tonight's training session; The Martial Arts Movie Archive Mash-up...a cut'n'paste concise history of chop socky through the 20th century
...from the experimental shorts at the birth of cinema, the swashbuckling silent era, Japan's classic Chanbara period, China's Golden age of Wuxia, the global icon of Kung Fu Bruce Lee, the stuntmen who followed in his shadow, the western pretenders, the explosion of Ninja video nasties and the fight arrangers who now dominate the world of action cinema in the digital age...

plus, up for discussion The Tale Of Zatoichi (1962) Kenji Misumi's classic story starring the incomparable Shintaro Katsu as the blind vagrant dragged into a Yakuza conflict, featuring Shigeru Amachi as a noble Ronin doomed to fight for a dishonourable cause, this is the unasuming start of the monumental 26 film series about the flawed but fascinating wandering masseur, compulsive gambler and lightning swordsman Zatoichi