Kung Fu Panda

Mark Osborne and John Stevenson's Kung Fu Panda kicks and chops and punches and blocks to the tune of the traditional comedic structure. Within we have Po (Jack Black), a tenderly rowdy Panda who dreams of becoming a revered warrior but spends his days working for his father as a culinary jack of all trades. A group of kung fu warriors lives on the mountain above and one day Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim) has a vision that villain (and former student) Tai Lung (Ian McShane) will escape from prison (which holds 1000 guards exclusively for him), unleashing an unforgiving campaign of torment in his pursuit of the Dragon Scroll. To counter, he believes that the Dragon Warrior must be chosen and trained for it is predicted that only her or his power will be strong enough to overcome Tai Lung's. Through serendipitous circumstances, Po is chosen to be said Dragon Warrior although Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) holds sincere reservations. His training begins none to soon for after Tai Lung breaks free from his chains and defeats the Furious Five, only Po's ingenuous determination can save the citizens of Peace Valley below.

The film's funny and smart, its comedic timing stylistically aligned with its animated martial arts sequences. The structure's a bit haywire, however, which led to a bit of a crisis insofar as I was initially expecting a specific pattern which didn't coalesce yet was still disappointed with the unexpected results (what I was expecting would have required an additional 20 to 30 minutes which likely explains why it was cut). The problem lies with the Dragon Scroll. The Dragon Scroll can only be read by the Dragon Warrior yet when Po reads it he has not attained the heights of Dragon Warriosity. The Dragon Scroll holds the secrets to unlimited power and it makes more sense that the chosen one would refuse its gift, finding personal strength in the acknowledgements of their limitations (and the maintenance of the legend which supports them). Po certainly doesn't want to read it but he does much to the fury of rival Tai Lung. Tai Lung and Po both have father figures and their relationships are established in opposition: while Po generally supports his father, Tai Lung viciously subverts his. Due to Po's support, his father rewards him by letting him know his soup's secret ingredient; Tai Lung receives no such knowledge. That very same secret ingredient provides Po with the wisdom required to understand the Dragon Scroll and suddenly become a hero, even though he should have never been given the damn Scroll, but, in the tradition of Richard Lester's Superman II we find a hero that's just plain and simply a go**-d*&^ hero once she or he realizes it.

And then they kick ass (although it's unlikely that afterwards Po lives for an entire year off only the dew from one ginkgo biloba leaf and the energy of the universe).

Be Kind Rewind

In Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind, two down on their luck eccentric individuals decide it's time to sabotage a local power plant. Jerry (Jack Black) is convinced that the government is using that power plant to manipulate minds, and, ironically enough, after Mike (Mos Def) abandons him during the act, a bolt of electromagnetic something or other blasts him, magnetizing his brain. Which wouldn't be all that bad, but Mike works at Be Kind Rewind, a struggling video store in New Jersey which only has two months to bring its building up to code and avoid demolition. Jerry's new brain erases all of Be Kind's inventory, leaving them with only one way to get around bothering vacationing store owner Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) with the bad news: create their own home videos as quickly as they can and supply them to their customers as alternative versions (what they call "sweded") of their favourite films. At first the idea seems ludicrous, but as Ghostbusters, Robocop, and Rush Hour II come off without a hitch, their revolutionary idea pulls ahead full-throttle.

Be Kind Rewind seems ridiculous but its intellectual salute to forms of disenfranchised discourse demonstrates how the poor can take back the means of production and forge for themselves a dignified existence, where their insights and means of expression matter (a manifestation of what Žižek refers to as 'The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime'). It’s slightly off-beat but ludicrously effectively, emphasizing the value of friendship and the benefits of creativity.