News arrived in my email box last night.

After Monday's movie and the stuff I've been doing in Feng Shui, I felt that I had to take some kind of action, if only as a very small form of karmic repayment for the right to use anything about Tibet at all in my game material. This was crossposted to buddhists, so's you know.

For those of you not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama is the #2 lama in the religious/governmental hierarchy. When the Dalai Lama dies, the Panchen Lama leads the search for his next incarnation, and when the Panchen dies, the Dalai Lama leads the search for the next Panchen. Back in 1995, the current Dalai Lama identified a small boy - six years old - as being the eleventh Panchen Lama. Shortly thereafter, the Chinese government came in and put the boy and his immediate family under house arrest. They said they had identified the next Panchen Lama and that this boy was an impostor. The general idea is to solidify their control of Tibet by controlling the kingmaker figures.

It's the Panchen Lama's 14th birthday today, so I'm told. It'll be ... oh, gosh, I think the eighth one he's spent under Chinese house arrest.

You might want a look at a page with action you can take about this. Namely:
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/panchenlama_usa

There's another one for people outside the States:
http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/panchenlama_intl

Thought you should know. I've already mailed my Congressbeings. I might be in love with China as a culture and a historical force, but dammit, they* can be such absolute bastards sometimes!

*along with every other government, country, organization, race, and culture on the face of the planet Earth, including but not limited to my own - is that enough of a disclaimer for you?

Vacation plan update

Still keeping an eye on the costs of travel to China, out of a sort of morbid curiosity. Sadly, no one is desperate enough to get people to fly there by dropping their airfares. It's around $1160 for a flight from my home airport to Beijing and then home from HK, which is $155 more than it cost the last time I seriously looked. I suppose the extra money is to convince the flight crew to stick around, given the trouble Air India's had recently with pilots not wanting to fly a plane that has someone recently arrived from a SARS-infected country on board. Not that my folks would be willing to pay for partial costs of a trip to SARS country - my mom's not even comfortable with the idea of someone from Toronto spending a week at my house at this point (sorry, mountainspeak, I truly am) - but still.

However, round-trip airfare to Fairbanks, Alaska, costs $519 if I fly in on 3 September and return on 17 September. I've stopped looking at the costs to fly into Fairbanks and out of Anchorage, because for $199 I can get on a trip that takes me from Fairbanks up to Gates of the Arctic National Park and lets me get a photograph of myself at a marker saying 'hey, she crossed the Arctic Circle and you didn't, neener neener'. All right, no 'neener neener', but you get the idea... I know it's only an arbitrary designation on the map, but it's kind of a neat idea. I'm not a mountain climber, so I'm not likely to get the chance to set foot on Denali's own slopes; I might as well take this particular opportunity to have an experience I can't get anywhere else in the United States. I did briefly consider the $400 trip, which flies from Fairbanks to Point Barrow, but the few pictures I've seen of Barrow seem to indicate that it's not really all that interesting after the first hour or two. Might be the farthest point north in the United States, but... if I'm gonna fly up there I'd like it to be on a dinky little bush plane, maybe carrying the mail or something. That'd at least be part of the Old School Alaska Experience, not like flying on a 757 or whatever Air Alaska uses to ferry people up there. I might go for that, but the only bush flights to Barrow seem to be cargo only, so I'll just stick with 'heeeey, arctic circle' and leave it at that.

I changed the allocation of my vacation account money slightly. Previously, I had my office put $180 into my savings account and the bank would spin off $25 a week to the vacation fund. This week I had them up it to an even $200. $50 per week is now going to be spun off to the vacation fund and the remainder will stay in my savings account against a time of need. Right now I have $450 in my vacation account. I am inclined to buy my plane ticket as soon as there is enough $$ to cover it, then continue saving until I have to actually take the money and go to Alaska with it. I'm allowed to take stuff out of that account twice a year, so I'm told. Hopefully, this will work...

Movies! Movies! Movies!

Hi, folks. It's been brought to my attention recently that some of y'all have recently developed an interest in one of my favourite genres of movie, the Hong Kong action flick. I've been asked to put together a list of such movies that I'd recommend, starting from the assumption that the reader has only begun to have an interest after seeing Bulletproof Monk. I suggest visiting 10000bullets for a few more ideas, but in the meantime, shall we begin?

1. Shaolin Soccer. You want to see this movie. If you liked Bulletproof Monk then you really want to see this movie. However, I must warn you... The showing of Monk that I went to had a preview for the US import version, due out in... I think maybe May.

YOU MUST NOT SEE THAT VERSION FIRST. ( Anti-dubbing rant follows )

I should point out that it is possible to get your hands on the DVD of Shaolin Soccer at stands in shopping malls, even though they're not the 'approved' import version. Or on eBay, for that matter. Trust me, this movie is worth it. Take your typical 'formerly great sports team comes out of retirement and shakes off the rust to defeat Very Bad People and regain their youthful glory' movie. Now assume that the person directing it is essentially Jim Carrey on sparkly pink fruit-flavoured monkey crack, and that he's hired the special effects team from The Matrix and several of the finest fight choreographers in Hong Kong. The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie are a bit slow and some of the humour depends on Cantonese wordplay that simply doesn't come across in the subtitles, but around the fifteen minute mark, whatever medication Stephen Chow is taking to keep people believing that he's sane wears off. And oh, my friends, when the medication wears off the most gloriously ridiculously funny movie I've seen in a long time kicks in. If you play Mage and you want to make your GM cry, watch this movie and then work up an Akashic Brother...

