Strange days we’re livin in, here in the futuristic year of 1999. Everywhere you go there’s people getting chased, cars on fire. I just saw 2 people beating up Santa Claus on the sidewalk. Can you believe gas has gotten up to three whole dollars a gallon? What a nightmare! And man, I almost miss junkies. They were so much better than these “wireheads” you got now, who plug into recordings of the brain responses to sex and bank robberies and stuff. Those guys make me sick.
Okay, you got me, this is actually late 2009 when I’m writing this, and that was a made up science fiction scenario that did not end up happening in ’99. I would remember if it had. Isn’t that weird? In less then two months we’ll be at the 10th anniversary not of this movie, but of the future it takes place in. So it’s ironic that it’s about people stuck on re-living old experiences, and meanwhile we’re watching it comparing it to the actual New Year’s Eve 1999 we experienced. (read the rest of this shit…)
(warning: spoilers reign)
THE KEEPER is Steven Seagal’s new movie, still no release date in the U.S. but already released in England, where Seagal is so popular they even published a groundbreaking book that chronologically analyzes all his works up to PISTOL WHIPPED. This one isn’t as strong as RENEGADE JUSTICE (URBAN JUSTICE to us Americans) or PISTOL WHIPPED, and not much better than the okay DRIVEN TO KILL, but don’t worry, it’s much better than the less-than-half-assed AGAINST THE DARK and the Guinness Book of World Records-worthy all time most disorienting editing of KILL SWITCH.
I guess I got a nuanced view on these Robert Zemeckis “mo-cap” movies. I think he’s kind of delusional if he really thinks this is the future of movies, and I was complaining about the creepiness of attempted realism in POLAR EXPRESS (and earlier in FINAL FANTASY) long before it was a common complaint with the name “uncanny valley.” When it comes to being creeped out by dead-eyed computer animation, I’m NWA and mainstream critics are Ja Rule or somebody.
THE ABYSS is probly James Cameron’s most original movie. It’s not primarily based around people getting killed by a monster or a bad guy. It’s more like man vs. scientific challenge, trying to fix things, to not run out of air, to survive the pressure (both literally and figuratively) of being deep underwater. Okay, so Michael Biehn snaps from a bad case of the Underwater Blues, and they gotta fight him, but most of it is more problem solving and scientific analysis like APOLLO 13 or QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. And then it turns into CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And a little 2001. But underwater, so it’s completely different. Water is different from space. You can’t drink space. 
There once was a director named Chuck Russell, who did movies like THE MASK and ERASER. Not very good movies as I remember it, but he seemed like his heart was in the right place. He was trying to have some fun. He also did THE SCORPION KING, which I enjoyed, and then disappeared for the last couple years. But before he became The Occasional Director of Studio B-Movies he was a promising name on the ’80s horror scene. His debut was A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS, the ridiculous but fun one that reinvented the series and gave Freddy his obsession with the word “bitch.” He wrote that one along with future THE MIST director Frank Darabont, who also helped him write movie #2, his remake of THE BLOB. 
I just received word that midnight screenings of outlawvern.com favorite BLACK DYNAMITE have been scheduled in some new spots on the map including Columbus, Boston, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver, Fort Collins, even Spokane, WA where a couple of you helped approve R-71. I think a midnight screening is the best way to see it, this is a movie that’s even better with a big audience. And by the way they expanded the best picture Oscar to ten nominees this year, so, you know, keep that in mind when you’re watching it.
In THE BLOB Steve McQueen plays “Steve” and he’s supposed to be a teen. But he was actually 28 and looked about the same age as he did in THE GREAT ESCAPE. Therefore I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about leaping to the conclusion that he was re-enacting true events that had happened to him for real. The Young Steve McQueen Chronicles. None of this is included in his biography and some of what happens here (like his father being a store owner) don’t jibe with the established facts. But what importance do the details have when there is an essential truth at work here, the truth that a teenaged Steve McQueen sighted, tracked, battled and helped defeat The Blob? In a sense, this is BATMAN BEGINS to Steve McQueen’s life. 
Once every 7 years, in a different town each time, high stakes gamblers run a secret competition where the world’s greatest assassins all try to kill each other and the last one standing gets ten million dollars. With that premise and generic title this doesn’t sound like the kind of DTV I would like. And with Ving Rhames and Robert Carlyle starring I have to wonder if this was intended for theatrical release, which could also be a bad sign. We don’t want another EDISON FORCE on our hands. But the great Scott Adkins (UNDISPUTED II, SPECIAL FORCES, etc.) is in this so I’d been keeping my eye out ever since I spotted it on his IMDb page. It was released by the fucking Weinsteins with their pain in the ass exclusive deals (how the fuck do I get my friend to watch MARTYRS if he can’t find it anywhere?) so I didn’t know it came out until I got some emails about it. Two different people said it was even better than BLOOD AND BONE, which I’d pre-emptively declared best DTV action movie of the year. 
In Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of PSYCHO they tried to recreate Hitchcock’s filmatism, they had Joseph Stefano only slightly re-word his old script, they re-recorded Bernard Herrman’s score and made it sound basically the same. So the success or failure of this version mostly falls to the one element Hitchcock claimed to not give two shits about: the actors.
