The other night I went to see a movie at the Paramount called "Kung Fu Hustle" by Stephen Chow. The movie was part of the SXSW movie festival. The longer I live in Austin the more I dislike SXSW. I guess the film festival isn’t so bad, but the music festival really gets my goat. To make it worse, the only band I went to see, VAZ, cancelled. So anyway, I went to see this Stephen Chow movie with Jessica and Billy Wood. While we were looking for seats, Seth spotted us and handed Billy a DVD copy of most of his short movies. I guess that’s an appropriate thing to do at a movie festival. They say that wearing bizarre clothes is appropriate for artists and film makers; Seth must have been playing a real artist that night, because the outfit he was wearing was totally fucked. He had on overalls and this hat with a wide brim that folded up on both sides and was fastened to the sides of the hat with snaps. He was also wearing rope sandals and a bunch of toe rings.

While we were waiting for the movie to start, Billy diagnosed my girlfriend with a rare illness and we learned that Seth had never seen any Stephen Chow movies. Chow has made a ton of movies, but I’d only seen "Shaolin Soccer" (which you’ve probably heard about) and "Gods of Cookery," which is a story about a wayward kung fu student and kung fu gangs in an Iron-Chef-style universe, where a dish called "exploding pissing beef balls" is the mightiest dish in the land. You have to rent it because it’s fucking amazing. (P.S.—Jessica doesn’t really have anything, it’s just that Billy has recently gone back to school and he thinks he knows a lot.)

Stephen Chow’s movies consist of severe kung fu fighting, Abbot-and-Costello-style, slapstick stunts, Monty Pythonesque absurdity, fart jokes, and the like. Kung Fu Hustle is his best film yet. It spoofs a bunch of recent films, has some high-quality potty humor, and top-notch special effects. The kung fu is fierce. Before the movie started we were told that the movie is going to be released nationally in April. There’s no two ways about it, you have to go see it.

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