"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Find Me Guilty

tn_findmeguiltyRemember around the time you first heard about Vin Diesel, you would read all this shit about how he wasn’t just some dumb musclehead, he was a multi-talented enigma, he directed a short that caught Steve Spielberg’s eye, blah blah blah? But then he just did a bunch of action and action-like movies, many of them not very good, turned down the sequels, never got his HANNIBAL movie off the ground, then eventually had to stoop to the Hulk-Hogan-in-MR.-NANNY route to get a hit, and everybody wrote him off?

Well, I think he might get things rolling again, but we’ll see. And even if he doesn’t, it turns out he’s got one role under his belt that fits that “more than meets the eye” hype and shows that he’s got more range than just the differences between Riddick and Dominic Teretto (hint: Riddick wears goggles). (read the rest of this shit…)

Rooster Cogburn

tn_roostercogburnIn ’75, six years after John Wayne won his Oscar playing Rooster Cogburn in TRUE GRIT, they figured on bringing the character back. Not a bad idea, actually. Maybe not as good as my idea of spinning off his cat, but still, it works. He’s a marshall who goes after outlaws, obviously he’s gonna have other adventures. That’s what this is, this ROOSTER COGBURN, it’s not a stripped down drama about him getting old like ROCKY BALBOA was. (And if you’re looking at that picture thinking man, Mattie Ross got old fast, don’t worry, it’s a different character.)

This particular adventure (subtitled “(…and The Lady)” on the DVD box) starts out like an old west Dirty Harry movie. The judge is outraged by Cogburn’s unorthodox methods. He shoots too many people and isn’t good enough at kissing authority figure ass. So he gets his badge taken away. I thought it was kind of funny to have John Wayne doing this when he actually turned down DIRTY HARRY, but when I read True Grit: The Book I learned that this scene is sort of based on something that happens at the end of that book. (That doesn’t explain McQ, though.)

Of course the judge has to come crawling back to him because a gang stole some nitro glycerin for robbing a bank, and Rooster’s the only one with the skills, knowledge and balls for the case. On the trail he comes across a small church where the gang killed some people. The survivors are the preachy spinster Katherine Hepburn and a young scout who dreams of becoming the first Native American marshall. Of course Rooster reluctantly takes them with him and eventually comes to care about them. (read the rest of this shit…)

True Grit

tn_truegritThis movie’s gettin a squeeze of the ol’ limelight again on account of the Minnesota Coens are doing another version of the same book.

In this first version John Wayne plays U.S. Marshall Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, who everybody talks about as a mean old bastard but let’s be honest, he’s really a lovably eccentric curmudgeon. I mean even if he says no at first it doesn’t take a whole lot to convince him to go on a bounty hunt with a 15 year old rich girl. And then he doesn’t rob her or slap her around or anything. In fact the big turning point in the story is when the Texas Ranger who’s going along tries to spank the girl with a switch, Rooster decides to put his foot down and enforce an anti-spanking policy.

I see plenty of room for Coen humor here with Mattie Ross, the spanking victim in question who hires Rooster to catch her father’s killer. She has a Barton Fink sense of entitlement (“My family owns property and I want to know why I’m being treated this way!”) and her repitition of the word “grit” (“I’m looking for someone with grit,” “I hear he has grit?” “Is this what you in Fort Smith call grit? Back in Yell County we have a different word for it,” etc.) would be right at home in any Coens movie. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Dream That Made Me Sell Out

tn_rapsnacksMy friends,

You might’ve noticed there’s an Amazon.com deal over on the sidebar there. I wanted to say a few things about that.

Number one, Steven Seagal’s Lightning Bolt Energy Drink is not currently available at Amazon, nor are Dirt McGirt Sour Cream and Onion Rap Snacks (left). So you will have to get your food somewhere else.

Number two, you guys know I’ve been doing this websight for ten years now, and other than what I get for my books I don’t make any money off of it. And I’ll keep doing it for free until I die if I have to, but I figure if I ever do make some money off of it it could help me to do the day job less and spend more time on this, do a better job of striving.

