"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Why I give a shit about this NEED FOR SPEED

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).

September 25th, 2013 | 47 Comments »

Interview with Tim Man, stunt choreographer on NINJA 2 by david j. moore

tn_timman

extendedoutlawcontent

This next-to-last interview in david j. moore’s series of NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR interviews is a name I wasn’t familiar with, but it’s important to learn shit. That’s why we’re here. Fight choreographer Tim Man – remember, I heard it here first. Here’s david:

–

When I met Tim Man, the stunt and fight choreographer on the Bangkok, Thailand set of Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, my first thought is, “Wow, this guy’s short!” He has a distinct look about him, and he speaks with an unusual accent. He is of Chinese and Swedish descent. Man, trained in Judo, Jiu Jitsu, Tae Kwan Do, Viet Vo Dao, boxing, and Wushu, has worked on several Thai martial arts productions including Ong Bak 2 (2008) and Kill ’em All (2012). He was tasked with not only creating all the fights for Ninja II, but he also handled all the stunts, and he co-stars in the film as well as a villain named Myat. As I tried to get to know him over the course of several days, I found him to be immensely knowledgeable in action movie terms, and we’d quiz each other over action stars we like and their movies. We discussed the merits of guys like Keith Cooke, Tony Jaa, Gary Daniels, Billy Blanks, and all sorts of other guys, and it was obvious that he was a hardcore fan of B-action and martial arts movies. He was always in good humor, and in between takes, he’d sit down next to me and carry on our conversation.

  (read the rest of this shit…)

September 25th, 2013 | 1 Comment »

Summer Movie Flashback of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes

tn_rotpotaB

2011
2011

I like doing these re-reviews. Alot of times I feel differently about a movie as I get older, or I notice new things after seeing it more than once, or I benefit from being removed from the context of the hype and the reactions I’d been hearing when it came out. But it’s a challenge too because it’s so easy to be redundant. More than once I wrote a draft of one of these and then read my old review and found out I unknowingly repeated an idea or even an exact phrase. Shit. Like I was doing I, ROBOT and I was real proud of this joke where I rewrote the 3 Laws of Robotics in my own way. Then it turned out I already did that years ago.

And as the gap narrows here at the end of the series it’s getting pretty ridiculous. This was only 2 years ago, and I haven’t gone off to live a quiet life in a monastery and stick fight in a remote village or anything like that. A man can only gain so much wisdom in that period of time, so my views haven’t really changed on the movie of THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES of the starring James Franco. It’s still a very enjoyable dumb man’s thinking man’s sci-fi. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 24th, 2013 | 38 Comments »

Isaac Florentine Interview on NINJA 2 by david j. moore

extendedoutlawcontenttn_isaacflorentineShit, NINJA 2 is getting some pretty serious raves out of Fantastic Fest. I almost wish I didn’t hear that, it’s like when I was patiently anticipating THE RAID because of MERANTAU and then all the sudden a bunch of people flipped out for it and the wait became excruciating. Oh well, as long as that’s the case let’s read david j. moore’s interview with action hall of famer Isaac Florentine.

–

On the set of Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, director Isaac Florentine is completely in his element while making his latest martial arts action film, starring Scott Adkins and Kane Kosugi. I’ve been invited to observe several days of filming on the Bangkok, Thailand set, and my first day consists of watching an intense dialogue scene between Adkins’ character and his mentor, played by Kosugi. Both of them are dressed in Japanese robes during their scenes together, and the dojo set is decked with traditional Japanese tapestries and artifacts. I interact with the crew, as they move lights around, and in between takes I chitchat with Adkins, Kosugi, and Florentine, who all take time out to address my questions, comments, and attempts at humor. Florentine, whom I’ve interviewed before, is incredibly gracious to me, and he thanks me several times for visiting the set. We both agree on the fact that movies like the ones he makes aren’t given the attention or the fair criticism that they deserve, and I’ve made it my prerogative to give him and his peer filmmakers like Jesse Johnson, Ben Ramsey, and Ernie Barbarash, the attention that they should be getting. I interviewed Florentine for a few minutes about Ninja: Shadow of a Tear on set, and while this is not a comprehensive interview on his career, it does shed some light on what his intentions are with making this particular film. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 23rd, 2013 | 9 Comments »

Summer Movie Flashback: Cowboys & Aliens

tn_cowboysandaliens

2011
2011

COWBOYS AND/OR ALIENS starts out great. Daniel Craig wakes up with an apparent gunshot wound and a weird metal device locked to his wrist. He doesn’t remember who he is or what the fuck happened. He does remember how to fight, though, so when some guys try to rob him he kicks their asses, steals their clothes TERMINATOR style and heads into town. (And all this without talking.)

