Fasten your seatbelts, folks, the Bad Movie of the Week is back with a vengeance! (And yes, clichéd phrases are crucial to the BMotW experience). This weekend’s visit from Will included three features, one each from the bountiful genres of martial arts, science fiction, and grindhouse. Today we look at our martial arts movie, a little number by the same team that would go on to make the similarly bad U.S. Seals:

Lethal Ninja (1993)

Plot: Despite the obvious criticisms to be made, the movie picks a plot and sticks to it. No, the plot doesn’t make any sense. But somehow you’re left feeling that it could have made sense, if you had just been taking slightly more drugs. Keanu Reeves’ low-budget cousin, Ross Kettle, plays a meditation teacher who learns his scientist wife has been kidnapped by thugs in a small African country. The thugs have been poisoning the water in the country — here’s where you might want to start taking the drugs — in order to grab power by playing off the fear of an ancient prediction by Nostradamus, and kidnap the attractive blonde scientist to force her to give them an even more dangerous microbe.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Ross can’t swoop in to save the day without first recruiting the help of his obligatory reluctant black martial-arts friend, who then proceeds to crack jokes about Africa the whole movie. But hey, he doesn’t die at the end, which is pretty incredible in itself.

Best quote: Bad delivery is of course essential to many movies in this genre. The older scientist who dies at the beginning didn’t die soon enough to spare us an abominably bad performance full of lame lines like “We’ve got no time for visitors, tell them to go away!” The hero’s scientist wife, Dominique, is even worse. She delivers every line with a stunted urgency that kills any dramatic tension. Finally, plenty of lines just come out of nowhere to advance the plot: “We better check out that old fort.” What? Why?

Most implausible moment: The world is full of brilliant women scientists and certainly even many blonde ones. Dominique is not one of them. Her characterization as a scientist starts and ends with a lab coat and the line (upon mixing a test tube of liquid with a water sample) “It’s not changing color!” She spends the rest of the movie wearing ridiculously high shorts and throwing off lame, defiant lines to express her unconvincing outrage at her captivity. Also, even if she is a pretty mediocre scientist, she should be able to escape from an unguarded hotel room full of windows when given days to do so, right?

That’s not really the most implausible part of the movie. But most of the implausibility is just a result of misplaced expectations on our part. For instance, the ninja swords visibly bounce off their victims — but that’s only silly if you expect the swords to be made of sharp steel, instead of ninja rubber. The enemy ninjas stand guard with their backs to entrances and remain oblivious to sound and movement in their immediate surroundings, but that’s because they’re listening to Whitney Houston on their ninja Walkmen. And so on.

Final score: 2 (6 is worst). This includes a half-point “Rollerskating Ninjas” bonus so take that into consideration — it’s a 2.5 otherwise. But still, this was a quite enjoyable movie.

The first step was to build three additional walls, one solid wall to display the large map of the island and other information and the remaining two fitted with windows that open during the day to give a stunning view over the port. Once these walls were completed, the team turned its efforts to building the counter, which stood about 120 cm (4 ft) high and ran 3.5 m (11 ft) along the front and 3.5 m (11 ft) along the side to enclose the office space. This counter and the built-in desk behind it required thoughtful planning and careful, precise carpentry work on the part of the students. Finally, the finishing details could be put into place: a half-height door for the office space and awning windows across the front of the counter to secure the office at night.

The pavilion was handed over to the community with the rough carpentry work completed. Our local partners will finish painting the interior and will add details of their choosing, such as a set of aluminum doors, pulleys to operate the awning windows, three glass display windows to show products of the island, and an interior finished floor.

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent six weeks as a summer program leader in Guadeloupe for VISIONS Service Adventures. It was great! The work was very intense and often stressful, but it was worth it to experience a new and special place alongside a great group of staff and participants.

(Bilan is the French word for assessment or report and in Guadeloupe it also referred to our group debriefing and sharing session, held every other day.)

Read on for more pictures and words!

The Good:

It was a summer of new experiences. Aside from a trip to Belize when I was thirteen, I’d never been to the Caribbean before. Guadeloupe is part of the ‘DOM-TOM’ — France’s overseas departments and territories. I had just spent seven months in the southwest of France, but Guadeloupe is very different. Almost everyone speaks both French and Creole fluently, and we learned Creole expressions regularly — pa ni pwoblem!, the catch-all phrase, like the Aussie no worries!, or ka ou fé? ça va?

Guadeloupe is tropical, and that means wonderful fruit, excellent beaches, lots of sun, amazing scenery, and a very relaxed way of life. On a small island far from any supermarkets, we lived among goats, chickens, fruit trees, and other elements of Guadeloupean life. There were fruits we knew, like mango and passion fruit, and ones we didn’t, like corossol (soursop) and pomme malacca (Malay Apple). The fruits were fresh and overabundant, so Pierrette made juice of mango, guava, and corossol.

Our island had one main road, two towns, five small ports for fishing boats and one dock for ferries, three hiking trails, and two or three frequented beaches. Hiking into the steep, uninhabited center of the island, one comes across wild fruits, goats, and spectacular views over the neighboring islands and the sea. There are a couple of bars, two or three restaurants, a library, police station, fire station, city hall, two internet cafés, small corner stores, and about 1,000 residents. People know when they see us that the saison des Américains (American season) is here, and they smile and say Bonjour on the street. It’s hot, so, like most of the locals, we end our workday around noon — although we begin work only around 7am, not 5 or 6, like they do. (I’ll post separately about our service projects.)

