Chatter Of The Squirrel

Game: Twilight Imperium

Suffered a case of serious brain-fart last Saturday night… Made a social commitment that I wasn’t quite ready for.

Some time around 1130pm at Settler’s Cafe, I agreed to a game of Twilight Imperium. 3rd Edition, no less.

I didn’t leave the cafe until 7am.

TI3 is a huge boardgame of galactic conquest. A game of space exploration, diplomacy, trade, techonology research, fleet production and space combat. All the great ingredients of galactic empire building.

But OMG! It takes FOREVER to play!!

I can’t even begin to get into how the gameplay works… But it takes oodles and oodles of time to play. Don’t even buy the game unless you have a cadre of insane friends to play it with.

And incidentally, I have more than a passing acquaintance with insanity.

Granted this being the case… But there’s no denying that this IS the best space strategy boardgame by far. And a 6-person game of TI3 is an experience that is not within the realm of possibility for many people. (Due to the inability of finding 5 other people mad enough to play with). Although Sunday became a Shaun-like haze for me, I think the experience was quite satisfying.

Movie: ??? SPL : Sha Po Lang

I hardly bother with HK movies nowadays. Too many disappointments. Too too many…

But boy, did I “drop my glasses” [lit. translation of ????] this time!!

Noticed the DVD of ??? (Saat Po Long in Cantonese, Sha Po Lang in Mandarin) many months ago. A few glances at pirated wares. Only noting the title of this movie with a pic of ??? (Sammo Hong) on the cover.

Noted the title, only because ??? was the name of a ‘power move’ by a memorable character in the ?? universe. That’s the HK comic by ???, which got made into a so-so movie a few years ago. Followed this comic for a while, cos after ?? retired from writing, the only sword-fighting stories worth reading are ???’s comics.

Anyway, I just happened to find this movie in my housemate’s harddisk, and I copied it over for a watch.

It’s a cop movie. Sammo Hong is the evil gang lord. A team of bad-good cops have become obsessed with bringing Sammo to justice, to the extent that they were wiling to frame Sammo for the murder of an undercover cop, the death of whom Sammo was innocent of, since he only 4-Iron-ed the undercover half to death.

The bulk of the action happens on one Father’s Day. There is some sort of a plot somewhere. An assassin under Sammo’s employ kills a few cops. Donnie Yen, the good-good cop kills the assassin and Sammo.

The acting was OK. The plot was OK. The directing was OK.

The martial arts choreography was STUNNING!!

I was floored by the penultimate battle between Donnie wielding a telescopic baton, and Wu Jing with a Yakuza tanto. It was a vicious, go for the throat battle… fast and furious. It’s like watching Bruce Lee, if he went full throttle and didn’t have to slow down his punches for the sake of the limitations of the slow cameras of yore.

Donnie’s baton fighting is as deadly as a viper, and Wu Jing’s knife fighting has the fatal grace of a tiger. This battle even overshadowed the final show-down with Sammo.

There’s no wire-fu. No fantasy, like fighting on bamboo. No flying shadow kick. No stylish Jackie Chan fighting with props. No Bollywood brawl where no less than 500 punches are thrown before somebody stays down. No Matrix’s style over substance. And don’t even compare it to VanDamme or Seagal flicks!

It’s like a sword-fighting flick, but grounded in reality. Real martial arts masters going away at each others’ jugulars.

I’ve really paid too little attention to HK films. But I’m grateful for this opportunity to find out more about Donnie. I didn’t recognise him from the history-making fight against Jet Li in Once Upon A Time In China 2, nor as the evil eunuch from Dragon Inn (?????), nor as ?? (another name derived from ???’s creations) the spear-wielding assassin in Hero, nor in Tsui Hark’s pathetic ?? (Seven Swords). And apparently in Blade 2, Highlander: Endgame and Shanghai Knights too. He’ll be coming again in ??? (lit translation: Dragon Tiger Gate), which will be based on an ancient HK comic, from the time when Adam West was still Batman. Wasn’t going to give two hoots for this movie, but I may have changed my mind now, though I still have to find a way to deal with my revulsion of Nicholas Tse….

Wu Jing had the misfortune of being obscured in disastrous films, like Tsui Hark’s (again) embarassing Legend of Zu. But here’s hoping that SPL will bring him better roles in future.