BEFORE: Seann William Scott carries over from "Just Before I Go", and here are the links that I think will get me to the end of July:
Jaime King, Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Khalid Laith, Michael Keaton, Nicolas Cage, Pedro Pascal, Christ Witaske, Karan Soni, Issa Rae, Boyd Holbrook, Alicia Vikander, Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth, Tom Hiddleston and Jonathan Majors.
I realize that's just 17 people, but I've programmed a reduced schedule of just 25 films, so there will be some skip days, if the plan holds. I've got to slow down after July 4 or I'll use up all my slots for the year and then have no space left in November and December.
I'm really late in getting to this one - like, 20 years late. I used to live in Brooklyn and my upstairs neighbor was a screenwriter, and he co-wrote this film, so it's been on my radar since it was in production, but I just never got around to watching it. I felt bad about it, because if you know somebody and consider that person a friend, you should really find the time to watch the movie they wrote. But I moved out of that building in 2004 and bought a house, and then just kind of forgot about this movie - it kept popping up in the cable listings every so often, though, so eventually I put it on my list and found a way to work it in. My DVR screwed up again and recorded a VERY glitchy version of this movie, but thankfully it's still available on demand so I don't have to rent it for an additional fee.
THE PLOT: Based on the underground comic of the same name - a Tibetan monk becomes a mentor to a young street punk and tries teaching him how to protect the scroll of ultimate power from a secret Nazi organization bent on world domination.
AFTER: In January of 2022, I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" - there also I was about 20 years too late, but in my defense, martial arts movies aren't really my bag. But it's good to go outside of one's comfort zone every once in a while. I worked it in between "Shang-Chi" and "Mulan" and "The Replacement Killers" and "Gunpowder Milkshake" and did kind of a whole Asian thing. It worked, in retrospect, but that's the great thing about my chain, if I'm successful for the year then it all kind of works in retrospect. And then the OCD part of my brain is satisfied, and I don't feel the need to look back and second-guess myself and think of better ways that I could have organized things.
So that's kind of how I still feel about this film, it's not really my thing - but hey, it fulfilled a valuable function by helping me make my connection to my July 4 film, which, spoiler alert, is another action movie - in some ways 2023 is really the year of the action movie, I've watched more movies about assassins and hit-men and secret agents than usual, at least it feels like it, and it's going to be a real bitch at the end of the year just totalling them all up. "The Contractor", "Eraser", "Wind River", "The Marksman", "Gun Shy", "No Time to Die", "The Informer", "The Gray Man" and "Domino" - and that was just in January! "The 355", "Without Remorse", "The Card Counter", "The November Man", "The Rhythm Section", "Bullet Train", "Nobody", "Murder Mystery 2", "The Man from Toronto", "Kate" and "Come and Find Me" - man, it's been an action-packed year, and it's not over yet.
This one's a bit different, if you took "Crouching Tiger" and mixed it with "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and set that in modern-day Toronto's Chinatown, you'd have some idea. Who knew so many Shao-Lin monks lived in the Toronto area? I sure didn't. Who knew that taking care of a powerful scroll could keep you young and healthy and invulnerable for 60 years? Who knew that a Nazi could still be alive and active in 2003, masquerading as the head of a global human rights organization? Oooh, the irony of that one. I might not be able to trust non-profit charitable organizations after this, because of the possibility that they may be run by Nazis. JK.
The Monk With No Name - that's his name, so it's a bit of a paradox - protects the scroll to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Whoever reads the scroll could have the power to re-shape the world in their own image, meaning they can destroy the world or make it a paradise. Umm, sure. TMWNN's been roaming the earth for 60 years just to keep the scroll out of the wrong hands. He's also taken special precautions to protect it in the event that someone DOES steal the scroll from his bag, namely he's had the sacred text tattooed all over his body, which seems like a great plan, until the bad guys realize they can just kidnap him and then read the scroll by scanning his tattoos into a computer. Or, you know, just maybe take some pictures - let's not make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Along the way, The Monk finds Kar, a pickpocket who's got some martial arts moves - but he learned them all from watching Asian movies, since he works as a theater projectionist at the Golden Palace, and essentially lives in the theater's booth. I keep telling my managers at the theater that they need to put a couple of cots up in the booth, so I could sleep over and be there first thing in the morning during festival weeks. This hasn't happened yet, so I think they think I'm kidding - but I would totally sleep over if I needed to be there at 5:30 am to let breakfast caterers in, which has happened before. There's probably some rule against people sleeping on school property, I guess.
