Extreme Sports Archives | Otaku No Culture

Blazing Fists or Blue Fight, Takashi Miike’s Latest Is No Bloodsport!

Takashi Miike brings flashes of his trademark energy to Blazing Fists, but this sports drama works better once its gangland edge takes over. While uneven in pacing and emotional payoff, the film still lands a solid message about friendship and brotherhood.

Blazing Fists Movie Poster Well GO USA

Although Takashi Miike is best known for his gonzo work in films like Full Metal Yakuza, and his lighter fantasy fare like The Great Yokai War, I was curious to see how he would handle extreme sports in Blue Fight: The Breaking Down of Young Blue Warriors. In North America, this movie is retitled Blazing Fists and it could have easily become a vanity project for mixed martial artist Mikuru Asakura, but instead it centres on Ikuto (Danhi Kinoshita), a young man with very little to hold onto and even more to lose.

After defending Ryoma (Kaname Yoshizawa) in a street fight, Ikuto quickly forms a bond with him. The two become fast friends and begin chasing a shared dream of appearing on the televised competition Breaking Down. A cameo from Asakura helps fuel that ambition, and soon both young men are fighting for a chance to be seen.

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Is Dzhanik Fayziev’s Cosmoball a Grand Slam?

With this Michael Bay style popcorn flick, it’s best to turn your brain off and try not to ask too many questions. This work is a sensory experience and it looks gorgeous when upscaled to 4K.

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Well GO USA
Available to order or stream online on Amazon USA

The Russian made film, Cosmoball is out, and will it score a home run? Technically, the game is a high tech spin of rugby, and anyone familiar with the cartoon Galactik Football to which this film is based on will recognize a few ideas.

Dzhanik Fayziev, Andrey Rubanov, Drew Row and Twister Murchison are the screenwriters of this campy science fiction superhero epic, and it’s a doozy of a tale. This work crams in three different story threads. Some of it is inspired from recognizable sources: Bloodbowl (the Games Workshop miniature battle game) mixed in with Quidditch for the sport, Farscape for the world setting and the Avengers franchise for the big bad. Cherno can be related to Thanos; he drives the plot in his desire to escape prison.

Anton (Georgiy Bestaev) is this film’s protagonist and he can teleport. He realizes his abilities after an accident and he gets recruited for this intergalactic game. The fate of his home planet is at stake, and he has to learn how to play well with others.

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[VFF ’15] Sunshine Superman Flies High with Inspiration, A Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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4:30pm Feb 7
9:45pm Feb 10
Odeon Theatre

The art of free-falling as an extreme sport can be dangerous. When done right, the euphoria experienced might be like that of experiencing heaven shine upon one’s face like a bright sparkling diamond. Sunshine Superman is an aptly titled documentary about Carl Boenish, the father of BASE jumping. His work in the 70’s and 80’s helped further interest amongst the masses, and the challenges he faced typically meant disobeying the law. Not everyone in enforcement liked the idea of miscreants breaking into buildings or climbing high mountaintops only to leap off it.

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