![]() ![]() And their other trials, involving spikes and flaming hoops, are seriously badass. ![]() The monks' swordfighting, stick fighting, kickboxking workouts are graceful. This is perhaps the most beautifully choreographed training sequence ever. The warrior monks in this Hong Kong classic put the art in martial arts. But it also includes a song sung by Donny Osmond, (voicing the drill instructor, Shang), the ironic "I'll Make a Man Out of You." Like other martial-arts training sequences, this one involves swordfighting, stick fighting, and lugging around pails of water. Turns out the training montage works just as well in Disney cartoons as in live-action. Here, JCVD's woodenness serves him well, proving he's impervious to pain. Like Luke Skywalker, he has to learn a lot of his skills while blindfolded, including one bizarre segment where he has to serve tea, sightless, while fighting off the occasional blow. The movie that made Jean-Claude Van Damme a star features a lengthy montage where the Belgian kickboxer's character, an American named Frank Dux (yes, an American, just go with it) becomes one of the rare Westerners to learn the fighting techniques used in the Kumite. This last never seems to come in handy back in Gotham City, but it sure looks cool. Haunted by his parents' deaths at the hands of a mugger, future Batman Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) travels to the Himalayas for martial arts training, and who better to teach him than the guy who played Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn? Liam Neeson's Henri Ducard puts Bruce through his paces, teaching him to channel his anger constructively, to treat criminals without mercy, to practice stealth like a ninja, and to survive a swordfight atop an ice-covered lake. The montage includes a lot of slow-motion running, pointless dancing, bro-hugging, and a conspicuous lack of improvement in Coop's muscle tone. The spoof of '80s summer camp movies also includes a spoof of '80s training montages, particularly the one in "Rocky III." Here, lovelorn counselor Coop (Michael Showalter) gets trained, for no particularly good reason, in the "New Way," by psycho Vietnam vet-turned-camp-chef Gene (Christopher Meloni). Bonus style points for conducting her workout in the dark, and to the tune of Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" instead of some inspirational electronica anthem. Jordan O'Neill shaves her head, endures hellish and brazenly sexist hazing, and, in a brief montage, shows off an enviable skill at one-armed push-ups. Training to become the first female Navy SEAL, Demi Moore's Lt. So cue up Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," raise a glass of raw eggs, and drink a toast to the best training montages ever. You know, that staple of feel-good, fist-pumping, sweat-exuding movies, especially from the aerobicized '80s, that shows rapid-cut clips of the star getting in shape or mastering some arcane fighting technique, usually set to some inspirational, synth-heavy anthem.īy the end of that decade, the training montage had become such an overblown cliché that it fell out of favor, which is why we cherish the few new ones that come along and relish the old ones that still make us feel like slackers. ![]() Eventually, as you might guess I wanted at least one song where the tempo relaxed a little and that's the title track but otherwise, buckle up.Ralph Macchio's birthday - he turns 54 on November 4 - reminds us that, not only do we love the Karate Kid, but we love even more a training montage. "Plots, characters, heists, hostages, questionable capers, getaway cars, all that stuff. Bleed Out will be yet another concept album, but its theme lends itself to a bit more intensity: "I got this idea to write a bunch of songs where they were all uptempo mini-action movies," Darnielle writes in a press statement. 19 - provides a bliss-inducingly anthemic payoff. If you're a Mountain Goats fan who's missed the white-knuckle intensity of that earlier work, "Training Montage" - the first single from Bleed Out, which arrives Aug. His catalog is peppered with scream-along anthems like " No Children" and " This Year," but Darnielle has spent the last decade-plus in a mellow mood. ![]() The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle is one of the most gifted and prolific songwriters in the business, but he's settled into an odd paradox: As his subject matter has grown more ambitious and far-flung, with entire concept albums about goths and D&D and wrestlers and whatnot, the music that surrounds him has been polished to a breezy mid-tempo sheen. ![]()
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