Okay, I’m skeptical about this one, but it would be irresponsible of me not to make sure everybody has heard this report that three great screen martial artists from the RAID saga are allegedly crossing over to the STAR WARS one. This has been picked up by Deadline and other industry type blogs (specifically the movie industry), but the report comes from Twitch, who source it simply by saying that “Twitch has learned” Iko Uwais (Rama), Yayan Ruhian (Mad Dog/Sad Dog) and Cecep Arif Rahman (“The Assassin” in part 2) will be in THE FORCE AWAKENS.
I guess only time will tell whether or not Twitch learned accurately. In my opinion these three star warriors are for sure playing Luke Skywalker’s triplet sons Huey, Louie and Mad Dog Skywalker. I have learned (in a dream) that part 7 is pretty much non-stop brutal martial arts and death defying stunts with an occasional C3PO “Oh dear!” for punctuation.
Seriously though, guys, if this somehow turns out to be true then it looks like Lucasfilm has decided to go after the coveted Vern vote. Next week they’ll announce that part 3 will be directed by Isaac Florentine and go straight to video.
Back in 2013 
Happy New Year everybody!
A quick word on THE NOVEMBER MAN. It’s the recently-released-on-video Pierce Brosnan spy joint directed by Roger Donaldson (
“It was this old guy with a gun, and some broad.”
FOXCATCHER is an eerie examination of a true story about two brothers, Mark and Dave Schultz, who won gold medals in wrestling at the 1984 Olympics and a couple years later went to live on the Pennsylvania estate of a rich guy named John E. du Pont. The guy said he was a patriot and wrestling fan and wanted to help America win again. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but you immediately get the sense – in part from the foreboding grey skies and long, dry stretches with little dialogue and no music – that it’s gonna be something bad. I felt pretty confident this would end in some sort of fucked up tragedy and not with a Survivor song playing over a freeze frame on a joyful Channing Tatum (who plays Mark) being lifted by a congratulatory crowd of sports enthusiasts.
In Victorian England there was a tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. This is what gave us A Christmas Carol, of course, but is it a dead tradition otherwise? Well, I don’t know. There are an awful lot of Christmas-themed horror movies. There’s enough of ’em out there that I still haven’t seen nearly all of them. Maybe that’s what the ghost stories turned into over the years.
I usually have a hard time writing about comedies, but TOP FIVE is a moment worth commemorating: the point when Chris Rock finally became the filmmaker he always seemed like he wanted to be.
