for tigerstyle, jaguar wong, and myosimka

[apoweyn]

hey gang,

had to give you a heads up on a pretty good bad martial arts movie: the ultimate game (not to be confused with the reyes family's classic 'the ultimate fight').

j.d. rifkin and the unbelievably cheesy t.j. storm. follows the tried and true 'secret underground tournament pitting martial artists of different styles against one another in a fight to the death.'

hell, turn it into a drinking game. every time it rips off 'enter the dragon', 'bloodsport', or 'mortal kombat' (and yes, there are some very obvious 'homages' throughout) have a drink.

actually, don't. you'd go to the emergency room long before finishing the film.

for all that, i thoroughly enjoyed it. and given your p*ss poor taste in films, i expect you will too. :)


stuart b.

[Tigerstyle]

Thanks for the heads up. I saw it in the video store the other day, but I just couldn't bring myself to picking it up then. Maybe I'll rent it this weekend now. What's wrong with us, man :( ?

BTW ap,
Have you seen Hard as Nails yet? Full of bad movie goodness, like cyberpunk-looking thugs that use swords against guns, enough nudity to qualify it for a late night slot on Showtime, and badly represented Russian and Japanese mafia. There's also a ton of bad editing mistakes, like bandages that jump from one hand to the other between scenes, that make you wonder why you can't make movies too. It almost makes up for the bad taste in my mouth after watching Van Damme try to be a serious actor in Replicant :mad: .

[myosimka]

Proof that I am a junkie-

Despite the periodic Timecop and Maximum Risk, Van Damme has demonstrated an uncanny ability to pump out movies worthy solely of direct to video release despite the higher budgets his name commands. I mean these babies are truly crap. And yet after having seen Desert Heat, Legionaire, and replicant I still rented The Order.


Proof that there's hope-

I can at least pass Don Wilson movies at the video store. I am still working on it though cause I will periodically store one on TiVo.



So stop giving me these names ******. Now I am going to have see both of the two lemons you guys just mentioned. Frigging enablers!!

Side note: What has happened to Gary Daniels?? Bloodmoon, White Tiger, Fist of the Northstar and other giants are no more. Sure he used to put out some stinkers. Who can forget his stellar performance in Ring of Fire? But now it seems that he's taking parts based on his (gulp) acting. Somebody needs to set that boy straight.

[apoweyn]

"hi, my name's myosimka. and i'm an addict."

"hi myosimka."


man, i rented desert heat and watched it on the idiot box when they played it. saw legionnaire too (which wasn't half bad actually). never gotten around to replicant, which is surprising given that it actually has a good director (ringo lam). the order i rented the other day. that guy just gets goofier and goofier (though the female israeli cop... hello nurse!)

er, sorry.

don wilson, i'll still suffer through, though i've hated him from day 1. i'm odd that way.

gary daniels... sad. i rented a flick the other day. can't remember the title now. something like "delta force: the lost platoon." whew! what died in that video box?!


jaguar wong,

never seen hard as nails... yet. :)

my hopes rest on the likes of bryan genesse (traitor's heart stunk though), david bradley (hard justice is a classic), mark dacascos (unless he's 'too good' for straight-to-video after the success of brotherhood of the wolf), etc.

and how about michael worth in navy seals 2. wow. just wow.


stuart b.

[Tigerstyle]

Jaguar Wong? :confused:

Sure we look alike in person, but I've never been mistaken for him on a message board :p

Although I should feel more relieved than guilty, I haven't seen many bad, direct-to-video US MA releases lately. Recently, I have suffered through theatrical release crap instead (like Jeepers Creepers and The Mouseket... er, Musketeer). I paused one scene in The Musketeer and I could swear I saw "Property of Jet Li" written on the wire harness.

I haven't seen a Don Wilson movie in a long time, but that's because everyone else that watches bad movies with me draws the line there :mad: . And these are the same friends that watch old ninja movies from Imperial (Ah, Imperial. Truly my favorite of the bad direct-to-video companies.). If you haven't seen an Imperial ninja movie, picture the same 3 or 4 white guys in the same glittery gold and purple ninja outfits and throw in about an hour of scenes edited in from old, obscure kung fu movies.

