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Underworld: Evolution (2006)

 

 You can tell that "Underworld: Evolution" is trying to be an artistic action-horror film, because every scene is bathed in the color blue. Seriously, there's no yellow, green or orange in this movie. It's as if someone shot the entire picture through a bottle of Windex.

 *** The San Francisco Chronicle ***

 

And you thought the Emperor Charlemagne left behind a tragic legacy! A couple of decades after his death, Charlemagne's three grandsons divided up the Christian empire with an agreement called the Treaty of Verdun. The Western part of Charlemagne's European empire eventually became modern day France, the Eastern part became Germany. After the great emperor had struggled so mightily to unite Christianity in peace, his descendants spent approximately the next millennium killing one another. About the only time they took a break from slaughtering their own cousins was when they were concentrating on slaughtering Jews instead.

Charlemagne, or Big Chuck as we call in in English, apparently had nothing on another European patriarch named Corvinus. You see, about a millennium ago Corvinus had two sons named Marcus and William who turned into a vampire and a werewolf, and their descendants spent the next few centuries tearing one another apart. About the only time they took a break from slaughtering their own cousins was when they were concentrating on slaughtering Jews instead. Well, to be fair, they did slaughter other humans as well, but it was much easier for them to get the humans who didn't carry those accursed crucifixes. Poor old Corvinus, who was basically a decent sort as played by Derek Jacobi, was not only cursed with the fact of his legacy, but he was also unfortunate enough to be immortal, which meant that he had to watch the whole damned mess for all eternity.

Now that I think about it, he wasn't immortal. Although he lived a thousand years before this film began, he finally bought the farm in this story. At least I think he did. Frankly, I'm not too sure what the hell was going on in this story, which seems to require lots of advance summer reading and an intimate knowledge of a previous movie called Underworld. I did gather that one of the two sons was so powerful that he was placed in an eternal cage, and the other son, learning that his father's eternal life wasn't quite as eternal as previously suspected, reasons that the family's definition of "eternal" may not be entirely precise, and studies up on arcane lore which will allow him to free his brother and ... I don't know ... destroy the world, or rule it, or both. Something nasty. The evil brothers are opposed by Kate Beckinsale, who is a vampire capable of killing both vampires and werewolves, and her boyfriend, who is a powerful vampire/werewolf hybrid and a killing machine, but is really a sweet guy at heart. He's got that whole Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno thing goin' for him.

The entire movie basically consists of blue-tinted fight scenes between various combinations of werewolves and vampires, all linked together with clumsy expository narration about ancient events involving people with silly names, all of which will make about as much sense to the average moviegoer as shop talk between two "Dungeons and Dragons" geeks. The film is essentially like a Uwe Boll movie with a lot more visual pizzazz. Critics hated it, as I did, but the series has developed a core of fandom, and this installment had one of the best January opening weekends in history. I had thought that the audience for this series must skew extremely young, but that does not appear to be the case. The demographic scores at IMDb do show that the film plays stronger with younger audiences, but the drop among older voters is not dramatic at all. Overall, Underworld: Evolution is currently rated a very respectable 6.6 at IMDb, which is about two points higher than you'd expect from a film with only 15% positive reviews. That and the strong box office performance are indicative of a cult in the making.

 

Kate Beckinsale

Kaja Gjesdal

Shadow Man (2006)

Here's a tip for you youngsters who want to be international terrorists: do NOT kidnap any members of Steven Seagal's family.

Here's a tip for you ministers of tourism: do not grant a tourist visa to any members of Seagal's family, just on the odd chance they may be kidnapped. When Seagal gains his revenge on the baddies, there is a lot of collateral damage!

This time the Beefy Battler is in Bucharest with his daughter. He plays, as always, a man with a mysterious background in special ops or black ops or some kind of stuff so double-secret that even Dean Wormer doesn't know about it. As always, the espionage is behind him now and he's trying to live a mainstream life as a CEO and cuddly family man. The only reason he's in Romania is to visit a grave. As always, the only woman he has ever loved is dead. Steven Seagal's very presence represents a very economical device for a screenwriter because his characters always have the same back-story, so minimal exposition is required - and little is offered, given the fact that Seagal is also a screenwriter.

