In Lieu of Thrusting

No manjectification today. The thing that's got me the most smitten this week is a documentary—the most engaging film I've seen since Hanna. It knocked my socks off. I'm not even going to tell you what it's about or post a trailer. I'll just say it's called Marwencol, and that you should go find it on DVD, rent or buy it off iTunes, or view it on Netflix Instant Watcher. Go. Now.

Friday Night Fu Review: Shaolin

Shaolin ★★★  

This was such a hard movie to review, and I'm not even sure why. Shaolin (2011) was beautifully filmed, finely acted, with multiple satisfying character arcs and quality fight choreography. It also featured a charming and hefty-yet-well-balanced cameo by Jackie Chan, but didn't allow the guest mega-star to steal the show.

Shaolin has a historic biopic feel (seems to be the fashion in Kung Fu of late) though as far as I know, it's not based on any actual events or figures. It stars Andy Lau, a talented performer whom I knew best from The Warlords (2007), offering a solid screen presence if not a surfeit of charisma. Playing the baddie was Nicholas Tse, whom I mistook for Huang Xiaoming the entire movie. In my defense, both actors are also former pop stars. They must have twin-like pop-star facial features. Anyhow, Tse played a believable power-hungry, sadistic dictator figure, though like Lau was also just a little short on charisma…though for all I know, that could be the fault of subtitle translation.

I won't bore you by summarizing the plot, which was your classic, thoughtful war epic, as well as a culture clash between ambitious military generals and pacifist-but-still-bad-ass Shaolin monks whose temple is under siege and caught between the two warring factions. It also becomes adoptive home to the protagonist after he (of course) loses everything he loves as a result of his ambition and back-stabbing. Enlightenment and vengeance ensues.

The fight scenes were solid and innovative, with a just a taste of that over-the-top Kung Fu reliance on invisible wires for stylization, which personally I can really take or leave. They were well integrated, but I think what didn't work for me in the movie was the overall tone… It was, at times, heartbreaking and gritty and grief-stricken. Then at odd moments, bordering on slapstick (perhaps because of its guest star, though I don't blame Chan for the mad-cap components.) It was never wacky, but the wacky-ish moments didn't jibe with the heartrending scenes, which were many. The movie didn't suffer from a complete personality disorder, but a more consistent mood would've helped. And maybe I'm greedy, but I wanted more fight scenes. And more training montages. Always more montages!

I really enjoyed Yu Xing's supporting performance (according to IMDb trivia, he actually is a 32nd generation Shaolin monk!) I knew his face from the Ip Man films, and he and another actor did a great job in two minor-ish roles, soft comic relief in the form of charmingly wayward monks. They added a lighter element without it feeling too discordant, given all the wartime sturm und drang. Also deserving praise was the young performer (and actual Shaolin monk, I believe) who played the perhaps twelve-year-old monk fighter featured in the final quarter of the film. He was fabulous, though I wasn't able to track down his name to credit him.

So overall, a solid Kung Fu war epic, if not the most memorable one. But if you're intrigued, check the trailer:

Spontaneous acts of unh

Just watched The Warlords. Two hours of unshaven Takeshi Kaneshiro looking pensive in a furry hat. Unh.

Friday Night Fu Review: Fearless

Fearless ★★★★½ 

Though he disappointed me awhile back with The One, I decided to give Jet Li another chance. He'd never let me down before, after all. I needed to wash the lingering taste of 2001 out of my mouth and move on.

Fearless (2006) was a palate cleanser of the best ilk. It was directed by Ronny Yu, but I was convinced it had to be Wilson Yip's work. Yip directed 2008's artful Ip Man and its even more artful sequel, and that franchise and Fearless are reminiscent of each other in multiple ways. Both are historical Chinese biopics, but the similarities go far beyond that. I wouldn't say Ip Man is derivative, but I'd be surprised if Yip hadn't been influenced by Fearless.

But on to the story. Fearless is the dramatized biography of Huo Yuanjia, a real-life Chinese Wushu Master. He starts the story as a charmingly feckless, bullied child, maturing into a kick-ass fighter, young widower, and father, whose cockiness and party-boy habits lead him to great trouble and tragedy, in the form of his remaining family being slain in revenge for his careless disrespect toward another local Master. Nice character arc from invincible to reckless to ruined to reborn and redeemed.

Oh, Tanaka… sigh.

