In my previous feature, I discussed two movies that directly advertised to the audience. In this article I’ll be pointing the products that you’ve might not have first noticed (But your brain did).
“Gymkata”
Product: Gymnastics.
There are many combination of stuff in the world that work beautifully together without any real reasons: Eggs and Ham, Beer and Hot Wings, Tequila and Limes, etc. In the misfit side of combination’s, Gymkata is the Ramen Noodles and Hot Pockets of combination failure. Sure, the Hot Pockets will break down in the hot ramen, but what happens next to your stomach is a life lesson well taught. For many people, the words Gymkata sounds confusing because many of us have taken a gym class, but what the hell is “Kata”. Kata (in Japanese) means is a well rehearsed series of movement, basically all forms of traditional Japanese Martial arts is a type of kata. (Its like the “Fu” in Kung-Fu, but Kata sounds snazzier) However, in the Western worlds, Kata is one of those oriental words that people will add to 1)creates the illusion that a Japanophilia is educated in martial arts, 2) makes what they do alone appear less depressing, and 3) create ridiculous rules for a made up fight style. A great example of this is MotorCycleKata. Taken from the 2004’s classic Torque, there is a sequence in which two biker chicks battle each other with their leathery bodies and their bikes.
video://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E46rnGQFhjk
Though, not all hope is lost. A few people have made a really cool looking katas that kick ass. GunKata is flashy style of shooting guns in pre-determine spots that are statically deadly (Instead of normal ways, like aiming). Its looks great in movies, just NEVER do it in real life. Unless you’re in Korea, in which case everyone knows it already.
Gymkata is another hot mess of a martial art exploitation film produced in the 80’s. The plot is about an Olympic gymnast who combines his gymnastic abilities and his knowledge of Ninjutsu to compete in a deadly fighting tournament. In the 80’s, Ninja’s and Ninjustsu was in the minds of every little boy since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived; somebody decided to cash in on the ninja craze, and created the fighting style known by only four people, Gymkata. In a typical martial arts movie, it’s always one fighter’s style whose is superior; however a fighter using Gymkata will only be superior if he is surrounded by gymnastic equipment. You won’t believe how any of that shit from gym class can (and will) appear in the movie. Gymkata tries to sell people on the idea that gymnastics will make you an unstoppable flipping warrior. Back flip into a person and rock his face with your well posed landings! Contour your legs in different angles to impress groups of men who want to kick your ass at a time! In reality, Gymkata probably won’t save your life. And if you got your ass handed to you from a guy whose spinning around on a pommel horse, and its not the Olympics, you might want to change the battlegrounds the next time you want to take on world famous Kurt Thomas.
video://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mkl9rtttog
“Johnny Mnemonic”
Product: Hard Drives/Flash Drives.
Johnny Mnemonic set the bar pretty high for technology at the time during the days when having a CD Burner built in a computer meant you were big shit. In the movie, the human brain can be reformatted to be a hard drive, the internet was fully 3D with Powerglove like controls, and New York was cleaner that ever. Man, the future of 2021 looked promising. The plot of Johnny Mnemonic is about a man that uses his brain as a hard drive to transport secret information; this man also happens to be Keanu Reeves. As much as some people would love to store & share their porn and music collection in the head of Keanu Reeves, this movie was made before portable hard drives were made incredibly affordable. 320 gigs = 320,000 MBs, a standard CD back in the day (1996) was about 700 Mb. That’s about 457 CD’s (Plus a floppy disk to carry the left over bytes). Back in the day when people sadly download their 2 minute porno clips on a 56K dial-up connection, the idea of “high speed internet” and “320 gigabytes” were crazy idea of technology delusion. Whenever I see Johnny Mnemonic , I feel thankful for the free 8 gig flash drive as a prize in a raffle, and I’d high-five the guy who made silicone chips cheaper for my 1 tetra byte external hard drive. However I’m pretty sure there is still plenty of room in Mr. Reeves head to keep a decent archive of adult entertainment these days.
video://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QComFWf0DUo
“CUBE”
Product: Calculators.
Never has a movie scared me to also have some sort of computing device on hand. From a simple TI calculator, a scientific TI-83, a cell phone, another Asian, Cube is one of those movies in which you have grand scale math nightmares. Mathematics is a key plot element in the movie (and for the rest of the movies in the series); essentially similar to explosions to a Micheal bay movie. The plot of Cube is something an evil math league wrote up for a dream fantasy to extract revenge upon the evil football team jocks. A group of random people awaken inside a complex and deadly machine that is riddle with traps. These traps can be avoided by solving mathematics problems that only the elite math wizards can understand. Usually in the Cube movies, there are a few people who plain suck at math, and die in a horrific death sequence that just reminds us that we should have pay more attention in Algebra.
video://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmm_HzNXyY0