Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "Camel army"
¤ Usage: Right right... left left... right right left left... camel army!
¤ Origin: While watching a nature program one night the camera was turned on a flock of ambling camels, a sight that cracked Malaya up due to their right-right then left-left walking style.  We started verbally riffing on it, and from somewhere I came up with the above marching theme, to the tune of "1-2, 3-4, 1-2-3-4, go army!"
¤ Notes: Since the initial invention of this months ago, we've used it in numerous occasions that have nothing at all to do with dromedaries. Our favorite current use is to walk around the house and scare the cats; I stand directly behind Malaya with my hands around her waist and we walk in step, left-left then right-right, and relentlessly pursue the cats until they get freaked out and leap behind the couch or run under the kitchen table where we can't get at them. -- October 13, 2004

President Bush: Look, I'm going to say it one more time. If I -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That ought to comfort you. We're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government.

That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors....and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program...

Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission.

1) "Most people want security in this world, not liberty."

2) "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

¤ Hollinger's other new article, analyzing why scoring has decreased so much over the past couple of decades, is more his typical style, and it's very good as well. Turns out almost all the scoring decrease, over 17 points per game since the early 80s, is due to the slower pace of play. No one runs fast breaks anymore, teams therefore have 8 or 9 fewer possessions a game, and since they score about 1 point per possession... that's 16 or 18 points a game, right there.  It's far more complicated than that, of course, and he considers shooting percentage, defensive changes, free throws per game, three pointer attempts, and so on. But the simple fact that there are so many fewer possessions was a surprise to me, given all the lamentation you hear from most sports writers about how no one plays as a team and no one can shoot anymore.

he following is an excerpt from Flux's Decahedron #18, my latest column on Diabloii.net.  It was posted Tuesday morning, November 2, 2004, and you should check out the full column if you want the introduction, and the conclusion, which covers the combat reality of D2 characters.  I'm reposting this portion here since I've blogged about Kali several times in the recent past, and wrote a shorter version of the combat reality in movies discussion here as well.

That and I'm tired. Since Sunday I've written a Halloween short story, Monday's long blog, the feedback to my last D2 column, all of my new D2 column, the upper portion of today's blog, and I'm now planning to take a break and eat some ramen for energy, before I get to work on my novel.

If you've already read the new D2 column, you can safely skip the remainder of today's blog, since it's a straight cut and paste.

I don't think anyone is confusing the combat in Diablo II with real fighting; it's a fantasy video game after all, and it's not intended to be realistic.  The combat in movies, on the other hand, is usually meant to at least look real. I've been pondering this subject a lot lately, since I started taking some combat-oriented martial arts classes a few months ago. I haven't been training for very long, and I'm not going to make any claims of great combat ability just yet, but one thing I have gained is a far sharper eye for what works and what doesn't in fake fighting. The type of fighting you see in video games, and especially in movies.

Movies first, then Diablo II, after a bit of background information

Kali

The form of Martial Arts I've been training at is called Kali. It's a Filipino form with several variants, and is taught around the world, as I was surprised to find out when a long-time reader of my site mailed to let me know he'd been inspired by my blogging about it and had recently started taking classes... in Hungary!  Every teacher has their own style and form, and there are several schools of Kali style, but I'm not going to get into that issue here. Suffice to say, all of the forms share some techniques, differ on others, and stress hand to hand combat, along with various weapons. You start off with short sticks and blunt knives, then work up to long staves and various types of swords when you gain skill. Kali is very adaptable though; basically anything can be used as a weapon. My teacher's master has run workshops where the weapon was a rolled up section of newspaper; it's quite an effective training weapon, believe it or not. When loosely rolled and taped to stay together it hits hard enough to hurt a bit, but not hard enough to injure. And yes, we hit each other quite often.

In fact that realism is what really attracted me to the form. I'd always wanted to get into some martial arts training, but the strip mall "wear cute little uniforms and stand in line and punch/kick the air in unison" type I most often saw held no appeal for me. But with Kali there's none of that, and almost all of the training is very real life and combat oriented. The teacher shows you a move or counter, and then you pair off and practice it on each other. Not hitting, of course, at least not very hard, but it's all very practical and immediate, rather than shadow boxing style.

