Here’s a feature I wrote on a Dambar Kadariya, a Nepalese man who has discovered great reward in taking care of the developmentally disabled.  (Appeared in the New Hampshire Sunday News, 2/21/2010 )

In 2001, Dambar Kadariya won the lottery. He didn’t score $50 million, but, for him, receiving word that he had been one of 50,000, chosen for a Diversity Visa– out of worldwide applicant pool of 30 million–to come to the United States, was nearly as exciting.

“It was like winning Powerball,” the Nepal native says, laughing.

Nine months of paperwork and bureaucracy later, Dambar’s plane touched down in New England, and he and his wife and unborn child were set to start a new life in Manchester, New Hampshire.  Now, eight years later, Dambar is a successful Direct Support Professional, serving his eighth year as an employee of Moore Center Services and sporting an impressive piece of recognition: the 2009 Region 7 New Hampshire DSP of the Year award.

The Rime of The Dangerous Man
(with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

It is a Dangerous Man
And he killeth one of three
By thy slicked back hair and squinty eyes
Now wherefore killeth thou me?

The Dangerous Man’s fists are opened wide,
And he’s ready to begin,
With shoves and slaps and kicks and smacks,
May’st hear the violent din!

He holds me with his liver-spotted hand,
“Time to die,” snarls he!
“But wait, unhand me, wrinkled goon!”
Efstoons his hand slapped me.

He holds me with his tiny eye—
Powerless, I stood still,
And listened like a frightened child;
The Dangerous Man hath his will!

When Tony Jaa blasted onto the international martial arts film scene with Ong Bak, he brought with him an eye-popping athleticism, wire-free stunts, and an electrifying arsenal of badass Muay Thai moves. Unfortunately, his movies grew progressively more nonsensical. Does this sequel to his debut continue that unfortunate trend?

There’s a “2″ at the end of the title, but this is not a continuation of the events of Ong Bak. In fact, the story for Ong Bak 2 takes place hundreds of years in the past. Jaa stars as Tien, the lost prince of a kingdom on the brink of extinction. After his father is killed, Tien is captured by slave traders, but manages to escape and shack up with some awesome fighting woodspeople, where he learns the ins and outs of swordplay, martial arts, and basic leadership skills (e.g. murdering mentally unstable cave-dwelling hags).

From there, it’s time to embark on his mission: avenge the death of his father. Along the way, he’ll have to face off against a crocodile in hand-to-hand combat, infiltrate a royal dance party, smack down the very slaves who imprisoned him, and engage in some bodacious elephant surfing.

From well-known throat-puncher Michael Jai White, a combination satire/homage of and to ’70s blaxploitation.  You see, Black Dynamite (White) is super bad. And he is outta sight. But he’s oh so much more. He’s former CIA. He has a license to kill. He’s a kung fu master. He’s an orphan. His brother was shot dead by The Man. He has sexual intercourse with multiple women at a time. He’s friends with pimps.

He will need to call upon all of his skills and contacts to take on the greatest challenge of his life; squaring off with smack dealers, street thugs, shady government operatives, deranged martial artists and perpetrators of the most diabolical, genital-affecting scheme ever devised.

The question on everyone’s mind: is Black Dynamite superior to the current gold standard for blaxpoitation spoof, the fun but flawed I’m Gonna Get You Sucka? The “nuanced” answer, or, rather, cop-out, is that they’re two different movies. Sucka is a gag-a-second Naked Gun style spoof, the Wayans’ funniest endeavor before they started afflicting the Earth with Scary Movie installments.

Black Dynamite? It’s actually a pretty smart satire (the filmmakers make a point of differentiating between “satire” and “spoof” in the extras), with more daylight between the jokes than most other parodies, but when the funny hits, you’ll be laughing from the guts.

What jumps out immediately about this movie is its appearance. Black Dynamite absolutely feels like a genuine movie from the 1970s. The filmmakers chose a specific, retro film look, which gives the whole thing an authentic, grainy feel. This is the first cue of what White and director Scott Sanders are going after and why the satire tag applies; they’ve created a “believable” world where a ’70s blaxploitation film might occur. The laughs don’t come from a 21st century point of view, pointing and laughing and snickering at the goofiness of the spoofed genre, but rather all the gags are organic, springing from this alternate-time reality they’ve created.

He’s tough. He’s tender. He’s three feet tall.

Evil quakes for only one man: Agent 00. Sure he’s no taller than most nightstands, but Agent 00 (Weng Weng) is a force to be reckoned with. No thug can survive his tiny fists of fury, and no woman can resist his compact charms.  Agent 00 faces his biggest challenge when he finds himself entangled with the expansive crime syndicate run by the enigmatic and notorious “Mr. Giant.” Working with a beautiful undercover agent named Irma, Agent 00 must call upon all of his investigative skills, combat training, and seductive wiles to defeat the unwavering horde of goons and bring justice to Mr. Giant.

What a great, fun, profoundly weird movie. A far-out take on James Bond films (featuring strangely similar music), For Your Height Only is hilarious—but I’m not entirely sure it was supposed to be a comedy.  All the elements are there to earn it that genre assignment, but I’m still not sure. There aren’t enough “comical” moments to convince me that this isn’t merely a hugely nuts film that is so crazy it’s funny.

And that’s fine. If the filmmakers wanted to play it straight—and I suspect they did—all the better! Weng Weng is awesome as Agent 00, mainly because he plays the role as a legitimate spy. He’s not clowning around or trying to make contrived humor work; he’s playing the tough guy role straight, and that juxtaposition with his small stature is fantastic.

Look, I’m not trying to pick on little people, and I don’t think this film is doing that. In fact, by giving Weng Weng the straight role is, to me, an act of better taste than the stream of shameless and unfunny “midget” throwaway jokes you see so much in comedies these days. I need to pause here to say, again, that this film is more awesome than your life.

The Charge
“You should see the looks on your faces.”

Opening Statement
James Cameron’s event 3D extravaganza has already made sackfuls of money. Apparently no one cares about story or characters or stuff making sense any more.