# the perfectly serious kung fury of the 80s kung fury - an 'over the top action comedy' by director david sandberg starring a renegade cop - has entirely the wrong pitch // video here perhaps it should be sold online as a perfectly serious straight-to-unrewound-vhs arthouse flick it's uncertain if the phrase 'over the top action comedy' refers to its 'content' or themes - or simply to the idea of kung fury consider the unspoken cultural norms over what / how one regards as the viewing public's unspoken cultural norms regarding how to properly consider kung fury - eg. as 'cool' interesting how david sandberg made mainstream commercials before erupting in kung fury - itself another advert- but just without any product. a perfectly decaffeinated state in which the movie seems a deadpan-free expression of perfect 80s seriousness: "the 80s" was always a parody - a self contained farce existing without any original 80s to parody - a copy without an original maybe kung fury is the truth about the 80s which explicitly reveals via (its surface) that there is no truth whatsoever about the 80s - except that hyper-stylized something which is always merely 'in the style of the 80s' kung fury proves that no authoritative no or canonical reading of the 80s can exist; perhaps only through being perfectly serious / deadpan does the player / viewer generate its alleged narrative kung fury's current 80's aesthetic high score is irony: absolute zero; so welcome forever back to the kickstarted simulacrum of style you crazy kids ultimately - that is from the very outset - consider kung fury a depressingly standard baseline example of (false) hyper-cynicism - not about but of and from the 80s the 80s did not exist; that is it only ever exists in/as a virtual non-existence; a digital composite; a forever self-referencing cultural meta-surface or black hole in which the best things about kung fury are david sandberg's perfect cheek bones - and the fact people born in the awful 90s will have no idea what era the movie is referencing - until they are quietly informed by inherently embarrassed self-styled '80s survivors' in deadpan ritualistic fashion yet those who think kung fury 'references' the 80s are also mistaken; more specifically it's an expression direct from the near future retro 80s arcade-robots dinosaurs nazis (not funny dave) mutants viking gods and super kung-fu cops may safely be considered random / arbitrary selections from the effortlessly unhealthy fast food smorgasbord of the 80s(tm) similar to dark matter in physics post production / post processing effects (ambient occlusion color correction depth of field motion blur stereoscopic anaglyph outlining etc) make up large percentage of this production the truer interest however - seduction fascination and hallucination - always come or arrive before or after (post) the movie / the 80s; "kung fury" itself however is always strangely absent.. director david sandberg misses a potential trick by not making this project totally integrated with the internets - not just 'a movie and a promotional website' but a web based art space; something entirely interactive reactive collaborative - a cross media platform story of 'martial arts love on the run in a time of danger' (or whatever) kung fury is always already a retro video garme - that one plays by making watching and watching others watch it; compare and contrast kung fury with the alleged video garme "far cry: blood dragon" // video here indeed there is no difference - these are simply different holograms of the same endlessly repeating vhs tape loop fragment as cut up by digital glitch artist max capacity (yet with seemingly little of ir dirty lo-fi mondo transgressive underground danger or hardcore angst) to admire kung fury is perhaps only ever to publicly state one's useless ability to self promote one's hip shared love of the 80s the 80s never died because you can't kill something that never lived - that it was always just a cheesy-smelling zombie in cheap data shades - romantic mass stupidly fascinated by its own hollow neon tinged reflection one wonders if the largely nondescript and unremarkable video corpse of the 80s needs another quick retro(tm) jolt to keep it twitching **update patch** in ir blind parasitic search for new ip content both hollywood and the garmes industry are apparently rubbing david sandberg's hands together. thus what might of started and remained a neat one-off project will now like a tube of popular toothpaste be squeezed flat until no creative juice whatsoever remains oh and the flick is finally here. meh // republic of bob