Posts Tagged ‘Ronny Yu’

Jet Li’s Fearless

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

I don’t know if that title means “Jet Li’s” in the sense of BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA or as a less formal way of saying Jet Li is Fearless. Neither one makes complete sense because Jet Li is not the director (that would be the great Ronny Yu) and his character is not named Detective Jack Fearless, he is playing a guy named Huo Yuanjia who it turns out is a real life martial artist (1869-1910) who united the various factions of Chinese martial arts to form “wushu.” He’s the guy who is supposed to be the teacher of the fictional character Bruce Lee played in BRUCE LEE’S FIST OF FURY and the one Jet played in JET LI’S FIST OF LEGEND. This new movie is a very mythology-ized version of the guy’s life but does have many elements that are based on actual historical events. But they are honest enough not to say “BASED ON A TRUE STORY” in the ads, despite the continual lowering of the standards for what counts as a true story. (The latest chapter: the prequel to the crappy remake of a completely fictional movie that was vaguely inspired by what Ed Gein did to dead bodies now counts as a true story.)

Instead, the hook they’re going for with JET LI’S FEARLESS is “Jet Li in his final martial arts epic.” This claim is not really a true story either, or at least it’s up to interpretation. If you read interviews with Mr. Li, he is saying that he considers this his final statement on wushu, so he does not plan to do more movies about wushu. But he will do action movies with martial arts in them and he hasn’t even ruled out historical epics with martial arts. Just not movies specifically about him being a martial artist.

Will he even stand by that promise? Most people don’t seem to think so, but I am willing to take his word for it. Jet Li is made of different mettle than most of us. The dude survived a Tsunami. This is a guy who promised his wife if she got pregnant he would stop doing movies for the entire pregnancy and spend that time with her. Not only did he keep that promise, he dropped out of a little movie called CHOW YUN FAT’S CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON in order to do it. So there is reason to believe he means what he says. (more…)

Unlike

Tags: , ,
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews | 1 Comment »

Formula 51

Monday, March 20th, 2006

FORMULA 51 aka THE 51st STATE

Here’s a movie I always meant to see just because it was directed by Ronny Yu (BRIDE OF CHUCKY), but I skipped it because I never heard a single good word about it. Until the day Paul wrote to disagree with my MUNICH review and then, possibly to avenge me for the review, recommended I watch this one.

Okay, so the movie’s not terrible, it has it’s moments of inspiration, but to me it was a big mess and a little on the cheesy side. When it was over I realized that a better score would’ve gone a long way toward making it more acceptable. Ronny Yu does the whole thing in a goofy, frinetic style and then the cheeseball dance music done by some guy named “Headrillaz” makes it seem like some out of touch commercial trying to be cool.

If I describe what the movie’s about though, it might sound cool. Samuel L. Jackson plays Elmo McElroy, rogue pharmacologist. Batman started when his parents were killed in an alley, and Elmo McElroy started on graduation day 1971 when he was pulled over smoking a joint while still in his graduation robe and lost his right to practice medicine. Skip forward to the 2000s when he works for an overacting Meat Loaf as “the Lizard,” who always refers to himself in the third person and somehow passes as a feared crime boss. He’s supposed to meat with The Lizard and various other kingpins to demonstrate his new super drug POS 51, but instead he sets up a fancy Rube Goldberg contraption to blow them up. (There’s a nice shot of Meat Loaf laying in a giant pile of dolls, maybe a reference to BRIDE OF CHUCKY.)

Elmo heads to England where he meets Robert Carlyle, who is supposed to take him to a chemist and the boss who wants to buy his formula. On the same plane with him is Emily Mortimer as the Lizard’s hired gun Dakota, and this is probaly the first and last time Emily Mortimer will ever play a sexy assassin. At the airport is the villain from MONEY TALKS as a cop trying to catch Elmo. (more…)

Unlike

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | No Comments »

Bride of Chucky

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

I don’t know why it took me this long, but I’ve finally seen the most recent Chucky picture. This one came out on the tenth anniversary of Die Hard as well as the original Chucky picture so it is very special to me.

As some of you know, over there in Japan they are making cartoons for adults, and what they’re doing with Bride of Chucky is doing the same thing for puppets. I think many adults have always wanted to watch a puppet movie but they were too embarrassed unless it had alot of blood and a respectable brand name like Bride of Chucky.

This is actually not as much a horror movie though as it is a campy comedy with occasional sadistic murder scenes. It is all very tongue in cheek. I don’t know if the filmatists here realize that Chucky isn’t scary anymore, but they definitely do know that there are some things that are just funny to see puppets do. Like shooting two guns at a time, or getting in a shovel fight, or making out in front of a fireplace. The best scene of the movie is when the girl doll Tiffany spectacularly mutilates and electrocutes a newlywed couple with the simple toss of a champagne bottle, and it impresses Chucky so much that he marries her and then there is a romantic love scene in silhouette. That is why the trailer (which is on the DVD) says “This October, Chucky gets lucky.” I guess it came out in October. (more…)

Unlike

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller | 2 Comments »

Vern’s Amazingly Late Summer Preview

Sunday, August 31st, 2003

Well friends I’m back after a few months of travelling around the world learning every martial art known to man, or maybe just not being inspired enough to write. One of the two. I would like to thank the people who wrote me nice e-mails to make sure I was okay or encourage me to Write again. Also I would like to thank the people who sent me advice about paying my mortgage, penis enlargement, the hot new mother and daughter pictures, my details and especially the wicked screensaver.

As usual, it is hard to write about politics these days because holy jesus, where do you even start? I have noticed that there were a whole lot of us who were right, and a couple people on tv who were wrong, and yet I haven’t seen anybody saying I told you so. Thanks alot assholes, for taking the fun out of “I told you so.” It sucks to be right when being right means that all those troops you supported so god damn much are left rotting in the desert with no mission, no welcome, no desire to be there, and no hope for coming home any time soon, unless they run over a bomb and lose a couple limbs. Every once in a while you see one of them on tv looking sad, and you have to imagine a little thought balloon over their head that says, “4 more years!?” Oh well, it’s a volunteer army, I guess you can’t really complain that you got shipped off to your doom by the same assholes who turned around the very next day and cut your benefits and your pay. I wonder how many of those congress bitches were still wearing their american flag pins when they signed that into law? No biggie, when we’re done arguing about gay marriage and the ten commandments maybe we’ll look into bringing them home. IF there’s time. I doubt it but maybe. Keep your pants on, troops. Go USA.

But hey, you already know how I feel about that so for now, FUCK THAT SHIT. This is a web sight about the god damn Films of Cinema, is it not? So what exactly is the deal here, Vern? The last summer movie I reviewed was THE MATRIX RELOADED and I believe that was before summer technically started. So today what I want to do for you my friends is go back and review all the big summer movies I didn’t bother to review before. So put on your shorts and get ready for a nostalgic journey WAY back to the beginning of summer. (by the way, just because every fucking day was DO THE RIGHT THING this summer doesn’t mean there’s global warming. that’s all a big coincidence.) I want you to close your eyes, well not actually close your eyes because you should be reading this, but anyway I want you to open your eyes and remember a time when all anybody was talking about was a hulk, and not just any regular hulk but an incredible hulk. I guess maybe technically speaking he is not called an incredible hulk he is just HULK, however the incredibleness of this particular hulk goes without saying. (more…)

2 people like this post.
Unlike

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Vern Tells It Like It Is | No Comments »