The Monk saves Kar from a street gang that doesn't want him stealing stuff on their turf - the gang is led by Mr. Funktastic, which is a great name if it's 1972, otherwise, not so much. But in his gang is Jade, who's another martial-arts afficionado who also speaks Chinese and recognizes the Monk for what he is. And what is that, exactly? A guy who's invulnerable and can float on air when he fights, only because he believes that he can. (And because he's got a special effects crew behind him that are proficient in wire-work...). This reasoning, that you can float and do amazing parkour moves just because you believe you can is like something out of a cartoon, it's why the coyote doesn't realize he's walked off of a cliff at first, and only after he looks down and realizes his mistake will he begin to plummet.
There are three prophecies that must be fulfilled before the Monk's successor can be chosen, and he can finally go "on vacation" after 60 years of service. The Monk notices that the prophecies seem to suggest that Kar is "The Next", however the interpretation of those prophecies are quite liberal, and they require some creative thinking to be recognized as true. Hey, rules were meant to be bent, right?
I'm trying to be nice again tonight, not just because I know the screenwriter but because there are fewer loose ends here than there could have been, the film does eventually answer all the unresolved questions, like "How does the monk not look older after 60 years of service?". Sure, the answer is always "Because magic" but that's acceptable for a fantasy film. But then the biggest unanswered question is "Why do hot dogs come in a pack of 10 and hot dog buns come in a pack of 8?" As if that's some kind of Buddhist koan or something, but do they even have hot dogs in Tibet? I'm not so sure. Anyway, it's not really a valid question for several reasons - first off, sometimes hot dogs DO come in a pack of 8, it depends on which brand you buy. I usually get the cheapest ones in the store, and there are usually 8 in those, not 10 - so I don't have this problem of matching up my weiners and buns.
The real answer, however, is not the one listed in the film (which is really a non-answer) or the commonly-held belief that they're trying to make you buy 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of buns for your cookout to make everything even out. The answer is also NOT "because some people like to eat a hot dog without a bun" or "because some people are gluten-intolerant". The answer lies in the fact that the two items are made by different industries, or by two different people in the marketplace, the butcher and the baker. And back when the standards were developed, this is true now, the two industries DID NOT talk to each other and work this out. The easiest way for bakers to make hot dog buns is to use pans bake them in clusters of four, and then two clusters go into a package of eight, and that's how they set their assembly-line machines to work. The baking industry COULD make packages of 10 hot dog buns, but they choose not to, because they'd have to reset their machines or buy all new machines. Meanwhile, the meat-packing industry decided that the easiest thing to do was sell a pound of hot dogs at a time, and the weight of the average hot dog is 1.6 ounces, so ten fit in a pound, and so they set their machines in 1940 or so to arrange and wrap 10 hot dogs at a time. The meat industry COULD reset their machines to make the hot dogs a little bit bigger and wrap 8 together at a time, then everything would work out, only they choose not to. But again, some companies DO put 8 hot dogs in a pack, and those are the ones I buy.
So there's your answer, there are two industries that made decisions a long time ago and they both refuse to change, for the most part. Sorry if that's not very symbolic or philosophical, but I learned this a long time ago from the "Straight Dope" web-site, and I bring this up again because July is National Hot Dog Month - Heinz and the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (I swear this organization really exists) have teamed up to finally, maybe, resolve this issue by working with the big hot dog bun companies to firmly establish that the appropriate number of hot dogs and buns per pack should be 10. Which is still wrong, this only shows that both industries are still unwilling to change - I might get more excited here if the news was that Heinz and the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council have teamed up to concede that hot dogs should maybe be a little bit bigger and across the board should come 8 to a pack and that would finally resolve this issue. But clearly the meat industry is still reaping the benefits that come from selling 10 to a pack, which are - what, exactly? More hot dogs to go around? The chance that two hot dogs purchased will be wasted, or fall off the grill? Fulfilling the dreams of weirdos who like to eat hot dogs without the bun? I'm afraid we're still at an impasse on this one. Try again, Heinz.
I'll let you in on another little secret, though - if you keep finding yourself with two extra hot dogs with no buns, there's no need to go crazy and buy 4 packs of hot dogs and 5 packs of buns, or eat the hot dog (shudder) as it is. Just grab a slice of bread and fashion your own hot dog roll - the bun is just bread in a slightly different form! Bread is bread, right? You're welcome.
Also starring Chow Yun-Fat (last seen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), Jaime King (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Karel Roden (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Victoria Smurfit (last seen in "About a Boy"), Marcus Jean Pirae, Mako (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Roger Yuan (last seen in "Dune: Part One"), K.C. Collins (last seen in "Owning Mahoney"), Sean Bell (last seen in "Against the Ropes"), Kishaya Dudley, Rob Archer (last seen in "The Man From Toronto"), Mauricio Rodas, Bayo Akinfemi, Russell Yuen (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Albert Chung, Karis Han, Suresh John.
RATING: 6 out of 10 hot dogs, of course
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