Enough about that, if you read the last two paragraphs and want to know more, check out this page on my site. If you skimmed the last two paragraphs and want me to get to the point, start reading again.

Realism in Movies

While I'm far years from being an expert (or even an intermediate) in Kali, all of the sparring, footwork, movement, weapon practice, and observation I've done in class has made me far more aware of how the combat scenes are handled in movies. Most of them are pretty bad, but you knew that already. After all, no one believes the actors can really fight, and even if they can at least pantomime the moves pretty well, everyone knows the stuntmen are pretending to get hit and running right into the punches, etc.  But how well do they fake it? Would the moves they do really connect and really hurt if they did?

I've been watching the action scenes from various films over the past couple of months and evaluating them, and it's been interesting to see. Things I never noticed before now leap out at me, in good and bad ways. Some things are just painfully fake now, but others I had not noticed are beautiful. In numerous cases I've been impressed by things I never would have noticed without Kali, and it's often the little things that work; a clever bit of footwork, a nice punch to a vulnerable spot rather than the usual haymaker to the jaw, an actor who actually knows how to hold a weapon properly, or can parry a punch while moving his body as well, etc.

In this section I am mostly talking about actors doing martial arts. Actual martial artists acting is an entirely different subject, and to be fair I should probably compare Jet Li's acting ability to Matt Damon's fighting skills. But since I've recently been taking martial arts and not acting classes... sorry Matt.

Actually, Matt fares pretty well, since in training for the Bourne Identity/Supremacy films, he worked with a Kali teacher, and he does quite a few Kali-style moves when he fights in the movies. I say "kali-style moves" since Kali isn't a discipline that requires rigid memorization; it's all about improvisation and movement and circling, and while we learn proper form for hitting, it's proper form to hit hard and accurately (with fists or weapons), not proper form to match some diagram in a book.  Of course you can hit hardest if you have good arm extension (not all the way straight though) and form and a target right in front of you, but how often is that the case in an actual fight? One of the best aspects of the hand to hand fighting in The Bourne Identity is that Damon moves very well. Slide to the side, dodge the attack, and hit them in the side as they go by, or the back of the head when you turn after them. Forget that Stephen Segal "stand still and grab their arm and throw them into a wall" stuff; the guy is 50, fat, and can hardly lift his leg... you don't really believe he's doing any of that stuff, do you?

Many martial arts styles mandate that the fighters stand still and face each other and if they turn, they should circle at the same pace. All of their moves are designed to go right at the opponent, and while that's fine if they stand there, what if they don't? And if that's all your opponent knows, why on earth would you stay still to let him do what he's comfortable with?  Damon is no more an expert than I am, but his choreography in the Bourne films is nicely done, since he moves to the side, hits while moving, and hits backhand, sideways, high, low, knows to kick (though not very well), and so on.

The most opposite example I can think of is how they fight in the Charlie's Angels movies. I've only seen the first one, (it was awful) and I saw it before I began training in Kali, but even then it was so absurdly-fake that I laughed out loud in almost every scene of combat. Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, and Cameron Diaz are all flexible enough to do high leg kicks, and while I admire their ability to lift a leg up to head height while wearing fashionable high heeled boots; they are clearly doing so with about enough power to crack a peanut. We can sort of pretend that Neo is hitting super hard in The Matrix, since it's virtual reality, but when one of Charlie's Angels kicks with about the force of a football cheerleader and the bad guy who is hit by the kick flies backwards through a brick wall, it's a bit harder to accept. The movie isn't going for reality, not with all of the double flips and spins and such, but to have such cartoonish fight scenes in an otherwise semi-realistic movie felt very jarring to me.

Charlie's Angels also made use of extensive editing and cutting; every time anyone kicked you'd see them kick, snarling, and the camera would then cut to the bad guy's face as he was kicked. There were very, very few long shots, since those require the actors to actually be able to sort of do what the movie would have us believe they are doing.

