This Jackie Chan vehicle marks a departure for it’s star. The crazed stunt work and rhythmic fights scenes that are Chan’s typical signature, while not altogether gone, are a mere echo in this film. Chan exhibits his affable Everyman persona here and while Chan can play this kind of role in his sleep, he has never relied on it to carry a movie.

In fact, he plays a character who actively avoids fighting, running away from conflict or playing dead and nearly every opportunity. Chan has long been plagued by lingering injuries from botched stunts and has stated in interviews that he would like to make the transition to serious actor. Typecasting is a bitch, though. Jackie Chan built his career on action movies and became an international sensation because of them. Language varies, but a kick to the head is universal and falling off of buildings needs no translation. Being the world’s best action star has meant that Chan’s fans are loathe to give up their hero to straight dramas and comedies.

It hasn’t helped that he is obviously slowing down. Chan has passed the half-century mark, long after most athletes have retired. A number of avowed fans want to see Jackie Chan return to the mercurial hard-hitting movies of his heyday rather than the slower American movies dominating his later career. As with favorite bands, they say, the old stuff was better. Chan’s more modern outings may have bigger budgets, better sets, and slicker production values, but they leave a lot of his hardcore fans cold. Just mention The Tuxedo and watch the outrage fly.

I can’t criticize Chan for wanting to shift gears late in his career. I can’t bemoan him for his mortality, that the slowness of age and the desire to live a long life are catching up with him. He has given so much of himself. Not to mention, I owe him for his dedication.

Jackie Chan saved my life.

This, of course, is a lie, but there was a time when his movies felt like a life line.

The time in question was 1994. I was living in Iowa City, IA, having moved there from California to follow my girlfriend only to find out her future plans didn’t include me after all. I was working baker’s hours starting at four in the morning. I was tired to the point of hearing voices that weren’t there and utterly miserable.

This was the year that Kurt Cobain blew his brains out. While not a devout Nirvana fan, I felt my despair resonating with Cobain’s. I wasn’t suicidal, but I was foolhardy. I remember standing outside in a raging spring thunderstorm that the Midwest serves up so well, blinking hard amidst the buckets of water and lightning, daring Thor’s Shotgun to strike me down. A bit dramatic, yes. I was hurt, angry, sad, and exhausted.

I needed to get my mind off of this miserable track. The public library had a huge selection of movies, but my aged VCR was broken. I checked the Yellow Pages for a place to fix it. I called around a few places and finally settled on the closest one from where I lived (at the time, I did not have a driver’s license and was walking everywhere the bus didn’t stop).

The place was improbably called Tofu Hut. It was a video rental store that specialized in indie films, anime, concert bootlegs, cult movies, and foreign films. My VCR was resuscitated by some screws and an elastic band and I was convinced to get a membership while I was at it. So I perused the shelves of videotapes, many with primitive inkjet-printed covers and handwritten descriptive index cards. I settled in a section labelled “Hong Kong Cinema”. One card in particular caught my eye. I don’t remember what it said, but I’ll paraphrase; “Not only does he write, direct, and star in his own movies, but Jackie Chan performs some of the most crazy, death-defying stunts ever committed to cinema. This guy is CRAZY!”

Clearly, I was missing out on something.

The movie in question was Police Story. I picked it thinking I was going to get a dumb, moderately entertaining action movie to keep my mind off of my troubles for the next few hours.

You couldn’t slap the smile off of my face afterwards.

I could feel my heart still racing when I popped the tape out. Did I really see what I just saw? Hanging by an umbrella-handle from a speeding bus? Falling three stories through electrical wiring and glass displays? Fight scenes like a Miles Davis routine?

I had to get more of this.

I went back to the Tofu Hut and found Armour of God, Project A, and Wheels on Meals. I found other filmmakers from Hong Kong, directors like John Woo and Tsui Hark. I found what would become one of my favorite movies of all time; A Chinese Ghost Story.

It really sounds like so little; a clutch of movies from a foreign country keeping the personal demons at bay. I still maintain that Jackie Chan was exactly what I needed during that wet spring thaw in Iowa and why I will always be a fan of his, even when he makes movies like The Tuxedo. By all means, let him become a character actor in the third stage of his career; I’ll still be watching.

Modified from an original photo from Joi Ito under a Creative Commons license.

The number of testimonials to Steve Jobs has been nothing short of amazing, eulogies rarely seen this side of a world leader or pop icon. Major media outlets and humble (ahem) blogs all seem to have something to say regarding Jobs’ passing.

Misunderstandings abound. News outlets breathlessly cite Jobs as an inventor and creator. Reinforcing this are the hundreds of patents owned by Apple with Jobs’ name on them, but all of Apple’s extraordinary products were designed, commissioned, and/or purchased by Apple as a whole. Windows still retains snippets of code written by Bill Gates himself but Jobs was neither an engineer nor a programmer, even with a background in electronics working at HP and Atari.

