One More Bullet

(Wo)men in Black Leather Suits

September 17, 2012

Your favourite Canadian action director is talkin’ shit again. Before making three more Smurf films, he’s speaking out on how he feels about films. In an interview with The Guardian, he spat out a bit on modern female action heroes.

Strong words, but fairly apt. Let’s take a look at some films released in the past few years. Even without the plot, they all shop at the same leather shop.

Granted, they all generally fit the style appropriate for their stories and films, but it is all a bit samey and are a fairly unrecognized cliche. Not sure if it makes them men, but I’ve seen as far as memorable characters go, I can’t even remember the character’s names. Is Mr.Cameron guilty of his own statements though? Ripley (Aliens) and Sarah Connor (Terminator 2) have all the fierceness of any macho post-Rambo characters, but they do avoid being strictly damsels in distress or eye candy with notable personality traits. One that stands out for me, is their own maternal instincts such as Sarah Conner desiring to save humanity and her son from Judgement Day or Ripley protecting Newt. Obviously, Titanic doesn’t follow into my argument as easily, but Cameron’s pretty bang on about the leather-clothed ladies. Forgive me if I don’t want to see Resident Aeon Evil Underworld Flux again in the near future!

1 Comment | aeon flux, aliens, james cameron, machete, resident evil, the avengers, the expendables, the terminator | Permalink

Steele Justice Review

July 29, 2012

Steele Justice is 1980s cheese-action gone sour. Here we have a film having trouble deciding whether it wants to delve into every 80s cliche (by doing this, it cribs far too much from other good to average 80s action films) and unintentional humor (which sadly, only comes in brief spurts). The film stars Martin Kove as John Steele who we meet in Vietnam in the 1970s. How tough is Steele? Well he’s got a great set of neck ware with his plastic snake necklace.

Sneak in your pets by disguising them as your regular army gear.

I promise the next clip isn’t from Hot Shots, as this is Steele Justice seals the deal with the incredibly silly rat with grenade attached to it. And we’re only 5 minutes into the film.

Grenade on a rat!! It’s officially that kind of a film

I’m not even going to bother including the scenes that follow up involving Kove having a gun that shoots knives because this movie just starts out with actions that would make Italian rip-off cinema blush. I’m also not including it as the movie suddenly changes tone completely and drops any goofy weaponry when the film announces that it’s about 15 years later. Steele find his partner killed by Vietnamese gangsters who have also offed his partner’s family. The last family member remaining is Cami played by Jan Gan Boyd. Boyd is manicly miscast looking to be just as about as old as her mother. The film takes influence here from quality adult films and just give her pigtails. Instant teenager, right?

I’ll admit I’m being a bit harsh on the small stuff but this is all that remains firmly in memory after watching Steele Justice. Outside a few goofball choice it just turns into a poor man’s mish-mash of Rambo, Commando, and the Missing in Action films. It lacks the strange logic of Andy Sidaris films or Ninja III and instead focuses on being a far too familiar action film. Ronny Cox even plays a police sgt that’s basically the same role he had in the Beverly Hills Cop films. In my mind, it makes both these films take place in the same universe. Steele Justice for me is unofficially a spin-off of Beverly Hills Cop.

It’s not an 80s action film until you have your training montage with anthemetic rock blasting, and of course Steele Justice has one. The film does take some bizarre turns in musical cameos however. If you are into country-rock, there are some scenes of Chris Hillman (formerly of The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Band) performing with his 80s group The Desert Rose Band and a scene involving Astrid Plane, the original lead singer of synthpop group Animotion performing some delightfully poor choreography. Check out the backup dancers.

Does poor dance choreography lead to poor action scenes? In this case yes, the fights are sparse and many involve either Kove either knocking out people with a single punch or running away from battle. Only in the final showdown scene is there any element of interesting cinematography and atmosphere to give the still poorly choreographed swordplay any grit it needs to deserve your attention.

