Parkour — the style of movement seen in chase scenes Casino Royale, The Incredible Hulk, and Live Free or Die Hard — officially got its start by David Belle in the mid-90s, with inspiration from French military and rescue training.  But this clip from 1977′s Gizmo! (via Kottke) shows footage from the 1930s that indicates David Belle is a big French plagiarist.

In a related bit of news, I found this section from Parkour’s Wikipedia page enlightening, yet unsurprising:

According to Belle, “the physical aspect of parkour is getting over all the obstacles in your path as you would in an emergency…” Thus, when faced with a hostile confrontation with a person, one will be able to speak, fight, or flee. As martial arts are a form of training for the fight, parkour is a form of training for the flight.

In other words, the French actually created an entire discipline dedicated to finding the most efficient method to run away.  Stereotypes are awesome.

If the guys at Fan IQ know what they're talking about — and it's possible they do — then Damien Walters, the guy in this video, is a British gymnast.  But as we all know, gymnastics is super-gay, which is why God invented parkour, which is fucking sweet.  I like parkour because (a) it looks cool when people do it well, and (b) it's hilarious when tools try to copy the moves and land on their faces.

And Walters does parkour very, very well.  It's not often I post video of someone just being awesome, because who wants to watch another home movie of me?  But this is a pretty worthwhile exception.