Jobs often described Apple as being the juncture of technology and liberal arts. It is specifically the performing arts where we can see his genius. Cinema is the best example, dance choreography and stage will often fit as well. The movies may have actors with charisma and star power, but a movies’ success often hinges on the director. The genius of the director is to get the best performances from the actors, choose the best shots from the cinematographers, and have the final say on casting, costuming, and set design. The director is both herding cats and juggling plates when combining the technical expertise of the film crew and the performances of the writers, cast, and soundtrack. The director is relying on the performances of others (with a few exceptions), yet with the good ones, we can always see their fingerprints all over the final product. Consider Alfred Hitchcock (used as part of Apple’s famous “Think Different” ad campaign) who rarely looked through the camera lens when filming, but is one of the most distinctive directors in film history. There is no mistaking a Hitchcock film.

We rarely lionize directors outside of the performing arts or sports teams. Perhaps its because current CEO culture lets mediocre leaders rise to the top with minimal innovation or that the current political climate relies too much on contributions and greased palms to enact much policy. The genius of creating and enabling an environment where creativity thrives in business culture is a lost art.

That is where Jobs’ genius lay; the ability to gather a group of talented people, muster the resources and environment they needed, and coaching them into doing their best work.

It’s strange to get the news now; Jobs was practically eulogized when he stepped down as Apple’s CEO. His passing away seems like a formality.

Jobs’ presence was definitely missed at the iPhone 4S launch yesterday. Tim Cook, Apple’s current CEO, has been an able and affable leader during his short tenure but he lacks the effortless star power of his predecessor. The ads showing off the new iPhone’s digital assistant technology are pure Apple, technology made easy and accessible. This is definitely Job’s influence still at work and one hopes that this vision guides the company for years to come.

Not long after Jobs began his second term at running after, a made-for-tv movie came out regarding the rivalry between himself and Bill Gates. At the time, Gates’s shadow loomed over the tech industry and Job’s influence was considered to be barely a blip. Yet Jobs was the focus of the biopic. The reason was obvious; Jobs has simply lived a more interesting life, even when placed next to the world’s richest man (at the time). Gates is another iconic figure, but Jobs always has had a knack for upstaging people.

I have a small feeling of loss, not deep or crushing, not really what you would call grief, but loss nonetheless. The last time I felt this way was when Jim Henson died.

I typed this post in my iPad.

I dread these times because the truth tends to be an early casualty. Sound bites rule the day and public policy needs to be summed up in the space of a Twitter post or it gets no traction. News outlets forgo educating the public and instead circle the campaigns like predators, waiting for the inevitable gaffe that they can blow up like a grenade. And let’s not forget the money, great tidal waves of money that line pockets and keep the volume at an earth-shaking roar.

Campaigns are won by media time, poise, and narrative. Policy can wait for the winners to hold office.

There is a Twilight Zone quality to these times, a surreality that blankets us. Submitted for your approval; the presidential campaign of Rick Perry. Perry, the current Governor of Texas, is positioning himself as the Republican heir apparent. He is right out of central casting; square-jawed, steely-eyed, impeccably-coiffed (Molly Ivens nicknamed him “Goodhair” in her much-missed columns). He is the Six Million Dollar Man in a tailored suit. And his has just released his first televised campaign ad.

I’m not linking to this. It’s easily found if you’re curious. I’m still scrubbing my eyeballs.

But the bombast! This camapign ad takes it’s cues from summer movie trailers; sweeping orchestral music, fast-moving, blocky typography, rippling flags, and carefully placed imagery of it’s handsome leading man. Perry is running for office to lead a powerful nation under the mantle of a big, dumb action movie.

It pains me to say that this strategy could work and perhaps is working.

It doesn’t matter that Perry is a lousy governor (a quick look at Texas quality-of-life metrics makes this evident). The voting public is badly informed, easily-swayed, and, in this age of recession, in a really bad mood. Once upon a time, I would have thought the public would see right through the theatrics, but I fear the public will prefer the movie version of a president rather than the real thing.

Blog 1.0 was a test to see if I maintain a relatively regular series of posts. I’m not going to grade myself, but I think I did okay. I wanted to do two things; write a personal running commentary on events in my life and engage in taste-making, pointing out to visitors some of the wonderful things on the internet that showed up in my browser. I ended up doing a bit more of the second and while I love blogs that act as a curator, I felt my own attempts were parroting better sites than reflecting me. Because of that, the blog went into hibernation while I pursued other creative outlets.

I wanted to start writing again, but picking up where I left off felt uncomfortable, like trying to squeeze into the pants I wore back in my college days (back then I was as thin as a bamboo reed, today I’m… not). I took a hatchet to my posts, mopped up the stray words, and started painting over the crime scene. The internet might not forget, but it likely won’t mourn either.

So here I am, placeholder graphics hastily-posted while I figure out what shape Version Two is going to be.