All Japan Disguise Grand Prix
This impossibly cool video appeared at Metafilter today. It is from a Japanese TV show called, as best as I can translate, (Joe, maybe you will see this and help?), All Japan Disguise Grand Prix. When we were in Japan, we saw that show on TV! It is the best show ever. Teams of people, I’m pretty sure they’re all amateurs, go on and perform various amazing skits and stunts that must have been painstakingly crafted and practiced for months. They mostly employ some sort of trick or gimmick or costume or optical illusion, it’s kind of hard to explain. Some are more artsy, some are very abstract, and some are just plain weird. Here’s the one that won the episode we saw. Does that give you a better idea of what it’s like?
There was another one we saw where they set up a bowling alley, with people as bowling pins. A guy bowled himself down the alley (he started as a regular person standing up, but as he went through the bowling motion he very smoothly pulled a black sheet over himself and rolled up in a ball and rolled down the alley) and struck the “pins”. They flew everywhere in a very natural motion. Then, they “paused” and “rewound” the action. The people acted out the pins flying back into place, and the guy rolled himself back up the alley, unfolding from a ball position, back to standing up. They did it again forwards and backwards a few times at different speeds, and with some freeze-frames, but always exactly the same. There were little flourishes like one of the pins flying away, and one last pin staying standing and another pin spinning on the ground to knock it over. All acted out by people in costumes.
As far as I can tell, Japanese TV is about 10,000 times better than ours. TV in Taiwan was mostly lame, except of course for PUPPET KUNG FU.
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Use your powers to find a version that actually plays properly. I have only been able to view a choppy 48 seconds worth.
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Here\’s a regular WMV version of the ping pong video, I think it is more likely to work:
http://www.iritor.com/~amoe/kin10.wmv
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Yup…it works fine. Very cool video.
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more puppet kung fu please!!!
(Kung Fu Thunderbirds are Go!)
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The company that makes the puppet kung fu is called Pili, here\’s their home page:
http://www.pili.com.tw/
English version:
http://www.pili.com.tw/en/
They also made a movie (which is what that was a trailer for). Movie home page:
http://movie.pili.com.tw/
I bought a copy of the movie (Legend of the Sacred Stone) in Taiwan, but it is not in English. I know that a subtitled version exists, and has been shown at film festivals, but I don\’t know if it\’s for sale anywhere. If you find it, let me know!
If you live near a chinatown, you might try going in video stores and asking if they have any Taiwan \”bu dai shi\” (puppet play). But, I bet it\’s sufficiently specialized and rare that you won\’t be able to find it. You\’re just going to have to go to Taiwan yourself! There you can buy or rent VCDs of all the puppet kung fu shows that have played over the years. Oh, and you\’ll have to learn how to read Chinese, or speak Taiwanese.
Good luck!