traceurs and paper projectiles

Banlieue 13 (District B13), with David Belle (founder of parkour) and Cyril Raffaelli. As much as I was disappointed there wasn't more parkour, I was of course impressed by what there was in the movie. Tangentially, I love how more and more martial arts movies seem to be forgoing wire work and relying on the real, true physical ability of the actors. To me, B13 is a short story kind of a movie (as opposed to those movies which are based on short stories but which go on for several hours) and utilizes that kind of shortened-story feel to keep from taking itself too seriously. It's interesting as a text if read along with French current events and politics, on a completely different note, and might even be read as kind of a post-cyberpunk text in that regard. And yes, that is a technical literary term, actually...hm, which even fits this story quite nicely, in fact. One other thing of interest to me was that as much as enjoy the sound of the French language, it's kind of hard for me to take it seriously when they try to use it for 'gangsta' or 'badass' talk - even the lowest of the thugs seemed somewhat erudite and learned when they were threatening people in French.

So, after making a little origami blow-up box to throw at the back of Lisa's head, a thought occurred to me. That is, I think the blow up boxes are interesting in a kind of....ah, semiotic? Symbolic way, maybe? I'm not sure how to put it. I've got this plain, well, plane of paper in front of me. Then I start folding it in upon itself, more and more, making it smaller, imploding it, and finally tucking it into itself. Then I take space itself, as it were, and insert it in the middle of that folded plane, and poof! It's suddenly a kind of cube. There's got to be some metaphysical meaning there, though I haven't figured out what, yet. So: off the box goes, to bop a Mexican on the head.

-there's some pretty good insults in this note, 10 points to the Cossacks