I’ve not even seen Ong Bak 2 yet (is it even out over here?), but apparently 3 wrapped sometime ago and will be out early this year - elbows!

Having playing Tekken (1) after being lured away from Mortal Kombat, I’ve been a big fan of the game and the current incarnation (Tekken 6) is awaiting my attention when I have some time. After a slew of so-so to crap martial arts game adaptations, the Tekken movie looks like it might be quite good - here’s the trailer:

The story focuses on Jin Kazama, out to destroy the head of the Tekken Zaibatsu, Heihachi Mishima, to avenge the death of his mother. Pretty much the entire roster is there: Eddy, Bryan Fury (yay!), Heihachi, Nina, Anna, Raven (not so yay), etc. The fight choreography has been done by an amazing martial artist / stuntman / loon called Cyril Rafaelli, who you may recal from the film District 13, where he starred alongside David Belle.

So long as they shoot the fight scenes well, it should turn out rather well. I found the trailer to cut away a bit too much, but it is a general trailer, not R / 18. The cast includes Jon Foo as Jin Kazama and Lateef Crowder as Edy Gordo, both of whom were in Tony Jaa’s excellent Warrior King - Lateef Crowder had the better fight with Tony Jaa in it, but it looks like Jon Foo will shine a bit more in this film. Incidentally, look out for Lateef Crowder in Undisputed 3 soon, with the always-awesome Scott Adkins.

The rest of the cast is rounded out very well: British martial arts star Gary Daniels looks spot-on as Bryan Fury, Luke Goss (very good in Blade 2) as Steve Fox, MMA star Cung Le as Marshall “cheap” Law, and I’ve pleased to see everyone’s favourite robo-ninja-cyborg-thing Yoshimitsu in there as well, played by Gary Ray Stearns. I’ve only mentioned a few of the cast, so head on over to the Tekken page on IMDB to read up.

Release date is March 5th, 2010 in the UK, but no theatrica release unfortunately - I wonder if it’s in Blu-Ray?

Here’s a “green band” (e.g. suitable for everyone) trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s film adaptation of Mark Millar’s “Kick Ass”:

It looks like a lot of fun, and it’s out in April - hopefully I’ll be seeing it then, still not got round to seeing Sherlock Holmes, hmmph.

Note: here’s a “red band” trailer (suitable for adults only - e.g. blood, violence, and fruity language) starring Hit Girl, another protagonist and all-round ass-kicker - worth a watch, but be warned, blood, violence, etc…

H/T to FirstShowing.Net

This, courtesy of YouTuber pAiNfUl666d3ath, is an amazing showcase of what dedicated people can do - I was seriously agog at this chap:

I mean, egad!

If, like me, you’ve over-indulged at Christmas, you may be thinking about going out running to work some of the Christmas cake / turkey / chocolate-covered marzipan off. You may, like me previously, have not done serious running before and thought, “How hard can it be?”. After a run with my wife on New Year’s Day several years ago, as we were recovering from our frozen alveoli, I said (between pain-wracked sobs) “There must be an easier way to do this” - and there was.

First, get over the idea of actual, proper running - all I do is a jog, about 5 - 5.5mph, that’s what I call running. I’ll sometimes throw in sprints, but we’ll get to that later, this is all about starting running.

Next, get yourself some decent running shoes and a place to start running - a local park is good, I would recommend running on grass to start with, or a treadmill in the gym if you’re a member. You will also need a stopwatch, or at least a digital watch, but if you’re on a treadmill, you’ll have a timer regardless.

Now, the system. What we are going to do is do some cardiovascular exercise for twenty minutes in total (to start with). We’ll start by splitting the twenty minutes into two ten minute sections. After a gentle stretch, you start off by walking for nine minutes, and the jogging for one. Jog at a pace you feel comfortable with, do not try and run, just jog. Repeat that for the other ten minutes, and you’re done - have another stretch to cool down.

Repeat this routine again in the same week, and if you have the time, once more - I feel that 2 - 3 times is optimum. Concentrate, because here comes the magic science part: next time you go out, walk for eight minutes and jog for two, and repeat that twice. Same twenty minutes of exercise, but you’ve jogged a little while longer. Repeat that a couple more times, then go out for a seven minute walk, three minute jog twice, etc. Stick to the twenty minute sessions for now.

You are basically doing a form of progressive resistance training, a phrase coined by the inventors of the Nautilus fitness machines back in the 70s. As your body gets used to the jogging, it can do more of it, and the minute (in time) increases are not too much of a shock, e.g. not going out and running straight away.

