Not so Serious Movie Review: Shinobi 2 - Runaways (2005)

 

A few weeks ago, I watched Shinobi: Law of Shinobi (2004). Shinobi 2: Runaways picks up where Shinobi left off. Our heroes, Kagerou and Aoi are on the run. Literally, they run through the woods for half the movie. Along the way, they encounter other shinobi who are instructed to kill them. There is a Shinobi 3 and 4, so it is not a spoiler to say the other shinobi don't succeed. Not even the crazy prisoner guy who yells "Kagerou" often.

The low quality of these movies make them confusing. I think they are supposed to take place in the 16th century but they talk like it was last week. Yet the dialogue is not as bad as the narrative breaks in the movie that fill in unnecessary backstory about the villages and tribes. And I am still not sure what to think of Aoi. She continues to be a confusing mix of damsel in distress and badass swordswoman. Overall, this movie doesn't advance the story at all. It's just more running. I can't wait to watch Shinobi 3.

Grade: 1 running shinobi of 5.

Seen on a SportsKeeda WWE Video

 

Eagle-eyed wrestling fan and my good friend Nick Major informed me that I was in the background of a recent video by Sportskeeda Wrestling. The video, entitled "How WWE Failed Dolph Ziggler", covers the career of Ziggler from his days in college wrestling to his present status with TNA and New Japan Pro Wrestling. A majority of the video covers his nearly 20 years with WWE, to include his 2008-2009 stint at Florida Championship Wrestling in Tampa.

That's where you see me and fellow Afro-Squad member Snowman. We are at the 3:30 mark in the video.

Fun story: one Thursday night in late 2008 or 2009, I went to a local Hooters after an FCW show. It was near 10pm and Hooters was about to close. But there was enough time to get food. While I was sitting at the bar eating wings, Dolph Ziggler walked in a took a seat at a table in the nearly empty restaurant. I told the bartender that he was a wrestler. At first she didn't believe me but then walked over to ask him. She talked to him for a few minutes. That's my Dolph Ziggler story.

Unfortunately, that is not the Sportskeeda video. But if you want to watch what is in the video, here it is.

Flash vs The Aliens full video is finally online

 

Almost 25 years ago, I made a movie with a few Army friends. That movie, Flash vs the Aliens sat on VHS for years until I finally digitized it in 2012. At the time, Youtube would only let me post 15 minutes at a time. For a 38 minute movie, that meant it had to be in three parts. Very inconvenient.

Last year, I created a Vimeo account. Vimeo allows longer videos but less often. So now Flash vs The Aliens is available in full on Vimeo. All 38 minutes of amateur alien invasion insanity. I am excited. Maybe I will clean it up for the 25th Anniversary Special Edition.

Flash vs The Aliens - The Earlier Adventures of Flash Hercules from JordiScrubbings on Vimeo.

My problem with the comments of Stephen Hawking

I wrote this over 10 years ago. Not sure why I never published it. I haven't thought about Stephen Hawking in a long time. Here are my thoughts on him from back then.

There is no doubting the utter brilliance of Stephen Hawking. The man is as close to a real life living brain as possible. He has done miraculous work in the field of cosmology and theoretical physics. I consider him the smartest man since Einstein.

(For the Star Wars geeks, Hawking is also basically a human version of the BT-16, the spider thing in Jabba's palace. According to Wookiepedia (again!), a BT-16 is a robot spider that carries the brain of an enlightened monk. Or in Hawkings case, a super smart astro-physicist.)

Now all that said, Hawking has been ruffling the feathers of the faithful over the last few years with comments that God wasn't needed to create the universe and his most recent statement that there is no afterlife.

While I am not going to dispute his statements there, I am going to call BS on his reasoning for the latter.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," Hawking said. "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

(Quote from Space.com.)

If the brain is truly like a computer, then it must be completely understood as a computer. A computer only runs when hooked up to electricity or a battery. It doesn't work without a spark. When the computer becomes outdated or the motherboard or chips fail to work, the power in the battery and the electricity in the wall doesn't vanish. It becomes potential energy back in the battery or on the grid. The energy is still there. "Life" for the computer is still there. There is just no consciousness.

Likewise, when our parts stop working an energy that ran us needs to go somewhere. While our consciousness is gone, the energy should still exist. That's Newton's Second Law, or the Law of the Conservation of Energy. The energy that drives Einstein's General Theory of Relativity should be default also exist in humans. We don't have a special "non-energy" that propels our existence. The same energy that energy that exists in all atoms and galaxies is the same energy in us.

Using the notion of an all inclusive energy and if you believe that "all is one and one is all", then the energy that was "us" is no longer contained in us when we die but is now potential again. Hawking should know that all the energy in the universe is spawned from the Big Bang or may possibly slip through to other dimensions and alternate universes, depending on what theories of astro-physics you believe.

With the understanding that energy can not be created nor deleted, Hawkings statements can be seen as somewhat off. Although I agree that we have no consciousness of an "afterlife" with Pearly Gates and saints and a life among the clouds, the energy that was in us will still be there after our life. Whether potential or kinetic, the energy that drives human life will continue to exist, always and forever.

(Yes, that means unless energy is deported to another dimension or universe, the next Big Bang should be just as epic as the one that created our universe.)

You can call that energy God or the Tao or the Great Spirit or whatever you want.

But you can't deny its existence.

Not So Serious Movie Review: Shinobi - Law of Shinobi (2004)

 

Back in the day, Shinobi was a video game, kinda like Kung-Fu, but with more ninjas. This movie isn't based on the video game, although it might have been better if it was.

Shinobi are the lower class foot soldiers of samurai. They are assassins and swordsmen trained to kill or be killed. They love to run around in forests. No lie, 80% of the movie is the woods. Shinobi are also as cliquey as high schoolers. Kagerou is the best shinobi so of course no one likes him except his bestie, Aoi. She is part badass and part damsel in distress. Very confusing. They fight the bad guys, a dude gets impaled by a log, another guy gets gutted like a rabbit, and our heroes run around in the woods.

Looking forward to Shinobi 2: In the Woods Again.

Score: 2 cheap samurai of 5.