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Posts Tagged ‘Bill Smitrovich’

Sam Raimi: The TV Years (Rake, Ash vs Evil Dead, 50 States of Fright)

Thursday, February 3rd, 2022

So, OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL (2013) is Sam Raimi’s most recent feature film until DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS comes out in a few months. It’s like he accidentally took one too many drops of the potion and woke up in a whole new world.

But not really. In the interim, as always, he’s been producing movies for other people, including Fede Alvarez’s EVIL DEAD remake (also 2013) and DON’T BREATHE (2016). And of course he’s developed movies to direct that just haven’t gotten off the ground for one reason or another. There have been announcements of him directing movies based on the video game The Last of Us, the books Love May Fail, The Blade Itself, The Next 100 Years and The Kingkiller Chronicle: The Name of the Wind, plus a remake of A PROPHET. All of these seem to have fallen away, as such things often do.

Throughout his career as a director he’s also been prolific as an executive producer of TV shows including M.A.N.T.I.S., Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, American Gothic, Spy Game, Young Hercules, Jack of All Trades, Cleopatra 2525, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker and Spartacus. But in 2014, about a month after OZ came out, he finally directed his first TV show. (read the rest of this shit…)

Renegades

Thursday, June 20th, 2019

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I had never heard of RENEGADES. At first I assumed it was a western. It does reunite YOUNG GUNS stars Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips (the original Woody & Wesley), but it’s a contemporary buddy/cop movie set in Philadelphia. And it’s as solid as you’d hope for from director Jack Sholder, following up ALONE IN THE DARK (1982), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE (1985) and THE HIDDEN (1987).

Sutherland (STAND BY ME) plays Buster McHenry, who is one of those guys who goes into a little diner and is on a first name basis with the old man behind the counter. You know the type. Like Dirty Harry, he happens to see a traffic stop turn into a hostage situation from the window while having some night time coffee. Like Riggs, he goes out and performs a crazy stunt, pretending to be a drunk guy wandering in the situation so he can take one guy’s gun, shoot two others, make one surrender. Then he slaps the commanding officer and spends a night in the drunk tank for it. He’s actually a cop but he’s on vacation, doing a private undercover case with the knowledge (but not official sanction) of his boss/mentor/dead dad’s friend Lieutenant Finch (Bill Smitrovich, BAND OF THE HAND). (read the rest of this shit…)

The November Man

Wednesday, December 31st, 2014

tn_novembermanA quick word on THE NOVEMBER MAN. It’s the recently-released-on-video Pierce Brosnan spy joint directed by Roger Donaldson (SPECIES). Brosnan plays Peter Deveraux, an ex-CIA guy (not MI5, interestingly) who gets called in for one last mission for personal reasons, gets betrayed, has to straighten things out and make those motherfuckers wish December would get here real quick. The intrigue involves a brutal Russian general (Lazar Ristovski, CASINO ROYALE) on the verge of becoming president and various parties trying to find a woman who might have incriminating information about him or something. But to Deveraux it’s just about the fact that the agency had his old protege Mason (Luke Bracey, Cobra Commander in GI JOE’S RETALIATION, soon to be remake Johnny Utah) snipe his old girlfriend Natalia (Mediha Musliovic). What the fuck, CIA.
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