Talk:Chris Crudelli
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To an experienced martial artist it is clear Chris is far from the balanced, honest and unbiased martial artist it is claimed in this and related pages. I'm embarrassed when watching his programs because he suffers from the same arrogance that many people with martial arts ability tend to develop. His "faux-naievity" is painful to watch and serves no real purpose other than to perpetuate the silly stereotypes and misinformation of martial arts.
Ultimately his programmes are nothing more than a typical martial arts film with its pomp and ceremony but made out to be factual and documentary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.229.91.27 (talk) 02:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Series information
Moved this information from Crudelli's page to here so it can be incorporated into the series page.
For the uninitiated, for which the programme is made, a novice could expect no finer tutor than Crudelli and his engagingly humble persona. He absorbs himself into every situation with refreshing vigour, and a faux-naivety not too dissimilar from many modern presenter-led TV shows. When he meets people he clearly respects, we can only share in his adulation, best summarised in a later episode where he nervously fires questions at Hong Kong film legend Sammo Hung, who has clearly been an important figure in Crudelli's life.
In the local segments of the show, he gets dockworkers and Welsh auctioneers to try and push him over, which not even a team of eight manage to do. He then breaks collections of enflamed concrete paving slabs with his hands, and acts as miracle worker to air traffic controllers and Glaswegian hairdressers offering snippets of crucial self-defence and techniques on how to harness chi energy.
Crudelli comes from a Chinese Kung Fu background, and steers the show to his principal lines of teaching. Clearly a master himself, it is great to see Crudelli go from superhuman man of the people, teaching skater punks how to punch properly, to then being thrown mercilessly around by an old aged pensioner in a silk suit moving very, very slowly. It is endearing, but enough to make you slightly sceptical.
He is as sceptical as we are when he tackles Japanese theories on telekinetic combat, and on Kiai screaming tactics that can disable opponents with just one incredible yelp. His best reaction comes when he meets an ancient dim mak master who has spent his life developing a ‘death touch’, locating pressure points and hitting people really hard. Crudelli is poked in the stomach, quite harmlessly at first, before reacting painfully to the blast in a separate area of his torso. In three swift slaps on his back, Crudelli announces that his pain has suddenly disappeared.
Other sections are just plain weird. Like the techniques of Iron Penis Chi Gong, which is perhaps the best stunt ever captured on any TV show. After lifting a 150kg weight with his testicles, a master of Chinese conditioning manages to shift a four-wheel truck carrying a cargo of ten people all with the aid of a piece of rope attached to his penis. Mouth agog, you suddenly realise why you spend money on a TV license.
Thankfully, Crudelli appears to have taken it upon himself to not only be the face of the BBC’s martial arts output, but also Britain’s best tour guide to the more mysterious aspects of far eastern culture. --NeilEvans 19:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
