Future Film Makers, a club I’ve ran at Salisbury University for the past few years, has wrapped filming and production of its first Feature Film, BRIDE, written and directed by Mike Woodard. I act as producer on the project, and group favorites Thomas England (Man of Action) and James Howe (Gullman, The Spy Wars series), costar in it along with. Steve “Siggy” Young is also a huge part of the production, playing the villainous Professor.

The story is about Cory Hertz, a sophomore at Salisbury University who begins a research project that will change his life forever. Investigating the tragic disappearance from school over a decade ago of the long lost student, Mea Bridell, Cory uncovers a plot of love, obsession, and revenge that leads him on a chase to discover her fate. With his reluctant but faithful friend Douglas in tow, the two spiral down their own path of madness, reaching for the truth until they finally encounter the dangerous person and the malicious grudge that rendered a young love to it’s bitter end.

The finished film will be premiering in Salisbury sometime in October (probably around Halloween) and possibly double featuring with Strike a Pose Films!!! Classic, Curse of Bodangofish.

Be sure to check out Mike Woodard’s youtube page, www.youtube.com/user/thugger333 for more details.

This just FRIGGIN IN! Gungrave, your humble writer’s favorite anime/gangster story/revenge tale, has officially been greenlighted for its own FEATURE FILM. This news comes from VARIETY so you know its not a joke!

My favorite image from the show

Brandon Heat can't cover his eyes from death in a defining moment.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Convergence is aiming to produce both projects as live-action features with budgets in the $30 million-$35 million range by tapping into financing sources from its strategic partners in Asia. Tim Kwok, the banner’s topper, will produce, with Yasuaki Nagoshi from Red Entertainment exec producing “Gungrave,”

Convergence is the company currently adapting the King of Fighters film, and who knows how that is going to turn out! Some promotional images for that can be found here.

As for the description, if you didn’t already know, GUNGRAVE is about “a lone figure who rises in the ranks of a crime syndicate only to be murdered by his best friend and then resurrected as a harbinger of death who exacts revenge on those that wronged him.” I can promise you all that is only the tip of the iceberg. The show follows that main character, Brandon Heat, through a lot of development, and tests his loyalty to his code and his friends.

Here is my main stipulation with this announced project:

Gungrave is pretty much the only Anime I TRULY still love. I watch it every chance I get for its poetic symbolism, its quiet main character, and its INCREDIBLE finale that is pretty much a dialog based shootout of characters reliving their past selfs in an artistic display of memory-based “combat.” Find it and watch it to see what I mean, but overall my point is I’m going to figure out how to contact these guys, write a draft of the screenplay, and submit it before they make their final decisions! MY WILL BE DONE.

Merciless avenger, Beyond the Grave

Merciless avenger, Beyond the Grave

GUNGRAVE was also the subject of my first AMV, and the first time I tried out Sony Vegas. This simple video will show any naysayers out there that the show isn’t just about action but a deep emotional core to the characters…or something like that.

Either way, give it a watch and a comment, and let me know if you’ve seen GUNGRAVE. Also- what do you all think about these movies coming? Tekken, KOF, and all that jazz are getting a bum wrap. They might as well let a fan boy like me write one on something completely unknown, right? Couldn’t HURT I’d say!

Predators Update

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One of the greatest movie monsters of all time is getting the Reboot treatment, as Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Desperado, Spy Kids) is producing and developing the new Predator film, PREDATORS.

Hired to helm the flick is rising director Nimrod Antal, who’s films do not properly reflect his name: the man has some intelligence with his work as he has proven succesfully with KONTROLL and ARMORED. Even Vacancy, though simplistic, wasn’t that bad. Mostly thanks to Luke Wilson, but the directing was solid.

However, I’m still not completely sold on this guy. With Rodriguez behind the scenes, at least we KNOW 100% it will be full of cool stuff–explosions, violence, and maturity (of at least the masculine variety).

However, its also the plot synopsis that I’m unsure of at this point. From the interview with Rodriguez himself:

I can’t go too much into the story right now, because we’re still writing. But it still involves a very intense group of people stranded on a Predator planet discovering unspeakable horrors (that are not always from outside their group). So like the original movie, the title does have a double meaning.
Aliens was a different take on the Alien idea, and an original movie in it’s own right, and that’s what we want to do with this.

Aint it Cool News has the full story, so you should check out the link here.

