Posts Tagged ‘Ice-T’

Who’s the Man?

Friday, December 17th, 2010

tn_whosthemankidnplayYou know how nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin to say, but nothin comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish, and motherfuckers act like they forgot about Dre? And this despite the widespread recognition of Dre Day, and everybody’s celebratin? Well, that must be tough for Dre, but it’s even worse for Dré.

Dr. Dre – title abbreviated, name spelled with an ‘e’, not an ‘é’ – is the famous producer/rapper, the genius behind NWA, discoverer of Snoop and Eminem, headphone consultant, Dr. Pepper advocate. He still produces, is still highly respected despite unleashing 50 Cent, appears on commercials all the time but somehow still has a mystique about him. He recently released a song from the album he’s been working on for ten years, so he’s on the cover of magazines and people are really believing it’ll come out in February. And plan to buy it. Most rap careers don’t last as long as just the time people have been anticipating this one album by Dre.

Meanwhile Doctor Dré – title spelled out in full, name spelled with a little wavy thing above the ‘e’ – you could definitely make a strong argument that motherfuckers weren’t acting, they sincerely had forgotten about that particular Dré. (more…)

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Trespass

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

tn_trespassDidn’t Robert Zemeckis used to be a big deal for movie nerds? Right now he’s mainly looked at as a heretic because of his obsession with doing those creepy motion computerized movies that I seem to be pretty alone in appreciating. But there was another Zemeckis before that, a live action one. Everybody loved that BACK TO THE FUTURE and a couple of his other movies. It seems like people used to put him up there just below Spielberg as one of those worshipped All-American brand name mainstream directors of the ’80s. (more…)

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Surviving the Game

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

In this 1994 MOST DANGEROUS GAME ripoff, Ice-T plays a homeless man hired by a bunch of rich assholes supposedly to be their guide on a hunting trip, but actually to be their prey. Because the second deadliest prey is man, the first deadliest is Ice-T. (I wonder if Predator knows about this yet?)

The movie doesn’t really offer any backstory for why Ice-T is tough enough to survive this hunting expedition (SPOILER), he’s just Ice-T. He’s not an ex-soldier or ex-cop or trained in the Orient or anything. In fact it’s the reverse: he’s a regular guy and almost all of the people he kills are ex-CIA.

I gotta warn you this is a little on the cheesy side. It’s not exactly great action, and some key moments are bogged down by bad decisions like having Ice’s one-liner clearly recorded in a studio and looped in so it takes you out of the moment. But it’s still enjoyable to watch because it’s such a simple, classic setup and it’s an all star cast. Hunting Ice are no less than Gary (PREDATOR 2) Busey, John C. (ON DEADLY GROUND) McGinley, Charles S. (BLACK DOG) Dutton, F. Murray (SCARFACE) Abraham, and their sicko leader, Rutger (BLIND JUSTICE) Hauer. Then there’s some guy named William McNamara as Abraham’s babyfaced son, and for most of the movie that is the entire cast. So not a bad ensemble.

Busey gets to be crazy Busey, in fact he has a pretty incredible monologue about his fucked up childhood that makes the idea of his character being a CIA psychologist even funnier. McGinley also gets to do the type of over-the-top acting that makes him so enjoyable. And the movie has a great use for Dutton – at first we see him as a volunteer at a street mission supposedly trying to help Ice-T out. It’s pretty standard for a guy like that to secretly be evil, but this is Charles S. Dutton we’re talking about. He’s Roc. He drove GET ON THE BUS. He’s in RUDY. Even when the guy goes into space, like in ALIEN 3, you know he’s still playing a great inspirational dude who gives tough love and makes righeous speeches. That’s exactly who he seems to be at the beginning of this, so it’s actually kind of surprising when all the sudden he’s talking about choosing Ice-T as his prey due to his breeding and musculature. Talking about him like he’s a horse or a piece of meat. This movie is kind of fucked up! And Dutton has the best death, laying on the ground mumbling about plans for the next expedition right after having his legs blown clean off. (more…)

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Ricochet

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

I think I saw this movie back when it came out and I remember it just being ridiculous, but seeing it again I thought it was a good ridiculous. The movie begins with a melodramatic Hitchcock style credit sequence, but then cuts straight to Denzel Washington, Ice-T and Kevin Pollack playing very aggressive basketball on a playground. As far as I know this one is one of only a handful of movies in all of cinematic history that begin with those three guys playing street ball.

