Posts Tagged ‘Casper Van Dien’
Thursday, March 11th, 2021
There’s a new MORTAL KOMBAT movie about to enter our realm, and it’s crazy to think they’ve been developing this thing for over a decade! It made me want to journey back to the beginning of that process and revisit what happened when director Kevin Tancharoen tried to reimagine the fighting tournament game turned movie series.
Tancharoen was on the mixing stage at Warner Brothers when he heard talk about hopes to restart the series. He thought there was a way to put a new, gritty spin on it, and wanted to try. One problem: the only movie he’d directed was a glossy musical, the 2009 version of FAME. He was much more established as a choreographer for Britney Spears than as a filmmaker. He knew they weren’t gonna fuckin believe he was the guy to bring back MORTAL KOMBAT unless he showed them. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Tee, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Casper Van Dien, Dan Southworth, Darren Shahlavi, Eric Steinberg, fighting tournament, Garrett Warren, Harry Shum Jr., Ian Anthony Dale, James Lew, Jeri Ryan, Johnson Phan, Jolene Tran, Kevin Ohtsji, Kevin Tancharoen, Kim DO Nguyen, Larnell Stovall, Lateef Crowder, Mark Dacascos, Matt Mullins, Michael Jai White, Michelle Lee, ninjas, Oren Uziel, Peter Shinkoda, Richard Dorton, Ryan Robbins, Samantha Jo, Shane Warren Jones
Posted in Action, Martial Arts, Reviews, Videogame | 20 Comments »
Tuesday, February 19th, 2019
Man, we’ve been hearing about James Cameron doing this manga/anime adaptation since 2005, well before AVATAR. We’re talking Obama’s first year as a United States Senator, Christian Bale’s first year as a Batman, three live action Spider-man actors ago, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe even started, when Chris Evans was still The Human Torch, George Lucas was still making Star Wars movies, Saddam Hussein was still alive, the word “sexting” was just invented, Youtube was just starting, and Twitter didn’t exist yet. A long time ago.
So I can’t say I was thrilled when, after that decade plus of hopes, Cameron announced “Just kidding, Robert Rodriguez is gonna direct it.” Fresh off of SIN CITY 2. But also I wasn’t stupid enough to scoff at it. Cameron co-wrote and produced the thing. The only other time he did that was STRANGE DAYS, and that turned out pretty good. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Casper Van Dien, Christoph Waltz, cyborg, Diana Lee Inosanto, Ed Skrein, Edward Norton, Jackie Earle Haley, James Cameron, Jeff Fahey, Jennifer Connelly, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Keean Johnson, Laeta Kalogridis, live action anime, live action manga, Mahershala Ali, Marko Zaror, Michelle Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez, Rosa Salazar
Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 51 Comments »
Thursday, January 25th, 2018
SHOWDOWN IN MANILA is the latest from Alexander Nevsky, the Russian bodybuilder turned b-movie actor who starred in and directed BLACK ROSE. This one is the directing debut of Mark Dacascos and it’s much more fun and ambitious than that last one, largely due to an EXPENDABLES-worthy cast of action icons.
Nevsky plays Nick Peyton, the leader of some sort of elite police strikeforce thing in Manila. In the prologue he leads a police raid and his whole team are wearing those giant helmets like in THE RAID – except for him, even though he’s 1-3 heads taller than all of them. Standing there ready to take it like a lightning rod. He doesn’t get shot in the head, but does get shot and fails to apprehend two ultimate b-action bad guys: Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (L.A. TAKEDOWN, KICKBOXER 2, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO, MORTAL KOMBAT, BRIDGE OF DRAGONS) and Matthias Hues (NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER 2, I COME IN PEACE, BLACKBELT, MISSION OF JUSTICE, TALONS OF THE EAGLE, TC 2000). C-HT in particular looks like he’s enjoying the hell out of just strutting around in tropical gangster clothes being arrogant.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexander Nevsky, Andrzej Bartkowiak, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Casper Van Dien, Craig Hamman, Cynthia Rothrock, Dmitriy Dyuzhev, Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Mark Dacascos, Matthias Hues, Olivier Gruner, Tia Carrere
Posted in Action, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Monday, July 25th, 2016
Before there was THE LEGEND OF TARZAN there were over 200 other Tarzan movies, and before those there were 26 books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and books by other people, and radio plays and cartoons and records and cereals and pajamas. But for the purposes of Summer 2016: Origins I wanted to watch the previous live action Tarzan, the Tarzan movie of the ’90s, TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY (1998) starring Casper Van Dien (followup to his debut STARSHIP TROOPERS).
