Hey everybody, I might not post any new reviews until after Thanksgiving. We’ll see. But I wanted to say thank you everybody for your support and just for reading and commenting and everything. I appreciate it and it inspires me to continuing striving for excellence.
Also I’m thankful that the films of badass cinema are alive and well enough that some of our favorite action movie icons have movies on the way, and some of them recently released trailers. So I have gathered some of them here for us to watch and discuss.
Tony Jaa must be officially out of the jungle now because after finishing the long awaited TOM YUM GOONG 2 and in the midst of shooting THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS 7 and a Dolph Lundgren movie called SKIN TRADE he just announced this on Facebook:
I am really excited to tell you that I will be starring in SPL 2, the sequel to the action thriller SPL (Sha Po Lang). I am equally excited to have Wu Jen the star of Legendary Assassin as my co-star. There are some really neat additional cast members that you will hear about soon and the action will be amazing. SPL 2 will shoot next Spring after I finish the shoot of Skin Trade with my friend Dolph Lundgren. (read the rest of this shit…)
What’s the deal at the end there – are they really telling us this is real? I’m assuming it’s a special effect, and I like it. An iconic JCVD moment (doing the splits between the walls in CYBORG) taken to ludicrous heights. And with a sunset and Enya-type music to show how important it is. Now let’s get Seagal playing the hand slap game with a Volkswagen.
If you haven’t seen the blog RUPERT PUPKIN SPEAKS, you’re missing out on some good stuff. He’s one of these rare individuals who knows his shit but is still relentlessly passionate and positive about movies, recognizing that at any given time there are way too many gems that you haven’t seen out there to fixate too long on hating the new Starbat prebootquel or whatever. Some of his passions include obscurities available from the Warner Archive and collecting weird movie novelizations.
Alot of his material is lists of recommendations from various guests, and every October he has an avalanche of underrated horror lists. I love reading these and have found some good ones from them, and I’ve always wanted to do one myself.
Well, he never invited me, so this year I just asked him if I could do one. And I guess he is a gentleman, so he said yes.
note: As you can see in the intro I tried not to overlap with anybody else’s lists, but I think P2 and maybe something else ended up on other lists after mine was submitted. But what can you do?
Check out my new Bruce essay on The Village Voice websight (web exclusive – they tried printing it on paper but my writing was so hot it caught on fire). This is basically my response to the anti-Bruce sentiments a few weeks ago when he was in the news for dropping EXPENDABLES 3 and a couple other incidents. Apparently this piece has turned out to be more of a bummer than I intended, and the headline does sound a little harsh. But really I’m just trying to illustrate how much of Bruce’s power in DIE HARD comes from not being a standard action guy, and therefore it makes sense that he’s grown restless with being pushed into the standard action guy slot. It’s a celebration of his talents and unique place in action movie history.
The clock just struck midnight here on the west coast, and thus begins the annual outlawvern.com Watching Of More Horror Movies Than Usual season. Try as they might the GOP were not able to shut down this hallowed tradition.
During October it is my official policy to only watch horror movies, excepting only the occasional new release that I feel the need to watch immediately. (You can’t keep me away from GRAVITY, for example.) But I always figure there must be some non-horror watchers who are regular readers (even if they haven’t made themselves known) so for you my friends I have some non-horror reviews on the backburner that I’ll put the finishing touches on and posting throughout the month. So don’t abandon me. I’ll be there for you.
As usual I’ll be conducting a SLASHER SEARCH, looking for slasher gems I haven’t seen before. But this year I feel like going broader and trying to squeeze in more of the other flavors of horror if possible. I already have a longer list than I’m gonna have time for, but I always welcome suggestions. I can’t guarantee anything but I am a man of reason so if you make a strong argument you might convince me.
Our NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR early coverage concludes with david’s interview with the ninja himself, the world’s most complete fighter, El Gringo, a man who has had bit parts in both the remake of THE PINK PANTHER and ZERO DARK THIRTY, an icon of modern action, Mr. Scott Adkins.
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It’s weird meeting action stars in person. I’ve met more than I can count now, and every one of them is different, but I knew Scott Adkins would be cool. We’d previously met face to face when I did an hour-long Skype interview with him in 2012 after I saw him in Expendables 2, and he was incredibly gracious and generous with his time. In that interview, I was shocked at how well versed he was in B-action movies, and we talked about not only his movies and career, but the careers of guys like Jeff Speakman and Michael Dudikoff. He joked to me how upset he was when he saw Jeff Speakman’s second or third movie and that Speakman wasn’t delivering on the martial arts front like he did on his first movie. “Fuck you, Jeff Speakman!” he joked, which I thought was hilarious.
