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Posts Tagged ‘Craig R. Baxley’

Strictly Bozness: The Fiery Majesty of STONE COLD

Wednesday, November 7th, 2018

Another one from the Vern Vault: I have written about STONE COLD many times, but this was the only time I thought to title it STRICTLY BOZNESS. Originally posted October 15, 2015 on One Perfect Shot.

STRICTLY BOZNESS: THE FIERY MAJESTY OF ‘STONE COLD’

There is a certain type of action movie I love where it’s more important to be awesome than grounded; where the knowing use of cliches, absurd physics and extreme exaggeration are part of the agreement between the film and the audience. These are movies that are almost impossible to truly make fun of, because their ridiculousness is not a drawback, even when it’s an accident. They make you laugh but you’d be lying if you said you were only enjoying them ironically. Classics of this type include Schwarzenegger’s COMMANDO, Van Damme’s HARD TARGET and Seagal’s HARD TO KILL. (read the rest of this shit…)

a new piece on STONE COLD

Monday, October 5th, 2015

tn_stonecoldThose of you who participate in the “Twitter” brand social media platform might have seen an account called “One. Perfect. Shot.” It follows the simple idea of posting beautiful frames from favorite movies, so you can admire their composition and lighting and what not. For example here’s a nice one from today:


I didn’t know this at first, but the guy that does it is Geoff Todd, who was the editor over at Daily Grindhouse when I did a column there. He also collects them at a websight, oneperfectshotdb.com, complete with, like, articles and shit. He asked me to write some of those articles and shit, and he’s always been good to me, so what the hell. I will be writing one or two perfect essays a month over there.

Since most of his readers probly don’t know me from Adam and Steve I figured I should introduce myself with a movie that truly represented who I am and what I represent, not only as a writer but also as a human being here on this planet just trying to get by and travel this journey you know what I mean so obviously I wrote the only thing a man in that situation CAN write, a little piece called:

Strictly Bozness: The Fiery Majesty of ‘Stone Cold’

I know I’ve written about this movie a couple times before, but come on. It’s fucking STONE COLD, man. This won’t be the last time either. “Stricly Bozness,” by the way, is what I wanted to call my book on the films of Brian Bosworth before I determined that too many of them (including the barely aired TV show he starred in) were unavailable for me to do it. Maybe some day.

Anyway, check it out and feel free to comment over there so they know somebody gave a shit.

Dark Angel (I Come In Peace) Blu-Ray review

Wednesday, August 28th, 2013

tn_icomeinpeace

Craig R. Baxley’s DARK ANGEL – or, as we Americans proudly call it, I COME IN PEACE – hit the ray of blu today courtesy of the great Shout Factory. You can read my review of the new disc over on The Daily Grindhouse.

For comparison’s sake here’s my original review of the movie from about 7 years ago.

 

Vern Explains The Importance Of The STONE COLD DVD!

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

Really, what more is there to say? Vern’s the man, and if he says it’s time to go buy STONE COLD on DVD, who am I to argue?

Ladies and gentlemen, the day has come. The eagle has landed. Brian Bosworth’s 1991 film debut STONE COLD is finally available on Region 1 DVD. We’re through the looking glass, people.

As a DVD this is kind of a bust. There isn’t even a trailer on the thing. They did spring for interactive menus, that’s about it. They even labeled the disc wrong, the widescreen is actually on the standard side and vice versa. The movie is about a biker gang, but the cover seems designed to make it look like a current DTV espionage thriller – there’s not a single motorcycle pictured on the front or back. (read the rest of this shit…)

Under Pressure

Friday, September 15th, 2006

UNDER PRESSURE is another one by director Craig Baxley, this time starring an actor I’ve never heard of before named Charles Sheen. This guy reminds me almost EXACTLY of the better known actor Charlie Sheen, but with the more formal name “Charles” obviously he must be more sophisticated and more serious about acting.

