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Archive for the ‘Blog Post (short for weblog)’ Category

trailer: MERCENARIES

Tuesday, July 29th, 2014

Well, looks like on August 8th (on VOD and in theaters most likely not near you) we will get the first of the long-promised “female Expendables” movies.

The good news: Zoe Bell, Cynthia Rothrock, Vivica A. Fox, Kristanna Loken, and Brigitte Nielsen as the villain (which I’ve been saying they should do for a while, though I guess I hadn’t thought of it when we first discussed this). The bad news: produced by The Asylum. Also, director Christopher Ray (MEGA SHARK VS. CROCOSAURUS, 2-HEADED SHARK ATTACK, ASTEROID VS. EARTH) also has one coming out called PRISON RAID with pretty much the exact same cast, so who knows how much thought and care they might’ve put into either one of them. Or one of them might be all outtakes.

I’ll give it a shot, though. It’s also worth noting that Asylum is about to work with a world class director known for transcending the limitations of his chosen formats. Z Nation is the name of their upcoming 13-episode zombie tv show for SyFy. Sounds like Asylum Walking Dead, which sounds like the worst thing ever, but the pilot is directed by John Hyams. I read somewhere that he was also the show-runner, but the SyFy websight lists some other guy, so maybe not. Anyway, I’m keeping my fingers crossed, which makes it hard to type but I’m doing it.

trailer for FALCON RISING starring MJW

Tuesday, July 29th, 2014

We finally have a new Michael Jai White vehicle on the way, and here’s the trailer.

Falcon Rising – Trailer from Moonstone Entertainment on Vimeo.

Somehow MJW hasn’t had an action movie role since 2011 (when he co-starred in TACTICAL FORCE and NEVER BACK DOWN 2), and he hasn’t had a starring action role since his DTV classic BLOOD AND BONE in 2009. The producers of FALCON RISING recognize this problem so they are pre-planning this as a franchise. If they stick to the plan then White’s character John “Falcon” Chapman will doing flying kicks on motherfuckers in different exotic locations each year. This is of course the Brazil chapter.

It looks like Neal McDonough plays his boss, and his sister (who gets kidnapped, I think) is played by Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila. Not surprisingly considering the setting, Lateef Crowder (capoeira fighter who’s in THE PROTECTOR and UNDISPUTED III) is also in it. Larnell Stovall (UNDISPUTED III, NEVER BACK DOWN 2, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING) choreographed the fights. At one point I read that Isaac Florentine (where are you, man?) was gonna direct this, but it ended up being Ernie Barbarash. Not as much of a sure bet, but I remember thinking his Van Damme/Adkins team-up ASSASSINATION GAMES was pretty decent.

Allegedly this will have a theatrical release September 5th, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Holyshitmadmaxfuryroad

Sunday, July 27th, 2014

More than a decade after he almost started filming it with Mel Gibson, we finally have a trailer for George Miller’s return to the world of flipping cars and weirdo punk savages. Honestly I almost teared up watching this. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’re fighting for.

http://youtu.be/yJnPg2_Y_UI

My thoughts can best be expressed in punctuation.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!… !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inspirational artwork for the day

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014

Carsten P. Dietrich, who is a regular poster here, sent me a great Seagal picture he did that I thought needed to be shared. He described it as a scene from “that animated prequel to UNDER SIEGE, where we see Ryback going on various black-ops missions whilst regularly flashing back to his youth on the streets of Japan etc.” It kind of reminds me of those Hungarian comic book adaptations we were talking about a little while ago. And there’s a cameo in the picture relating to an implied back story from the movie.

seagalCPD

Click on the clipping to see the whole picture on Carsten’s tumbler.

He also shared with me his cartoon portraits of Mad Max and Snake Plissken, and going through his archives I saw a couple Riddick and a John McClane (specifically from A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, but that makes it more unique).

This might open the floodgates to write this but maybe that’s not a bad thing: I know alot of you are great artists who have sent me badass cinema related links like this, should I start posting some of them from time to time?

awesome book alert: World Gone Wild by david j. moore

Thursday, July 10th, 2014

tn_steelfrontierThis is not a review, because this is the book by david j. moore (no capitals), the guy who did all the NINJA II set interviews for me a while back. So an actual review would be unethical. But I have to make sure everybody knows about this great book because it’s right up most of your alleys. The full title is World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies. It’s a beautiful hardcover book, like a textbook. You flip through it and there are capsule reviews of pretty damn close to every post-apocalyptic movie ever made. Not even just obvious ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs but also things you wouldn’t think of right away like I AM LEGEND (and AFTER EARTH, and I think INDEPENDENCE DAY is in there too for some reason. Are all of Will Smith’s movies considered post-apocalyptic? I don’t think I saw SEVEN POUNDS in there).

