Rejoice, friends; Toa Fraser has started work on The Dead Lands. While he’s not Mad Mel of Apocalypto, who I pined for in a previous blog to direct a Maori combat based action movie, he’s actually a much better man for the job. Obviously.
The Dead Lands is described as an ‘action epic’, which along with the primo concept art above, should get your blood pumping. But it gets much better than that. The summary is as follows: “A Maori chieftain’s teenage son must avenge his father’s murder in order to bring peace and honour to the souls of his loved ones after his tribe is slaughtered through an act of treachery. Vastly outnumbered by the band of villains, his only hope is to pass through the feared and forbidden Dead Lands and forge an uneasy alliance with the mysterious ‘Warrior’, a ruthless fighter who has ruled the area for years. The film will feature the Maori martial art of Mau Rakau, a unique hand-to-hand fighting style not seen on international cinema screens before.”
Fraser hasn’t really directed action, but he’s certainly been able to capture some pretty amazing choreography on film. Together with cinematographer Leon Narbey, Fraser directed the film adaptation of ballet Giselle, and the results were stunning. Narbey, whose other credits include Whale Rider, The Tattooist and Ruby and Rata, returns as DOP on Dead Lands. This is good news.
I’m unfamiliar with Mau Rakau, but it sounds pretty hardcore and could translate to the screen with terrific results. The concept art suggests some patu, mere and mighty taiaha business, which I’ve dearly wanted to see on film for years. Utu is legendary, of course, but it’s got heaps of muskets and pakeha and stuff making it not quite the amazing pre-European warfare of New Zealand that is just crying out for some solid silver screen treatment. The Dead Lands sounds like it’ll focus on one or two dudes fighting small groups of other dudes at a time, rather than the epic, large scale pa assault tribal warfare I’d still love to see in another film one day. But if Fraser and Narbey nail this combat in the way I hope they’re going to, this is going to be one hell of an entertaining film. Someone else who shares my hopes is a gentleman that has captured fight choreography better than anyone else in recent years:
@ToaFraser best of luck with the shoot sir!
— Gareth Evans (@ghuwevans) December 9, 2013
While it’s been out for ages, I haven’t blogged for ages, and The Raid 2: Berandal teaser is just as mint as I’d hoped. It’s right up there as a contender for trailer of the year, along with Ninja: Shadow of a Tear and Special ID.
The first full trailer should be out December 31, and Evans says he’s trying not to repeat a single shot from the teaser, or have anything spoilery in it. Plus it’ll have a new piece of music that should be indicative of the new score. So… “Hey guys, sorry just gotta turn the music down for a second… hey how do I get the YouTube on the big TV? No trust me, it’ll take 2 minutes!” <— me on New Year’s Eve.
The Raid 2: Berandal is scheduled for release in New Zealand on March 27, 2014, say the good folk at Madman. That’s after it premieres at Sundance in January. Also set for a theatrical release in New Zealand, as somewhat of a pleasant surprise, is The Night Comes For Us. This is another Indonesian action crime flick Evans is producing with his buddy Timo Tjahjanto on directorial duties.
This bloke co-directed what was by far and away the best segment of V/H/S/2 with Evans, and has also done ultra-violent horror Macabre (as part of ‘The Mo Brothers’). Their next film is Killers, also premiering at Sundance, and that one just dropped this amazingly violent trailer yesterday.
The Night Comes For Us stars The Raid boys Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian, with Iko Uwais designing the fight choreography as a blend of judo and MMA influences with silat. Cool. As well as creating spectacularly brutal cinematic action, Gareth Evans is a filmmaker who looks after his fans really well via social media. He uploads on-set pics and updates regularly, even shows VFX boards and various things from when he’s in post – it’s like the special features of a DVD only you get it live, on the reg, as it happens. He even hosts impromptu Q+A sessions, one of the recent ones included these answers to yours truly: 
Evans has also continued publicly flirting with Scott Adkins and the two of them working with each other now seems somewhat inevitable, which is just so exciting I get all giddy and light-headed thinking about it.
Excellent @ghuwevans interview, cannot wait for #raid2. Ready when you are buddy. http://t.co/6xyuYnqU7R
— Scott Adkins (@TheScottAdkins) December 11, 2013
That interview Adkins links to is a fantastic, quick read, that I highly recommend. Dudes mentioned in it include Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Sylvester Stallone, Sam Peckinpah, John Woo, Tony Jaa and Adkins himself. Another fantastic interview released online recently was this one with Isaac Florentine, the man behind Adkins’ two Undisputed and two Ninja movies. He talks all about how he discovered Adkins and how he shoots such amazing action on budgets that are very modest, by American standards. Highly recommended.