Speaking of long shots and Neo, how about the fighting in The Matrix? I'm speaking mostly of the first and second movies here, since there wasn't any real hand to hand combat in the third one (Though I may be forgetting, since I have not viewed it again after the first hugely-depressing time I saw it in the theater.)  You probably know that Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburn, and Carrie Anne-Moss trained extensively for their combat in the films. They put in months and months of martial arts lessons, and it shows in their form, if not their ability to faux-spar convincingly. Keanu is the best, and he's studied enough to put his body into the correct positions most of the time, but he still has a major problem with his routines in Matrix 2: no power.  He can do the moves, but he doesn't have the control to pull them at the last instant. I don't know why they didn't do more of the super fast movement stuff anyway, as he did at the very end of Matrix 1 when blocking Agent Smith's punches. It's like he regresses in skill between films. It's no surprise really, poontang always blunts a man's edge, but he's supposed to be special. He's The One! Morpheus' fight scenes, especially the truck one in Matrix 2, are less impressive since he's simply too slow on his feet. The two ridiculous edge-of-the-truck handstands didn't help either, whoever wrote those in. So while overall the fighting in The Matrix films isn't bad, it's pretty clearly that no one in the film really looks like they know what they're doing, beyond having memorized a few sequences of choreography.

Well, that's not entirely true, I assume the Sing Ngai, the guy who played Seraph, knows what he's doing. He's starred in dozens of Chinese martial arts films at least, done stunt work with Jackie Chan, and he looked pretty competent in his one Tea House fight scene in Matrix 2. But as for Keanu and Lawrence? They're okay, at best.  I will give them credit for one thing though; they can actually do what they're doing. That's clearest in the first fight scene in Matrix 1, where they spar in the Japanese dojo after Neo has just downloaded all of those combat forms. Mediocre though he and Morpheus are, the camera is far enough back that they often do two or three moves in a row, and you can see almost their entire bodies as they do them with relatively-acceptable form.

The long view is very seldom the case in movie combat, where a close-focus and fast-cutting style is used to make things seem faster and more intense, while also hiding the inability of the actors to actually do what their characters are supposed to be doing.  I'm not completely criticizing this technique; it's better to cut it up and tight focus it if the long shot would look silly, but it can also be used to make the fight faster and more interesting, as well as to focus the viewer's attention on the details.

Watch the Tea House scene in Matrix 2, where Neo spars with Seraph before meeting the v2.0 Oracle.  It's not a great scene, but they do some nice footwork as they mince across the table tops, and on several occasions the camera draws your attention to this as it shows their feet when they circle, or their hands as they trade shoves and blocks.  I sort of noticed that when I first saw the film, but didn't think much of it. Watching it now I see that they're doing some nice close technique, and I really notice it since the camera is focused in on the technique as they do it.  This style forces the uneducated viewer's attention in on the technical details of combat, things he or she wouldn't notice otherwise, and while you still can't really appreciate it until you've done some of it yourself, a film maker can at least highlight some of the subtleties in this fashion.

To quickly mention a movie that starred an actual martial artist, consider Jet Li in Kiss of the Dragon. It's not a very good movie, but Jet Li has spent decades training at martial arts, so he certainly knows how to do everything his movie character does. And it shows; lots of the movie is filmed from enough of a distance that you can see him actually doing things. It's not all Charlie's Angels style super tight close ups here; guys run up, punch at him, and he blocks or dodges or counters, then knocks them out.  Since Jet can fight, the film often shows him taking on several guys in a row with no camera cutting; it's just a matter of lining up the stunt guys and making sure they hit their marks. (Not that this is especially difficult; I could probably manage it with some practice and choreography help, and I've only been training for a couple of months.  Which just shows you how lame most actors are at what they're pretending to do.)

