"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

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.

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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.

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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 »

We demanded it, we got it: the return of Sean Boswell

Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. This summer, when FURIOUS 6’s mid-credits sequence caught up with the Han’s-death scene from THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT three movies ago, it created opportunity for what many of us had been hoping for for years: bringing back Sean Boswell, the redneck kid who was transplanted to Tokyo and became their new king of street racing (under the tutelage of Han and with the blessing of Sonny Chiba). But in all the exciting FAST AND FURIOUS 7 casting stories we’ve heard (along with the great returning cast they’ve added Jason Statham, Kurt Russell and Tony God Damn Jaa, plus a cameo by Ronda Rousey) Black was never mentioned, and I gave up hoping that the producers agreed with us that this was important.

But they do! Deadline reports the triumphant news that Black “has signed a deal that calls for his character to become a regular in the series and (get this…) “he will be part of at least the next three installments.”

THEY ARE PLANNING A WHOLE NEW SEAN BOSWELL TRILOGY, PEOPLE

One thing that could be potentially funny, it seems like they will need to begin with Dom coming to Tokyo looking for the man who blew up Han, or at least immediately after those events. So Sean should still be a high school student… but the movie will actually be coming out 8 years after TOKYO DRIFT, and Black is 30 now! I hope they make him wear the same clothes. The poor guy.

Now let’s use The Secret to get a Bow-Wow-in-Hulkmobile cameo.

September 17th, 2013 | 27 Comments »

Interview with Kane Kosugi by david j. moore

tn_kanekosugiexclusiveThis week and next week, because we’ve been good, we get to learn about NINJA: SHADOW OF A TEAR, the upcoming Isaac Florentine/Scott Adkins joint which premieres September 20th in Austin. You remember david j. moore, who previously shared with us his interviews with Jesse V. Johnson and Ben Ramsey? He visited the set back when it was called NINJA II and did a some interviews that he’s been generous enough to let me run as OUTLAWVERN.COM EXCLUSIVES. (note to Vern look into adding dramatic sound effects as mouseover)

We begin with david’s interview with the legendary Kane Kosugi, who not only tells us about working with Florentine and Adkins, but also what it’s like to be a 6 year old doing fight scenes in Cannon movies.

(read the rest of this shit…)

September 16th, 2013 | 5 Comments »

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