Monday, April 11, 2005

do the hustle

The weekend started earlier with a midnight screening of Kung Fu Hustle at the Arclight. Oh who am I kidding, the entire week is just one big party for me. In any case, I don't think you'll see another martial arts film with such a violent opening leading into a dance number complete with top hats, so many stars eligible for a senior discount at the multiplex, or as many inside jokes for fans of the genre.

I won't bore you with a review of the film, do a google search, the reviews are everywhere. Believe the hype, all of it. Yes, Quentin Tarantino wishes he were Stephen Chow. Yes, there are moments of absolute hilarity. Long stretches of absolute hilarity, actually. Yes, Chow pays homage to martial arts flix of the past and you'll probably enjoy it more if you have familiarity with the genre. It has received some lukewarm reviews as well, so if you're not a fan of goofiness or martial arts films you probably won't laugh your ass off like I did. But I'm asking my friends who travel regularly to China to come back with a DVD for my collection. It's a keeper.

I figured I'd be beat after the screening, after all it did start at 12:01am. But we were so energized after the film, we needed to chow down on some noodles and talk about how much we loved the movie. It was 2am, so we headed to Little Tokyo's Koraku Restaurant. I can never get enough of the mabodon, and Koraku makes it better than anybody else. Of course I've only tried it at 10 other restaurants, so if you know of anyplace else that excels at mabodon, please let me know. I think half of the people at the screening had the same idea, because all these cars pulled up about the same time we did and I saw a lot of familiar faces, all slurping up ramen and talking about the movie.

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