There's also a great thread involving Yuanjia's lifelong best friend, a businessman who stands by him through his terrible mistakes and ultimately funds his participation in some exciting bouts against various non-Chinese challengers (much encroaching colonialism, though not as demonized as that in Ip Man). There's also a nice little understated romantic subplot involving the charming actress, Betty Sun. The villains in this story were handled exceedingly well—very human, unlike Ip Man 2's monstrous but cartoonish Mr. Twister. So, the movie was already great…then add to it the special bonus called Shidô Nakamura, a Japanese kabuki actor and major fox who played the highly thrustable anti-villain of the final showdown fight, Tanaka. Unh. Unh on you and your most honorable sword, Tanaka.

So, I highly recommend Fearless. Oh crap, and I haven't even mentioned the actual fighting, which was tremendous. It's hard to find a truly original fight scene in the Kung Fu genre, in choreography or setting, but this film had some real gems. But the best thing of all was that the fighting and the story and the execution of the film were all equally strong. If Ong Bak hadn't set the bar so didonkulously high for this feature, Fearless would've been a five-star Kung Fu flick for me. Here's one of its many kick-ass fight scenes…I normally don't care much for weapons, but whoever did the sword choreography for this film was nuts. So good. Go find the whole movie on Instant Watcher.

The Montage from Rocky IV

What a stand-up manfriend I have, to send me the training montage from Rocky IV! And it's not even our anniversary! This clip has it all, everything but meat-punching (see Rocky I). Saw that wood! Pull that sled! Chop that tree! Grow that beard!

Thrusty Thursday: Paul Rudd

No intro—straight into the man-tage. BAM!

Also, did all my fellow beard-lusty working-class-man-coveting she-perverts know Paul Rudd is in a movie called Diggers, in which he digs clams and otherwise spends the whole movie wearing a knit cap and henley while smoking and talks in a Long Island accent all set in the scrappy mid-seventies?! If only it were on Instant Watcher, I'd be enjoying it now, instead of putting this silly post together. I mean, DAMN. It's like I wrote and directed my own ideal p0rno.

Snerk.

Friday Night Fu Review: The One

The One ★★ ½

I was prepared to be wowed, but sadly I wasn't.

There was a lot of potential awesome going for The One (2001)—Jet Li, Jason Statham, several more Jet Li multiverse alternate reality clones… And yet it fell flat.

Let's back up, though. Here is what the movie's about, in a nutshell. It's a biggish budget sci-fi action flick, and Jet Li plays the bad guy, a dude who travels through worm holes to assassinate his many other iterations in alternate universes, thus gaining himself superhuman powers en route to becoming The One, a majorly evil unstoppable bad-ass. He also plays the good guy, a mild-mannered martial arts enthusiast cop version of himself, and the final guy the evil Jet Li has to kill to become The One. Jason Statham—never shirtless and with far too much hair on his head for my taste—plays an inter-universal agent, trying to help the good guy and stop the evil guy.

The unbilled star of this movie, for better or worse, was the year it was made—2001. It comes through in the pervasively nouveau cock-rockish post-Marilyn Manson soundtrack, the Matrix-wannabe effects (and affects), in the sheer colorization and cinematography of the thing. Heck, maybe it just wasn't meant to be seen by a viewer for the first time in 2011. But it's dated.

The major issue for me was that this movie lacked the charisma of a more over-the-top, pure martial arts romp (i.e., the original Drunken Master or Ong Bak). Its choreography was solid, stunts decent, star undoubtedly talented…but that magical, borderline wackiness of a true classic was missing, replaced with unconvincing slow-down/speed-up special effects. (In my snotty opinion, a good Kung Fu movie's wow-factor comes from the actors' physicality—the magic is in the "holy shit, did you see that dude flip?" moments, not the "holy shit, did you see that CGI?" moments.) It also could have used a lot more cheek and humor—Li and Statham both have it in them, but sadly, the writers apparently did not.

But I'm being mean, and asking it to be something it never promised it was. I mean, look at the cover—it's clearly at least 50% sci-fi. So here are some pluses to balance out the criticisms. Cool premise. Fast paced. Likable supporting heroine character. Quality stunt double action in the scenes where Li battles himself. Some innovative fight scenes and settings (in addition to some really tired ones). If you like nouveau cock-rock, the perfect soundtrack. An ending that's both sweet and utterly schlocky, utterly Hollywood. But I'm afraid that's about it. Tons of potential, but in the end, a limp-yet-noisy rehash.

