DTV Action Items (Part 2): Intro to Stone Cold Steve Austin StudiesThis is Part 2 of 3 in my series on direct-to-video action movies. In last week’s post, direct-to-video action expert Outlaw Vern modestly proclaimed that, “for the time being I think Stone Cold Steve Austin is the most prolific star with a good track record [in DTV].” In Part 2 of my industry shaking series on DTV fight films, I exhaustively investigate this claim. Steve Austin (born Steve Anderson) was the biggest star in professional wrestling for most of the past 15 years, perfecting the persona of a blue-collar hellraiser with a rabid anti-authoritarian streak. A series of injuries to his neck and back forced him to retire from the ring, and he’s been churning out DTV bare-knuckle brawlers since 2009, after his one big bid for the theatrical market, The Condemned (2007), failed at the box office. While he hasn’t matched the insanely successful screen career of frequent WWE foe Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Austin is forging a worthy one of his own, albeit on the fringes of the movie business. Spy Games: Matchless (1967)
Remaking MetropolisLast year I had the privilege of participating in the Blu-Ray restoration of the restored version of Metropolis (the UK Blu-Ray edition at least, from Masters of Cinema), recording an audio commentary alongside Jonathan Rosenbaum. It was a tremendous thrill to see this once-lost footage brought back into circulation—it makes you think that maybe anything is possible. But for all that was positive about the experience, there was one point of frustration, centered on how the restored edition was marketed. And to explain my contrarian position, we need to back up over eight decades and tell the convoluted story of multiple Metropoli. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is the CureOne day, Japanese pulp cinema auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa was watching TV. A killer had been apprehended, and the TV newscasters mobbed the perp’s neighbors to ask all the familiar questions: what was he like? Did he act unusual? Did you ever suspect you were living next door to a monster? And the answers to these inevitable questions are inevitably frustrating: he was just a nice, quiet man who never aroused any suspicions. He must have been a monster disguised as a man. People want to be able to explain away crime as something aberrant. The press tries to meet this need, to package the reporting of crime in ways that pit us versus them. But Kurosawa, a cynical man who studied sociology before becoming a moviemaker, recognized these impulses as delusional. The killer, his neighbors, his victims, the detectives who caught him, and the reporters who covered the tale are all made of the same stuff. Kurosawa saw the disquieting truth: anyone can be a monster. Even you. This was in the mid 1990s, a period when the world’s cinemas were clogged with serial killer dramas all hoping to be the next Silence of the Lambs, or Se7en. That, or at least hitch a short ride on their coattails. Most remained just that—wanna bes, never weres, nots. This is the story of the film that did become the Next Big Thing, and along with Hideo Nakata’s 1998 Ring invented J-Horror. The Top Twelve Genre Films of 2011As the carcasses of prestige pics get picked over by awards committees and prognosticators, I like to distract myself from this pointless posturing by watching movies featuring actual corpses. After last year’s rundown of genre flicks received a good response, I return to the bloody well again, this time with twelve of my favorite action/horror/exploitation items released in the past year. Sure to be ignored by your local film critics circle, they are works of grim resourcefulness and ingenuity, deserving of more attention. I look forward to your criticisms, insults and recommendations in the comments. My picks are presented in alphabetical order, and if you’re interested in my overall top ten list, it’s posted here. A New Film RosterToday marks the last day of my Fall calendar film program. Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get working on the next one. My goal is to find 50 titles that provide repertory programming, community and academic outreach, festival favorites, cult oddities, challenging cinema, quality docs, along with enough arthouse money-makers and crowd-pleasers to keep the whole damn thing alive. The ideal mix honors the past, is grounded in the present, and has an eye for the future. Like a good friend, it needs to have the temerity to confront you with uncomfortable truths, take you to new places, introduce you to new talents, provide a window to other cultures, feed the mind, feed the soul, provide catharsis, tears, laughter, and a wide variety of surprises. A few directors come to mind who try to do all those things in one film, but this at risk of making you nauseous. (I’m looking at you Takashi Miike!) What follows are some of my top-picks (so far) as I consider titles to include in my Spring calendar. READ MORE Here’s to the Horror Film: A Measure of Our Times
Lance Henriksen: Not Bad for a HumanYou know this gaunt growler. He lurks in the disreputable direct-to-video section of your local video store, if it still exists, or pops up on Netflix in a low-budget creeper rated with one reluctant star. He is, of course, Lance Henriksen, a tireless worker and a real character of a character actor. In his wild, circuitous life he’s compiled a trunk-full of anecdotes and chastened life lessons. With the help of co-writer Joseph Maddrey, he packed all of them into his autobiography, Not Bad For A Human. It lays bare his poverty-stricken youth and job-hustling acting career with a disarming lack of vanity and a rhythmic sense of cursing. Vintage Violence: Sands of the Kalahari (1965) and Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976)A baboon and Santa Claus are witnesses to man’s descent into savagery. In Sands of the Kalahari (1965, out on DVD today from Olive Films), a charter plane crashes in the African desert, and its passengers battle each other (and some observant simians) for survival. Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (1976, a recent Raro Video DVD release) finds a couple of pretty boy Dirty Harries gunning down suspects before they have time to commit crimes. Poor Old St. Nick can only grin and bear these assaults on individual freedom. Both films display the brutalizing depths wisecracking civilized types can descend to when they feel above or outside the law. |
Archives
Recently i was totally bowled over by... - Emgee
Featured Sites
Popular terms
3-D
Action Films
Actors
Actors' Endorsements
animal stars
Animation
Anime
Anthology Films
Autobiography
Awards
B-movies
Best of the Year lists
Biography
Biopics
Blu-Ray
Books on Film
Boxing films
British Cinema
Canadian Cinema
Character Actors
Chicago Film History
Cinematography
Classic Films
College Life on Film
Comedy
Comic Book Movies
Czech Film
Dance on Film
Digital Cinema
Directors
Disaster Films
Documentary
Drama
DVD
Early Talkies
Editing
Educational Films
European Influence on American Cinema
Experimental
Exploitation
Fairy Tales on Film
Faith or Christian-based Films
Family Films
Film Composers
film festivals
Film History in Florida
Film Noir
Film Scholars
Film titles
Filmmaking Techniques
Food in Film
Foreign Film
French Film
Gangster films
Genre
Genre spoofs
Guest Programmers
HD & Blu-Ray
Holiday Movies
Hollywood lifestyles
Horror
Horror Movies
Icons
independent film
Italian Film
Japanese Film
Korean Film
Leadership
Literary Adaptations
Martial Arts
Melodramas
Method Acting
Mexican Cinema
Moguls
Monster Movies
Movie Books
Movie Costumes
Movie locations
Movie lovers
Movie Reviewers
Movie settings
Movie Stars
Music in Film
Musicals
New Releases
Outdoor Cinema
Paranoid Thrillers
Parenting on film
Polish film industry
political thrillers
Politics in Film
Pornography
Pre-Code
Producers
Race in American Film
Remakes
Road Movies
Romance
Romantic Comedies
Russian Film Industry
Satire
Scandals
Science Fiction
Screenwriters
Semi-documentaries
Serials
Short Films
Silent Film
silent films
Social Problem Film
Sports
Sports on Film
Stereotypes
Straight-to-DVD
Studio Politics
Suspense thriller
Swashbucklers
TCM Classic Film Festival
Television
The British in Hollywood
The Germans in Hollywood
The Hungarians in Hollywood
The Irish in Hollywood
The Russians in Hollywood
Theaters
Trains in movies
Underground Cinema
VOD
War film
Westerns
Women in the Film Industry
Women's Weepies |