(read the rest of this shit…)

The Connection

tn_connectionLong before Kathryn Bigelow swept the country into a state of frenzied Hurt Lockermania there were other women directors paving their own roads, carving out their own niches, laying their own tracks, mapping out their own nature trails, and other metaphors. One such director was Shirley Clarke.
(That’s not her to the left, that’s a goofy lady that’s in the movie.)

I first heard of Clarke when I saw ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA, a very strange experimental documentary about free jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman. It’s a mixture of interviews, re-enactments and performances in strange settings. Ornette talks about his life, his work, goes off on tangents about self-castration, geodesic domes, you know the drill. Or maybe not. I guess Clarke was not your everyday director. And not just compared to Penny Marshall or Nancy Meyers. Compared to everybody. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Loveless

tn_lovelessThe Oscars this year performed a courageous service: they taught the world who Kathryn Bigelow was. Or at least that she’s a woman, she won the Oscar, she directed THE HURT LOCKER, and that business about her ex-husband, whatsisdick. So now she’s pretty close to a household name, she’s not just that legendary female director of action movies who for a short time had the filmatic chops to match or better her testacled counterparts. Now she’s reborn with a great movie at the top of her IMDB profile and a place in history.

Don’t get me wrong, she still directed POINT BREAK. But there’s more to her than we paid attention to before. So in honor of that I decided it was time to go back and watch the ones I haven’t seen before. (read the rest of this shit…)

Defendor

tn_defendorAs much as I like Marko Zaror, I thought DEFENDOR was a much better take on the “regular person becomes super hero” genre than MIRAGEMAN. To be fair, Woody Harrelson is not as good of a martial artist as Zaror, and is not as Chilean either. But he is good in this movie.

You know, it seems kind of stupid to call Woody Harrelson “underappreciated” when he just got nominated for an Oscar last year. But I think he kind of is, and partly because he doesn’t get too many starring roles these days. In this one he did, but the movie hardly played theaters, and some of you probly never heard of it until now. (read the rest of this shit…)

Mirageman

tn_miragemanI was thinking the other day: I wonder if super hero movies are the westerns of our time? A genre that’ll dominate for a while and then after a generation or two of being done to death it’s put off into storage, except for special occasions, like the fancy silverware. If so then I think we’re a little early with all these super hero deconstructions, these different versions of “what would really happen if somebody tried to be a super hero?” WATCHMEN and the upcoming KICKASS are the expensive, fantastical versions of that kind of idea and then there’s this slew of low budget indie ones like SPECIAL, DEFENDOR and MIRAGEMAN.

MIRAGEMAN stars Marko Zaror, the Chilean martial artist. If you’re not familiar with him his claim to fame used to be that he was The Rock’s stunt double in THE RUNDOWN. Then, like Tony Jaa over in Thailand, Zaror and his team decided to start making movies, first the fantasy KILTRO and then this. He also has one called MANDRILL playing the film festivals and he’ll be in UNDISPUTED III with Scott Adkins. (read the rest of this shit…)

Blind Date

tn_blinddateBruceIt might be hard for some of you youths to believe, but there was a time when our boy Bruce

1. could never be thought of as an action star and

2. had some hair.

In those pre-DIE HARD, mid-MOONLIGHTING days it made more sense than anything for Bruce to star in a Blake Edwards comedy. He was kind of thought of as a hip young smartass comedy star, instead of a smoldering veteran action star who can also be funny. (read the rest of this shit…)

The State of Affairs in Badass Cinema, first week of April 2010

explosionsThere seems to be alot of trailers and announcements and shit related to the sorts of pictures we’re interested in around here, so I figured I’d round them up so we can discuss them. Also, it is always exciting to have a picture of a bunch of cars exploding.

Diesel-related Developments

According to a Collider interview with producer Neal H. Moritz about the upcoming fifth FAST AND FURIOUS movie (once again teaming Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and director Justin Lin) “the goal is to bring touchstone characters from each of the movies back.” I suspect this means I’ll get my wish of Lucas Black from TOKYO DRIFT at least making a cameo. After all, Han is dead, and Sonny Chiba doesn’t drive. And hell, I hope they throw in a Tyrese from 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS. Why not? (read the rest of this shit…)