Now behold the trailer:

Thrusty Thursday: Laurence Fishurne

So I've been watching a slew of seminal cycling movies in the past week, so-called inspiration and research for a work-in-progress neither me nor my evil twin will yet claim authorship of. But this last weekend we watched a real hum-dinger of the genre—Quicksilver.

It stars Kevin Bacon as a stock trader turned bike messenger, and it is like the eighties filtered through a lens made of pure eighties. I recommend it. Highly. The soundtrack is like…uhn. It also reminded me of a fact one must not let slip from one's daily consciousness—Larry Fishburne is a fucking fox! He may just get my nomination as one of Hollywood's Top Five Foxes of All-Time. Behold his dishiness as it transcends role and age:

Goddamn you and your stern-but-dreamy eyes, Fishburne!

And of course, here's the trailer for Quicksilver (1986). It's slightly more OTT than the actual movie…but only slightly:

Unnhhh…

Oh yes, to quote Ruthie Knox, unh… Unnnhhh, big time. Thanks to Zoë Archer for tweeting this decadence from Swoonworthy, as it's probably—no, it's definitely—the greatest poster for anything, ever. I saw the trailer for this movie a couple months ago and my loins promptly exploded, because, as anyone who knows me is aware, fighters do things to me. Things that make me unh. You're welcome to all the cowboys, the SEALs, and especially the billionaire tycoons, so long as you forward all the bruised and bloody, battered men straight to me.

Right, one last ogle then it's back to work on this new Blaze proposal…which, handily enough, is about a fighter. Unh.

Thrusty Thursday: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I won't go nuts objectifying this week's thrustee, because I must admit, I'm mildly uncomfortable about the crush. Even after I saw Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was still frozen in my head as his character on 3rd Rock From the Sun, and adorable though he was…uncool. Way uncool. My undersized low-cut pink leopard-print tee-shirt does not rhinestone-sparkle proudly with the proclamation, Cougar! thank you very much.

Then last week I saw Hesher, and it threw my lady-bits into turmoil. No! You're too young! Wrooong!!! But once a Google search revealed he's only a year my junior, I gave myself permission to perv on out.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt…charisma. You has it. Use it wisely.

For your consideration, the movie trailer:

Friday Night Fu Review: Ip Man 2

Ip Man 2 ★★★★ 

This is one of those rare cases when the sequel surpasses the original. I didn't actually do a formal review of Ip Man, but it was a good movie. Beautifully filmed and choreographed and starring the super talented Donnie Yen, and yet…it didn't light me on fire. Certainly not the way Ong-Bak did. In my opinion, it was lacking a certain amount of charisma and fun, though there's no doubt is was a solid Kung Fu film.

Ip Man 2 (葉問2:宗師傳奇, 2010) on the other hand, was really exciting. Both films are biographical, telling the story of Ip Man, founder and Grandmaster of the Wing Chun style of Kung Fu, and Bruce Lee's mentor (though Bruce doesn't turn up until the very end of the sequel, in an obnoxious bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing). The second film follows Ip Man's struggles to start his own Kung Fu school in 1950, in the wake of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong depicted in the first installment. Ip Man is opposed by a bullish collective of established masters in the area, and must win their respect and acceptance if he's to realize his calling and provide for his vulnerable family.

Xiaoming, you are getting

so thrusted on next week…

Amid all this drama, colonial tension is also brewing. The British are causing unrest in Hong Kong with their blustering imperialism, and this manifests itself in the form of Mister Twister. Twister is an über-thug English boxer (played by Mancunian martial artist Darren Shahlavi) who scoffs at Kung Fu and its pint-sized practitioners. Of course this unites the city's schools, and Ip Man has the chance to prove himself a true and worthy master if he can rise to challenge the British brute and avenge the Chinese fighters who have been injured and even killed in the ring.

I thought this movie was really solid, and far more fun than its predecessor. It loses a star for the hyper-precocious Bruce Lee reveal (which could have been so much cooler if handled with a wink instead of a sledge hammer), and some unnecessarily over-the-top Crouching-Tiger-style stunts, which felt out of place in an otherwise passably realistic biopic. But it gets a solid four stars from me, especially since it's got Huang Xiaoming, who is a FOX!