2. The Storm Riders. This one, like Monk, is an adaptation of a comic book. The difference is that Monk is an adaptation of an underground comic - I believe one written by an American - whereas The Storm Riders is an adaptation of an insanely popular comic book series by Ma Wing Shing, known and read throughout Hong Kong and surrounding territories. In order to understand exactly what sort of movie you're dealing with, you need to remember: this is not a cinematic triumph of a movie. This is a movie in which Sonny Chiba plays an Evil Overlord called Lord Conquer. Let me repeat that: the main antagonist of this movie is named Lord Conquer. That in itself should tell you nearly everything you need to know, just like people who go to see Bulletproof Monk need to know that the movie contains a kung fu Nazi in order to understand what they're dealing with. This is a special-effects-heavy movie. Not just the wire-fu kind of stuff you see in a lot of these movies, but lots of flashy glitzy attempts to replicate the visual atmosphere of Mr. Ma's comic. It should be noted that this is a movie that features a scene where a guy rips off his own arm (he gets better later). There's magical swords and there's murdered fathers and there's jealousy over the master's daughter and there's old geezers named Sword Saint and there's a Shaolin monk who shoots fireballs from his hands and oh, lordy, if you're looking for a flick that captures the feel of a comic book in live action, you can't do much better than this one. And there's a monkey! There's even a monkey! Everything's better with monkeys! Side note: the two main disciples of Lord Conquer, young men named Wind and Cloud, are played by awfully attractive actors. I paid $29.95 for it at Suncoast Video and feel my money was well spent.

3. Iron Monkey. I have never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie, but I owe him a lot; he was instrumental in getting this movie to the United States. I may have to love him forever for somehow arranging to make sure that even Blockbuster used subtitles instead of whinging until they got it dubbed. This is ... if Robin Hood had kung fu instead of Merry Men and a bow, you'd be on the right track. This sucker's just a fun little movie. Friendly neighbourhood doctor vs. evil, or at least stupidly corrupt, regional overlords, one of whom forces another doctor to hunt him down as an outlaw. Wire-fu all over the place (in case you hadn't caught on - wire-fu is when they don't even try to make what's going on look natural or reasonable under the known laws of gravity). An amazing little fight scene featuring a small boy (well, the character's the young Wong Fei-hung, but he's played by a girl) vs. large and cranky people in the marketplace - ph34r his m4d umbr3ll4 sk1llz! This movie is a brilliant example of one of the key axioms of the RPG Feng Shui: everyone knows kung fu. EVERYONE. I liked the story, I liked the script, I liked the visuals, it made me happy, I bought a copy. You can rent it, though. Unlike the first two on this list, this movie had a wide theatrical distribution in the States and is available for rental at pretty much any Blockbuster you care to name.

4. Legend of Drunken Master. Here we get into movies starring people most Americans stand a chance of recognizing. Jackie Chan as Wong Fei-hung is the star of this one, although Anita Mui, who plays his mother, comes very close to stealing the show several times. ( At this point I have to make a quick diversion for background's sake. )

The storyline involves national treasures being smuggled out of China as part of a scheme to weaken the country, but you can get all of that and more by watching the movie. What you newbies need to know most is that this is the famous Jackie Chan movie where the more he drinks, the more powerful his fighting skills get. It also features a really nice fight set under a train (not a moving one, thankfully). I was able to rent this one. You should be aware that this is actually the second movie in the series; the first is simply called Drunken Master, but I've never seen it.

5. Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2. I can't very well recommend a Jackie Chan movie without suggesting one that has Sammo Hung in it, and this is the Sammo movie that I've seen that I think Bulletproof Monk fans will take to fastest. The title link is to a database of Hong Kong movies, and it's detail-heavy; don't click on it if you don't want to see most of the major plot points summed up in a hurry. All I can say is, this movie made me like Sammo at a time when all I'd seen of him was a few appearances on Martial Law. The man is capable of shedding every last bit of personal dignity for the sake of a great performance, a feat other comedic actors can only envy. And - because this is Sammo - it has to be said: do not let the fact that he's fat fool you. Sammo is fully capable of punching a man in the crotch while standing back to back with him. Or flipping forward in such a fashion that he can kick someone on the top of their head with the top side of his foot, without so much as batting an eye. It's really a fun little movie, though I haven't seen it in ages, and I think you'll like it if Monk is all you've had to go on so far.

6. Swordsman 2. This stars Jet Li, who's probably my favourite living HK action star. (Lam Ching Ying unfortunately died of liver cancer a while back.) I'm sure most HK fans would suggest you watch Once Upon a Time in China instead, but right now I am targeting people who've only seen Bulletproof Monk. The story's kinda disjointed and it's got plot holes you could drive a truck through, but that's kind of the point. I mean, it's got ninjas - ninjas! Not even Lin Kuei, ninjas! Everything's better with ninjas! - and it's got a group of people referred to as the Highlander Clan and I'm pretty sure the subtitles on my copy said something about the ninjas being gypsies... and it's got a scroll of ultimate martial arts power, which is always cool, except for the part about having to castrate yourself. This would be why the antagonist is played by Brigitte Lin. It's an awfully entertaining movie, if not a particularly well scripted one, and once you've watched it you can go on to see Once Upon a Time in China and properly appreciate Jet's skills. Just do yourself a favour and try to get hold of the version entitled Swordsman 2; Blockbuster has a version called Legend of the Swordsman and it looks like another one of their craptacular dub jobs.

That's about it for now. More tomorrow, when I get the chance.