Tag: Ninjas

Keanu Reeves had every reason to sound tired but his voice was pulsing with an enthusiasm that was impossible to miss even across a crackling international phone line. “We just wrapped. It was our last day here in Hungary, we’re in Budapest,” Reeves said from the set of “47 Ronin,” the period-piece epic that’s due in theaters in November 2012.  “We had about 34 shooting days here. Then off to England. It’s been amazing so far. Do you know the story of the ’47 Ronin’? It’s a story of honor, revenge and impossible love. It’s famous in Japan.” That’s an understatement. The saga of the 47 ronin is based on 18th century historic events but as the story settled at the center of Japanese consciousness — it’s been described by scholars as ”the national legend” – it was enlarged and embroidered to fit the needs of folklore. And ...

It’s time to sharpen your shurikens and polish up those nunchucks! Yes, Sunday, Dec. 5, is the International Day of the Ninja – a sort of silent-and-deadly counterpart to September’s bleary-sounding Talk Like a Pirate Day. Don’t know how to slow your heart rate? Not ready to punch through steel? Can’t find a high-quality katana? No problem. The first step in tapping your inner ninja is a simple one: You must find your ninja name. YouTube-famous Ask a Ninja, the brainchild of Los Angeles-based improv comedians Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, is here to help you determine your ninja name with tips in an exclusive instructional video made just for you Hero Complex readers. According to Ask a Ninja, creating a ninja name has one rule: You must keep your initials. Other than that, it’s flexible — just like a ninja! You have to look for the ninja who ...

Robert Ebelesays the “The Warrior’s Way” is the wrong path… A master swordsman leaves his homeland of warring clans for the Wild West in the bloody wuxia/shoot-’em-up hybrid “The Warrior’s Way.” But South Korean filmmaker Sngmoo Lee’s debut feature is less a genre-spanning romp than a tiresome lab experiment in computer-generated tropes and green-screen oppressiveness. The human part involves quietly dashing Korean star Jang Dong-Gun as the stoic, blade-wielding nomad Yang, who brings his waylaid enemies’ lone survivor, a baby girl he can’t bring himself to kill, to an American frontier outpost made up mostly of circus workers led by a welcoming ringmaster named Eightball (the always appealing Tony Cox). There Yang takes over a laundry, grows flowers, teaches the spiritual side of knife-throwing to a lipsticked yet still grime-laden Annie Oakley type ( Kate Bosworth, working her own unfortunate ...