It turns out some of the things I liked about LEGEND’s approach had already been done in this one. LOST CITY begins with Tarzan already a lord and having to return to the jungle and his old ways to help somebody. It also has a respect for the native African characters, showing them as his close friends who he comes to help. And it has bad guys who are arrogant European assholes plundering Africa (although they’re just stealing diamonds, not abusing workers/enslaving people like in LEGEND). They start by stealing from graves, which does not go over well with the locals. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: adventure, Carl Schenkel, Casper Van Dien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jane March, jungle, old timey adventure
Posted in Action, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Wednesday, January 7th, 2015
How’s this for a pitch: it’s POINT BREAK meets DROP ZONE and TERMINAL VELOCITY! Stephen Baldwin plays an over-the-edge customs agent who, like Keanu Reeves’s FBI agent in POINT BREAK, goes undercover with a group of (non-surfing this time) skydivers who he suspects of being involved in drug smuggling. And like DROP ZONE and TERMINAL VELOCITY it’s about this whole subculture of skydivers who live like a family or a tribe with their own stupid lingo and traditions that they’re real proud of. For example “cutaway” is their term for somebody (for example a hot shot lawyer) leaving behind their previous life to just be one of these parachute gypsies for now on. And of course that takes on extra meaning for Baldwin’s character, who is here with a secret agenda that he’s gonna be tempted to cutaway from as he becomes accepted by the group. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Wylie, Casper Van Dien, Dennis Rodman, Guy Manos, Maxine Bahns, Phillip Glasser, Ron Silver, skydiving, Stephen Baldwin, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tom Berenger
Posted in Action, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, August 29th, 2012
Remember how they made two DTV sequels to STARSHIP TROOPERS? Now there’s a new one, but I think the world will be sharply divided over whether we consider this part 4 or not. It does continue the futuristic bug war star trooping of Captain Carmen Ibanez (originally Denise Richards, now Luci Christian), master psychic Carl “It’s afraid!” Jenkins (originally Neil Patrick Harris, now Justin Doran) and Johnny Rico (now promoted to General). But one thing they did different, they gave it to the Japanese animation director Shinji Aramaki (APPLESEED) to computer it up. Now instead of deliberately white bread humans it’s creepy Real Doll type animated characters sort of along the lines of FINAL FANTASY and those types of computer animated pictures.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Casper Van Dien, DTV, DTV sequels, Ed Neumeier
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 94 Comments »
Monday, August 4th, 2008
I’ve been sort of looking forward to this new STARSHIP TROOPERS, and if you got a problem with that too bad because I’ve gotten enough “are you gonna review Starship Troopers 3?” emails to know that we can take you. Ed Neumeier takes over as director this time, which means the satirical tone remains since this is the guy who wrote all three STARSHIP TROOPERS as well as ROBOCOP. And, uh, ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID. I didn’t know that, I just found that out on IMDB. Hmmm. I had not considered watching that one. This changes everything. This could be the big one.
If you saw STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION you may or may not remember that it was pretty different from the first one. They scaled it down for DTV, making it into mostly a one-location siege kind of story and incorporating smaller bugs that implant themselves in people’s brains or something. The good part is it was directed by the effects legend Phil Tippett so it ended up having the best effects I’ve seen in a DTV movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Australian cinema, Casper Van Dien, DTV, DTV sequels, giant crocodiles, Sam Worthington
Posted in Action, AICN, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 31 Comments »
Monday, November 22nd, 1999
This week what I saw was a piece by the name of Sleepy Hollow. This is what you call an old fashioned horror type movie based on that old story of the decapitated horseman. What he does is he goes around chopping off motherfuckers heads with an ax goin “Where’s my head? Where’s my head motherfucker give it back!” Or at least, that is what he’s communicating through the medium of head chopping.
Now first of all, if any of you like me saw halloween 20 last halloween, your probably thinking the same thing I am – could it be… michael meyers is the headless horseman? Because remember michael also got his head chopped off with an ax. And yeah nobody ever taught him how to ride a horse but then nobody taught him how to drive a car either but he was doing very well last night. Anyway I don’t want to give anything away but its not him unfortunately in sleepy hollow because it takes place in a different time period. SOrry.
Well obviously what you gotta do in a headless horseman type situation like this, even if its not michael meyers, you gotta figure out what the hell is up with this fucker and catch him. Let me tell you i’m glad this dude doesn’t get locked up in the end, i would feel bad for the inmates that have to deal with a dude with no head, that’s just creepy.
So anyway the dude who goes after him is kind of a sissy type fella by the name of Ichabod Crane. Apparently he’s some sort of cop although without a uniform or a badge I’m just going to let it slide and say, okay, this dude is all right with me. Even if he’s wearing some kind of lady’s scarf which I guess was considered less taboo at the time this takes place. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Casper Van Dien, Christina Ricci, Christopher Lee, Johnny Depp, Ray Park, Tim Burton
Posted in Horror, Mystery, Reviews, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 2 Comments »