I like this scene because it very quickly sets up most of the major players in the movie while also establishing just why the movie is cool. For one thing, the director is Russell RAZORBACK Mulcahy, video director turned movie director who is fond of fancy hotshot camerawork. But this is 1991, still firmly in the naive days when a director followed a code of honor that they were expected to provide visual clues to the audience to understand what the fuck is going on. For some of you younger individuals it’s probaly hard to imagine, but the camera is flying around in such a way that it enhances your enjoyment of the movie, instead of pissing you off. This starts in the basketball scene with the camera somehow following right behind Denzel as he weaves through the other players and slam dunks.

In this one scene we learn that Denzel is a cop and law school student, Pollack is his partner, Ice-T is a childhood friend who he is distancing himself from because he’s a criminal, and Victoria Dillard is a girl Denzel has his eye on (who will become his wife). More importantly though what this scene establishes is that this is young, arrogant, show-offy, charming Denzel. It’s after MO’ BETTER BLUES but before MALCOLM X, so he’s got the chops but not the expectations. And he’s applying that talent to a character in an over-the-top b-movie thriller. His character is named Nick Styles, if that gives you an idea. (more…)

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Leprechaun, Leprechaun 4: In Space, Leprechaun in the Hood, Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood

Monday, March 19th, 2007

I don’t know why, but I never saw a LEPRECHAUN picture before. You guys know I got a taste for straight to video trash, as well as little bastard killers. Nobody is as good as Chucky, but I had fun writing about THE GINGERDEAD MAN. Plus, the Leprechaun made it into space 4 years before Jason did, and I loved JASON X. (HELLRAISER won the space race, after false starts from HALLOWEEN, give credit where credit is due. But Leprechaun was there second.)

More importantly, it was St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m not Irish, and I can’t drink, so what the fuck else am I supposed to do on St. Patrick’s Day besides watch some Leprechaun pictures.

The first one is the one that stars Jennifer Aniston playing a Jennifer Aniston type. She’s an L.A. city girl who has to come with her dad to a barn out in the boondocks somewhere. Little does she know that the old Irish immigrant who used to own the place once went back to the motherland, trapped a leprechaun (Warwick Davis, RAY) and stole his gold. The leprechaun came home with him in his luggage and tried to kill him, but the old man used a four leaf clover (like a crucifix to a vampire) to trap him in a box. In Jennifer Aniston’s barn.

Mark Holton (Frances from the PeeWee Herman movie) plays a reta– I mean a lovable manchild who accidentally opens the box. And because he’s a lovable manchild, nobody believes him that he saw a leprechaun. Also they don’t believe him because he said he saw a leprechaun.

The lovable manchild and his actual child friend find the leprechaun’s gold, and the manchild accidentally swallows a piece of it, and then the leprechaun uses evil magic to try to get the gold back. etc. (more…)

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Point Doom

Sunday, October 1st, 2006

Back in 2001, long before he ever challenged me to a wrestling match, CHAOS director David “The Demon” DeFalco wrote an action movie called POINT DOOM. It’s directed by a guy named Art Camacho, who was in HALF PAST DEAD and directed a bunch of Don “The Dragon” Wilson movies. The producer is the same guy from CHAOS, here credited as Steven Jay “Bernie” Bernheim. It was sold as a Blockbuster Video exclusive, which I’m sure everyone involved was very proud of.

This is a terrible movie, but it has its own style of craziness and ineptitude that to me makes it much more interesting (if less competent) than the straight up rehash of CHAOS. It has a distinct ’80s retro L.A. sleaziness and an insulated world view that makes you wonder if these people only know cliches or if they are shut-ins who live in a strip club before. I think Grieco is supposed to be a straight-up hero, not an anti-hero, but it’s hard to imagine who would find this chump sympathetic. And the females in the cast have the gravitas of BAYWATCH stars. Almost everybody in this movie is a talent agent, a biker, or an employee of a strip club. The only exceptions are Ice-T (gangster, but not biker) and Angie Everhart (sister of strip club employee).