This time around, Seagal's father-in-law plants some kind of top secret device on him, making the Weighty Warrior an unwitting mule for a lab-created virus which evil CIA operatives are going to smuggle from the USA. Their plan is to auction it off at the annual convention of purely evil super-baddies, the various rapscallions and ne'er-do-wells who want to destroy all life on the planet.

Kinda like oil company executives.

The main baddies are not Mobil/Exxon execs but Russian mobsters (I think), and they foolishly think they can gain leverage on the Fleshy Fighter by kidnapping his daughter, or killing her, or something. The baddies seem kind of confused, to tell you the truth, because during half the film they are pursuing the Tubby Tiger for the secret virus they presume to be somewhere on his person, while they use the other half of their time trying to blow him up, which would also presumably destroy what they are seeking. Actually, this apparent conflict may be a result of the fact that the various baddies are not working in concert. Some of them just want to steal the virus so they can sell it back to the other baddies, or anyone else who will bid more. The Russkies receive assistance and/or competition from various treasonous American agents and diplomats, as well as the entire corrupt police force of Bucharest. The police force also employs all taxi drivers as paid informants, and the cops inform Seagal of this, but that doesn't stop the Chubby Commando from taking taxis throughout the film, thus keeping the rotten police apprised of his every movement. (A master of stealth, that lad!)

It doesn't really matter that the Big-Bellied Battler has to fight against overwhelming odds and a confusing array of baddies with indeterminate motives. He just wants his daughter back, and you know it's gonna get ugly for those in his way. Let's just say that by the time the Doughy Doughboy gets the adorable ragamuffin back, Bucharest is going to have to hire a whole new police force. Not to mention several construction crews.

My favorite scene: a traitorous American agent locks an unarmed Seagal inside a supposed "safe house" which is actually a death trap with bricked-up windows and doors. Several baddies of indeterminate origin, clearly bent on exterminating Seagal, show up with automatic weapons. The Stout Sensei should be dead meat in this situation, but the evil agent had made the mistake of trapping Seagal in a house filled with ordinary household materials. Seagal is able to fashion some deadly weapons using the pipes beneath the sink, a Mr. Coffee machine, a ball of twine, a frozen Hungry Man seafood dinner, an old-fashioned Victrola, a scratched Mel Tormé record, and a thimbleful of Clorox. Unfortunately, these weapons are so powerful that he not only knocks out the baddies but also destroys an entire city block in Bucharest, the first of many which will be razed before the film is over. By the time the Stocky Samurai is finished with his makeshift weapons, the United Nations has had to call a special session to declare that the Velvet Fog's records have been reclassified from Category Three Kitsch to Weapons of Mass Destruction.

In the film's final scene, the Pudgy Paladin rewards his daughter for being a very brave little girl while she was held by the agents of pure evil, and for always remembering to put toilet paper over the entire seat before doing a pee-pee at Pure Evil Headquarters.

He buys her a pony.

I didn't make that up.

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His fans seem to think this is one of the better Seagal films. It has earned his highest IMDb rating since 2001's Exit Wounds.

1. (6.19) - Executive Decision (1996)
2. (6.09) - Under Siege (1992)
3. (5.25) - Get Bruce (1999)
4. (5.09) - Exit Wounds (2001)
5. (5.09) - Above the Law (1988)
6. (4.99) - Out for Justice (1991)
7. (4.89) - Marked for Death (1990)
8. (4.80) - Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)
9. (4.79) - Hard to Kill (1990)
10. (4.77) - Shadow Man (2006) (V)
11. (4.70) - The Glimmer Man (1996)
12. (4.69) - My Giant (1998)
13. (4.40) - Mercenary for Justice (2006) (V)
14. (4.39) - The Path Beyond Thought (2001) (V)
15. (4.30) - Belly of the Beast (2003)
16. (4.11) - Into the Sun (2005)
17. (4.10) - Half Past Dead (2002)
18. (4.10) - Fire Down Below (1997)
19. (4.03) - Today You Die (2005)
20. (3.91) - The Patriot (1998/I)
21. (3.74) - Submerged (2005) (V)
22. (3.72) - Clementine (2004)
23. (3.67) - Black Dawn (2005) (V)
24. (3.65) - Out of Reach (2004) (V)
25. (3.51) - On Deadly Ground (1994)
26. (3.23) - Ticker (2001)
27. (2.66) - Out for a Kill (2003)
28. (2.65) - The Foreigner (2003)

