I don’t know if that title means “Jet Li’s” in the sense of BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA or as a less formal way of saying Jet Li is Fearless. Neither one makes complete sense because Jet Li is not the director (that would be the great Ronny Yu) and his character is not named Detective Jack Fearless, he is playing a guy named Huo Yuanjia who it turns out is a real life martial artist (1869-1910) who united the various factions of Chinese martial arts to form “wushu.” He’s the guy who is supposed to be the teacher of the fictional character Bruce Lee played in BRUCE LEE’S FIST OF FURY and the one Jet played in JET LI’S FIST OF LEGEND. This new movie is a very mythology-ized version of the guy’s life but does have many elements that are based on actual historical events. But they are honest enough not to say “BASED ON A TRUE STORY” in the ads, despite the continual lowering of the standards for what counts as a true story. (The latest chapter: the prequel to the crappy remake of a completely fictional movie that was vaguely inspired by what Ed Gein did to dead bodies now counts as a true story.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Archive for the ‘Action’ Category
Jet Li’s Fearless
Thursday, September 28th, 2006AVP: Alien vs. Predator
Monday, September 25th, 2006
Judging by this title, we are dealing with a story about 1 (one) Alien facing off against 1 (one) Predator. Maybe the Alien dripped acid blood on the Predator’s invisibility machine, so they start getting up in each other’s face or something. It is hard to predict what would cause them to fight, but it is easy to predict the outcome. The Alien wins because the Alien is hands down cooler than the Predator. Sorry Predators, just tellin it like it is. Of course, the title could also mean the actual movie ALIEN is facing off against the movie PREDATOR. In that case ALIEN will be defeating PREDATOR for tension, atmosphere, originality, and artistic legitimacy, while being roundly defeated in the oneliner and gun size departments.
But the title ALIEN VS. PREDATOR is misleading. It is actually MODERN DAY HUMANS + SOME CGI ALIENS AND TEENAGE PREDATORS. It turns out that the ancient Predators built a pyramid in what is now Antarctica and it’s still there under the ice. Once every 100 years exactly, a Predator ship comes down, sets loose some Alien eggs and has their Predator boys fight the Aliens as a rite of passage. Maybe they are from the south of Predator planet and this is their equivalent of deer hunting. Or Texas football. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wanna See Vern’s MAN-THING? Er, His Review, I Mean…
Friday, September 22nd, 2006 
Hi, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab…
Wait… Brett Leonard made a bad film? THAT’S UN-POSSIBLE!!
Dear Harry-Thing,
I happened to see this movie MAN-THING and I figured it was my duty to notify you boys. The cover says it’s Marvel Comics and “from the producer of SPIDER-MAN, DAREDEVIL, X-MEN and BLADE.” Funny, no mention of ELEKTRA or DAREDEVIL. You remember that one, where Ben Affleck was the blind sadomasochistic biker version of Spiderman, and Colin Farrell kept trying to kill him by flicking peanuts and paperclips and shit at him? I was thinking maybe I dreamed that movie but my sources assure me that it was an actual, theatrically released movie starring popular Hollywood actors. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Protector
Friday, September 8th, 2006
real title: TOM-YUM-GOONG
should be the title: WHERE ARE MY ELEPHANTS?
Well, I can’t say I didn’t know what I was stepping into. The import DVD of the newest Tony Jaa movie (from the same director as ONG-BAK) has been circling around forever and a day now but I never got around to seeing it. Now those gangsters Bob and Noodles Weinstein have unleashed their bastardized and cut-up version across the screens of America. I knew it was probaly gonna be dubbed, I knew it was shortened (that’s what the Weinsteins do: buy other people’s movies, then cut parts out of them), and I knew it was re-scored.
And it was actually that last part that reeled me in like a sucker fish. Because in the newspaper ads it says in giant letters, almost as big as the title: “MUSIC BY RZA.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Escape from New York vs. Escape from L.A.
Thursday, September 7th, 2006
Recently some joker spread a phony story on the internet about how Kurt Russell had tricked Paramount into greenlighting ESCAPE FROM EARTH, a third Snake Plissken movie, as part of a three picture deal. I knew it was too good to be true, but I also know that Russell always says Snake is his favorite character he’s ever played, and he clearly loves working with John Carpenter. Carpenter could use a return to the big screen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if after Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF comes out next year (starring Kurt Russell as a killer stuntman and scored by Carpenter) there is a rise in popularity and nostalgia for the classic Kurt Russell badass roles. I think it would actually be smart to make a new Plissken movie right now as long as it wasn’t a huge budget and it wasn’t a rehash of the other two. So, their loss I guess. And the world’s.
