FOR THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE…
In 2019 and 2020 I wrote a dozen Profiles in Badass columns for a new online outlet called Rebeller. It was pitched to me as a “Fangoria for action movies” that would bring together people from all across the political spectrum. It turned out to be more of an anti-PC thing that caused me stress and shame until I quit.
I didn’t pay for a membership so I never saw the comments, and have no idea if people enjoyed my columns or dragged them across concrete. The only reader feedback I saw (other than from regulars here) was when some prick on Twitter shamed them for caving to the PC woke anti-male agenda or whatever by publishing my column about Michelle Yeoh (which he declined to read). Only the sharpest, most reasonable minds over there.
But considering Michelle Motherfuckin Yeoh’s recent upgrade to ACADEMY AWARD WINNER MICHELLE MOTHERFUCKIN YEOH I am re-upping that column for anyone who wants to know more about her filmography. For historical purposes I’m leaving it as I submitted it, but I have two corrections to make:
1) I repeatedly referred to Yuen Woo-ping as “Woo-ping” when his surname is Yuen. Sorry about that. I guess I thought we were friends.
2) At that time I still believed Yeoh did a real motorcycle jump onto that train in SUPERCOP; The Art of Action later informed me that Bruce Law did a jump over the train onto boxes and the landing was Yeoh being lowered onto the train with a very cool wire rig. (Still a great stunt, but very different from what I always believed and spread the legend of.)
Hello friends, and welcome to my annual preview of the Oscars. They happen on Sunday and I’m anticipating them in the very rare-for-me position of my actual personal favorite movie of the year (
This year for my preview I’ll go ahead and go through each of the categories, though I’ll have less informed opinions on some where I haven’t seen all the nominees. And of course I encourage following the links to my reviews of the ones I’ve seen.
Well, I’ve been thinking about it for far too long, but I’ve finally gone and done it: my first home brew, play along commentary track. This is designed to sync up with the US cut of NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER (the shorter of the two included on the Kino Lorber DVD and blu-ray) but I think it would also work okay if you just want to listen to it like a podcast. I try to explain my love for this intersection of Hong Kong cinema and ’80s American pop culture, with my usual goal of being informative and wise but also funny, sincere, and occasionally stupid. Lots of talk about little details of the movie and the people in it, the Seattle locations, the history of action movies filmed in Seattle, the worldwide phenomenon of Bruce Lee worship, some stupid stories about me, and of course plenty about Van Damme. (Sorry for slagging Chuck Norris for the same reason two different times, but I say some nice things about him too.)
Is everyone here familiar with Patrick Bromley and ‘F This Movie!’? The latter is 
I just made my second appearance on “‘I Must Break’ This Podcast,” where I seem to go to discuss movies that Dolph Lundgren is briefly in. 
Back in 2016 I did a review series where I alternated between Francois Truffaut’s five Adventures of Antoine Doinel films and Cannon Films’ five AMERICAN NINJA films, trying to keep the same open mind toward both, look for parallels, etc. I referred to it as Antoine vs. Ninja at the time, but now I like to think of it as The 400 Death Blows. Although I’m way more of a ninja guy than a French New Wave guy I think it’s good to try out a broad spectrum of art and not be put off by some other dip shit’s perception of what is supposed to be high or lowbrow or too trashy or too arty for little old you. Fuck that guy. You’re not that simple. You can appreciate all kinds of things.
On Monday I’m leaving on a trip, so I won’t have any new posts for about the next two weeks. I’m sure I’ll be posting on Twitter occasionally about my adventures, but hopefully I’ll be able to unplug a little, recharge, relax, reboot, rebuff, re-animator, etc.
There are really two specific movies that were released in the summer of ’92 that were the primary reasons I wanted to do this Weird Summer thing. One of them is David Fincher’s audaciously anti-crowdpleasing ALIEN 3. I’ll be posting the review here on Monday but I thought I would give Patreonites a chance to read it early if you want. (It’s nearly 6,000 words, so it might take the weekend.)