Jet Li fights in a pretty conventional straight ahead style, and though he has a scene in the film where he uses two sticks at once (something Kali specializes in and something I love doing myself) he doesn't really do anything that creative with them. Blocking straight, like in a typical sword or lightsaber fight, and then hitting with the other stick in a swing that's almost all arm, rather than using the body torque to generate more power.  I like that he is very no nonsense in his combat though; none of those Jean Claude van Dam 360º spinning kicks that would simply never, ever work on an opponent who was paying any sort of attention. I don't recall Jet leaping much at all, or wasting time or effort on high kicks or other flashy but not very practical things. He hits low, hits hard, kicks low, and knows where to hit to make it hurt.  It's not a very flashy style, which is unusual for a movie martial artist, but he does it so competently that it's still impressive to the viewer, and it's believable.

Besides the quickly-disposed-of stuntmen, there is one other guy in Kiss of the Dragon who can actually fight, or at least movie fight; Cyril Raffaelli, the shorter of the two blonde bad guys. I've never seen him in anything else, but apparently he's an action star in France, and he has enough martial arts training that it shows in how he moves in the fight at the end of the movie. I didn't consider for an instant that he could actually fight when I saw the film pre-Kali, but when I watched it again a few weeks ago I immediately perked up when the end fight began between him and Jet Li, and it was a pretty good one. The fight choreography is very flashy and high-flying in that sequence, but it's by far the best fight in the movie, at least in part because both combatants can move and punch smoothly.  It's funny how little it takes to make a scene work better once you're watching with even a slightly-trained eye.

Finally, you should also consider that most of the fights in movies are completely unreal, and that that's entirely intentional. Of course the actors survive dozens of blows that would cripple a real human. Of course they throw wilder punches, bigger swings, and flashier maneuvers than any trained fighter would do. Of course they do it all without getting tired or breathing hard. And of course they do moves that anyone with any actual training would counter or simply step out of the way of and kill them as they staggered past. They have to, since it looks good on film.

Sword fights are probably the worst offenders, and I'm including light sabers as well, since the duels in the Star Wars pictures aren't far from Charlie's Angels fake, when you watch them with a trained eye. I haven't done any actual sword fighting yet (and won't for some time, until I've mastered the stick well enough to have control to not cut my own or someone else's head off by accident), but I've seen the experts go at it, and many of the principles are the same as using a stick.

The first thing every movie fighter does that no one would in real life? Block full force swings that wouldn't have landed anyway.  It looks good on film when both actors swing high overhead and smash their swords together, but think about it; the swing wasn't going to hit anyway, it was well off to the side, and it was slow and long. A skilled fighter simply steps diagonally away from the swing and towards the opponent and stabs him while his sword is still descending. Trust me, I've seen it done to far less inaccurate swings than they perpetrate in the movies.

I could talk at great (greater?) length about other action films, the techniques they use to make fights look real, what's wrong with the moves, and more, but I need to get to the D2 portion of this article at some point, don't I?  I suspect I'll elaborate a bit more come reader feedback time anyway.

The funniest part about this whole martial arts = movies look fake is that I now enjoy the fight scenes more than I used to. Something as poorly-done as Charlie's Angels still sucks, but in more reasonable cases, even when the fight is obviously fake, I still enjoy it, since I feel like I'm learning something.  I know what it's like to do moves like they're doing, and to defend against them (albeit at slow, sparring-in-class speed) and that gets me much more involved in the scene since I automatically put myself in the place of the fighters. What would I have done there, how would I have countered that, did the way he dodged it make sense, etc. I feel more analytical as well as more involved, and it definitely makes it more interesting.

This is a surprise to me, since I thought I'd hate bad action scenes, now that I know enough to know just how bad they are. I don't, and it's a bit like how I feel about bad novels... I sometimes learn more from reading the bad ones, since I can see where the author is going wrong and think how I would have tried to improve it. Conversely, watching two brilliant fighters spar is a bit like reading something that's perfectly written... it's sort of intimidating and there are no seams to pick at. How can I identify with or compare to that?

