You guys know my friend david j. moore, right? He did those NINJA II on-set interviews for us back in 2013, and he’s the author of the awesome coffee table book World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Movies, which I had the honor of writing the introduction to.

Well, back when he first contacted me about that he told me about this next book he was working on, and I’m not sure there will ever be another book more up my alley. THE GOOD, THE TOUGH & THE DEADLY: Action Movie Stars 1960s-Present is his upcoming opus about “every action star who’s crossed over from the world of martial arts, sports, professional wrestling, and stunt work.” We’re talking a big, beautiful 560 page hardcover book with photos and everything between over 1,000 action movies reviews, a few of them contributed by yours truly (me [Vern]), plus some by Zack Carlson and Mike McPadden. If it’s anything like World Gone Wild I’ll have an ever-growing must-see list folded up inside it as a bookmark.

But I’m more excited for david’s interviews with 70+ action stars and filmmakers. He’s mentioned to me who some of them are, and basically it’s most of the people we talk about here. Yes, big famous people, but also the lesser knowns who in my opinion are more interesting and important to hear from. david’s got encyclopedic (is it wikipedic now?) action knowledge, especially the DTV and the ’80s and ’90s sub-Van-Damme type stuff that most fascinates me. On the rare occasions when I tell him one he doesn’t know I feel like I should get a medal or something.

And by the way, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can assume this one really gets it because it knew it was important to have helicopters and ninjas in the background.

The book will be available December 28th, but you can pre-order it right now. What, are you gonna decide between now and then that this is not a book for you? I doubt that very much.



https://youtu.be/unnLg1TPCYM

Man, of all the crazy crossovers, who would ever think we’d see Ash get to fight Evil Dead? Holy shit, who is gonna win!?

I think this looks really good. EVIL DEAD meets old man action. Of course it looks like all jokes, more like ARMY OF DARKNESS than my preferred EVIL DEAD 1-2 tone, but that’s what you gotta do with modern Bruce Campbell, I think. It’s got a good look to it, though. Nice modern take on the style of the movies. (No cinematographer listed on IMDb.)

For those who haven’t heard, this is a TV series with half hour episodes. That’s unusual for a horror show of course, but I like it. It suggests it will be fast-paced, no dragging it out to fill the hour like on some shows. The pilot is directed by Sam Raimi, and other directors aren’t listed on IMDb, but I’m pretty sure there are some. The music is by the movie’s composer, Joseph LoDuca. At least one episode is edited by the film’s Academy Award winning (for THE HURT LOCKER) editor, Bob Murawski.

I think most of us will agree that this looks promising. If you didn’t know about this, director Ryan Coogler got some heat for his debut FRUITVALE STATION, and then instead of signing on to some studio’s pet horror remake or comic book movie like he’s supposed to he pushed his dream project of a movie about Apollo Creed’s son being trained by Rocky. Stallone loved the screenplay and agreed to do it.

You may know that there is a movie called SKIN TRADE starring Dolph Lundgren, Tony Jaa, Michael Jai White, Ron Perlman and Peter Weller that just came to V.O.D. and will have a limited theatrical release in a few weeks. If you’re in L.A. and want to see it on the big screen I’m told there’s going to be a premiere at the Egyptian on May 6th.

Oh yeah, and with DOLPH MOTHERFUCKING LUNDGREN and TONY GOD DAMN JAA in attendance. Subject to change, I’m sure, but that’s what I’ve been told. And I have not been told this but I fully expect Jaa to ride in on an elephant and for Dolph to be carrying the dead Apollo Creed over his shoulder and wearing the He-Man costume.

Here’s the link for tickets. Apparently if it goes well there may be more of this type of screening, which would be good for you guys and for America.

I’ll post my review of SKIN TRADE on Monday morning.

You guys remember when Tony Jaa couldn’t even finish ONG BAK 2, and then he disappeared into the jungle for a while, and then later he quit the film industry and became a monk? Well, he changed his mind. We got him in a small role in FURIOUS 7 next week, and then we got the sequel to SPL (or KILL ZONE as the Weinsteins call it) to look forward to:

(read the rest of this shit…)

Everyone please send some extra special good vibes in the direction of our friend Clubside Chris, the Technical Expert (see photo) of outlawvern.com. I’ve learned from social media that he’s in the hospital. It sounds like he’s gonna be okay, but he’s going through a huge ordeal and hopefully it won’t embarrass him if I take this opportunity to show some appreciation for all that he’s done for me.

If you don’t know the story, Clubside Chris is the guy who years ago decided to register outlawvern.com and give it to me because he couldn’t stand to see my important academic works sitting on a shitty Geocities sight. I actually turned him down because I had some notion about creating profound works that only the truly enlightened would be able to read because they would overlook that it looked like crap and was on a free sight that normal humans abandoned like 10 years earlier. A couple years after his kind offer my crappy sight went kaput and I contacted him (convinced he was offended that I turned him down before) and he was generous enough to help me out.

At my weirdo request he went through alot of trouble to create a WordPress template that would mimic the crappy look of my Geocities sight. And when I got sick of that (and after it possibly gave one poor guy a seizure) he made this nicer looking one we use today. He also made a forum after you guys kept requesting it. So Paul and alot of spambots owe him gratitude for that.

Chris is also the guy who convinced me to start posting my links on Twitter and Facebook. I thought the whole idea of Twitter was ridiculous, but he convinced me to give it a fair shot, and… whoops. Sometimes when I’m procrastinating from writing I wish I wasn’t so addicted to it, but it has really helped me to bring in more readers and stay in touch with people and stuff.

Chris continues to keep the sight operating and answer my ignorant questions when I have them. The most insane part of all is that he’s done it all for free, in fact at a loss. It’s incredible how much he’s done for me and for everyone who likes to read my reviews and for the community here. I also sometimes get the impression my politics can be offensive to him, and yet he’s never ditched me over it. He is a good guy. Thank you Chris.