Coming in March - Steven Seagal is . . . Ruslan

Steven Seagal is . . . Against the Dark

So after several months, the newest Steven Seagal movie is out. I have to admit, I went into this one pretty skeptical. I had heard the tidbit that in this movie Seagal fights vampires. I'm really not into that sort of shit. Vampires have never really done anything to fire my imagination. I especially dislike all of their most modern incarnations. You either get the ruffled shirt, androgynous, Euro-gay vampires like in Interview with the Vampire, the goth/emo vampires like in Twilight, or the leather-clad vampires that walk around to techno music like in Underworld and Blade Trinity.

So which type of vampires do you get in this movie? None. You want to know why? BECAUSE THERE AIN'T NO FUCKING VAMPIRES IN THIS MOVIE. They are really zombies in the vein of 28 Days Later and Resident Evil. Oh sure, they call them vampires in this movie but they don't really do anything like vampires. Well, this one does drink blood from a glass but that's about it.

So what about the movie and why is Seagal fighting Vampire/Zombies? The movie starts out by defining the word "infection" for us. I shit you not. In 21st century movies, some nuclear radiation or some shit from space just isn't enough to make people zombies. It always has to be some viral infection. We learn that your standard zombie apocalypse has occurred due to this virus. There are, of course, brothers of man out there struggling to survive. But there are also teams of zombie hunters that walk around in black leather with swords killing as many zombies as they can find. Seagal is a member of one of these teams. Since Seagal is having to clean up the mess, I can only assume that the CIA had something to do with the creation of this virus. It's never mentioned in the movie. It's just my guess.

We first see Seagal and his team rescue a kid from some zombies. As soon as the zombies are killed and the kid is safe, Seagal says "we're not here to decide what's right and wrong. We're here to decide who lives and who dies." As my friend Craig said, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It makes NO SENSE in the context of the scene. Now listen, I am well aware that DTV Seagal movies usually don't make any sense. But usually the nonsense is so absurd that David Lynch couldn't have even thought it up. This was just sort of odd and lame.

You better enjoy that scene and line though because you aren't going to get much more Seagal for another 30 minutes. The movie shifts focus to a group of survivors in a hospital. They fight a few zombies, argue with each other about what's best to do, and try to make their way through, what seems like, the biggest God Damn hospital on Earth! Seriously. They don't have to fight zombies at every turn. There isn't that much to slow them down. But it takes them 90 minutes to traverse this place! They are either piss poor at following exit signs or this thing is as big as the Mall of America. We get establishing shots of the hospital every now and again. It looks like a standard hospital except where you would normally see a cross or a corporate logo, there is some weird symbol that looks like it came from a goth kid Vampire RPG. I guess the company that built the hospital knew that one day it would be filled with zombie/vampires and decided to consult some goth gamers for their corporate logo. I digress.

Most of Seagal's other lines, when he's actually in the movie, are simple statements like "you clear that room!" You could have hired French Stewart to say that shit! Why waste Seagal on such tripe? He also carries this weird, fake looking sword to fight the zombie/vampires with. It doesn't even look like it's made of metal. It looks like a lousy home-made prop that some costumer would bring to Dragoncon. The description on the box refers to Seagal as a "kitana master." This dumb-ass sword looks like no kitana you've ever seen. A Hitori Hanzo this is not.

To further discuss this asinine plot would be a waste of my time. If you've ever seen a movie you've heard pretty much every word anyone says in this POS. The odd thing is, the plot is coherent and maybe that's the problem. I am used to Seagal movies like Attack Force and Submerged that started with fantasy element plots and were changed in the editing room from aliens to gangsters. I enjoyed them being gangsters but still doing weird shit that made no sense in the new context. This movie has none of that. It is just painfully dull, doesn't have enough Seagal, and when he is on screen he rarely does or says anything cool. Of this movie's 90 minute run time, I would guess Seagal is only in it for 20 minutes at the most.

