I heard some sad news today from Cynthia Curnan, the producer and writer of several Albert Pyun movies going back to SORCERERS in 1998. It seems that Mr. Pyun, who has recently completed his 50th movie ROAD TO HELL starring Michael Pare, has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and has been forced to retire from his extremely prolific filmmaking career.
I guess this has been public for a few weeks now, but I hadn’t heard about it. Pyun is a force to be reckoned with in the world of b-movies, with a few under his belt that are beloved in some circles (THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, CYBORG, NEMESIS, BRAIN SMASHER… A LOVE STORY) and alot more that you’ve at least heard of (RADIOACTIVE DREAMS, ALIEN FROM L.A., CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990), DOLLMAN, MEAN GUNS, many others). Honestly after seeing a few of those and not liking them I tried to avoid his movies, but of course I analyzed his Tom Sizemore/Steven Seagal/Dennis Hopper movie TICKER in Seagalogy and I was surprised to find myself genuinely liking his KICKBOXER 2: THE ROAD HOME.
That’s when Albert Pyun the actual person, as opposed to the mysterious director of a million low budget movies, came onto my radar. Even though in my review I wrote “The director is Albert Pyun, but I never would’ve guessed that because it’s both watchable and kind of good,” Mr. Pyun showed up in the comments. It was a really nice and self-deprecating post responding to some questions that had come up during the course of us all trashing his filmography. Then he kept coming back to answer many questions that people had for him.
(read the rest of this shit…)
…which ends with Mr. Davis promising to look up my book Seagalogy, thanks to Fred telling him about it. It’s a good interview centering on THE FUGITIVE (on the occasion of its 20th anniversary) but also giving some background on the script of ABOVE THE LAW that I sure could’ve used when I wrote the book.
I feel like I should post about upcoming EXPENDABLESes, since we’re all fans of several people in the cast, and since we all want to love these movies, though many of us don’t. And though the two so far haven’t in my opinion come anywhere near living up to their potential I have gotten some joy out of them. So I always want them to get it right on the next one. And this has plenty of elements that sound promising.
I got 
The final bout of Round 2 is another close match. In fact, I thought I had a decision, then I changed my mind. Both DRAGON FIRE (Red Fist Club) and EXTREME CHALLENGE (The Men From Hong Kong) are kinda crappy, and yet kinda good, and in totally different ways from each other. Please join with me to consider their merits.
THE SUPER-KUMITE continues to be a rewarding viewing experience. In this battle between TEAM BOLO and THE WOMEN I was able to see two fairly ridiculous movies, both loosely based on the BLOODFIST template, and by watching them in such proximity I’m really able to properly appreciate them as valid variations on an American-ish artform. So which will it be: the MBA who goes to Hong Kong and enters a tournament after his brother dies of a drug overdose, or the cop who goes to Manila and enters a tournament after her sister is killed for knowing too much about an assassination?
I’m always reading the movie news but only every once in a while is there a convergence of action and tough guy related news large enough to make me feel like I gotta line it all up and make sure everybody here knows about them. Right now is one of those times, though. Click through to see a few noteworthy new developments. Out of kindness I’m even gonna start with the biggest one and it’s the one that involves a descendent of a character killed by another character played by Dolph Lundgren. 