Other than that metal thing it plays as a straight western for a while. Paul Dano is a crazy asshole who terrorizes the town, shooting his guns off and demeaning innocent people because his dad (Harrison Ford) is the cattle baron and he thinks he can get away with anything. But when he picks out Craig, a random bystander, to flip some shit at, he finds himself crashing nose-first against a wall of badass. This stranger doesn’t know who the little shit is and can’t pretend to be scared of him, so he knocks him on his ass. In the scuffle the kid accidentally shoots a deputy, a crime the sheriff can’t overlook despite who his daddy is, so they both get arrested, to be transferred to federal custody the next day.
(read the rest of this shit…)

September 22nd, 2013 | 23 Comments »

Interview with Frank DeMartini by david j. moore

extendedoutlawcontenttn_ninja2bAs NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR is premiering in Austin, let’s continue with david j. moore’s series of interviews. Today he talks to producer Frank DeMartini, a guy who insisted they stop fucking around and just make a sequel to NINJA already. In other words, an American hero. You’ll also find out why he feels qualified to compare the NINJA series to the AMERICAN NINJA one.

–

The producer’s chair on the set of Ninja: Shadow of a Tear is filled by Millennium Entertainment’s own Frank DeMartini, who was once a Hollywood attorney before he became a producer. DeMartini is there on the set every moment, supervising every detail of the production, and he allows me to be comfortable on the set, which is sometimes difficult to do on a movie production where grips, make-up, wardrobe people, and props and wires of all sorts can create a hectic atmosphere. DeMartini is calm, and his mandate on this set is to help director Isaac Florentine and star Scott Adkins create the best action film possible. When he has time, he submits to my questions and I’m surprised that he is able to converse on action movie terms. Off the record, we talk about the action movie stars from the glory days of Nu-Image, stars like David Bradley, Frank Zagarino, and Bryan Genesse, and when we actually sit down to conduct the interview, it’s clear that he has an interest in these types of films, and indeed would love to produce more of them.

(read the rest of this shit…)

September 20th, 2013 | 9 Comments »

Summer Movie Flashback: Inception

tn_inception

2010
2010

The best way to explain the genius of INCEPTION is just to describe what’s going on at the climax. The main characters are all asleep on a jet, dreaming that they’re in a van that’s crashed and is falling off a bridge. All but the driver, Dileep Rao, are asleep and are also in a dream-within-a-dream where they’re tied together floating weightlessly in an elevator. Joseph Gordon Levitt is preparing to wake them up, the rest are asleep and in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream about blowing up a snowy fortress. But Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page are asleep there because they’re actually in a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream where Leo is making the emotional decision to leave behind a SOLARIS-type living memory of his dead wife Marion Cotillard to go into a limbo to rescue his client, Ken Watanabe, who has lived a whole life there and is now an old man and forgets that he’s not in reality, because time passes at a different pace within each of these worlds. And there is a decades long slowed down music cue that tells Leo the van in the first dream is about to hit the water and wake them all up.

And here’s the kicker: all of this was understandable even on the first viewing for knuckleheads like me and the millions of people who made it a huge hit summer movie. I mean, you don’t have to like it, but it takes a silly motherfucker to deny the accomplishment of making such an effective mainstream thriller out of a concept this complicated. (read the rest of this shit…)

September 19th, 2013 | 58 Comments »

Tom Yum Goong 2 trailer

“Fierce as a lion, strong as an elephant. Sadly after today he’ll disappear forever.”

I can’t tell if this is gonna be any good, but I do know that 1) I personally requested in CLiNT magazine for them to shoot Tony Jaa in 3D, and they did it 2) it is the sequel to maybe my favorite straight-ahead martial arts movie of the 2000s. (Or top 5 if I put it up against KILL BILL.)

One thing I really hope for, though there’s no evidence in this trailer, is an attempt to one-up part 1’s famous long take fight scene. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of thing, but maybe some other spectacular idea we haven’t quite seen on that level before. One thing that makes TOM YUM GOONG so great is that they were clearly intent on outdoing everything they achieved in ONG BAK. They seem to have lost that spirit in later movies as Jaa started having a hard time living up to his legend or whatever was going on that caused him to abandon the filming of the ONG BAK sequels and become a monk for a while.

Now they have JeeJa around, which could help in the upping-the-ante department. And I like that RZA is the bad guy, since he is already kind of a TOM YUM GOONG villain for having rescored it for the bastardized Weinstein version THE PROTECTOR. (Not that he did a bad – or good- job. In fact, if the music on this trailer is from the movie I wouldn’t be against RZA taking a crack at it.)

September 18th, 2013 | 18 Comments »

Interview with Ross Clarkson by david j. moore

tn_ninja2extendedoutlawcontentIn part 2 of this OUTLAWVERN.COM EXCLUSIVE series, author david j. moore talks to NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR cinematographer Ross Clarkson on set. Here’s david:

One of the pleasant surprises while visiting the Bangkok, Thailand set of Isaac Florentine’s Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, was hanging out with the cinematographer, Ross Clarkson. I had lunch with him several times over the course of the few days I was on set, and I found him to be jovial and consistently likable, despite the fact that I could clearly see that he was under pressure while under the restraints of a tight budget and schedule for the film. Clarkson, an Australian living in Hong Kong, got his big break working with Ringo Lam, and has shot numerous films with some of the greatest action stars in the business, including Dolph Lundgren, Michael Jai White, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and of course Scott Adkins.