Steele Justice is not available on DVD and I manged to see it theatrically at a midnight show at the Mayfair Theater. Their was even a pre-recorded video involving Martin Kove introducing the film. Kove didn’t get into too many details about the film outside that he was excited to not play a bad guy in his role and that the film was a fun movie to make. It’s not quite as fun as Kove may hope as in between a bad film’s overtly goofy moments we have a film that’s too afraid to keep up with these more bizarre risks and just hops into the realm of safe clean action film making that I can only recommend to people who have worn out their Missing in Action tapes and need to pick up a quick bargain tape off e-bay.

3 Comments | 1980s, martin kove, steele justice | Permalink

Mayfair Theater’s Poster Sale

June 28, 2012

Easily the worst photograph taken by a human being, but if you use your imagination this is a jpeg of a poster sale.

Finally done my film exams for the summer so I can remember I have this One More Bullet crap to work on. A few ~~days~~ weeks back the Mayfair Theater had a poster sale to help pay for a digital projector by the end of the year. My mind was swimming to find out what treasures may be lurking in their for-sale stash.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be a surprise to tell you it wasn’t the best of hauls, but I managed to find some quirky items. All posters were films shown at the Mayfair since it’s re-opening in 2008 and the theater had quite a slew of strange and weird films shown since but sadly few of the films shown were related to their midnight line-ups. Among the oddities I’ve found though were posters for A Serbian Film, Tokyo Gore Police, Bellflower, and the most confusing of all was a Korean poster for X2. Why we have a Korean poster for an X-Men film when they have not even presented an X-Men film is beyond me.

As for the poster I bought, It’s for a film that I probably have no interest in seeing again, but I believe I need some colour on my wall.

Hey! Don’t judge! The poster for RoboGeisha is actually pretty attractive in a “toss in assorted unrelated Japanese imagery” kind of way. This purchase ultimately states that I do not follow A Hero Never Dies‘ ideal of that you should get a poster for the film itself, not for how it looks. I’m more on the side that a poster is generally going to be viewed for what it looks like rather than what it represents. I’m more interested in having eye-candy opposed to something that doesn’t really promote a film you appreciate in the best light. This RoboGeisha poster also seems a bit unique as I haven’t found a place to buy the same version as this one online. I’ve seen a similar one with Japanese text replacing the American one, but no duplicate.

My last thought on this poster sale is that I think it was illegal? Film posters are promotional items and to my knowledge can not be re-sold for profit like this. I know the ByTowne Cinema in Ottawa sells several posters but all the proceeds go to charity. But is it still charity if it’s to help the theater purchase the projector? Can anyone who’s got more poster or film law knowledge give me a head’s up?

2 Comments | film posters, mayfair theater, noboru iguchi, robogeisha | Permalink

John Woo’s Unfinished Projects

May 30, 2012

John Woo with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Picture from at least 100 years ago.

It’s been at least two posts since I’ve written about John Woo. He’s been pretty quiet since the release of Red Cliff which still demands a larger fanbase. I think hardcore fans skipped out on it theatrically knowing it wasn’t the full cut and the interest in Chinese epics has dwindled since we are long out of the era of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. Woo’s slow down in production had me a bit worried, especially after hearing him deny having throat cancer doesn’t help much. He had a tonsil tumor removed before February this year as well and is not getting much progress done on his romance film Love and Let Love. Whether this film gets off the ground or not, it can be placed in the large pile of projects that Woo had put on hold. I’ve tried to make a complete list compiling what is currently in the works and films that are no longer in play.

Kickin’ off with the films that are currently in the lengthy period known as “pre-production”:

John Woo’s Le Samourai

Nearly any article that mentions a mild history of Woo always brings up either Le Samourai or Jean Pierre Melville’s influence on him. It’s hard to overstate, and would make me wonder how Melville would react to such love from directors like Woo or Johnnie To. According to French director Jacques Rivette (who hated Woo’s Face/Off but loves Luc Besson), Melville apparently always wanted to have disciples so I’d suppose he would be proud to have such followers. I don’t think there’s any real reason for Woo to remake Le Samourai as he’s already nipped the best bits of it for The Killer ages back. It would also be an American film which only makes me imagine Nicolas Cage in the Alain Delon role and Rihanna as the nightclub singer. It’d be a big step up from her work in Battleship probably, but we’ll have to wait and see if anything new comes from this project.