Of course, reading this horse shit got ME nostalgic for the old John Carpenter badass movies, so I watched THEY LIVE again, because that’s my favorite (sorry Kurt). And then I did something I never did before, I watched ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and ESCAPE FROM L.A. in a row, to get a better comparison. It’s sort of like one of those puzzles where there’s two similar drawings and you have to pick out what’s different. Hey, wait a minute, that baseball player is holding an ear of corn instead of a bat and shit like that. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a doctor’s office, but they have Highlights there sometimes. (read the rest of this shit…)
Predator 2
Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
After watching PREDATOR for the first time since the ’80s and realizing that it’s actually a good movie, I decided to watch PREDATOR 2. I never seen this one before and I knew the reputation wasn’t too good. More ominous, instead of John McDIEHARDTiernan the director is Stephen LOST IN SPACE Hopkins. Not lookin good.
But damn if the opening isn’t a scorcher. It starts out with the familiar Predator POV heat vision in the jungle… but as it pans across you realize it’s not the jungle – it’s the outskirts of Los Angeles. THE URBAN JUNGLE! In the futuristic year of 1997. (Think about it: a Predator is loose in Los Angeles at the same time Snake Plissken is looking for the president in New York. Meanwhile, the Spice Girls are topping the charts and TITANIC is breaking box office records.) (read the rest of this shit…)
They Live
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
THEY LIVE is one of my favorite movies ever. It is probaly the very best version of a rare type of movie I love: the badass action movie that also works as a political statement. BILLY JACK may be more political, but it seems so self important and it has no sense of humor. THEY LIVE is kind of saying the same thing THE MATRIX is saying about a society brainwashed by media and advertising, but it’s saying more than that. It’s about the America of the Reagan years, when everything was geared to help the rich at the expense of the working class. Which for some reason seems awfully familiar today. Huh. Weird.
“Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays Nada, a drifter who walks into town with tools and a sleeping bag on his back. (Hey, what happens to that sleeping bag? I think it disappears.) This is a hero who not only doesn’t drive a sports car, but doesn’t have a car at all. Or a house. Or a job, at first. The plants are closing, the jobs are drying up, that’s why he’s on the move. But he happens to get a construction job, where he meets Frank (Keith motherfuckin David from THE THING) and finds out about a homeless encampment near a church where some nice people serve food for the homeless. (read the rest of this shit…)
Snakes on a Plane
Monday, August 21st, 2006
For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is alot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I’m gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.
I still fondly remember those glory days when all it was was a title on IMDB for a movie that Ronny Yu was actually gonna direct, and yes it was about what it sounded like it was about. The perfect concept for a Ronny Yu movie and the perfect title for a movie period. So simple, so blunt, so minimalistic, like some kind of Asian poem style that’s not as well known as haiku because it’s too hard to do, but in this case somebody did it. Four words, four syllables, no more than necessary, no extra flourishes. Boiled down to its basic elements. (read the rest of this shit…)
Predator
Saturday, August 19th, 2006
PREDATOR starts out with a shot of an alien spacecraft jettisoning a shuttle towards earth. We just see it from the distance, there’s not alot of detail visible, but we don’t live under a rock, so we know what’s going on here. The extra-terrestrial hunting enthusiast known only as “Predator” is arriving on Earth. The human characters in the movie get all the screen time, but Predator gets the first shot, so we know this is really his story.
Like E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL, PREDATOR doesn’t give us any backstory on the alien star. All we know is the guy is no botanist. Maybe an exotic meat salesman. It almost seems like an alien remake of FIRST BLOOD because you got this one crazy alien maniac out in the jungle by himself, taking on a couple platoons worth of elite soldiers and doing a pretty good job of it. John Rambo did some sick shit but he didn’t skin a bunch of guys and hang them upside down from the trees. He didn’t pull out people’s spines. So Predator’s got one on John. You even get the scene where Predator, like John, is wounded and has to do some makeshift surgery on himself. The only difference is he uses advanced alien technology to heal himself instead of just crudely sewing himself up. (read the rest of this shit…)
Vern’s Peace Initiative
Sunday, August 13th, 2006
As if the whole world wasn’t going to shit already, now we got this war going on between Israel and Hezbollah in Syria. Or according to some people, between the US via Israel and Iran via Syria via Hezbollah in Lebanon or I don’t know. Whatever the fuck is going on over there, it’s not good. People are dying every day and it seems like this could be just the humble beginnings of this latest phase of the world’s biggest mess.
In the old days, like, say, seven years ago, what we would do is the President would make some phone calls, send some diplomats, try to figure out how to get those assholes over there to chill the fuck out. “Come on guys, it’s not worth it.” Like when your buddy’s had a few too many drinks and starts getting in a guy’s face in an argument over a girl or a shoe or a slice of pizza or something. You gotta give your buddy some perspective before things get ugly. (read the rest of this shit…)
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