't do anything that made me immediately facepalm. Gigi played a rock star scientist who helps save the world, the writers made her way over the top quirky but tone it down as the film progresses, I definitely appreciated the outfits she wore.

The second movie I thought I would mention is Red Werewolf Hunter.

Felicia Day with weapons? And I'm sold seriously though I had seen this come up a few times in movie searches and when I looked at Felicia Day's IMDB page AS YOU DO. This is an OK film again but you can see its limitations like the two locations and the distinct lack of people. The plus points is Felicia and Kavan Smith from Eureka but I couldn't really recommend it in the way that I could Quantum Apocalypse.

So this is what I have been up to while trying to figure out how to get a new computer. Talk to you later.

TECHNOLOGY: Emma Watson Blowing Up Computers LITERALLY

So if you’re my age then you might remember when X-Files was HUGE partly because heck everyone loves alien but mainly because everyone couldn’t keep their eyes off on Gillian Anderson. At that time she was the one of the most searched for terms on the Internet.

Now when I think of internet searches Emma Watson is definitely one of those in the top 10. Unfortunately the star of Harry Potter has had her name subverted by cyber criminals sending anyone searching for Emma on the internet to fake websites or websites with all manner of malware.

Cyber criminals have no honour how can you subvert something as beautiful as this.

Or this.

In order to slow down my computer with spyware or a damn keylogger. This should serve as a reminder to keep your anti-virus and firewalls up to date and let them cycle through their scans regularly.

BIG THANKS TO @anglophenia for the story.

ONE WACKY WEEKEND

No more World of Warcraft for me in the foreseeable future. Why you ask? Is it because the new talent system has driven me away, or the Glyphmas debacle or just generally being bored of Azeroth. My answer – NO my XPS just finally fell over fatally. It was a fine machine a hand me down from a friend when he managed to melt the original graphics card and half assed a replacement resulting in a dead screen. When you’re desperate for an upgrade a dead screen isn’t going to stop me especially as I already have a decent monitor to fill in.

Image provided by http://www.stockfreeimages.com/

It served me well but good things always come to an end and now I have absolutely no clue how I am going to get myself another PC that will play World of Warcraft or any other decent reasonably current game for that manner. I have been looking around on Ebay and found stuff that would fit the bill unfortunately the cost is nearly £400.

So the best bet it seems is to keep on keeping on with job applications by the bucket load and hope for the best, things would be so much easier with a job but then those who know tend to say different.

There isn’t a lot more going on really other than that. Hmm maybe next post I can talk a little about what I will do with all this free time I suddenly found.

ELECTION 2012 US

So I'm a follower of US politics so I have been trying to keep my eye in so to speak and especially now as it is Convention time. I am a fairly new but wholehearted embracer of online content so in addition to checking out The Daily Show and Colbert Report specials I have been checking out the Philip Defranco/SourceFed coverage. I like it but then it is definitely left of centre and therefore may not appeal to all. I have found it to be a lot more serious and responsible then maybe I was unfairly expecting.

http://www.youtube.com/user/sxephil

So I definitely recommend taking a listen, I also have to give them props for trying to explain the basics and the more advanced issues and terminology in American politics, I learned a lot.

So does politics matter to you?

This has been a quick post, might start to do them this way instead of procastinating for hours over them.