Pressure Points and Other Things You Won't Believe Until You Feel Them

Besides learning to more-accurately evaluate the fighting techniques I see in movies, I've learned quite a few other things that have changed how I view action films. For one thing, you know when wrestlers grab each other and one guy drops to his knees and starts beating the mat in agony? It looks ridiculous, and isn't all that convincing in movies either, but guess what? Pressure points work frighteningly well, and if someone who knows what they are doing gets a hold of you, they can put you on the ground, begging and clawing for mercy, with just one finger.  I've seen five foot women do it to 300 pound men, and trust me, they could do it to you too.  There isn't any Spock claw knock out grip, and there isn't any magical five point strike that will force your heart to explode like in Kill Bill 2, but there are lots of places on the human body that will inflict crippling pain, if they are pressed firmly. And I'm not talking about areas everyone knows are painful; no eye-gouging or nut-crunching is required.

Want an easy example?

1) Put your right hand near your belly button, so your arm is bent like you're holding a loaf of bread, and point your elbow out a bit. (The arm position isn't crucial for the pressure point; it's just easier to describe the location this way.)

2) Use your left forefinger to feel down the outside of your right arm while you clench your right arm so your bicep is bulging (or as near bulging as you can get, as pumped as you must be from using the mouse).

3) Feel down the upper arm bone until you find the depression where your bicep, tricep, and shoulder muscle meet, and poke around in there until you find a little hollow, and a large and very surprising burst of pain.  Push a little harder and your right arm will go completely limp, which tends to complicate your efforts to fight out of the hold, if you've got any fight left in you while suffering such intense pain. And that's just with your forefinger gently poking it!  Imagine a strong, skilled, and merciless thumb digging in there? 

My point here isn't to train you in inflicting pain upon each other, but just to demonstrate that pressure points are very real and very effective, no matter how fake they look when manipulated in movies. And don't think for an instant that this upper arm spot is in any way the most painful or vulnerable pressure point on the body; there are dozens of other places that hurt far worse and that can be grabbed far more easily.  I've barely begun my training and I know that much. The fact that my girlfriend is taking the same classes I am, and in fact is going to another one on weekends that I'm not attending is enough to pretty well rule out any sudden sneaky tickling attacks by Flux.

Another thing that works better in real life than you'd believe by watching it in a movie? Force. Not the midichlorian one Lucas nearly ruined Star Wars by inventing, but the simple process of transferring your movement into momentum towards your target. Characters in movies often push someone with what looks like a simply shove, or hit them with a regular punch, and when the target goes flying backwards it's neat, but totally unrealistic. Or is it?

Surprisingly-enough, it's fake in the movies, but it's very possible to do in real life. On top of that, it's easy to learn, it doesn't take a great deal of skill, and with just a little bit of practice you can stand still in front of someone, lean into them while pushing, and they'll feel like a truck just bumped into them when you push with a hand or a forearm and they stagger back. I'm not exaggerating at all, except by pretending to have great experience being hit by motor vehicles. The trick is to focus every bit of your force into the shove or hit, and to add to your force by using your legs and your weight. The master demonstrated a few things on me one day, and literally knocked the breath out of me and sent me back several steps by dropping his forearm on my chest from about six inches away. And he did it with a fraction of the power he could have used, or he would have broken my clavicle. My girlfriend, after three months of Kali, can do a simple sway back counter, then lean back into me with one hand against my chest and almost knock me over without even really trying.

One of the easiest ways to do it is to punch low, and just as you strike the target drop down by bending your knees. Literally drop, almost as if you fell off a step. When done right, the weight and momentum of your body dropping transfers right into the fist or forearm shove, and you'll hit far, far more powerfully than you ever could have otherwise. The scary part is that the blow you deliver (or take, if you're the sparring partner) isn't fast. It's not a wild swing or even a jab; it's a deliberate push, like you're shoving someone higher on a swing set. Which makes the leaden force if arrives with all the more surprising.

Unfortunately, just like pressure points, this is something that looks ridiculous in a movie even when you know that it works from first hand/chest experience. Hell, it doesn't even look realistic in person!  I've had it done to me, staggered back ten feet, and then watched someone else receive a demonstration and automatically thought, "Oh he is so faking that."

The funniest part? You hardly believe when you do it. I've worked on various pushes and thrusts in class, done it wrong five times to no effect, then finally gotten the weight transfer right and seen my partner stagger backwards while thinking, "Damn, screwed it up again."

Read the entire article if you wish to see the concluding Diablo II portion. Click here for that.

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