Xavier Defrang

For the other weirdos into B-Movies: you may want to read this breathtaking review of Steven Seagal's latest DTV release entitled Urban Justice.

Update: the movie is indeed pretty damn good for the Seagal DTV standards. Seagal displays some serious street cred, the man's spittin' ebonics like a real brother!

If like me when I was a kid you thought that Top Gun was an epic story about a bunch of fighter pilots, read this analysis which makes the heroes of the ambiguously gay duo look like the machoman himself.

UPDATE: Colin sent me an illustration for this conspiracy theory.

Every new DVD-exclusive Steven Seagal release deserves a detailed review! Now is the time to get 'Submerged'! (Warning spoilers ahead)

• The story: Detained worldclass mercenary Chris Cody (Steven Seagal) is 'gently asked' by the US military to gather his crack commando of international weapons and tactics experts to perform a Search-n-Rescue-n-Destroy mission in a remote location where some guerilleros give shelter to a mad scientist working on a new kind of mind controlling technology
• The plot takes place in Uruguay which is, to my humble knowledge, not the wildest place in South America so the whole thing seems a bit unrealistic even the action is supposed to happen in a near future (there's even a aircraft carrier named USS Clinton). Urugayan authorities do even consider to sue the producers because they ridiculed the country as a banana republic.
• The One-Man-Army factor of the movie is rather low, Steven has most of the job done by his crew. Still, he's the one who'll get them out of most situations.
• Special effects are terrible. That UAV in the opening scene looks obviously like a cheap model. Same remark when they blow up the dam: that scene must have been shot in a bathroom tub...
• Steven still suffers from severe weight problems. While his whole team is wearing tight military outfit, he's leading the deadly assault wearing an ample shirt wrapped in a leather jacket.
• Supporting actors are quite enjoyable, their english accent gives an exotic, refreshing touch to the movie.
• There are some nice moves here and there. Ok, we never even come close to 'Under Siege' but Steven still has some style (and even a few neat tricks) to take out bad guys... Gunfire scenes are very bad and totally unrealistic, they sometimes look Monty Pythonesque!
• Director Anthony Hickox tries really hard to make the movie look cooler than it is, abusing with fast cuts, flashbacks and accelerated/slow motion effects. But in this post-Matrix era, I guess we can't expect anything else from B-Movies directors anymore...
• The DVD cover shows a sub firing a torpedo. No such a thing happen during the whole movie.
• Shots of Seagal looking through small binoculars with his cooler-than-ice^tm facial expression are worth alone the renting fee of the DVD.

There's nothing like a sunday evening to watch a B-movie. This time I went for a rather old one I had never seen but which always had intrigued me because of its dystopian storyline: 'Freejack'. After the first shot involving Mick Jagger wearing a moronic helmet supposed to look higher-than-high-tech, I knew I would spend some good time with that movie.

The whole movie is crippled with clichés extracted from obvious references such as Blade Runner or Brazil and they even managed to rip off 2001's psychedelic abstract visuals. All motor vehicles look so ridiculous that they come damn close to the kind of cheesy rides you can see in 'Megaforce', just to provide some metrics. The acting is of course terrible but one would might guess that from a movie featuring no one else than Emilio Esteves playing the main character.

In other news, I noticed that the latest Steven Seagal exclusive DVD release named 'Submerged' was on the shelves of my local video rental outlet (but all copies were already out). The plot sounds amazing: Chris Kody, the world's best mercenary, is freed from prison -- but there's a catch. Kody must use his lethal weapons and fighting skills to stop a group of terrorists who have taken over a nuclear sub. Great! Now we're talking about a story like in the good old 'Under Siege' days! This one has some strong potential for a nasty one-man-army flick, especially if you compare it to Steven's latest east-european productions involving the kidnapping of a young polish girl who happen to be the long time pen pal of a former CIA operative... I can't wait to get my hand on a copy of this one!

Canuxploitation.com is your complete guide to Canada B-movies. I found this gem while looking for a review of Snake Eater, one of the worst one-man-army flick I'd seen for ages...

The post-Google Image documentary The Cyberpunk Educator has been quite a disapointment.

My main complaints would be that it's way too Bible-centric and too focused on mainstream movies. The author demonstrates his analysis with sequences from Terminator 1 & 2, RoboCop, Aliens, the Mad Max franchise, Akira and of course Blade Runner.

But I find it weird not to mention Brazil when you're explicitly talking about cyberpunk and irony!

And how can you talk about the place of women in the cyberpunk world without pointing Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days?

Although some pictures may give some hints, there's no in-depth analysis of the influence of gothic architecture in retro-futurstic design...

On the bright side, I did appreciate that the author looked a bit further than the usual urban dystopia and introduced movies such as Labyrinth.

Although there were some niceties (like the pretty smart US sitcom and chinese propaganda parallel) in this 1 hour and 43 minutes long documentary, some segments are just plain boring and completely out of scope. A lot of valuable time is wasted trying to find relations between the Bible and the so-called Cyberpunk world. I was expecting more an analysis based on how popular culture was distored and not to watch pictures of ancient mediteranean amphoras and engraved pictures from the old testament...

After watching all this flow of still and moving pictures, I still believe that the very definition of cyberpunk is depicted in Blade Runner, when Deckard walks through the Bradbury Building...

Funny 80ies training video for all Wendy's funky McJobbers... (via VP)

I do agree with Carl's review of GITS 2 : Innocence. The storyline is thiner than the average Stand Alone Complex episode and some scenes are obvious rip off from Blade Runner and even Chris Cunningham's video for Bj?rk's All is Full of Love. But even if the sequel is not as deep as the first one, the mindblowing visuals are enough to make it an unforgettable movie. I'm especially thinking about some of the 3D GUI and the fight against the doll looking robots in the huge ship which are just years ahead of what hollywood and even the video game industry are able to produce...

Give a try to this neat Steven Seagal Movie Generator!

Awesome trailer for the upcoming Ghost In The Shell sequel.