(read the rest of this shit…)

September 18th, 2013 | 3 Comments »

Summer Movie Flashback: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

tn_princeofpersia

2010
2010

This is another one I never would’ve watched without painting myself into a corner with this review series. It falls into the small percentage of big summer movies that I just had no interest in seeing at all. Alot of the ones I miss, like, say, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 4, I didn’t get around to seeing them, and I heard they were bad, but yeah, sure, I’d watch ’em. Probly will some day. But not this one. I wouldn’t have.

(read the rest of this shit…)

September 17th, 2013 | 74 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
  • Hey bud, thanks for reading.

    Don't feel obligated, but here are some

  • WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHIT OUT OF VERN & OUTLAWVERN.COM

    if that's your thing:

  • 1. Patreon

    Toss me a couple bucks a month, support the good shit, also get access to a bunch of exclusive writing. This is my primary source of writing money that has allowed me to cut down to part time at the day job. Thank you!

  • 2. Buy my books from your local bookseller or somebody

    click here for my Amazon author page

    (NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)

    EXTRA CREDIT: Review them on Amazon! That would really help me out. Unless you didn't like them, in which case forget I said anything.

  • 3. If you ever buy from Amazon, go through my links or search engines



    (you pay the same amount you were gonna pay anyway they cut me a little slice)

  • I also have an Amazon UK one:

    (I can't get the search box widget to work anymore, so click on MOONWALKER and then search for what you want.)

  • 4. My exciting line of fashion and leisure products

    (I get a couple bucks per item, you get a cool t-shirt, mug or lifestyle item)

  • 5. Spread the word

    Tell your friends about my reviews and my books and everything. Only cool people though please, we don't need a bunch of suckers and/or chumps around here.

    THANKS EVERYBODY. YOUR FRIEND, VERN

    * * * *

  • Recent commentary and jibber-jabber

    • CJ Holden on Basket Case 2: “I still see Jolt regularly in grocery store shelves, but I only drank it once in the late 90s and…” Nov 11, 23:05
    • Franchise Fred on Basket Case 2: “Funny thing about Jolt Cola. The American Crime Story season on the Versace murder had a scene where Andrew Cunanan…” Nov 11, 22:54
    • VERN on Basket Case: “BESTIE – I like that reading. I need to rewatch BRAIN DAMAGE and FRANKENHOOKER. I was pretty young when I…” Nov 11, 19:10
    • Dreadguacamole on Predator: “Ooof, thank goodness – everyone I know IRL liked BADLANDS. There’s dumb fun, and then there’s insult to your intelligence…” Nov 11, 11:02
    • geoffreyjar on Nightbreed (special Halloween revisit): “Rewatched it with the 4K earlier this year and felt the same as Kaplan did in the other write-ups comments…” Nov 11, 10:41
    • BESTIEunlmt on Basket Case: “Hey Vern, long time reader commenting for the first time, because I have a soft spot for Hennenlotter’s oeuvre. Have…” Nov 11, 09:50
    • geoffreyjar on Basket Case 2: “Been a while since I seen this one but remember enjoying it’s more goofy take with more monster people. 3…” Nov 11, 09:42
    • CJ Holden on Predator: “That was supposed to mean: “No amount of actually fun video games and comics can MAKE UP FOR HOW MUCH…” Nov 11, 06:34
    • CJ Holden on Predator: “Yeah, you see, that works, considering that basically every TERMINATOR sequel after part 2 feels like a stand-alone “what if”…” Nov 11, 06:28
    • Toxic on Predator: “Weyland-Yutani is the main antagonist and there’s one thing clearly taken from ALIENS that I won’t spoil (and didn’t even…” Nov 11, 01:35
    • pegsman on The Car / The Car: Road to Revenge: “Thanks for the recommendation, Majestyk! Youtube had a decent VHS version of NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER. The Movie Archeologist in…” Nov 10, 22:27
    • CJ Holden on Predator: “I don’t mind all of that (on paper, haven’t seen it yet), but I am really mad that it apparently…” Nov 10, 21:51
    • Dreadguacamole on Nightbreed (special Halloween revisit): “I adore this movie, warts and all, and this is a beautiful review of what (and what doesn’t) work. Vern,…” Nov 10, 17:07
    • KayKay on Predator: “Maybe I’m just the GRUMPIER OLD GUY, but I didn’t sign up for a Predator with feelings, a name, and…” Nov 10, 16:29
    • KayKay on Predator: ““certainly I’m being hyperbolic with the “lunk-headed as you can get”.” Oh yeah I definitely got that, as I’m sure…” Nov 10, 16:22

  • Recent Commented on Posts

  • Most Comments