There’s no sign of Ninja: Shadow of a Tear making its way to cinemas, sadly. It releases on Blu-ray in the US this December so hopefully it’ll be heading here for the small screen early next year, at least. I also haven’t yet heard about Zoe Bell flick Raze getting a theatrical release here, but there is another, much more brutal trailer been released for it:
Jean-Claude Van Damme has been up to heaps of shit recently. He took the internet by storm by putting his legs, two trucks and the music of Enya together with stupendously good results. Sure, it’s him selling Volvo trucks, but even if it was him selling Halliburton and SeaWorld stocks or something I’d still have watched this amazing video several dozen times.
Two recent Van Damme trailers have been far more depressing, however. Welcome to the Jungle has the Muscles from Brussels playing a caricature of himself in a comedy so infuriatingly shit looking it could give Adam Sandler some comfort, while in Enemies Closer he appears to be channeling Heath Ledger’s The Joker by way of every Nicolas Cage performance ever. Fuck.
Recognising the greatness of JCVD that once was, though, while also appreciating it being reincarnated in Scott Adkins, is one particularly great YouTube user. Putting this tribute to the two great white kickers together with the music of Metallica, the greatest band on Earth, seems particularly inspired – until you realise it’s a kind of crappy karaoke version of Metallica. But still, this is a wonderful use of YouTube:
As well as those awful Van Damme trailers, we children of ’80s action have had further news to weep over recently. Despite how fantastic The Last Stand was, Schwarzenegger’s follow-up Escape Plan has been called so terrible that I shan’t bother watching at all. In the 2-star review here on Flicks Matt Glasby sadly reckons “Schwarzenegger is awful. He can barely eat convincingly, let alone speak”. Fellow Flicks writer Dominic Corry and I both list Schwarzenegger as our only serious religious belief in this life, and Corry calls the film “a serious turd”. “I am concerned my favourite Austrian is on his way to Steven Seagaltown or Jean-Claude Van Dammeville. Or even worse, The Island of Bruce Willis,” Corry writes on the Herald.
I refuse to accept that Corry’s concern will eventuate. I just can’t, not yet, and avoiding Escape Plan altogether will help me focus on The Last Stand and the potential greatness that still exists in Arnie’s post-politics film career. Maybe he just needs to never work with Stallone ever again, given the dreary results thus far? Speaking of Stallone, while his 2007 Rambo was heavenly, he needs to stop churning out so much utter garbage. Sort it out, Rocky, and quit getting Arnie to play second fiddle in your bullshit. When we fantasized about Rambo vs Commando all those years ago, it was always he that wasted you in the end, no matter how impressive your headband was.
Also helping me not give up the Schwarzenegger dream is the trailer for Sabotage, which promises something potentially pretty cool, with a couple of plot elements rather close indeed to the holy grail of action that is Commando. Writer/director David Ayer’s career is hit and miss to say the least, but this could deliver the goods.
Arnie has also recently offered to match any donations his fans give to a charity that keeps kids safe after school. Pretty cool. Even cooler is that the person that gives the largest sum will be treated to a ride in the crazy Austrian’s tank, during which they’ll smoke a cigar together. If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum. And some angel edited together this 28 minute HD montage of all of Schwarzenegger’s movie kills so far:
Finally, I want to mention the worst news that’s happened to action movies over the last few months, which is the tragic death of Fast and Furious icon Paul Walker. I want to send a massive FUCK YOU to all those schmucks who thought it’d be clever to crack wise about the extremely clear irony of his death, seemingly as soon as they heard the news, all over Twitter and shit. That was them acting like dickheads, making painfully obvious jokes in a highly disrespectful manner. A man died in a horrific manner, a 15-year-old girl lost her father, and whatever his acting ability was he brought happiness to millions of people with his movies.
Walker’s fatal crash happened during filming the next installment in what is pretty much the biggest action blockbuster franchise on the planet. The release has been pushed back from its original July 2014 to an as-yet unannounced later date. They still had scenes with Walker left to film, so how they handle that with rewrites and reshoots and so on is all stuff that is yet to be worked out. He was finally laid to rest over the weekend which means the particularly tight cast and crew can now, hopefully, be past the initial mourning process and onto what they do with the film, forging ahead and completing it in the most respectful way possible that honours both the memory of Walker and the passionate millions of Fast and Furious fans around the world.
Will the new Jason Statham villain character kill off Brian O’Conner like he did Han? If so, can they have the character’s death occur via a vehicle, which would be true to the series but potentially too insensitively close to Walker’s actual death to actually do? It’s hard to say, but with Vin Diesel in the kind of godfather role he has with this franchise, and his integrity, I’m confident they’ll suss out some way of finishing the movie with the utmost respect for everyone. Whatever happens, I’m already bracing myself for the emotional in-cinema experience Fast and Furious 7 will inevitably be.
Thank you for the movies Paul. RIP.
