My Martial Arts Weekend

So Saturday morning, the lovely bride and I went to support our Tai Chi and Wu Shu Accademy which was doing a demonstration at the Seattle Center. We were not performing this year, so had the luxury of not having to remember our moves and keep in step with our fellow students. As always the sword demos were coolest, but the youngest students got the most applause.

And Saturday afternoon was spent with Steve Winter and Dave Gross. Dave's living in Canada now, but came down for the SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) festival. I really dread the day that he stops, because he's the only reason I end up going to movies at SIFF, despite the festival's proximity. The movie in question was The Five Venoms, a Shaw Brothers production from 1978. The youngest student of the Five Venoms school (known for its evil) is sent by his dying repentive master to recover the school's treasure and judge the five elder students, who may or may not be evil. Each of the five senior students has mastered one of the five fighting styles, each one named after a poisonous creatures - scorpion, snake, centipede, frog, and ,um, gekko. Yes, gekko. Apparently selling car insurance makes you poisonous.

So there was a lot of nice kung fu actions wrapped around a longish plot about justice and corruption, sort of Law & Order with more hitting. The special affects were primitive and the furniture strangely solidto a modern audience used to epics where everything can be broken and used as a weapon. And the costume designer was probably Wendi Pini, since I swear one of the main characters looked like Cutter from Elfquest. Still, it was amusing (to the point that the audience filled with serious film geeks was laughing at it), and virtue triumphs as the young student teams up with one good surviving senior student (go ahead, guess), defeat evil, and go off to find the treasure (which you never see). Amusing.

But as a result I think I'm coming down with a headcold, so today was spent hanging about the house, reading a little, going for a walk with the Lovely Bride and practicing my Chen form (since I missed last week's practice due to an overly long overseas phone conversation). So its been quiet.

So, how has your weekend been?

More later,