We were lucky to have a great group of kids participating in the program. They were smart, upbeat, and outgoing, and quickly made friends among the local kids and teenagers. They had lots of opportunities to speak French, both in these informal interactions and in the context of worksites, internships, and dinner stays with families on the island. They got to experience local music, particularly through our in-house band Melody Vice, and local food. Thanks to the great group, the summer went very well.

The Bad:

Work was tough! To be clear, it wasn’t bad, but it was a lot of responsibility and stress. We had to deal with a lot of complications and unexpected difficulties in order to make the summer as fun and seamless as possible. In part, it felt like being the parent to 25 children, with all the accompanying issues: lost passports, illness, injuries, general mayhem. The logistics were the hardest part, living as we were on an isolated small island, doing business in French, and working with unfamiliar systems and limited resources. As the carpenter I struggled constantly to get tools and materials ordered and delivered on time, to coordinate drivers and other support, and to keep our projects on track.

We worked hard, made some mistakes, and found local friends who could help us, and in the end the summer was very successful. Our two toughest projects, the carpentry project and the mural, both made great progress. When it rained, or when the schedule unexpectedly changed, we found other things to do, and the kids were very positive about it.

The Ugly:

These freaking things!

More:

A couple of people on the trip were dedicated enough to blog through it! Check ‘em out: Jackie  |  Rose

I’m lucky to have found an excellent summer job, one that will take me back out of the country for about 5 weeks this summer. I’m heading to Guadeloupe, a French island in the Caribbean, as a trip leader with a program called VISIONS Service Adventures. VISIONS runs community service programs for teens that blend volunteer work, cultural immersion and adventure.

Here’s some information from VISIONS’ own website:

In Guadeloupe, we’ll be living in a fishing village on the small island of Terre-de-Bas. Our service projects may include renovating public buildings, paving walkway,  landscaping, and trail maintenance. Participants will work with young children at the local library and apprentice with fishermen, sorbet vendors, and local craftsmen.

Hiking is our frequent past-time, usually ending at a beach. The trails lacing Terre de Bas lead to gorgeous vistas overlooking the sea and unspoiled coves. We ferry to Terre-de-Haut to tour the shops and to the mainland where we tour marketplaces alive with madras plaids and hike to La Soufriere volcano, natural parks and nature preserves through rainforests and to mountain waterfalls. We snorkel, kayak and scuba dive. We learn Zouk and Gwoka (Creole for “big drum”), the dancing and persistent drumming that “underpins the island’s musical tradition, like the solid wood of a table beneath a fancy dinner service.

I’ll be somewhat out of touch until I return to the US at the beginning of August, but you can reach me by email until then.

Dans la langue de Molière :

J’ai de la chance d’avoir trouvé un super job d’été en Guadeloupe, et donc je repars à l’étranger pour cinq semaines de plus. Si tu ne connais pas bien les DOM-TOM, la Guadeloupe est un archipel français situé dans la mer des Caraïbes. Je vais être un des responsables d’un groupe de lycéens américains qui partent pour faire du bénévolat, découvrir la culture, et vivre une grande aventure avec VISIONS Service Adventures, une association américaine.

Here are a few of the expressions I have picked up over the past 5 months. Disclaimer: some of these might be particular to parts of France; I live in the southwest, but other regions might have different expressions.

Pas de souci(s) – No worries / no problem. –Désolé d’être un peu en retard. –Pas de souci!

Pas terrible – (From the familiar meaning of ‘terrible’ – great, awesome) Not great, crappy; C’est pas terrible – That sucks. Il pleuvait tout le week-end? C’est pas terrible, ça.

Nickel – Awesome, great, perfect, fantastic; C’est nickel ~ Good as gold. –Ça va? –Nickel.

Tu m’étonnes – No kidding. (not necessarily sarcastic, just agreeing with an obvious statement.) –C’est pas facile de se déplacer dans les Landes sans une caisse (une voiture). –Tu m’étonnes.

Péter un plomb – To go crazy, (lit.) to blow a fuse. Quand elle a entendu que son copain a été infidèle, je croyais qu’elle allait péter un plomb!

Se la péter / se la jouer – To show off, to vaunt something. Oui, il joue bien, mais il se la pète trop!

Additions will probably follow. And corrections are welcome!

Sample usage:

Vincent: “So, class, what did you do this weekend?”

Student: “Zees weekend, I go to zee nightbox. I have drink lot.”

Nightbox is simply a too-literal (yet somehow wonderful) translation of la boîte de nuit (nightclub).

Since, according to their accounts, my students’ lives are primarily occupied by two activities — (1) drinking and (2) sleeping — if I can get them to talk correctly about those things, I’ll have to consider it a success.

Here’s the view from the slopes:

Ha! ha! Of course I’m just joking. That’s only what it looked like for, say, 90% of the day. Depending on where you were on the mountain, it was either foggy, snowing/sleeting, or foggy and snowing/sleeting. This is what it looked like for the remaining time:

The menu: Fried chicken, potato salad, cole slaw, green beans, and biscuits. I went with a fairly Southern meal; I’d thought about trying barbecue, in fact, but decided fried chicken would be more practical, at least at first. To drink we made good old-fashioned Southern sweet tea.

In the end, surprisingly (given my cooking abilities) everything turned out very well. The French people were excited to find out that American food is more than just hamburgers and fries.

For dessert, the French people were adamant that they wanted pancakes, although I tried to explain that they would be better as a breakfast. Eventually I succumbed to the pressure. Florian made the batter and Séverine and Cécile cooked the pancakes and I must say they turned out quite well. We had them with maple syrup (quite exotic in France), apple sauce, and bananas.

Et voilà! Doing my part to fatten the French up. In the end, although I’ve never cooked most of those things before, we pulled it all off, and it was a great feeling to be able to share a little bit of my culture.

See the full set on Flickr.