[apoweyn]

tigerstyle,

i'm an idiot. sorry.

what's wrong with us? absolutely nothing. we're freaking saints. thanks to the tireless efforts of people like you and me, olivier gruner has that humvee he always dreamed of as a tyke in france. thanks to us, lorenzo lamas can afford to have a harley motorcycle in his dining room. (okay, perhaps we should be punished for that one. but hell, we rent his movies. that's punishment enough.) we suffer so that others might prosper.

yay us!

:)

i remember imperial okay. was 'white ninja' one of theirs? been a long time since i saw that.


stuart b.

[apoweyn]

by the way, i'm with ya. 'jeepers creepers' was a big piece of crap!

i enjoyed the musketeer though. (almost as much as i enjoyed the gag about seeing jet li's name on the harness. i'm SO ripping that joke off. sorry in advance.)


stuart b.

[Yung Apprentice]

I liked the Legionaire! Musketeet put me to sleep, and Jeepers Creepers I liked up until the ending. I saw Blade 2 last week, anyone else seen it? I liked it.:)

[myosimka]

I did like Blade II though the decision to go more with the horror and less with the fights was a POOR one. Plus the use of CGI in the place of wire work was also a poor choice. Tell me there aren't a few unemployed wushu guys who would have done the work cheaper and looked better than the CGI. That's my big fear about Spiderman too. All in all, my afternoon full of vamps was well spent. (I had to watch the original before I went to the flick didn't I?) Blade II will be much better on DVD though when I can skip all that plot crap and get straight to the good stuff.

And you like Legionnaire? I bow before your superior lack of taste. Ap, I think we have a winner.

[Yung Apprentice]

For some parts I actually liked the CGI. In the begininng where Blade flips on to a bike, they have the shot looking down from high above, as you see blade flip, you can Wesley Snipes's face, and body. That looked more natural than had they used wires. But I agree there were SOME scenes that looked a bit cheezy. Like the scene where he fought the ninjas. In fact I thought there weren't to many cheezy scenes, the only fight scene in the whole movie that I didn't like was the ninja scene.

I own Legionaire on VHS! And dare I say, I liked Replicant?:D

[apoweyn]

:)

yeah, i wouldn't go so far as to say i liked legionnaire. i survived it.

as for blade II, i enjoyed it even more than the original. i agree that the CGI was a bit much and that wire work, some wushu guys, etc. were in order. but i dug the additional horror. and i didn't think the fighting suffered for it.

hell, nomak was a much better villain than stephen dorff from the original. i LOVE the original. don't get me wrong. but i dug the sequel even more.

but the CGI still looks hokey.

and what's with killing off donnie yen like that?! i understand he had to die. but for crying... how about at least having him put up a frikkin' fight?! they did the same thing to him in highlander: endgame. shameful.

aside from that, i thought blade II kicked arse with a burning combat boot.


stuart b.

[apoweyn]

yung,

exactly. if CGI is used to show something that would be harder without CGI, fine. but i agree with you and myosimka that if you could get a better effect from using actual practitioners, then criminy. do it!


stuart b.

[Tigerstyle]

I didn't hate Legionnaire, but I don't own it. I do, however, own Streetfighter (Van Damme) on VHS and The Ultimate Fight (Ernie Reyes Jr and Sr) on DVD (The Ultimate Fight also stars Corin Nemec, proving that Parker Lewis can lose). They Live is one of my favorite movies. Does that count for anything?

ap,
I thought the exact same thing about Donnie Yen in Blade 2 and Highlander: Endgame. What a waste of some great MA ability, to have him simply killed off camera after he clearly shows how talented he is :mad: .

[apoweyn]

'they live' is a great film, yeah. carpenter always does a good job of creating that isolation feeling. ('they're all around us.) 'the thing' is a classic.

'streetfighter', i hated. mostly because there's one martial artist in the whole freaking thing. why?! it's not like the guys they got were qualitatively better actors than most martial arts actors.

[sigh]

"parker lewis can lose."

glad i wasn't drinking anything when i read that line. [laugh]

donnie yen: i understand that he can't be showcased properly. (as much as i dig wesley snipes, donnie yen would steal the scene in a hong kong minute if he tried.) but it would have been nice not to have him just shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, that's that then" (endgame). and blade II... i don't need to see hammer dude chase down his former girlfriend. have her killed off screen. then show us the throwdown with donnie.

ah well. all in all, still well worth the ride.


stuart b.