John Woo’s Marco Polo

There’s very little information about this one, but Woo is interested in another historical film about Marco Polo, specifically his relationship with Kublai Khan. I’m not Chinese history expert (and neither is Woo from his story in Red Cliff) but from drawings of Kublai, I think Lam Suet should co-star. If he’s working his historical romance now, I think three in a row would be a bit much to ask of Woo. Cut it out with the historical films already.

John Woo’s Flying Tigers

Here’s Woo being slow to the punch again. Zhang Yimou’s Flowers of War was first to be the big popular film that was a Chinese production with an English-language actor (Christian Bale). This could be why it’s been at least a year since we’ve heard anything about Flying Tigers which was about an American Volunteer Group and the 14th Air Force during World War II. This would have been a film starring Tom Cruise which Woo hasn’t worked with since, well, the worst film in the Mission Impossible series. As no one has spoken about this film in quite a while, I can only assume it’s been shoved back. Tom’s very busy doing his hair metal movie anyways.

John Woo’s Youth of the Beast

This one I was the most excited for a number of reasons. First, it’s Woo’s return to the gangster genre, his first since…well, I suppose either Hard Boiled or A Bullet in the Head. Has it been that long? Second, it’s a film that Woo hasn’t already basically done unlike Le Samourai Woo has stated that he is a fan of the Japanese yakuza genre, but hasn’t explicitly noted how Youth of the Beast or any of Seijun Suzuki’s films have influenced him. Lastly, it’s a film that not everyone knows. Youth of the Beast is generally considered higher-tier Suzuki from his fan-base but it’s not quite as popular as Branded to Kill or Tokyo Drifter. The only problem? The film will probably be American as it’s plot now involves a “western outsider” and a two groups of gangsters: Russian and Japanese. Woo’s American films’ aren’t my favourite’s, but I’m still quite curious.

That’s a lot on Woo’s plate so that bastard better get well and get filming as soon as possible. He has left projects off long enough or has turned down films which would’ve have interesting results. Let’s quickly dash through the list of films that Woo has passed up.

John Woo’s King’s Ransom

Anticipating King’s Ransom is nostalgia from the 90s. In a perfect world, this should have been Woo’s first project in the United States as it was reportedly going to star Chow-Yun Fat and be written by the Face/Off writers Michael Colleary and Mike Web. This film has been in talks since the 1990s and Woo has finally given up the idea of directing it. The latest news on King’s Ransom is that it will be directed by Milky Way alumni Patrick Leung who also worked with Woo as a second unit director on The Killer and Red Cliff. In the book John Woo: The Interviews, Woo states the script has changed on King’s Ransom, so I don’t think we’ll be seeing any Face/Off-esque dialouge directly translated to Mandarin anytime soon.

John Woo’s Metroid

Video games aren’t movies. Movies based on things where a protagonist who is generally mute sound like bad things to base your film about. Either way, Woo has purchased the rights to a film version of the Metroid series around 2006. This was pretty shocking for me to hear about at the time as Woo seems to dislike science fiction. He even turned down the original script to Face/Off which he found to be too science fiction oriented in 1993. His only real step into the science fiction arena was in Pay Check which isn’t anyone’s favourite Woo film. No one has really discussed anything about Metroid relating to John Woo since the announcement of him buying the rights to it in the mid-2000s, but I have a hunch that any paper Woo signed relating to this project is gathering dust in a closet.

