Just came from the movies, my friends dragged me to a FRENCH movie, i thought “oh great this is going to be horrible”. Well boy was i wrong, this movie was called “Brotherhood of the wolf”. I just loved it, the filming was EXTRAORDINARY, it had great sound effects but the filming was what really stunned me, great acting, cool plot. It had everything, and i quickly got used to reading the text (the first 20 minutes took getting used to that).
Interstingly the movie had a lot of fight scenes using a lot of kicking, and this happened in french around 1750, i guess they just did it to add another element to the movie because i doubt they had MA like that at the time, they also had the main guys indian sidekick (i know it sounds cheesy but it’s cool) doing a lot of MA and flashy kicks, not exactly how the indians did it but hell it looked cool
Anyway if you see it at your theatre i highly recommend it. Really surprised me.
well that dosent explain how the indian knows it Plus isnt Savate kind of pressure point kicking? They pride themselves in precision kicking to weak points and especially by using their toes to strike with the front kick insted of doing it with a flat foot (Making it more of a push kick). They mostly had roundhouse kicks, flat foot front kicks and bacskpin kicks (spinning hook kick or whatever it’s called).
Like i said it looked great but it didnt look like the little i’ve seen/heard of Savate.
Not sure about the fight scenes though. The slo-mo and Saving Private Ryan style crisp frame motion thing (What do you call that effect anyway?) was interesting, but there was a bit too much of the close-in MTV style quick cutting crap that plagues all the recent western MA films. I found it hard to keep track of what was going on.
Film makers, please, I beg you; give me wide-angles and long takes. Make me a happy man.
Yes, savate has been around for a long long time…it even has weapons, the most known being the cane, any gentleman had a cane, so some developped techniques to turn it into a weapon. Staff technique existed to, it wasn’t uncommon to carry a staff to walk around…
But don’t expect too mcuh historical ressemblance MA-wise: if indeed anything done in the movie could have been possibly done in these days, the probability it has been actually done stays really low…but who said MA-movies were always reality based??
For those of you who are interested, savate has MANY kicks…we indeed have the toe front kick, but we also have the push version…we also have a side kick, once again either strike or push (it is chambered in a very particular way that enables you to chose the target after chambering it, enabeling you to strike at any level with one single preparatory move)…this chambering also acts as a protection (it shields the body or withdraws a limb attacked by a low kick)…we used to have the front slap kick but it has been ruled out of modern savate (too many cut tongues or exploded testicles hehehehe). We have the traditional roundhouse, although given in a very particular way that once again enables you to chamber it then decide where to kick or even to change target in mid-ckick.
We have also the infamous “lower kick” (not low kick, which would be more like a low roundhouse), whic can either slam the inside edge of the foot on the shin, or step on the knee or foot, or even sweep the opponent (fast, vicious, hard to see…you gotta love it!).
Then you have the external crescent kick just like in CMA (two versions: the traditional one with the leg straight and the crescent done from the hip, hitting with the outside of the foot, or the B. Lee version with the foot hitting with the sole after a slap done with the folding of the knee).
You also have the rotating version of all these kicks, the jumped version, and the rotative-jumped version. It is also perfectly natural for a savate player to combine two jump kicks (with one prior rotation or not), or give three kicks with the same leg without resting it (any combination of kicks and levels).
Chambering of the kick can be made on place, or while side stepping, side jumping, during a guard change, during a forward jump, or a rotation etc…the stepping is the current boxing step plus the sidestep-chamber and guard changes, or a shuffling step to cross a larger distance and give more power to a kick from the leading leg (which thanks to the shuffle becomes the rear leg during the advance to become the front one again during and after the kick).
You always hit with the foot, inside, outside, top or sole, never with the shin.
Ancient savate had knees, elbows, and headbutts but they disappeared from the modern version.
I hope this little catalogue of savate kick interested you…
I’m really happy to see that you guys like this movie, for me it was one of the most inventive in 2000, and definitely a movie done by someonee who has a different idea of cinema and its esthetics.
Did you know that he also was the guy responsible for the movie version of Crying Freeman??
I agree with you that fight scenes should not be so cut around (i wanna see what he’s really doing not just what his foot is doing). But the slow mo takes in the movies itself and such i really liked.
The director loves HK movies and Anime so he added the Wushu in there becuse he likes it. he directed mark Dacascos in Crying freeman as well. mark does Eun Hop Kuen Do, Wushu, Shuai Jiao, Tae kwon Do, Tai CHi, a little capoeira, gymnastics, etc etc etc.
Thing is, that style of filming is usually used to cover up the lack of the actor’s skills; but Mark Dacascos is more than capable of performing the long takes - not sure about the other bloke. Check out ‘Drive’ for an example of Dacascos being filmed properly.
My ultimate nightmare is that Hollywood will swallow up all the Hong Kong talent and we’ll be stuck forever watching split-second takes of Jet Li’s foot hitting some guy in the head while he flies ten feet in the air on a wire. :mad:
Do you think it’s just us MA guys that notice the difference?
I hear Christophe Gans is doing some nice DVD restorations of some of the old classic kung fu films.. maybe I won’t kick his arse just yet.
Yah, well, I’m okay with a secondary goal of the Tracking Shot Preservation League being only using people with MA training to film MA scenes, even if they have to be stunt doubles or lousy actors.
Also, I’m convinced non-trained movie fans can tell the difference. I’m not a big fan of The Matrix, but I hear a lot about it from other folks. The scene that people like the best is the one in the virtual dojo, where Reeves and Fushburne are going at it in medium to long distance shots that are held for like ten to twenty seconds at a time! I’ve read that the two actors trained intensively with Yuen Wo-Ping for months to get their skills to par to do that scene. There’s no such thing as a big The Phantom Menace fan, but everyone agrees that the lightsabre duel at the end was exemplary. Again, medium to long distance shots held long enough to tell what’s happening. The love story had a lot to do with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon becoming such a big hit, but well-shot fighting scenes didn’t hurt a bit (let’s leave out for the moment whether the forum liked it or not, or loves or hates wuxia-style wire work.) The fact remains you could see it, it was purty, that makes for good watching, realism be (often if not always) damned!
YAH I’M WITH YOU…WE WANT LONG SEQUENCE SHOTS FOR MA FLICKS DAMN IT…quick cut sucks…but I have to say that David Wu, editor under J. Woo and Chang Che started the editing of the movie…so I guess maybe it was done on purpose…dunno…
