***
The Scrapbookers Way
MauiTime – December 16, 2010; Volume 14, Issue 26
By Anu Yagi
“Being and non-being produce each other / Difficult and easy complete each other / Long and short contrast each other / High and low distinguish each other / Sound and voice harmonize each other / Front and back follow each other.”
Light without dark. Good without bad. Nothing is mutually exclusive of its opposite, movies notwithstanding. And there seems to be some strange point when the worst circles around so far as to intersect with the best. Like with Robot Jox or eXistenZ or Battlefield Earth. (OK, maybe not Battlefield Earth.)
MauiTime’s own Ynez Tongson, our good buddy Marc and I are halfway through watching The Warrior’s Way when Marc leans in and says, “In my book, a movie that ranks as a negative ten is just as good as a movie that’s a perfect ten. So far, this one is at about a negative seven.”
The Warrior’s Way (which, in case you’re wondering, is about THE GREATEST SWORDSMAN IN THE WORLD) so wonderfully and unwittingly employs every horrible movie cliche, it’s utterly enjoyable.
“If they weren’t so unaware of how bad this movie really is, I would have already walked out,” Marc adds.
Had he, it would have been a disservice to the rest of the audience. Not to toot our own horns or anything—it was the movie’s awesome badness that inspired our wit—but we were Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Joel Robinson, Crow and Tom Servo incarnate. Our odd-shaped silhouettes not-so-quietly piped commentary and asides—and we brought a puppet show to boot.
Hakama-wearing and be-banged, I know full well that I’m ripping off the look of a feudal-era Japanese boy. But it still rubs me the wrong way if a boy rips off my look (and in some weird, depressing sense does it better). In this case, the culprit is South Korean star Dong-gun Jang, whose enviable bangs are the yang to my dome’s dead-chinchilla yin. Thus, Ynez and I decided to wield our hinged-blade scrapbooking skills to create paper doll stick puppets of appropriate man-dos so we could hold them up and cover the onscreen offenses. Marc played along (because we forced him), but exercised a little creative license by (rather indelicately, to his manly credit) clipping out an entire picture of Mr. George Takei, in a lab coat, holding a bunch of bananas and taping it to a coffee stir.
Mr. George Takei proved to be a most valuable asset, as whenever there was a particularly cringe-worthy scene, Marc would simply hold him up and gush, “Oh, my!” in his best toe-curling voice. “Mr. George Takei saved my life a couple of times during that movie,” Marc opined afterward. “He saved all our lives,” I replied.
But what Mr. George Takei and the paper doll man-dos did best was reveal that props can make any movie—especially a bad one—really, really fun. So fun in fact, I’ve decided that props are a mandatory aspect of my movie-going experiences henceforth. I don’t know why I hadn’t yet come to the conclusion—I’ve been scrapbooking movie stubs et alia since the dawn of time, and will admit I’ve crocheted a Slytherin scarf or two (what of it?!)—but it’s a good idea made possible only via a really bad flick.
“Hehe. That is a fantastic idea. Maybe it will catch on,” Ynez replied when I proposed my new rule on Facebook. “And then, when people are bringing live chickens to The Black Swan, you can regally survey your empire.”
Oh no. Not my empire. For I serve the scissor overlords, glue sticks my clansmen, and until the next movie date—live chickens or no—you’ll find me patiently cutting and pasting in preparation. ■
P.S. Relating to Mr. George Takei, Marc shared this disturbing link: http://www.buzzfeed.com/yeselguapo/george-takeis-foot-o7p
P.P.S. If you’re so inclined, CLICK HERE to read a September 2009 MauiTime story about swords and swordsmen and stuff.
Comments
comments