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Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

This movie may suck but at least its finally here.

Ponyo, I’m on a Boat Mash Up

Movies that Changed Me…..Action

I could start this out talking about Star Wars and Superman: The Movie, those are to easy. I wanted to talk a bit about movies that changed the way that I watched movies. I have always liked movies, probably to much. I Got my first video card before I could drive and pretty much worked my way through the racks of the little local video store around the corner from my house. This was circa 1988-1989 and everyone was renting VHS tapes. But thanks to this little store I was able to discover Close Encounters, Jaws, THX-1138, The Untouchables and a slew of the best straight to video action movies that that Dolph Lundgren and Don “the Dragon” Wilson had to offer.

I also got my first taste of Jackie Chan a few years later about this time, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu and Fearless Hyena were amazing, I had discovered Hong Kong cinema.  I worked my way through everything I could get my hands on at this relatively large locally owned video chain called Road Runner. I was able to see Sonny Chiba as the Street Fighter, before Tarantino had made it popular in True Romance. I saw many of the old Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest kung fu movies on these old wore out video tapes, most of which had horrible transfers and dubbing.  But it didn’t matter at this point I was shocked at the amazing images I was seeing and hooked as I had never seen anything like that from Hollywood.

So fast forward a couple of years and I was driving and could go to the larger video stores, at the time it was Red Giraffe and Hollywood Video had opened.  This was an amazing thing to me as they had virtually thousands of tapes, stuff I never heard of.   While walking through he foreign movie section I saw a box that caught my eye. I had never heard of this movie and wasn’t sure what I was getting into but I felt I had to check this out.  The box looked like this.

I took this VHS home and watched it on awe.  I was amazed that films like this were being made.  The action was amazing and so over the top, but I remember thinking it looked cool as hell.  I was hooked. I was able to track down a used copy of this VHS to purchase from a video store that was going out of business,  now remember at this time circa 1992 or so video tapes were expensive but i think I may have paid $10 or so.  I passed this around to my friends and younger brother, but I think I was the one most touched by what we saw on the tape.  Then I heard that John Woo was coming to the states to direct a movie with Jean Claude van Damme, called Hard Target.

Now at the time Hard Target was a big deal, so we started to see more John Woo movies show up in the rental stores.  So once again I was walking through the store, this time I think it was a Video Vault, I had quite a few video memberships by this time.  Video Vault was were I went to get my “Japanimation” fix as this is what it was referred to at the time, I had recently discovered Akira.  But, I saw a box on the New Release wall that said “From the Director of Hard Target” on the front.  The movie was called Hard Boiled.

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Hard Boiled has been called one of the greatest action movies of all time.  Hard Boiled was the last movie John Woo made before coming to America to make Hard Boiled.  This movie when I saw had done things with a gun fights that we had never seen before in the states.  This often is the movie that I compare all modern day action movies to.  Mostly, because if you have seen this or will watch this you will see things that John Woo did in this film that has been mimiced over and over again in movies in the last 18 or so years since its original release.

From Wikipedia

Hard Boiled is also known as God of Guns (traditional Chinese: 鎗神/槍神.) The movie begins as an apparently straightforward film about the bond between a detective and an undercover cop as they fight a triad gang. However, it develops into an over two hour action movie with a body count of 235. Considered by many movie critics and fans alike to be one of the greatest and most influential action movies ever made, it is structured around four major action set pieces: the opening tea house shootout, the warehouse betrayal in the middle, the dock shootout, and the climactic thirty-minute hospital shootout.

Hard Boiled is considered one of the best heroic bloodshed movies of all time, and perhaps the definitive example, if only for the bloodshed. ^It increased John Woo’s and Chow Yun Fat’s popularity outside Hong Kong, and gained a unique cult status among genre fans worldwide.

In the June 22, 2007 issue of Entertainment Weekly, this was stated as the “9th greatest action film of all time.

Hard Boiled is truly the action movie that changed me.  Check back next time for the martial arts movies and sci-fi movies that changed the way I viewed movie growing up.

Lords of the Rhymes

Okay so Lord of the Rings fan stuff is like 8 years ago, but I thought I should share this video with you all (all 10 of you) who visit this blog.  This was the first video we showed on the now ill-fated Sennima Show back  6 or so years ago. For those interested this show aired on cable access in Louisville, KY and we showcased videos from the internet before it was the thing to do.

This is the first music video by the Lords of the Rhymes. The Lords are two hobbits who rap about Middle-earth and ring lore. The video contains a variety of costumes and references to the Red Book of Westmarch. Warning: The video also contains explicit language, Leonard Nemoy and a beat-boxing Gollum.

Official Web Site

Hunter Prey Teaser Trailer

A few years back an independent short film hit the inter-webs  from an unknown film-maker named Sandy Collora.  This film made a huge impact and was traded all over the place.  It even was featured on the my cable access show at the time where we showed the film twice. Once uncut and then again with an audio commentary by the director.  The film was the amazing Batman: Deadend or Batman versus the Alien and the Predator.

Well Sandy has finally made a feature film.  This new film called Hunter Prey has a teaser trailer out now.  The story: An escaped, deadly prisoner and a crew of space cadets marooned on a desert planet trying to bring him/her/it back.   The teaser is pretty short and doesn’t showcase much action, but looks cool as hell.  You can link to the trailer after the quote from the director.

Collora says:

Following the whole 70′s motif, just like we have with everything, the trailer is very much what I feel it should be: A brief glimpse of the characters, the world, and what the story is about. Not everything about the movie is revealed. I didn’t feel the need to tell or show it all, it’s not just all the “greatest hits” moments, believe me. I wanted to give everyone a taste of the film and get them excited about it, but I want them to discover the magic of the movie as they’re watching it, and not ruin the experience for them. After all, you can only see a movie for the first time, once.

You can view the trailer here, or find out more about the film and production schedule on Collora’s MySpace page, or at the official film website.

I have include an embed of the Hunter Prey trailer as well as a couple of Colloras other short independent films, Batman: Deadend and World’s Finest.  Enjoy.

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Kevin and Tim Talk Tech

Kevin Rose (creator of DIGG.com) and Tim Ferris (author of The Four Hour Work Week) talk about startups, viral marketing and research and naming your web site.  This is a very interesting possible for a pilot podcast.  On the Couch with Kevin and Tim.

Mister Rogers

I have always found the show Mr.Rogers neighborhood a bit creepy, even as a kid.  But, that doesn’t mean Fred Rogers was not an awesome person.  I found this article on CNN.com, it list 15 things everyone should know about Mister Rogers.  I personally found it fascinating, this man touched millions of people even the bad ones.

15 reasons Mr. Rogers was best neighbor ever

I am Stamos

When character actor Andy Shrub makes a wish to be a leading man, he magically begins to photograph as John Stamos … provoking the unholy wrath of Stamos.

Watch I am Stamos.