Astoundingly, I've seen every one of his films since Exit Wounds, and my favorite would be 2003's Belly of the Beast, which was also co-scripted by Seagal and has almost exactly the same plot as Shadow Man ("An ex-CIA agent's quest to find his kidnapped daughter leads him on a trail of political intrigue, corruption, danger and betrayal; he will stop at nothing to save her.") I prefer Belly of the Beast because it sets the familiar action in some exotic and colorful Asian locales rather than some dingy Eastern European nightclubs. I do agree, however, that Shadow Man is a major step above the two Michael Oblowitz movies (#27 and #28 above) which represented Seagal's career nadir in 2003. It is fair to say that Shadow Man is one of the big guy's better recent efforts.

 

Corina Toader

Strippers

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

Got some very odd stuff today...as in odds and ends from movies capped for other reasons and some capped from VHS and one from a DVD whose source was obviously a commercial videotape (that is, the quality of the images is downright nasty).

First up: Julie Michaels in Doctor Mordrid.

What a weird mofoing movie Doctor Mordrid is. Wizards of a science-fiction variety doing battle to see if one gets to destroy Earth or the other gets laid by a grateful inhabitant. Something like that. And what kind of doctor is he? As a wizard, he must have a PhD in economics. The guy playing the good doctor runs the full range of emotions from P to R. Most of the time he looks concerned, other times he looked shocked and in-between the two he looks alarmed. Nothing wrong with him that any one of several SSRI's wouldn't take care of. For our purposes the only reason to watch this bad boy movie was to see Julie Michaels get nekkid. Julie is quasi-famous for the amateur strip routine she did in Roadhouse. Good body in good lighting ... it was the highlight of that movie. In this movie, she has the same body, darker hair and way darker lighting. WTF was the director thinking? She gets nekkid ... you are gonna get an R rating, dude ... so light a few more candles or ... and this may sound radical ... turn on a few lights. But no. I grabbed what I could.

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There are a bunch of 70's and 80's Mexican movies, available only on videotape. We got beautiful women with killer bums and nice, natural hooties, all in excellent, clear light. Nothing to complain about at all.

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Did Rampage a long time ago by capping just about every frame of Brittany Daniel's nude scenes ... and here are two other gals who gave up goodies,

Joleigh Fioreavanti

and Michelle Borth.

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Then there is Demetra Hampton taken from clips of a TV show called Valentina. Demetra has an exotic face and a spectacular body. The last of the collages came from a slow pan from head to toe and had the kind of resolution you find on an average DVD.

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Last up are a few collages of internet nude model, Danni Ashe, on the same disk as Lorissa McComas in Lorissa Oil Me Up. You look at Danni and you realize that at about the time her boobs stopped growing, her career plans were pretty much set in stone. If hooties were brains she would be a frickin' Einstein.

A German court threw out a complaint by a 16-year-old girl that police violated her rights by strip-searching her before she entered a soccer stadium.  They ruled that security for the World Cup games is so important, police will have the right to strip-search anyone, even if there are no grounds.

*  Oh, there were grounds for it: she was SMOKIN' hot!



The Concord Monitor reports that Suzan Belanger of Penacook, New Hampshire, was charged with prostitution after police allegedly caught her providing sexual services at her "healing" business, Amazing Alternatives.  But Balanger, who appears in lingerie on her website, claims she's a  certified Reiki healer, cosmologist, herbalist, sexual therapist, sorceress, "all-around loving caring soul" and "Amazing Goddess" who was raised by fairies, and that God gave approval for her methods.  She vowed to fight the charges and appeal for aid to the very top: Oprah.

*  God gave His approval -  but she still needs to run it past Oprah.

 

The Drudge Report noticed that posters for "An Inconvenient Truth" don't
include Al Gore's name.  A rival studio executive told Drudge that market
research showed little audience interest in a movie starring Al Gore

* The truth of his presence turned out to be inconvenient.

* Also, the photo on the poster shows George Clooney kissing Julia Roberts while shooting Osama bin Laden.