And yes, this is an All-Star DTV Hall of Famer lineup we’re talkin here: Richard Grieco. Ice-T. Andrew “Dice” Clay. Angie Everhart. Zach Galligan from GREMLINS. Sebastian Bach of the ’80s rock band Skid Row. Even a special appearance by The Demon himself, but credited as “Bobby Young.” (Turns out as Bobby he’s acted in a few softcore movies like FEMALIEN and LOLIDA 2000.)

Grieco is the hero, Rick, a rich Hollywood talent agent with spikey hair, a big white collar and a fancy convertible. If you are too young to remember him on 21 Jump Street, just picture Ben Stiller with 25 face lifts and convinced he’s some kind of heart throb. One day while visiting his friend Frankie (Andrew Dice Clay)’s strip club he falls in love-at-first-sight with the Playmate-type blonde Stephanie (Jennifer O’Dell) who serves his drink. Frankie tries to warn him that she is the girlfriend of a guy from the Satan’s Slaves Motorcycles and Drugs Society of America and therefore bad news. But he keeps making googly eyes at her and follows her around and it’s supposed to be sweet so somehow she figures out that he’s not just a sleazy cheeseball agent guy hitting on her at the strip club where she works and that in fact she should risk her life to leave her boyfriend and go to the beach with him. There is a montage where they laugh and piggyback and go on a swingset. (more…)

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Mean Guns

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

A while back I reviewed this sci-fi action movie called EQUILIBRIUM and I complained about the cliche of using techno music in all the action scenes. I asked why somebody didn’t try out some different styles of music on some action scenes. A while later a guy named Jonathan Lee wrote to inform me of a movie called MEAN GUNS where they did just that, they used mambo music during all the action (and other parts of the movie).

The only recognizable stars are Ice-T and Christopher Lambert, and then there’s a bunch of other people. Mario Van Peebles was not available. Anyway, “The Syndicate” has recently bought a prison somehow, and the day before the grand opening Ice-T calls a bunch of criminals there for big meeting, like THE WARRIORS.

But it’s actually a trap. Once the suckers come inside they are handed a card telling them how they betrayed the Syndicate. The punishment is that they’re all gonna be locked in here to kill each other. Once there are only 3 traitors alive, they will supposedly get $3.3 million each and get to leave.

So some guys come in and dump big garbage bins full of guns and ammo into the middle and the game begins.

This all sounds pretty cool, but there’s a pretty big catch. The director is Albert Pyun. I haven’t written about this guy much, because I try to avoid him as much as possible. Pyun is a master at making movies that are terrible and yet completely boring. He did the NEMESIS series, some KICKBOXER sequels, CAPTAIN AMERICA, DOLLMAN. He did one called URBAN MENACE which is kind of like a soap opera interspersed with clips of Snoop Dogg walking around acting spooky. (Rehearsal tapes for BONES?) The best movie I’ve ever seen by Albert Pyun is the Seagal picture TICKER, which is one of Seagal’s least interesting pictures. (It is historically important though as the first Seagal picture with a director’s commentary track, and he does seem like an okay guy on the track.) (more…)

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‘R Xmas

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

The two strongest feelings I have about Abel Ferrara’s latest are “that was pretty good” and “what the hell?” I will cover these two feelings in order.

This is the story of Christmas for a rich couple in New York in 1993. We see them videotaping their young daughter’s private school Christmas play, trying to get her the most in demand Christmas toy, and that kind of business. Then they put her to bed, some fellas come over and they start filling up baggies of cocaine.

So the idea I guess is that drug kingpins aren’t that much different from any of the other rich fucks in new york. I mean you pretty much like these people. They really do care about their daughter and want to make her happy, even if they think they have to do it by buying shit. They have lots of old ladies sitting around the house and they hug and kiss them alot. When it comes down to it, their family life really is more important to them than their drug empire, although they don’t know how to live like a regular working class individual. And one thing that’s refreshing is that other than the fact that he sells drugs, the husband never shows a dark side. You never see him being ruthless. He doesn’t only SEEM charming and innocent, but have a furious anger hidden beneath. As far as we see, he’s just a sweet, romantic guy. Come to think of it, this guy is BETTER than the other rich fucks in new york, if a little superficial.

The plot turns out to be about the husband getting kidnapped and held for ransom, and how the wife tries to find enough money even though most of their organization went to Puerto Rico for Christmas. The wife turns out to be the strongest character in the movie and it’s interesting to watch her try to handle the crisis, and how the family members try to support her the same way a normal family would handle a normal crisis. (more…)

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