And then in between are interviews with many of the people involved with movies. All kinds of interesting people, mostly b-movie legends: Michael Pare, Sergio Martino, Vernon Wells, John Hillcoat, Albert Pyun, Dale “Apollo” Cook, Ted Prior, Brian Trenchard-Smith… but I’m most impressed that he interviewed really obscure people that you’d never think you’d see an interview with. For example he talks to the writers of KNOWING and CLASS OF 1999, two pictures I’m very fond of but wouldn’t have even been able to name the writers of. (read the rest of this shit…)

Thank God it’s Slyday

Sunday, July 6th, 2014

Today is Sylvester Stallone’s birthday, as good a time as any to make sure everybody knows that there was a Hungarian comic book adaptation of COBRA:

kobra

It seems the entire gem of a comics strip was once posted online by the excellent Cannon Films fan sight that has since disappeared like it was the Cannon SPIDER-MAN movie. I have also found evidence that this same series included an issue with back-to-back James Cameron adaptations…

hungarianjamescameron

…so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other cool ones.

Any Hungarians got a line on these? Are they rare, or do you just have them lying around everywhere, waiting to bring joy to the heart of somebody like me?

“unbekümmerter Don’t-give-a-fuck-ness”

Saturday, July 5th, 2014

tn_germanmechanicThere’s a new interview with me up on a websight called Hard Sensations. As far as I know it is not a pornographical type of websight, but it’s hard to know. See, the whole thing is in German, so I don’t know what the fuck I was talking about. Possibly THE LONE RANGER, judging by the pictures. Whatever it was, hopefully it’s nothing I could be blackmailed with by German blackmailers (erpressers).

So let me know what you think CJ and the rest of you learn German and then read it and then let me know what you think. Dank Kumpel.

Black & Dekker PREDATOR

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

tn_shaneblackAs I’m sure we all heard, Hollywood Reporter is hollywood reporting that Shane Black (LETHAL WEAPON) is writing a treatment for a “reboot” of PREDATOR, to be scripted by his old partner Fred Dekker (MONSTER SQUAD, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, sorry about ROBOCOP 3) and directed by Black.

Sign me up. Let’s discuss why this is good news. (read the rest of this shit…)

Vern Predicts: Jodorowsky Fever

Monday, June 23rd, 2014

vernpredicts150It was 2007. The Year of the Dolphin. The Scouting Centenary. The year of the last Harry Potter book. The year that Anna Nicole Smith and Bam Bam Bigelow passed. The year that DIE HARD turned PG-13. Amidst all that turmoil and unrest I wrote about an Alejandro Jodorowsky DVD box set for the famous The Ain’t It Cool News websight. And in that review I prophesied a day when the then-mostly-forgotten underground filmmaker of the early ’70s would become a mainstream pop culture phenomenon:

“This thing is gonna spread across the globe like airwaves. Rappers will start quoting HOLY MOUNTAIN; on CRIBS they’ll have THE FILMS OF ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY next to their SCARFACE dvd. Bono will buy a thousand copies and pass them out to world leaders, so they can begin their journeys of enlightenment…” etc. I went on for a while.

(read the rest of this shit…)

Vern’s Cinefamily Journal

Friday, June 20th, 2014

tn_cinefamilyWell, it happened. Last Saturday, after 15 years of admittedly weird dedication to anonymity, I went and stood unmasked in front of the Cinefamily theater to publicly share my love of the action films of S. Seagal. A couple of you who were there kindly told me not to worry, that I looked exactly like Lee Marvin, but on the internet I saw my looks compared to two different comedians. I won’t say which ones, so go ahead and assume Roddy Piper and Chopper Read. But now there are a couple blurry Loch Ness Monster type photos of me out there, and Griff says I am not buff and I look like his dad. Giving my reputation a hit like that was not what I had planned for my summer vacation.

But I got no regrets and the reason why can be summed up with one frame of film:

(read the rest of this shit…)