OK, so the only other person in the blogosphere stoked about Buffy The Vampire Slayer is Ryan. Last night’s episode was a rerun, but I wanted to point out a flaw that is quickly sucking the fun out of the action genre. Not everyone on the planet is a kung fu expert.

Last night’s episode (recapped by Ryan here) introduced a primordial vampire, “the vampire that other vampires fear”. Now without going on a tangent about vampire lore, what pissed me off about the introduction of this monster is that he had more moves than Jackie Chan. Not only did I see various Wushu styles in the fight choreography, but my god the monster used some tricky Capoera moves. I didn’t realize the “Uber-Vamp” got all funky in Brazil on his way to kill the slayer.

[Capoera references at Sambnovo & Dacascos]

I don’t understand why the writers & makeup artists would spend time to develop this new monster only to cheapen its realism with Matrix style fight scenes. Sure I love the Matrix, but Buffy is NOT the Matrix.

I do miss old action pictures. Sure the fight scenes didn’t look as slick, but at least they were somewhat authentic. What the hell was The Musketeer? (Not that anything could have made that a good movie) Blame it on the marketing people and their friggin’ demographics. “We can sell more merchandise if we overuse THIS cool technique”. I am so longing for the next big thing to get me out of this kung fu rut. Oh, and I do REALLY like martial arts, but that’s why I rent MARTIAL ART films.

Don’t even get me started about the crappy fight cinematography Hollywood is using. If you’re actor doesn’t know how to fight and you don’t have a decent stunt double, don’t jerk the camera around with extreme close-ups so I can pretend there’s a brawl happening. You might as well shake your camera every time you want to film an earthquake scene.

Not a bad film really. You’re almost forced to see movies you’re interested in right away as the marketing machine behind the titles will generally give EVERYTHING away weeks after the debut. I had thought this movie would be pretty funny and I wasn’t disappointed. Don’t expect a wild hour of Adam Sandler shtick, this movie is a departure from the Billy Madison era of his career. To my surprise it was Jack Nicholson that drove the humor behind this film. To see Adam play the straight man to Jack’s erratic behavior really was refreshing and made an otherwise predictable movie hysterical at times.

The movie did drag in a few spots and I can’t say I didn’t know the outcome a third of the way through, but I’ll probably snag a copy on DVD just for the bridge scene where Adam & Jack sing “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story.