Keith David is in the movie as your typical military guy who is going to launch an attack on the hospital at dawn whether Seagal and his team are out or not. Like I said earlier, if you've ever seen a movie you can guess everything that is said in his scenes. The biggest crime is that Seagal and David never share screentime together. No Marked for Death reunion here.

I would really prefer that Seagal stick with non-fantasy concepts for his movies. I'd much rather have him screwed by the likes of the CIA, black gangsters, or childhood friends gone wrong than dumb-ass shit like zombie/vampires. But regardless of what enemy he fights, I would really like him to actually be in the whole movie! This shit amounted to a glorified cameo. I love his really bad movies. Many of you that read this will never understand how I can love movies like Out of Reach or Out for a Kill. I know that. But Against the Dark was bad in a non-entertaining way. It was total ass. I'd be hard pressed to recommend this to anyone but the most hardcore Seagalogists.

Christian Bale - What an Asshole!

I seriously had no idea what a primadonna "ac-tor" Christian Bale was. Listen to this shit!

The End of Laserdisc and the End of an Era

I will never hesitate to admit to anyone that I am a movie geek. I love motion pictures with a passion. Movies are not an "escape" for me. I truly believe the old statement that film is truth at 24 frames per second. I remember when I was about 12 I found out that the movies released on VHS tapes were panned and scanned. I saw Siskel & Ebert do a side-by-side comparison of the letterboxed and pan and scan versions of Star Wars. From that moment on I only wanted to see movies in their original aspect ratios. But how could I see them? A magical format known as Laserdisc.

As a kid, the one thing I wanted more than anything else was a Laserdisc Player. I guess most kids were already bugging their parents about cars. Not me. Whenever we were in a Circuit City, I would show my mom the LD players and would explain why they were better than video tapes. My life would just never be complete without one! When she finally bought me one, she got me the best there was. I got a Pioneer that didn't require you to get up and flip the disc. The laser would move in the machine when it was time to change sides. It was glorious.

So many of the things people now take for granted on DVD were born on Laserdisc. On LD you could get widescreen versions of films, audio commentaries from directors, trailers, interviews, and behind-the-scenes documentaries. Any old LD afficianado will remember the awesomeness that was the Criterion versions of Halloween, Taxi Driver, and Blade Runner. The only problem was, Criterion typically charged anywhere from $100 to $150 for their movies. Then there were the much coveted Japanese imports you could order from Ken Crane's. There was the original cut of Highlander and the four hour version of Dune. The pride of my collection was the Star Wars Trilogy: Definitive Collection. It cost a whopping $350, came with a hardback book, and all three films in CAV, the highest quality presentation available at the time.

I got my first job at Suncoast to support my Laserdisc habit. The old Columbia House Laserdisc Club was a lifesafer in getting bargains on this far too expensive format. My vivid memories of the cost of Laserdiscs are what always makes me scratch my head when people complain that Blu-Ray is too expensive. Fuck. Compared to $100 per title, a Blu-Ray for $30 is a steal! Considering I was a teenager of modest means I had a pretty decent LD movie collection.

Well, as you all know, DVD came along and ended the Laserdisc as a viable format. Hell, even I converted right away. I was about to buy the Criterion LD of Boogie Nights. But before I did, I compared the specs to that of the DVD. The LD was going to be $200 but the DVD was only $20. The only difference in the content was the LD had the original documentary about John Holmes called "Exhausted." I went ahead and bought the DVD and put the rest of the money towards a DVD player.

Here we are in 2009 and Pioneer announced that they will no longer produce Laserdisc players. That means one day in the near future it will become impossible to play your LD collection. It's a moment that makes me kind of sad. I hate to admit it, but it makes me sad because I enjoyed being an elitist prick. Owning a Laserdisc player said something about you. It said you were a serious film lover and a videophile. It was like being in an exclusive club of movie geeks. If you were at the store looking at Laserdiscs, you could easily strike up a conversation with the other guys perusing them and have a great conversation about film. Other LD owners knew who directed the films they owned, they knew what year they came out, they weren't just interested in the newest movies made, they loved film the same way you did. The same cannnot be said of DVD or even Blu-Ray. Just try going up to a random person in the DVD section of Best Buy and striking up a conversation about which is Scorsese's best film. Enjoy the blank stares.