Here's the kick-ass trailer:

Thrusty Thursday: Darren Shahlavi

Think of Darren Shahlavi as Zachary Quinto on steroids. Not to say that the Iranian-English martial artist / actor's physique comes from anything other than hard work, as far as I'm aware. But those eyebrows, that subtly evil glint in the squinty eye…a more feral, jacked, hairy-chested Quinto. Definitely.

I know Shahlavi solely from the 2010 film Ip Man 2 (which I'll be reviewing next week) a sequel that surpassed its equally beautiful but less exciting predecessor. Shahlavi plays a thoroughly hateable "foreign devil", an English prize fighter who bullies, mocks, and grievously injures the local Kung Fu practitioners of Hong Kong in this movie set in 1950. Colonial tension, you can has!

Shahlavi was born in Manchester, England in 1972, and he's been training in a variety of martial arts since he was seven. He's been a gazillion and one movies of varying quality, most of them martial arts related. Without further ado, a man-tage from the film:

Stuff that's good…

I spent so much of May in a rough mood, I wanted to write a post about stuff that's good. So without further ado, here are some awesome things.

1. A new season of The Bachelorette. My favorite guilty TV pleasure…until Instant Watcher posts another season of Celebrity Rehab, anyhow. I'm saving yesterday's episode for tomorrow afternoon, once I've hit my word count goal and tackled a bit of design freelance and wine o'clock rolls around. And whenever possible, I like to complement a new-sale bottle of champagne with an episode of The Bachelor or Bachelorette. I figure if I poison both my mind and body at once, they'll cancel each other out. So far this season I'm rooting for two of the dudes—West and JP. Not sure they've got the best chemistry with Ashley out of the whole group, but I hereby declare them my top-pick foxy front runners.

2. Neko Case. I've been listening to her 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood practically non-stop for the past month. Love love love. It's already right up there in my moody-folky-chick-rock favorites list beside Patty Griffin's Flaming Red and Tori Amos' Boys for Pélé.

3. Weekly writing goals. In just the past three weeks I've switched from daily word count goals to a weekly one. It's tough to predict whether I'll be able to churn out 4,000 words before lunch, or struggle all day to type a measly 500, so instead of saying, "I'm going to write 2,000 words every day this week," I'm saying, "I'm going to write 10,000 words this week." It's an ambitious number for me, but I try to take weekends off from writing and editing (work-life-balance and all that) so if I'm still a thousand words short on Saturday morning, I can play a little catch up. I think the key has been not capping myself at 2K for any given day, as I used to, as once I'd hit that number, I was off the hook, mentally clocked out for the rest of the day. Now I think, "I hit 2,000 easily. Better push for 3,000 in case tomorrow brings a word drought." It's working great so far, and I recommend it to other writers with fluctuating daily counts. A good month for me used to 30,000 words, and now I'm looking poised to bank about 45K.

4. Dog the Bounty Hunter's autobiography. Well, his second autobiography, anyhow. I'm just about done with Where Mercy is Shown, Mercy is Given. I grabbed it randomly from the library and checked it out without shame. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's endlessly entertaining and surprisingly heartfelt.

5. No sugar = I lost three pounds. Actually, I couldn't tell you if it's absence of sugar or my getting back into yoga and calisthenics in the past couple weeks, but I've lost weight. It's likely both, of course. But ditching the sugar has definitely reduced the random carb cravings. As with meat last month, I'm really not missing it—the odd wistful twinge as the manfriend enjoys a block of chocolate or an ice cream sandwich, but nothing I could classify as true temptation.

6. Klondike. I've absolutely re-addicted myself to Klondike. Found the nifty free Real Solitaire app for my iPad and both the manfriend and I can't quit. Every morning over coffee, over lunch, over beers while dinner's cooking, before bed… In fact, new Angry Birds Rio levels came out yesterday and we haven't even opened them yet—the deck's got us by the throats.

6. Crank 2. We watched this movie randomly because for whatever reason, Revolver (another Jason Statham movie) decided not to play on Instant Watcher. I can't remember the last time the manfriend was so delighted by a movie. We'd never seen the original Crank, but that didn't matter. This action movie was spastic, incessant, ridiculous, nearly seizure-inducing…but really fun. Plus it's got Statham in a fitted hoodie, running really fast, all throughout the movie. And you know what a fast-running, desperate man does to me. He also electrocutes himself with jumper cables every ten minutes or so, which I found oddly stirring.

Hope everyone's enjoying their Junes so far!

