Posts Tagged ‘action’

Fans were already apprehensive with the casting of Seth Rogen as The Green Hornet, one of the world’s oldest superheroes, and now they have a reason to be downright upset. With the hiring of director Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), it sounds like the movie is headed back towards being more of a comedy than the serious action flick “promised” a little while back.

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I normally don’t feature projects like this, but writer David Desjardin contacted me in regards to a project he has been working on called Heavy Weapon. David, who’s in the military, decided to write an action movie script after he and his friends found themselves complaining about how modern action movies don’t compare to those in the 1980′s. This right there caught me attention, as while there have been quality action films of late, they just don’t compare to the classics of the 80′s (think Stallone and Schwarzenegger at their apex).

So, what does David do in response to his disappointment? He writes his own script. Of course, tons of people write movie scripts that never see the light of day nor are of any quality to deserve such honor, but here are a few things that make David’s script stand out from the rest:

• He actually registered the script with the WGA, which means he knows more about getting a script produced than 90% of other amateurs.
• The script is available for any to edit and refine.

I’m not endorsing the script; in fact, I haven’t read it. But the concept is a neat one: How better to create the perfect action movie than allow anyone in the world to edit it? David explains:

Basically, the idea behind Heavy Weapon is to allow anyone (especially action movie fans) to influence the script. You could almost look at it as being akin to the old Choose Your Own Adventure books: We’ve built the foundation for the movie, but anyone can suggest changes to be implemented throughout the story. Nearly every aspect of this movie is open for change; the actors, the characters, the spoken dialogue, the action. Everyone has the opportunity to make this movie rock, and it’s all up to the fan-base to spread the word about “their” movie. The internet community worked wonders for giving Snakes On A Plane that boost to the box office, and the way we see it, if that community actually holds stakes in this film, it could easily be a [shared] success in not only being picked up by a production company but eventually being shown nation-wide on the silver screen.

If you do provide work to the script, you won’t go unrewarded:

We’ve even worked incentives into the project to show our support to those who get involved in the project. Not just monitary incentives for providing workable script ideas, but also the incentive of seeing your name credited in the movie as a writer if you help as a major contributor. Don’t think we’d forget about the little guys either; If you help in even the slightest with anything that is implemented into the script, we’ll make sure your name makes it into the credits.

Who knows if this concept will take off. The probability of it succeeding are rather slim, but I think the idea has a lot better shot than most other projects. I get plenty of emails from people asking “How can I get my script turned into a movie?” and it is clear they will never get their script produced, let alone learn how to write quality English. David’s project is the first one to come along that I think actually has a chance.

Learn more at http://www.heavyweaponmovie.com/

The Bourne Ultimatum is out on DVD this Tuesday, and the DVD features some good special features that any Bourne fan will enjoy. I won’t go into detail on how much I liked the movie, as I’ve already written a movie review here, but having now watched the film three times, all I can say is that it is a great action movie – but not quite as good as The Bourne Supremacy (the second one).

Anyway, I’m a big Jason Bourne fan (of both the movies and books, even if they don’t match up at all), but here’s what the DVD offers:

• Deleted scenes
  A few deleted scenes. Nothing much to say here. There’s nothing all too remarkable here, and you can tell these were cut due to pacing issues.
• Man on the move: Jason Bourne
  The first of several very good featurettes, this one, split into chapters, takes a look at each unique filming location, from Berlin to Tangier to New York. You get to see the challenges the team faced in every location, such as in Tangier (they had to block off parts of a busy market, and often had to film in crowds) or, most interestingly, in London, where the train station scene had to be filmed amongst normal commuters – so there are several shots of Matt Damon running around with a camera crew on his tail, winding in between people on their way to work. This is definitely a highlight of the DVD.
• Rooftop Pursuit
  The Tangier rooftop scene was quite an accomplishment, according to the DVD. Whether it’s getting the right camera angles in tight quarters or filming that scene where Jason Bourne leaps across empty space and into a window, there were some complications (apparently camera crews collapsed a roof at one point) in the sequence. This is another great behind-the-scenes look.
• Planning the Punches
  A behind-the-scene look at the choreography and training involving the fight sequences. Also quite fun to watch.
• Driving School
  This is an entertaining one, as we get to see Matt Damon drive stunt cars, do 180′s and speed down a parking garage ramp. It’s always nice to see the actors actually doing some stunts, and having fun with them, too.
• New York Car Chase
  This one has some interesting moments, as we get to see special cars rigged with cameras or even stunt men (a guy sits on the roof and drives the car while Matt Damon is inside below, getting filmed). Overall this one isn’t as good, but still a decent entry.
• Feature Commentary with director Paul Greengrass

All in all, this is a great DVD. It doesn’t have a ton of features, but the features it have are informative and fun to watch. Thankfully, we get to see Matt Damon out of character, and he seems like a pretty fun guy to work with. It’s nice seeing how the cast and crew seem to get along with one another (Damon makes fun of Greengrass’ Oscar nomination at one point), but more importantly, it’s cool to scene how “real” the movie is compared to other action movies, which is really one of the strong selling points of the franchise.

While there are bigger and better DVD sets to follow, I’m sure (there’s already a trilogy DVD set, and an HD-DVD/DVD combo coming soon is going to have more features than what is found here), the regular Bourne Ultimatum DVD is a good value disc.

Rambo, starring Sylvestor Stallone, hits theaters January 25, 2008, and Lionsgate has just made the new outdoor movie poster available. It’s not nearly as cool as the regular poster, but certainly still has an appeal for it. I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Stallone movie, but I’m really looking forward to this bloodbath…

Here’s the new National Treasure: Book of Secrets movie trailer, starring Nicolas Cage. I really didn’t like the first movie (I found it long, boring and tedious), and this one looks just so ridiculous I doubt I will enjoy it. Still, this new movie trailer is a vast improvement over the original preview, which was full of camp and stupidity. The marketing department still reveals way too many of the twists (I would be much more intrigued to see the movie if they didn’t reveal that Cage plans to kidnap the President of the United States, which right there takes the film far off the believability scale), but until they hire me…