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by Tadeusz

Movie Review: The Prodigal

March 4, 2010 in Reviews

The Prodigal is a martial arts flick based on the Biblical parable of the prodigal son, but set in the modern day. Instead of wishing to eat corn husks, our hero finds himself surrounded by his drug dealer pals with the most pschyo of them about to torture him to death.

The martial arts is A calibre, and the movie is worth watching just for that. But it has an added layer as the hero struggles between his rage and his faith (and at least once they seem to work together).

They do some interesting camera tricks which mostly help.

The actor does a very good job of portraying someone with deep wells of berserk fury. He might be good as the source for the CGI for the next Incredible Hulk movie. Too bad that he is black, or he could play Bruce Banner as well as he does a fairly credible mild manner as well.

The setting is primarily a Southern backwoods town which is another bit of added interest. The story as a whole is not too surprising, but what they do with the bits and pieces, the interesting variations they work are good. Its a movie made of nothing too shockingly different, but each bit is different enough, clever enough that it adds up to something quite cool indeed.

And of course, the last bit of humor, you need to watch into the credits for, definitely.

Rained Out?

February 10, 2008 in Blogs

I was winding down last night, thinking that it was time to catch up on the sleep I’d been missing lately, when at ten o’clock my son called from his brother’s place. He did not exactly apologize for procrastinating, but he did admit to it as he asked whether I could pick him up and bring him home. I burned a CD of whatever songs I’d finished of our Collision repertoire (since I handed the last two such CDs to Baxter and Brittany at the last rehearsal, and I’d finished more songs since then, and since this particular son advises me on our music), and within the hour I was on my way.

I had to get something of an early start today, because I was too tired last night to get organized for today’s meeting–not to mention that there was supposed to be a special game today. I film student in New York had contacted me, hoping to get footage of a group of role playing gamers in play for a documentary, and we had agreed to be those gamers. We were keeping this quiet, mostly because we needed to limit the number of people present and more importantly avoid onlookers.

As it happens, the film crew never arrived. Our communication has been via e-mail, so I didn’t have a phone number, but after waiting for an hour after our director’s meeting, we agreed to give up, return to our lives, and send a message asking what happened. We’re going to see whether he wants to reschedule and catch a game at another time, probably another location. We’d like to do this, but aren’t sure exactly what went wrong.

Perhaps I will catch up on the sleep tonight. On the other hand, it is someone’s birthday today, and I should be working on that, too.

–M. J. Young

Slippage

December 10, 2007 in Blogs

Things seem to be slipping past me.

Last night my wife and I watched the DVD of the third of the Pirates of the Carribbean movies. I had so completely forgotten that it had been released to theatres that I was still waiting for it–but I see that I had been on the way to see it half a year ago when I lost a tire. Funny, I had not remembered where I was going then, or that the movie I had wanted to see was in theatres.

I was tired this morning, but still managed to get things going reasonably early. I wish I could say the same for my mother in law. I called her before four to let her know that I was going to be there a little after five to take her to the store, and my errand on the way took long enough that it was almost five thirty by the time I reached her–but she was not ready to leave until six, which on my original timeline was pretty close to when I hoped to be headed home again. I’m still playing catch-up, and someone has to pick up my commuter son who has called for a ride from over an hour away. However, if his brother will bring him part of the distance, his mother will meet them and I can do my work; otherwise, the work gets delayed and I go into tomorrow very tired once again.

Word is: I get to stay here and work.

–M. J. Young