Thrusty Thursday: Bradley Cooper

It's almost too easy, isn't it?

The weird thing about Bradley Cooper is that despite being a massive fox, he's not particularly photogenic. I had a tough time finding a picture that did him justice. So if you haven't seen Alias, The Hangover, or the A-Team remake, take my word for it, he looks far thrustier in motion than static.

I had Cooper on the brain, as I'm working on a book with hero who's a bit of an unscrupulous layabout. Since I'm not attracted to Matthew McConaughey, it's been an appreciable relief to have recently discovered Cooper, who I find to be a more palatable flavor off that same sort of duuude menu of actors for casting characters in my head.

I'm busy today and could only bother to do the most cursory research on Cooper, and I must say, laziness aside, there's not much on him…though I do make it a point to avoid the toxic tabloid sites, so perhaps there's juicier stuff to be glommed outside of Wikipedia. The best I've got for you? He's thirty-six and fluent in French. Très bien!

Here's a short and highly unprofessional interview (pardon the stretch, it was that or use an embed with an ad) conducted by Cooper's Hangover co-star Zach Galifianakis. It ends in a slappy-man-bitch-fight, so don't miss that.

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: Bradley Cooper from Between Two Ferns

Thrusty Thursday: Kayvan Novak

The several faces of Kayvan Novak.

Quick thrust from me this busy week—Thursday crept right up me! But do please take a moment to thrusticate upon Kayvan Novak, foxy British actor (of Iranian descent, also appeared in Syriana) who I just had the pleasure of seeing last night in the movie Four Lions, an absurd dark comedy from one of the true masters of absurd dark comedy, satirist Chris Morris. Novak plays Waj, a comic sidekick character who could easily have gone two-dimensional. Yet Novak's performance is subtle but hilarious, Waj's character outrageously stupid but also utterly sympathetic and lovable. I can't say enough about how deftly Novak snuck in and stole some of movie's funniest scenes—his timing is really something else. Really tough to describe, but very effective. Idiocy with depth. I recommend the movie if you dig pitch-black, uncomfortable comedies and can follow heavy British accents.

Angry Birds Rio is out!

Hooray! Angry Birds Rio released this morning! March has been a great month for Angry Birds fans, with new "Ham 'Em High" levels for Angry Birds and the St. Patrick's Day edition of Angry Birds Seasons already released. Now a whole new game?

Rio is much like the franchise's previous incarnations, except with a new setting and a new mission—instead of merely bombing pigs, the angry birds are liberating smuggled parrots in Brazil! Oh and bombing monkeys.

The paid version has lots of new levels and the promise of even more to come in the next few months. There's also an animated movie set to release next month (the game is a tie-in) by the people who did Ice Age. Imagine if Pixar had jumped on that deal? That would have been amazing…though the movie probably wouldn't be ready until well after the Angry Birds craze has faded.

So go forth and download! Who wanted to get anything done today, anyhow?

WARNING: Turn your volume down a bit before watching the trailer—it's loud.

A Doubly Thrusty Friday Fu Review

So just last week I "discovered" Jason Statham for myself and promptly dedicated Thrusty Thursday to him and his extraordinary foxxitude. Then I asked my Twitter cohorts—who know everything—which of his movies I ought to gorge myself upon first. The unanimous and resounding response was "TRANSPORTER!" And off I scampered to add it to my Netflix queue.

The Transporter ★★★ ½ 

Fun and foxy, if not strictly a
true martial arts flick.

I watched it on Wednesday night with the manfriend and enjoyed it a lot. Strictly speaking, The Transporter (2002) is not a Kung Fu movie, but the scenes that do feature martial arts-style combat are exceptional, so I'm rounding it up. It's fast-paced, well choreographed, and the action sequences are very clever and original. Statham plays the protagonist, a man whose job is to deliver anything to anyone, no questions asked. Matt Schulze plays the lead baddie, who's involved in human trafficking and attempts to blow Statham up, after using his services. Vengeance ensues!

As an aside, I didn't know until he popped up on screen that Matt Schulze was in this film. I owe Schulze more than a few solids, as his Thrusty Thursday post attracts (no exaggeration, I busted out the calculator) nearly twenty percent of all the traffic for this blog. And "Matt Schulze" is the most popular keywording used to find the Super Lucky #1 Fun Blog by light years.

