Kung Fu Fridays in September 2013

This Friday, Kung Fu Friday pays tribute to Black Belt Jones Jim Kelly who passed away last month with the blaxploitation classic, Three the Hard Way. Looking beyond, what's on tap for the Fridays in September? Read on:

Life Gamble - We haven't watched a Shaw Brothers flick in a while, and a Chang Cheh film in a while longer still, so 1979's Life Gamble (AKA Life Combat) will be the one. It stars some of the Venoms, My Young Auntie's Kara Hui (a woman in a Chang Cheh film? that's rare!), and Brave Archer's Fu Sheng. Expect a complex/complicated story, inventive weapons and action, accidental homoerotica, and sadistic violence with splashes of orange blood aplenty.

The Thieves - A Korean heist movie from last year? That's a country whose cinema I like matched to a genre I like! Oh and the Koreans team up with a Hong Kong crew? Double the like! A huge success in Korea, I expect it to be pretty swell in my living room too.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx - Well, we liked Sword of Vengeance, the first film in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, so I'm going ahead and putting a chapter on the schedule every month until we've gone through all six. And with a title like that, how could I not?

Dragon - This 2011 martial arts noir starring Donnie Yen, one of our very favorites, was described in the press as "channeling David Cronenberg's A History of Violence by way of 1917 China" and as a "clever, if over-amped thriller". Sounds cool. The movie also holds a Guiness World Record for biggest billboard advertizement at 3591 square metres, finally defeating Michael Jackson. So there's that.

A bit of the old, a bit of the new, three countries represented and a variety of genres. Sounds like a good package. Some excitement before October's Halloween-themed horror.

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