Of course, this is not set in stone. You may feel like you can jog for three minutes after a seven minute walk and skip the eight minute walk and the two minute jog. That’s fine, but make sure you are able to do both ten minute sections of the same division - if you can’t, you may have moved on a bit too early. That said, you may quickly adapt to the program and find you can skip up quite quickly - especially of you’re out two to three times a week. If you’re not, don’t worry, it’ll just take a little while longer.

The goal of the first part of the program is to stretch, walk for a minute, and then run for nine minutes and repeat that twice. In other words, two minutes walking and eighteen minutes jogging in total. When youre happy with that, try cutting out your middle minute of walking, e.g. walk five minutes and then jog fifteen minutes non-stop. This should not be too hard, as by the end of the first stage of the program you’ll have already been jogging for eighteen minutes, just not non-stop. The ultimate goal of the first part of the program is walk one minute, jog nineteen.

You will also want to record your progress, not least so that you can see improvement, but so you don’t forget what you did last time (I frequently had that problem). I’d suggest recording the date and a notation similar to “w4 j6 x 2″, which would mean “walked four minutes, jogged six, twice”. Hey, there’s probably an app for that on the iPhone, but this program won’t cost you anything

Once you’ve done the walk one, jog nineteen a few times, try to increase your time to thirty minutes in total. For this, I’d suggest going to a five minute walk, five minute jog section for three repetitions, e.g. thirty minutes in total. And as before, as you get used to it, the amount of time spent walkng will decrease per section and the amount of time spent jogging will increase. For this second stage, again you’d be looking at doing one minute walk, nine minute jog for three repetitions. And then forty minutes, etc.

Note: The body can take a while to start burning fat under cardiovascular exercise, usually about twenty minutes. This is why it’s advisable to do at least 30 minutes of exercise, even if it’s just walking and jogging

But if you’re time-constrained, you can keep at twenty minutes and work on your speed. As an old friend (a thoroughly decent chap called Richard Brentnall) once told me, “First you work on your distance, and then work on your speed”. Once you’re up to the one minute walk, nine minute jog x 2, slowly increase the speed that you jog at. You may do this for only part of the nine minute section, or all of it, or only once and that’s fine: listen to your body. By this stage in the program, your body will have already told you a lot, and you should know when you can increase your speed. For extra fun (?) you can even through in a fast sprint (or run) for the last 30 seconds or minute.

That’s about it, but I may edit this in a bit. This approach has worked for me, I hope it will work for you - have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Ok, read something about this earlier this year, and on the strength this trailer, I’m there:

Great cast, lots of comedy, and - I’ll admit it - I loved the 80s!

H/T to the ever-excellent FirstShowing.net

By youtuber dunk3d, a fantastic montage of many, many shows all using phenomenal image-enhancing software:

H/T to Warming Glow

Both as good as each other, methinks:

Very much looking forward to both, I really like the casual “You complete me” line from Tony Stark to Pepper Potts as he jumps out of the chopper, and hearing Zeus say “Release the Kraken” gave me chills…

Looking forward to seeing them both next year

I’m a big Family Guy fan, and enjoyed their take on Star Wars, titled Blue Harvest. Here’s their next offering, Something Something Something Dark Side:

The AT-AT holding its shin made me post this

What great news: someone has hacked the server and emails at the Hadley Centre’s Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University, strong proponents of man-made (anthropogenic) global warming.

The emails contain details on how to get round FOI requests, someone thinking it was “good news” that a leading sceptic had died (classy!) and this wonderful tid-bit:

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Fraudulent scientific shenanigans indeed! Oh, by the way, it’s taxpayer-funded research as well - I understand that some more FOI requests have already gone in.

Here are some links on the story, which all should be required reading:

• Start of the story on Watt’s Up With That?
• Commentay by the Devil’s Kitchen, who was a hell of a lot to say on the matter
• James Delingpole at The Daily Telegraph
• Melanie Phillips at The Spectator

Unsuprsisingly, the mainstream media isn’t really reporting it, which is shameful. In addition to this fraudulent “science” being paid for by taxpayers, governments around the world are using this AGW as an excuse to raise taxes, to create complex carbon trading schemes (of which Al Gore is almost a billionaire off of) and some Labour twat has even suggestion a “carbon ration” for citizens in order to move about - usual Labour, restriction of freedom.

I always said it was a con, and hopefully now people will start to see that and be as mad as hell and not take it any more - the increased green taxes, made to feel guilty whenever they start up their car, that godawful advert on TV where the dad is reading that propaganda to his daughter, all that crap can stop.

Anthropogenic (man-made) Climate Change is a CON.

(That said, I’m all for reducing pollution, recycling things and solar panels - but not those sodding wind farms, they suck ass.)

Incidentally, here’s a telling picture of how the CRU have form for distorting data:

Cat’s out of the bag, methinks!