Kendo practice on 1/29

Seven other people showed up to kendo practice last night. Four beginners, including Kurt coming back from knee surgery, and three people in bogu: Alice, Calvin, and Bernard.

Last night was howling winds, freezing precipitation, and I couldn't even get my trunk opened. I had originally intended to cancel practice until I called Aston and found out that five people had already showed up. I was shamed into going. -_-;;

Only other club to show up was the Judo club. Naginata had a good turnout as well. About six people. We were able to do a lot more kiai, some good fundamental practices with interaction with bogu, and finally a little bogu practice at the end.

Humbling and encouraging experience.

Discovery Channel's Behind the Great Wall

I watched the 2-hour special called "Behind the Great Wall" on 1/27/2008 on the Discovery Channel. It was rather interesting, both in its portrayal of people and events. It claimed to show sections of the wall not captured on film before. It also explained things in ways very different from what I know of the Great Wall. Shows how flawed my knowledge of Chinese history is. :-p

Some points:

• Language: All of the dialog was in English. This was a bit odd, I think, especially since in some of the scenes you can clearly hear the cast talking in Chinese. All of the speakers had no significant accent when speaking English either. I think it was odd, but it worked fairly well.
  
• Chinese cannons: The documentary claimed that there were cannons used, and the design was imported from the West. I wasn't sure when contact with the West happened and I didn't know cannons were already in use by then.
  
• Mongol raiders: There were no Mongol archers depicted, which was what the Mongols were known for. I speculate that's because mounted archers would greatly complicate filming.
  
• Timing: The documentary covers the events in the Ming dynasty (明朝), focusing on 戚繼光. (Explanation thanks to my friend Kai-ping.) I had always thought that it was 秦始皇 who is credited for the Great Wall.

Well, all in all I think it was an educational special without being too cheesy.

Movie Ranking and Description

Odd thoughts popped into my head this morning regarding movie ranking and descriptions. Basically it boils down to how insufficient descriptions like thumbs up/down, stars, and grades are. I usually have to read the in-depth reviews to get an idea of what the movie is about, which is what I would really like to know to help me make a decision. So, like the engineer that I am, I thought of a different system. One that involves radar graphs and attempts to both quantify and describe movies. :-p In a way, I think my idea is more a systematic breakdown of the various aspects of a movie rather than just a rating system.

I'm still working on the system, and I need to apply it to more movies of differing characteristics before deciding if I even like it myself, but here are the basics:

The movie is broken down into Entertainment, Artistry, and Appropriateness under an Overall graph, ranked from 0-10 each, and higher is better. Each of these 3 categories are then broken down into further details, each also ranked from 0-10. Entertainment includes Action, Comedy, Horror, and Education. This is to describe the primary aspects of how the movie entertains. Artistry includes Acting, Directing, Effects, and Story. Finally Appropriateness includes Language, Violence, Sexuality, and Difficulty. This is my response to the blanket ratings like PG and R and such.

So as an example, let's go through the movie called Russian Ark which I watched recently, which is a 90 minute film, shot in one continuous take, that goes over Russian history, its interaction with art, and Russia's relationship with Europe.

Overall (blue) Entertainment (red) Artistry (green) Appropriateness (yellow)
Entertainment (7): Action (0), Comedy (1), Horror (0), Education (8)
Artistry (8): Acting (9), Directing (8), Effects (6), Story (8)
Appropriateness (5): Language (8), Violence (10), Sexuality (9), Understanding (2)

The film obviously doesn't have any action or horror. While under Effects I usually think of special effects, of which there wasn't much in this movie, I think the costumes and subtle effects that were employed were well done. Although this is obviously a film that everyone can watch when it comes to appropriate language, violence, and sexuality, it is also obviously NOT a film whose subject and intent would be something that most people would understand and appreciate. In fact, I didn't understand what the European represented until the very end. :-p

Finally, all of this can be represented visually as radar graphs, or spider graphs, like those created from an Excel sheet. I throw up a rough example up top.

Well, that's a dump of my new attempt at movie description/ranking. I'll probably still need to work on it, especially when it comes to the detail sections. How dumb do you think it is? ^_^

New Year...

Half a bottle of wine (good ol' Ravenswood Cab) and a bottle of champagne and I'm still feeling quite good. I think steak is now officially my hangover prevention technique. ^_~ Granted, that was consumed over 8 hours...