Jozinga

In my elementary school all 3rd graders were weirdly required to pick a performance arts “class”. Option 1 was CLOGGING. Option 2 was putting on puppet shows of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Phantom. I desperately wanted to avoid clogging in front of the entire school to Elvira by Home Free, so I opted for the Cats puppet show. The teacher that ran it was obsessed with everything Andrew Lloyd Webber and rehearsals were like David O Russell’s I Heart Huckabees behind the scenes. She shared with us all her Cats knowledge and how it was so clever that Deuteronomy was the name of an old cat because Deuteronomy is one of the older books of the Bible/Torah. I think about the puppet show more than I’d like to. During Phantom I played the title character and my 3rd grade crush played Christine. The teacher put a lot of pressure on us to have our puppets kiss but even our 3rd grade brains knew that was super weird. I was horrified to see clogging in this movie.

As amazing as the tournament stereotype characters were in this movie, I can't help but think that JCVD really dropped the ball on representing nations. Taking place in 1925 while the planet was still in the aftermath of WWI, this was the perfect setup to have the fighters represent the major and minor players of the Great War. But besides that, what was with having one fighter represent all of Africa while giving Okinawa its own character- who by the way, was a pretty poor fighter coming from the birthplace of Mr. Miyagi? Okinawa is less than 700 square miles with a current population of 1.385 million people versus Africa's 11.67 million square miles and 1.111 billion people! The next closest misrepresentation of land mass was the Soviet Union clocking in at 8.65 million square miles with its highest population of 293 million people. But to be fair, most of that land mass is made up of the icy hell of Siberia. On top of that, Okinawa had been under Japanese rule since it was annexed in 1879 (and still is today). JCVD could have at least thrown in a stereotypical "walk like an Egyptian" fighter in addition to the Zulu warrior. I think that Africa got the short end of the stick, but at least had some sick intro dance moves. I guess the tournament was the US Senate of tournaments where Rhode Island gets as many senators as California. It's time to reboot the Quest with Street Fighter characters.

Did that medical doctor refer to the spider bites as insect bites? Arachnid bites, bro! Bad bite classification aside, I can't help but think that this movie is a crazy analogy for drug and alcohol addiction. I can't think of any movie that is so heavy on the term "using," but isn't actually talking about drugs. They use this language more than the script for Requiem for a Dream, except they're talking about magic! We've all seen pictures of 44 year old junkies that look 110. And if you enjoy getting messed up too much- you're definitely going to be screwed by the time you ascend aka start shooting up. Darklings are clearly the ghosts in your closet, or embarrassing/awful things you've done while using like sleeping with that person you shouldn't have slept with or calling your youth pastor drunk at 4am. Thinking about that shit can and will distract you into hitting a log truck. And in the end, your addiction is going to hurt your friends, mom that might want your body, and that blonde girl you made gross french kissing sounds with. Finally, you're going to have to battle for sobriety or will your power to the junk. Also, Jessica Biel managed the transition from cute child star to hot celebrity.