Greatest Thing Ever

I just wanted to let you all know. This video featuring THE MAN HIMSELF is absolutely brilliant. This is the exact thing I am talking about in my Citizen Kane essay on Meta-textuality. Absolutely brilliant.

My favorite media theory (One I slightly self-developed) is meta-intertexuality. Its basically about how a movie is affecting you based on the medium it is conveying based on the medium the characters operate under base on how the director manipulates that medium. And how you know you’re watching a movie about a movie (or reading a book about a book) about a film maker making a movie or a news paper writer writing a newspaper being demonstrated in news reels. Furthermore, it is about how it effects you specifically because of the medium in which its conveyed via its levels of didactic truth or angles of emotional involvement.

In this case, its Kojima doing a kitcshy video about Kojima’s home-made kitchsy stuff (the ridiculous looking MGS universe, which I love but has become a tad overdone), where the coolest thing is just running around ridiculously pretending your stealthy when in reality, the AI is just too dumb to notice you or doesn’t care, knowing that he’ll probably get away with it because, in all honesty, most people just don’t care, and that its funny because we do it just because we feel cool doing it. That’s the whole reason. He just…he knows.

Especially because, up until that point, the video really sucks. No offense guys at Mega64. I’m sure that was your intention. The trigger-happy-TV video game approach is, as always, beautiful, but I know you’re just being self-referential to your own previous material, hence the disappointment in your characters’ eyes when they meet their Maker. They know they’ve been caught in a running gag, just as the series of MGS has, itself, become.

More posts will be coming later, but are coming in slowly, seeing as I have become a Stunt Pirate somewhere I can’t say, and that I have a lot going on this summer, including Kung Fu training. No joke.

Sorry for the Delay/Favorite Scenes

I know this site has been experiencing some “down time” in regards to posts, updates, etc. Well, there’s a few things I’d lke to bring up and let you in on.

1) Why am I late on posting more often? Well, one word: College. Second word: Essays. So I’ll start by posting something for you all by the end of the post.

2) Go to the films page. Now. You’ll see that we haven’t abandoned ship on producing content. I have recently put up a new film, CONFLICT NOW, that will show you what we were made of two years ago. Official post to come soon.

3) Go to the Essays section. Thanks to Ryan, we’ve got a lot of them posting on a regular basis, from my resevoir of nearly 50 critical film essays (not reviews). Read em, love em, learn something.

Here’s an example of one, and what I’ve been working on right now. Its just an abstract, really, but what it will communicate is the basic idea of a Feminism/Realism article I’m writing comparing Leon the Professional to Thelma and Louise.

A dark, brooding figure is sitting at a table, cleaning out his pistol. A little girl approaches him and begins an argument. She tells the man that she wishes to be a “cleaner” a hitman, or in this case, hit-girl. The older man, not wanting to assume any responsibility, offering her the goodbye gift of a gun, and clearly knowing this girl cannot possibly handle the job, tells her “Go away, I work alone.” Her immediate response is childish, unrealistic, and most importantly: full of conviction and accuracy. “Bonnie and Clyde didn’t work alone. Thelma and Louise didn’t work alone. And they were the best.” Even though her argument is based on works of fiction (let us assume she has no idea about the real lives of Bonnie and Clyde), it speaks of her aspirations, and of a worldly, referential knowledge that could produce such an attitude. Matilda, the little girl, tells him that if he doesn’t help her to become like these fantastic figures (through his training, no less), that she will surely die, almost immediately. The man, Léon, tells her “You’re just a little girl, don’t take it badly but, I just don’t think you could do it.” The scene is capped off by Matilda taking the gun offered at the start of the argument, standing up blankly, and firing it out the window in random directions without any concern for the safety of the world. “How’s that?” Matilda says, rhetorically, as Léon gazes upon her, unable to respond. There is an air of terrifying awe, as this little girl, motivated by revenge and guided by the media, has proven that a little girl may be able to play with the big boys.

So, here’s an idea, would readers like more of this style of writing on the site? If, over the summer, I could produce maybe 3 updates like this a week, and make it something called, “FAVORITE SCENES” would you be interested? Lemme know in the comments. Also- we can turn this into a competition: readers can write in examples of their own “Favorite scenes” up to…eh let’s say 300 words, and at the end of each week, maybe, I’ll try and get them posted. Winners will recieve bragging rights and at the end of the month a special prize from me. Let’s try that out…starting…NOW. (End of the month being June, duh).

Back to writing this paper. See you out there in internet land.