Mr. Sheen plays a fireman, and in the opening scene he saves a baby from a burning crack house. Nobody should go in there because all the vials of delicious crack ingredients are exploding, but for chrissakes there’s a BABY in there! So he goes in and he saves the baby. There is a pretty impressive amount of close up fire in this scene and you could tell the stuntman in Baxley was getting excited, figuring out how to get some good fire stunts in there. (read the rest of this shit…)

I Come in Peace

Tuesday, August 1st, 2006

I COME IN PEACE aka DARK ANGEL

Craig R. Baxley’s second directorial work (after ACTION JACKSON, before STONE COLD) is probaly his weirdest. It’s kind of like the cop movie version of BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET. Dolph Lundgren plays a plays-by-his-own-rules cop whose partner dies in a drug sting that happens to also be interrupted by an alien invader with a trenchcoat and glowing eyes. This guy, I don’t know what his name is but he’s not a lovable E.T. type alien, he’s just a tall scary dude who goes around and says “I come in peace” but then shoots a weird tube out of his palm into your head and sucks out your endorphins. I could’ve sworn he stole the heroin from the drug dealers, but the reason he’s on earth really is not to steal heroin, it’s just to farm people for endorphins. We learn later from an outer space cop who’s chasing this guy that endorphins are a valuable drug on whatever planet they’re from, I guess we’ll call it Planet Icomeinpeace. He must be stopped because if he goes back to Icomeinpeace and gets alot of alien space dollars for his endorphins (or “dorph” as I bet they call it on the space streets) then other aliens are gonna figure out how easy it is to cop dorph out of our heads and it’ll be over for the human race. (read the rest of this shit…)

Action Jackson

Friday, July 21st, 2006

Every once in a while I’ll get in a gentlemanly argument with a motherfucker about whether Michael Bay single-handedly ruined the future of action cinema forever, or whether he’s just an asshole. And invariably a Bay-defender will claim that although his movies are not fun to watch and you don’t know what’s going on while you watch them, Michael Bay “blows things up real good.” I think the idea is supposed to be that Regular Folk like to watch a big fiery explosion with no brains involved and if you got a problem with that you must be some kind of snob.

Well I am not a snob and I think you guys know that. The problem is that in my opinion he DOES NOT blow things up good. He blows things up and then by the camera placement and quick cuts forces us to wonder whether we are in fact watching an explosion or a closeup of Billy Bob Thornton’s shoe or perhaps the reflection off a bead of sweat dripping down Josh Hartnett’s adam’s apple. (read the rest of this shit…)

Stone Cold

Friday, February 4th, 2005

As you know I have a professional interest in the old B-action pictures. I like your Seagals, your Swayzes, and your etceteras. That’s why somebody asked me Vern, do you know about this guy Brian Bosworth though. I said are you kidding me? Let me answer your question with a question. Did I live in Seattle in the year 1987? Of course I know who the damn Boz is. He was on the Seahawks and the local media acted like he was Jesus Christ Hisself, coming down from Heaven with a sacramental football and a new haircut. The haircut of course was a bleach blond mullet with designs shaved on the side, sometimes a full color Seahawks logo. It was called the Boz cut. I guess you could say he was the Dennis Rodman of his time. Known for his calculated outrageous fashion and In Your Face Attitude, he was a phenomenon with the kids. The white Mr. T. People copied the haircut, they had pro and anti Boz t-shirts, they even had this poster that said “Land of Boz” and showed him going down the yellow brick road with a bunch of kids dressed as him (Bozkins, probaly). He was a real big fuckin deal for all us retards here in Seattle.

Only one problem was, he never played that good. He kept getting injured and retired after three seasons. But his career was insured so he got rich off it all. After that score he figured, what the hell, maybe you can pull this same shit off in movies. Moved to L.A. and made STONE COLD. And it should’ve been obvious just from that background that this was gonna be a real good bad action movie. (read the rest of this shit…)