Rest in Peace Laserdisc. You were too expensive, you were not the best in terms of video quality, and you didn't have a very long life. But damn it, you were first! You will always be special in the hearts of film geeks everywhere.

Watchmen - Short about the Minutemen

This is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - Original Version

My favorite Planet of the Apes film has always been Conquest. It's one of the first science fiction movies, outside of Star Trek, I saw as a kid that really struck a cord with me in a deep and meaningful way. So, needless to say, when I first read on The Digital Bits that the Blu-Ray set of all five Apes films would contain the original cut of Conquest, I was ecstatic. I watched it the other night and was just blown away. It is THAT different.

For those of you not familiar with the movie, it tells the story of the ape revolution lead by Caesar. In the 1991 of the movie, North America is a fascist state in which humans use intelligent apes as slaves. They treat them brutally without an ounce of remorse. The only human who shows them any pity is a black man who, as a descendant of slaves, understand their plight. When Caesar, Earth's first talking ape, sees what is going on in the world he leads his fellow apes in an overthrow of the human government and system. It has always been a brutal film both emotionally and in terms of the violence is portrays. But if you thought the movie had a dark tone before, just wait until you see it as it was originally intended to be seen.

The differences don't start until the riots begin. What was a fairly bloodless affair in the PG version is now vastly different. We see apes getting shot and bleeding. We see humans getting shot and bleeding. We also get lingering shots of the bodies of dead apes that make Caesar's reactions that much more understandable. Granted, the blood is what I call "Dawn of the Dead 70's blood." It's not as realistic looking as that to which modern audiences have become accustomed. But, the blood and bodies add significantly to the heightened sense of anger that pervades the whole movie.

The biggest changes come at the very end. The first one is when Governor Breck sees a blowtorch cutting into the command center door. He knows that Ape Management is about to fall and orders the apes inside to be shot. In this version, before the police shoot the group of apes, Breck grabs a handgun and shoots a gorilla in the head at point blank range. In the scene, Breck points the gun directly at the camera, putting the viewer in the position of the gorilla. It then cuts to the face of the gorilla with a helpless look in his eyes. The camera doesn't cut away as we see his head burst with blood from the bullet. It really took me back. I literally said aloud, "holy shit."

Then comes the end and Caesar's speech. This version offers no peacemaking or reconciliation. Lisa does not say "no" before the gorillas try to kill Breck. Before he gives his speech we see the gorillas piling up the bodies of dead, bloody humans in front of where Caesar is now standing. I like what this adds to the movie and I also like it as foreshadowing the war-like nature of the gorillas in the future. It invokes a mirror image feeling of seeing the gorillas piling up human bodies after their hunt in the original film.

In this version, Caesar's speech ends with the phrase "and that day is upon you now!" After that, the gorillas raise their rifles and beat a defiant Governor Breck to death. We don't see the rifle buts impacting his body but the scene does go on for quite a while. It leaves no doubt as to what is happening. Breck is not spared and Caesar offers no pity for his human oppressors. The film then cuts to the long-shot of the apes in front of a burning sky-line. It fades to back and the credits roll. The only word I had after it ended was "damn."

The raw power and emotion of this version is jaw-dropping. I can only imagine what parents taking their kids to see this at test screenings must have thought. Every ape film before this had been rated G. This version would have clearly gotten an R. I can also certainly understand why the black culture of the time embraced this film so much. In this original form, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is one of the most savagely nihilistic science fiction films ever made. It has the emotional punch of the original Gojira. I never thought I could be a bigger fan of this movie than I already was, but it happened. If you know the old version like the back of your hand, you owe it to yourself to see this as J. Lee Thompson and Paul Dehn intended it. If you have never seen the movie, watch this version. You will not be disappointed.

Steven Seagal Pics for You!