Hello friends,

I promise that tomorrow I’ll post my take on that one new movie, the most important movie of all time since Thursday. (It will be a spoiler-filled review so we can discuss all the business.) But today please allow me to shine the spotlight on this piece I did for the websight Thrillist about the best action movies of the modern age.

At first they approached me to do the greatest shootout scenes of all time. I felt unqualified and suggested this instead. During my research I found that at least a couple other major outlets have done a version of this subject and their choices have some overlap with mine, but I believe I discuss them in more depth than most people do. The assignment was a so-called listicle that is genuine analysis, not just clickbait.

If you’ve been a regular here for a while you won’t be surprised by most of my choices, but I really did put alot of work into it including rewatching some of the contenders and catching up on some things I had missed. I tried to make sure each entry addresses both the quality of the action and something more substantive about what makes the story or characters great.

My longer first draft said in the intro, “I know how this works. I fully expect you to scoff at some of my choices, snubs, and unscientific rankings. That is your duty as a free-thinking, list-reading movie lover.” So I encourge you to do that here. I have a hunch about certain exclusions that will be controversial, so I’m especially interested in what you guys would include on your lists that didn’t make mine.

Here’s the link:

The 30 Greatest, Straight-Up Ass-Kicking Action Movies of the Century

I wrote a new piece, The State of Action Filmmaking, 2017, sort of a 2016 in review. I thought it was for The Village Voice actually but it has surfaced on the L.A. Weekly. So check it out. I am proud to get a big picture of Michael Jai White in the L.A. Weekly, I don’t know how often that happens.

THE ARTICLE IS HERE

Hey everybody,

Sorry I’ve been out of commission since Christmas. I didn’t intend to take a vacation, but some bots got stuck inside the datas or whatever (don’t know all the technical jargon) and totally crashed the sight. I guess somebody was mad at my dangerous message about the Star Wars prequels being interesting or something, I don’t know. It’s been getting worse all month and suddenly my sight was totally dead for days. Luckily Chris is on the case (please thank him) and it seemed like it was working yesterday and still this morning, so I was already to go and I wrote this and then as I was finishing up it was back to 503 Service Unavailable land.

But if you are reading this then apparently you are reading this, and that’s good. I thought I would do a year in review and link back to some of my favorite things on outlawvern.com from this last year.

First, a toast to 2016:

Goodbye and good riddance, 2016, you cruel and treacherous sonofabitch. You genius-killing, hope-destroying, progress-devouring monster. You ignorant, ought-to-fucking-know-better-you’re-an-adult, bullshit-Facebook-post-believing, perfectly-willing-to-enable-open-racist-oppression-and-claim-it’s-just-economic-anxiety stooge of a year. You injured us, you tortured us, you brought shame on us, and then made fun of us for it. Now you are over and it’s worse than the fucking Comedy Central Roast of Chevy Chase – not one sympathetic soul will step forward to defend you. (read the rest of this shit…)

some discussion points after the jump

(read the rest of this shit…)

Thanks for checking in. Apologies for the lack of new reviews. I have many things in the works, some punching and more horror business and what not. But I really feel like my next review should be something very positive and constructive. I’m getting there.

In times like this I turn to Stevie, so in case you need an uplift too I have a song to share with you. This is a religious song, and I’m not a religious person. I mean, I’m a scoundrel, sometimes I’ll try praying when shit gets scary (lately) or when someone I care about dies (too often), figuring if Someone’s not out there to listen at least I’m putting my thoughts together or sending out good vibes or something.

But I kind of feel like listening to music is my version of spirituality. Going to a P-Funk show is the closest I get to those ladies fanning themselves and speaking in tongues in the revival tent. There are pieces of music I love so much they can take me to a higher mind state and make me feel better about life. I can go to church on a piece of music.  I got a weird habit of putting on headphones at 2:30 am and listening to some song intently and getting real emotional, even teary-eyed just thinking about the way the notes move my soul. Recent examples include “Purple Rain” and “Maggot Brain.”

But one time not long ago I put on this song and I just thought about how if you were someone like Stevie, you had sounds like this coming instinctively out of you, of course you would be a religious person. It must feel like some godly voice is speaking through you.

Whatever it is, his voice and attitude and rhythms always soothe me, so try this one out if you need it.

You know what? That’s beautiful and all, but that might’ve not been a strong enough choice, we might need some more funk for this funk. I think we are gonna need to have Stevie at prime 1970s funk levels. And we’re gonna need his band set up just on a street somewhere. In fact, we’re gonna specifically need them to be performing on Sesame Street.

Unfortunately there are no Muppets in this clip, but it still looks like the greatest block party ever. Check out the kid at 4:11 rockin out like he’s on the Peanuts Christmas special.

Sometimes life is worth living, my friends.

Hello pals,

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been a little stressed lately by the wave of bad vibes in everything from the putrid state of American politics to current events in film criticism to me being deluged by Trump devotees after foolishly getting myself retweeted by Seagal. But I’m gonna take a deep breath and stand strong and positive and pour it all into outlawvern.com. I’m very excited about all the horror movies I’ve been watching and writing about and I know we’re gonna have alot of fun here this month. (read the rest of this shit…)