Back to the review. I liked this movie, let me say that right now. But there were a few things that ding it some points. For one, Matt Schulze was issued a haircut that did not best exhibit his foxiness. The dialogue was not nearly as clever as the action. The chemistry between Statham and the female lead was a bit unconvincing, and worse still, we don't get to see anything in the way of NC-17 bedroom shenanigans. However, perverts like me will be vindicated, because later in the movie Statham uses his shirt to incapacitate some baddies and spends a bunch of time fighting topless. Schulze, in my opinion, is a good actor for playing bad guys…he has a Stephen Dorff-esque charisma. However, I think he plays a better asshole than a true villain, and I enjoyed his smaller part in The Fast and the Furious more than this role.

Of course I couldn't post this without sourcing a clip (and a long one, as it turns out) that features Jason Statham fighting Matt Schulze…at least at the start. Then to make up for the lack of Schulze, Statham gets his shirt off and rolls about in a puddle of oil. No, really! Watch and see.

Thrusty Thursday: Jason Statham

I have been in the dark on this one! I haven't seen Jason Statham in a film since around 2003, which is when I watched both Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch in a single weekend. And even then I didn't really register who he was.

Then the other week I was working on a blog post for my erotica-writing alter ego, celebrating a new sale in my favorite, narcissistic author way—playing Fantasy Casting Couch. It's the shameless outside-of-your-head version of a game many authors and readers play, which consists of casting the books we write and read with familiar (usually celebrity) faces. For me, it makes animating the movie that plays in my head while I write easier. The celebrities usually fade away once I get to know my characters inside-out, but I love hearing what familiar faces other authors picked to envision their heroes and heroines, to see if their vision was anything like mine. It usually isn't. I also love hearing who readers cast as my own characters. Matt Damon as Flynn? Really?

Anyway, I was Googling "action movie star" in a frantic attempt to cast one of the book's male leads, and wouldn't you know it, Jason Statham popped right up! I knew his name from panting tweets bandied about by my contemporaries, but I didn't really know what he looked like. Lo and behold, he is three kinds of nonstandard sextasticalz—balding, hairy-chested, and over forty. I have no issue with any of those things, and bundle them all together and slap a British accent and a six-pack on that shit…for swoon! And he used to be a commercial diver? And he was in a movie set in a prison?! Where have you been all my life? The anti-hero I was attempting to cast (who, serendipitously enough, is a commercial diver) isn't balding or British, but Statham's face alone, with that charmingly, gruffly smug expression, was enough for me to shout, "You're hired! Here's your trailer. Would you like a relaxing massage? Go ahead, take off your shirt."

While doing the half-assed research I always dedicate to this feature, I noticed he's in a movie with Jet Li, called War. I'm hoping this means it involves a modicum of Kung Fu, as I plan to watch it tonight while drinking too much wine then run an overdue Friday Night Fu Review for it tomorrow. For now, I will leave you with this, a quick clip I picked simply because when I see the word "training" my brain goes blank. Enjoy:

I Cheat for Jogglers

Right when Meager March began, I admitted that I would be cheating. Abstaining from frivolous purchases for myself alone isn't too hard, but denying myself activities with my manfriend or family or friends feels like a false economy. I also promised I'd fess up when I did cheat, which is what brings me to this post.

Today my manfriend and I went to a showing at the Salem Film Fest. I bravely resisted the concessions, so with the ticket price, my non-sanctioned frivolous purchases currently total:

$10.00

But it was completely worth it. We saw a screening of Breaking and Entering, a joyful and eccentric documentary about Guinness World Record chasers and breakers. The director, Benjamin Fingerhut, was there, so we got to enjoy a Q&A with him afterward as well. It's a charming and hilarious film that features perhaps a dozen people—a handful of them in-depth—as they pursue their record-setting dreams, battle their rivals, and go for the glory.

My favorite story within the film was the rivalry between the two world champion jogglers (they run marathons while juggling three balls), Michal Kapral and Zach Warren. It should be amazing enough to finish a national marathon in thirteenth place overall, let alone to do so while juggling. I also enjoyed the various pursuits of Ashrita Furman, the man who currently holds the Guinness World Record for holding the most Guinness World Records (108; among them, running while balancing a milk bottle on his head, slicing the most apples in mid-air with a Samurai sword, and hula-ing the largest hula hoop). An awesome doco, and surprisingly emotional.

I can't recommend this movie enough. If you have a chance to watch it, do so! For now, check out its charming trailer: