Kung Fu

Whoa Nelly! A widescreen extravaganza of balletic action, wild kung fu fights and intoxicating special effects, The New Legend of Shaolin is a whirlwind of martial-arts movie magic. The great Jet Li stars as a Ching Dynasty warrior who, with his 8-year-old son (the fierce-faced Tse Miu), battles endless onslaughts of evil Manchus. Father and son meet up with a mother-daughter con-artist team, and the four of them band together with five pint-sized kung fu masters. These kick-boxing kids are tattooed with portions of a map that, when assembled, reveals a hidden trove of treasure.

Food: Vegan Vietnamese, starring banh mi hoagies ($4-$5) and rice noodles ($5), both starring deliciously fake (soy protein) chicken, ham and beef, dressed in cilantro, homemade pickles, coconut and/or jalapeños. Find it: For now, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 33rd and Chestnut; Saturday-Sunday at Clark Park, 43rd and Baltimore. Look for: A hand-painted hotdog cart with a red umbrella and kung fu trimmings. Eat on: The grass, or standing by a tall table balanced on milk crates.

'The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past," the blind Master Po advised the earnest Grasshopper. A lot of the viewers were more concerned with getting rid of the seeds (and stems) as they watched Kung Fu, a trailblazing series that debuted in 1972. A western with a hero who had no gun and no horse, and carried his boots slung over his shoulder, Kung Fu told the story of Caine, a Shaolin priest who journeyed barefoot between adventures, spouting aphorisms such as "To go anywhere, begin by taking the first step.

The Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival gets an action infusion today with "The East Is Red," a thoroughly wacky kung fu epic in the tradition of the commercial, crowd-pleasing, Hong Kong school. Which is to say that it's often incomprehensible. The helpful synopsis tells us that "The East is Red" is part three of a trilogy about a creature known as Asia the Invincible, a demon warrior who castrated himself in order to obtain super powers - including the ability to kill people with needlepoint accessories.

THE FIRST clue that Stephen Fung's "Tai Chi Zero" is not your usual kung-fu kickfest is when our hero - Yang Lu Chan (Yuan Xiaochao) - is introduced on a 19th century Chinese battlefield to the strains of heavy metal. And then, for several minutes that follow, it becomes a silent film complete with title cards. This is just a taste of the cross-cultural steampunk/ martial arts/ comic-book Sino-Anglo mash-up that makes "Tai Chi Zero" so visually entertaining. But, unless you're a die-hard fan of Chinese action films, its considerable charms - "Tai Chi Zero" is littered with in-jokes and references to other movies - may prove exhausting before its relatively brief 95-minute run time is over.

Despite all those Bruce Lee (or is it Bruce Li?) movies popping up like weeds on the UHF stations in town nowadays, there are many who insist that the true Golden Age of martial arts on TV ended 10 1/2 years ago. The apocalypse responsible for such cynicism was the cancellation of "Kung Fu" - the TV series in which the Old East met the Old West in the form of Kwai Chang Caine (played by David Carradine), a half-Asian, half-American vagrant who wandered through the lawless American frontier mumbling platitudes about non- violence and air-mailing foot sandwiches to anyone who disagreed with him. Well, weep no more, fellow pilgrims.

Steve Schiavo wore a visor, sneakers and a T-shirt Saturday at the Central Bucks West Relays. Not the typical attire for the Pennsbury pole vaulter. Schiavo, a senior, was there to support his team and work on his tan on the sunny afternoon. He has emerged as one of the Falcons' top pole vaulters, but had to sit out because of a groin injury. He did not pull a muscle at track practice, though. The injury occurred while he was practicing kicks during kung fu, a class he has taken for 11 years.

"The Matrix" is about a war between oppressed humans and a hidden enemy fought with perception-altering software on a battleground of psychic projections. Yet despite the availability of such astonishing technology, both sides agree: We'll settle this with kung fu and guns. It's an attitude that suits "The Matrix," a loud, expensive-looking movie with the mind of a ambitious sci-fi epic and the soul of a Hong Kong action flick. It almost could have been made by two people.

OK, martial-arts experts: Which pithy, yet fundamentally revealing, homily is not uttered by the inscrutable Kwai Chang Caine in the first 10 minutes of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues? (1) To achieve victory, one must get inside the skin of his opponent. (2) When your enemy is weak, you must make him strong. (3) Never squash a grasshopper. It could be your grandfather. The answer, of course, is No. 3 - a concept so universally known and understandable to fans of the old Kung Fu that it goes without saying, even among the most deliciously obvious claptrap of this campy revival of a camp TV classic (8 tonight on Channel 17)

Verrone Romeoletti shoved his favorite movie, Hercules, into the VCR. A maiden in a runaway carriage screamed for help, and suddenly the camera shifted to a man pulling a giant oak tree from the earth with his bare arms. He lifted the tree high over his head and hurled it into the horses' path, bringing them to a halt. "When I saw this the first time," explained Romeoletti, recalling his childhood, "I said, 'What the hell!' This made a difference in my life. He had so much power, but he cared.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH Unsung heroine Moonstone Art Center wraps up its commemoration of the life and accomplishments of antilynching crusader, suffragist, journalist and speaker Ida B. Wells with a discussion of the relationship between 19th-century lynching and modern-day capital punishment. Criminal defense attorney Michael Coard, Witness to Innocence activist Shujaa Graham and others to speak. Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square, 2 p.m. Sunday, free, 215-735-3456, moonstoneartscenter.org.

THE FIRST clue that Stephen Fung's "Tai Chi Zero" is not your usual kung-fu kickfest is when our hero - Yang Lu Chan (Yuan Xiaochao) - is introduced on a 19th century Chinese battlefield to the strains of heavy metal. And then, for several minutes that follow, it becomes a silent film complete with title cards. This is just a taste of the cross-cultural steampunk/ martial arts/ comic-book Sino-Anglo mash-up that makes "Tai Chi Zero" so visually entertaining. But, unless you're a die-hard fan of Chinese action films, its considerable charms - "Tai Chi Zero" is littered with in-jokes and references to other movies - may prove exhausting before its relatively brief 95-minute run time is over.

In an era of fashionista rappers with gangsta attitude, such as Nicki Minaj and Azealia Banks, it's awesome — even necessary — that Eve make her return. At 33, Philly's self-proclaimed "pit bull in a skirt" can show up any of her imitators. She proved as much during an intimate (200 people) gig Wednesday at Fishtown's funky Kung Fu Necktie. From her earliest days as one of the Ruff Ryders to her own pop-hop hits ("Who's That Girl?") and a klatch of smash collaborations with Gwen Stefani, Eve was always the queen of swagger.

'W e're at an administrative disadvantage but also a creative advantage," says the Spinto Band's Nick Krill. Krill and Thomas Hughes, the Delaware sextet's two principal songwriters and vocalists, are in a Wilmington coffee shop talking about the launch of their new label, Spintonic Recordings, and self-releasing and self-producing Shy Pursuit, their third official album. History is complicated for the Spinto Band. Their first album was really their seventh or eighth, and their new album is actually more than a year old. By the time they put out Nice and Nicely Done in 2006, they had been making records in their basement for years, although few were formally released.

Food: Vegan Vietnamese, starring banh mi hoagies ($4-$5) and rice noodles ($5), both starring deliciously fake (soy protein) chicken, ham and beef, dressed in cilantro, homemade pickles, coconut and/or jalapeños. Find it: For now, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 33rd and Chestnut; Saturday-Sunday at Clark Park, 43rd and Baltimore. Look for: A hand-painted hotdog cart with a red umbrella and kung fu trimmings. Eat on: The grass, or standing by a tall table balanced on milk crates.

Your TV hates you. How do I know? It's never there when you need it. Seriously, wouldn't you like some entertainment on a Saturday night? Ha! Let's take a gander at what the networks are offering this week, shall we? ABC starts off with Wipeout , its painful pratfall game show. Literally adding insult to injury, it's a repeat. In fact, the night has become such a den of reruns, it'll save us time just to list the original programming. To wit: back-to-back Cops on Fox, 48 Hours Mystery on CBS, and The Firm on NBC. In other words, two series that always seem like repeats anyway and a third - The Firm - that NBC has given up on and is merely burning off the episodes already paid for. I know, I know, there are a thousand other options out there.

Baltimore-based singer/songwriter Cass McCombs is renowned for his bleak, urbane lyrics and melancholy musicality. There's a cool sense of distance to some of his saddest, smartest songs. There's ambition beneath the laconic surface, though. McCombs is driven enough to have released two albums in 2011, Humor Risk and Wit's End ; energetic enough to write complicated, cosmopolitan, humorous songs that plumb valuable emotional depths; and calculating enough to plan a wildly entertaining tour with one-man-jug-band opening act Frank Fairfield.

THE BOX-OFFICE record for a movie directed by a woman stands at $663 million. Can you name the director? If you guessed Nancy Meyers or Nora Ephron, you can be congratulated for knowing the name of a commercially successful female director. But you are incorrect. You are also incorrect if you guessed Catherine Hardwicke, of "Twilight" fame ($392 million), or Betty Thomas, whose "Alvin and the Chipmunks" sequel grossed $443 million. You'd be very well informed, but still wrong, if you guessed Phyllida Lloyd, the British lass who directed the movie version of "Mamma Mia" ($609 million)

In a black shirt and pants with a white suit jacket and red pocket square, his hair upswept in a cross between a mohawk and a James Brown pompadour, JC Brooks could have stepped onto the stage of Kung Fu Necktie right out of a time machine. But while the songs that Brooks and his four-piece band, the Uptown Sound, played Thursday drew heavily on sweat-drenched 1960s soul, it didn't have the studied feel of a revival act. Aficionados of Stax and Motown had plenty to make them groove, but so did fans of the forgotten alternative rock band Luscious Jackson, whose song "Naked Eye" turned up in the middle of the set-opening "I Can See Everything.

Kung Fu Panda 2 Reviewed for: Xbox 360 (Kinect required); Alternate versions available for: PlayStation 3, Wii, Nintendo DS From: Griptonite Games/THQ ESRB Rating: Everyone 10-plus (cartoon violence) Price: $50 Games based on kids' movies have enjoyed a pleasantly unexpected surge in quality and attention over the last few years, and based on THQ's diverse array of Kung Fu Panda 2 offerings - four dramatically different games, tailored to their respective systems - it's a trend that will continue.