Thanks for indulging me with this Summer Movie Flashback series. Now that I’ve gone through 20 summer movies from the last decade I figured I should have a brief post-game huddle or whatever.
Shit, me starting writing this series almost seems like longer ago than PROMETHEUS, the most recent movie I reviewed in it. So it deserves a wrapup.
Here’s a trailer for NEED FOR SPEED, a movie coming out next March, apparently based on some video game. They’re smart to make it look all serious and not use any hip hop on the trailer so less people will compare it to THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS.
Of course with that one TV show being so popular, everybody’s focusing on this being an attempt to use Aaron Paul as a leading man. But the reason I’m drawing your attention to this is because it’s from Scott Waugh, the co-director of ACT OF VALOR. He was a stuntman on many fine (SPARTAN, SPEED, LAST OF THE MOHICANS) and not-so-fine (BATMAN FOREVER, SPY HARD) movies. He worked on both BIKER BOYZ and TORQUE. Then he was second unit director, producer and editor of the documentaries STEP INTO LIQUID and DUST TO GLORY, which led him to the weird stunt/reality/fiction/military recruiting film combo of ACT OF VALOR. I hope he can carry through some of the qualities I liked in ACT OF VALOR, this time 100% free of any guilt of enjoying military propaganda. Of course he’s working with actors now, so he won’t have that interesting “this is a real interrogator guy demonstrating how he does his job” thing going, but I’m sure there will be some good stunts.
The script is by George and John Gatins (FLIGHT, REAL STEEL) and George Nolfi (OCEAN’S TWELVE, BOURNE ULTIMATUM, THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU). Michael Keaton is in the cast. My man “Professional” Shane Hurlbut is the cinematographer. Stunt coordinator is Lance Gilbert (TORQUE, STEALTH, VACANCY, PRIEST).
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Toxic on Robot Dreams: “Also the design of the robot is somewhere between “friendlier Chappie” and “background droid from a STAR WARS prequel”.” Feb 1, 03:59
Toxic on Robot Dreams: “It’s not amazing, but for what it’s worth I really enjoyed it. It sticks to its basic premise without feeling…” Feb 1, 03:42
VERN on Robot Dreams: “I had to look it up. Like most Apple TV movies that I have heard of, I remember hearing of…” Feb 1, 00:24
Toxic on Robot Dreams: “But speaking of loneliness, loss, and robots and dogs and friendship, Vern will you review FINCH aka CASTAWAY MEETS WALL-E?” Jan 31, 14:40
grimgrinningchris on Last Straw: “I thought for sure that you had reviewed this and that was why I watched it a couple months ago.…” Jan 31, 13:04
VERN on Dracula Untold: “Oh yeah, I really liked WOLFHOUND: https://outlawvern.com/2010/03/14/wolfhound/” Jan 31, 12:28
Timo on Dracula Untold: “I was certain the director of The Seventh Son got the job because he previously directed the Russian medieval fantasy…” Jan 31, 01:45
Franchise Fred on I did Larry’s podcast!: “Did I know you were also a projectionist? Moving Bride of Chucky to the big theater for the employee screening…” Jan 30, 22:48
JTS on Last Straw: “One of those cases where I stopped reading the review because I realized this is something I wanted to see.…” Jan 30, 20:27
MaggieMayPie on Last Straw: “Sisto’s character on FBI runs “the jock” which is a hub at the FBI headquarters where they have people at…” Jan 30, 17:15
Curt on Dancin’ – It’s On!: “I second Majestyk’s assertion that David Winters might be a god. And I need to call attention to a particular…” Jan 29, 18:23
MaggieMayPie on Dancin’ – It’s On!: “I think GONE WITH THE WIND is (or was, I haven’t checked in recently) either my mom’s favorite book or…” Jan 29, 15:03
Mr. Majestyk on Don’t Mess With Grandma: “I was hoping MJW’s character was named Grandma.” Jan 29, 14:30
VERN on Dancin’ – It’s On!: “I was mostly joking about GONE WITH THE WIND, but there is definitely a contingency of people who appreciate it…” Jan 29, 10:26
Mr. Majestyk on Dancin’ – It’s On!: “Now that I’m inexplicably able to post again, I would like to point out that anyone who has both WEST…” Jan 29, 09:43