I love action movies from the ‘80s and ‘90s, and my favourite action hero is definitely Dolph Lundgren. Not only is he hot, a weightlifter and a 3rd dan in karate, he’s got a master’s degree in chemical engineering and speaks five languages so is obviously no slouch in the brains department.

Some of my favourite Dolph movies:

As Ivan Drago in Rocky IV:

In The Punisher, playing the title role:

What’s more, sci-fi writer William Gibson claims that Lundgren can do comedy. In this blog post from 2003 (you need to scroll to around two thirds down the page), he talks about Johnny Mnemonic, a film based (loosely!) on one of his short stories:

Ever notice how little sense Dolph Lundgren’s Street Preacher character makes? Just this big lunatic who periodically rages onstage and tosses people around?

I’ll tell you something you may not believe: Dolph Lungren can actually do *comedy*. I mean, like, who knew? But he can, and did, with great gusto. The nature of his character was anchored in a scene in his church (he’s the local Panawave-equivalent) in which he preaches, buck nekkid and skin-studded with creepy nano-gizmos, to a congragation of adoring female NAS victims. He delivers a bombastic, faux-Sterlingesque, literally balls-out *sermon* on the virtues of posthumanity. It came off sort of like Fabio as the Jesus you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. It *rocked*. Hilarious. So Sony cut it.

Even though Mr Lundgren is now past 50, he’s in much better shape than some of his contemporaries. And as if he didn’t have enough talents, it turns out there’s more: he can sing, dance (well, a little bit) and play drums:

*sigh*

So there’s a little YouTube tribute to an absolute legend.

When I was about 11 or 12, I found a compilation tape amongst the family stereo equipment called New Wave, from 1977 (the esteemed year of my birth). I don’t know who owned it originally or how it came into our household’s possession, but I took a listen and got my first dose of punk: Ramones, The Dead Boys, New York Dolls, The Runaways, The Damned, Talking Heads, and a whole ton more. There was also Patti Smith’s awesome Piss Factory which was a bit of a head trip for me at the time. [After writing this post I found it on ebay UK, on vinyl, so of course now it’s on its way home to me. This infernal web of distractions will one day be my undoing.]

Looking back, most of the bands on the New Wave compilation are not what is now generally accepted as "new wave" but anyway, it was a fantastic introduction and I love all those songs and bands to this day – especially The Runaways, who had a big influence on chicks in metal in the ‘80s. They were very cool and had this really raw teenage sexy vibe that was obviously appealing to someone of my age at the time.

So what I want to know is… how did I not hear about the movie they’re making? I read about it today on Reverb (which I mostly read for Duff McKagen’s posts). I checked out the official web site, the IMDB entry, the trailer (embedded below), the soundtrack and GODDAMN it looks good. I’m a little surprised at the casting – I don’t know much about Kristen Stewart playing Joan Jett) apart from the fact that she’s in Twilight, but I’ve never watched or read any of that tripe so I don’t know what kind of role she plays in that. And Dakota Fanning (playing Cherie Currie) has had, up until now, a very squeaky clean child image, so I’m sure that she’s trying to do something about that with this role.

Hoping this one gets a cinema release in Australia!

I used to read a lot of science fiction – often more than one book at a time, and finishing several books a week. But over the past few years, as my internet use has gone up, the amount of book reading I’ve done has gone down dramatically. To the point where it takes me so long to finish a book I forget what it’s about and start over, and eventually give up.

Lately I’ve been trying to reverse this trend, and I’ve found the perfect books to snap me out of it: The Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko (well, the English translations of them). Dave heard about the Night Watch (Nochnoy Dozor) film before it was released internationally, and we managed to get hold of the DVD on eBay. This was an interesting exercise in itself; even though the DVD was legit, so much dodgy stuff comes out of Russia that the only way of getting the payment through was a Travelex transfer, which cost an absolute fortune. The Travelex agent tried to talk us out of sending money to Russia too!

We loved the film, which is kind of a dark Russian fairytale set in modern times with Matrix-like elements. Essentially it’s about the Others – people with extraordinary/magical skills, who are either Dark Ones (sorcerers, witches, vampires and werewolves) or Light Ones (magicians, enchantresses, healers etc). There is a treaty between the two sides, which are very evenly matched, so that for every dark or evil act that is allowed (such as a vampire being issued a “license” to hunt a human), a light or good act is allowed (such as turning a criminal away from a potential crime). Policing the treaty are two “Watches” – The Night Watch, which is made up of Light Others who keep an eye on the Dark Others, and the Day Watch, made up of Dark Others who keep an eye on the Light Others.

It was hard to follow – we watched it in Russian with subtitles – but it was definitely worth persevering with. Apparently the US release was recut so it would make more sense, which I don’t like the idea of at all. When the sequel Day Watch (Dnevnoy Dozor) came out we grabbed it too – thankfully it was released internationally so it was much easier to get.

After the success of the films, the series of books they were based on were translated into English. I was initially a bit wary of trying to read a translation, but I shouldn’t have been concerned – there was no problem understanding them and they read very naturally. The first book, Night Watch, took a week or so to read; the second, Day Watch, took a few days; and Twilight Watch (Dusk Watch) took less than a day: so I definitely think I’m getting my reading mojo back! I don’t have the final instalment, End Watch (Final Watch) – yet. I plan to get it this week, but getting to the end of the series is going to suck.

The first thing that stuck me about the books is that the first and second films are actually based mostly on the first and second parts of the first book only, but the opening scene of the Night Watch film is a variation on the opening scene of the Day Watch book. Many changes like this have been made to the story but that’s inevitable –the story as written is far too complex for film anyway, I think.

Reading the books definitely made the films much easier to understand. One thing that cleared a lot of confusion is that in the subtitled version we had, they keep referring to various individuals as “The Other” when in fact they mean “an Other” – which may seem like a subtle difference but it clarifies the story a great deal when you don’t think they’re spotting some kind of special individual every five minutes.

I’m a science fiction fan but not usually a fantasy fan, but I guess this series does fall quite squarely into the fantasy bucket. Highly recommended (both the films and the books).

Without giving too much away, it’s a bit like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original version, that is) meets Crocodile Dundee. There’s a big tribute to Mad Max at one stage, and the cinematography is awesome – the scenery is just breathtaking. I’m glad I saw it on the big screen for that reason alone.

In terms of squishy bits, it contains the single most horrifying moment in a horror movie that I’ve seen (and thanks to Dave, I’ve seen a lot). Dave thinks it’s equal to one of the grossest bits in the original Texas Chainsaw, but I find this moment much more disturbing. Wanna know which bit? Go see the movie!

Overall rating? Afterwards I wanted to go home and hug my teddy bear. Two bloody stumps up!