John Woo’s Goldeneye

I don’t even no the accuracy of this one as the only mention of it I can find is in Christopher Heard’s book Ten Thousand Bullets which has a lot inaccurate information. According to the book, MGM offered Woo a chance to direct GoldenEye in the 1990s even before he signed on to make Broken Arrow which is a nearly forgotten film. Woo apparently took on Broken Arrow as a way to try to learn how to use special effects…so if you’re a fan of pre-Matrix post-Terminator 2 special effects, there’s a copy in a bargain bin somewhere with your name on it. GoldenEye, and the James Bond universe is probably something Woo shouldn’t have tackled in the long run. James Bond is an institution and you can’t really change those films too much and get away with it. Neither the producers nor the James Bond fans would really be happy with that. Woo would’ve been held down by the restraints of what requires a Bond film to be a Bond film at that time and not really get any of his own ideas really placed within it. But it’s still not as strange as the next film Woo had been considering.

John Woo’s Phantom of the Opera

I have just stared at the heading of this section for a minute trying to even think about what to write here. Woo has long pined for the chance to direct a musical film or as he describes it as “his action musical”. There’s little information in this one within the Ten Thousand Bullets book and the John Woo: The Interviews books stating that John Travolta suggested the idea to him. Woo reported that “it somehow didn’t work out”. Even more nuts is Woo was also in the running to direct Chicago, remember that film? No one cares about Chicago anymore. Woo had already signed on to direct Mission Impossible 2 at that time, so there was no chance of going through with it.

Woo’s a director with a long history mixed with rumors, classics and films ideas that need to be done as soon as possible. I don’t know how ill Woo may really be, but I’m hoping for good news and good films in the future. In the meantime, I’m going to see if Paul Verhoeven is planning to make another film before he turns 100.

6 Comments | alain delon, chow-yun fat, hong kong, james bond, jean-claude van damme, john travolta, john woo, johnnie to, luc besson, nicolas cage, paul verhoeven, Uncategorized | Permalink

Avatar From Now On

May 7, 2012

Even Worthington has had enough Avatar

Oh Mr.Cameron, what have you done to me? You take a ten year break after Titanic to live the Troy McClure dream making and directing some forgettable documentaries along the way. And then I finally hear you are coming back to what you should be doing: science fiction action films. Avatar was in the correct genre for Cameron and the long wait led up to…a decent film that is weighed down by hippie smurfs.

This frustrated me a bit as for myself, James Cameron is probably the strongest and most consistent American action film director (possibly only rivaled by Walter Hill). Cameron is best when he’s working on large science fiction action pieces like The Terminator films or Aliens. I have to admit I’ve never gotten around to seeing True Lies so I’ll hold my judgement on how he fares when he’s stepping outside science fiction. Is it better than Avatar?

Avatar for me worked as theatrical experience but predominantly as an action film. When the characters were doing things that weren’t fighting such as hugging or singing to trees I felt my dollar was well spent. I wasn’t too worried about it’s great success at the time as projects outside the Avatar universe were still in pre-pre-pre-production such as Battle Angel Alita . Just from a glance on the wikipedia article on the comic, Battle Angel looks like something that may have worked better in the late 1990s then it would in this era, but what do I know about anime? Just take a break from Avatar!

Sadly, I think is James Cameron is moving in the opposite direction that I am taste wise. In an interview with the New York Times, Cameron states that he’ll be strictly working on Avatar films from now on. Bad idea! He also goes on to mention that he was in awe of Zack Snyder’s 300 which puts me into deeper confusion on where his tastes really lie.

So…where does this leave American action films? Cameron will continue to do Avatar which makes financial sense, but it’s a bit upsetting seeing a master of action as himself will be cutting out the action in the sequels as they will have less action than the original film.

So who’s next to take the throne of the top American action film director? Walter Hill has been out of the loop for years and i’m only mildly excited that he’s making a new film with Sylvester Stallone. He feels more like just a hired gun to me and it wouldn’t really be as good as his earlier works. Is it bad that the only American production I’m looking forward to this year is Nolan’s new Batman film? I’m worried guys!

2 Comments | james cameron | Permalink