Steven Seagal has long inspired controversy among his fans and foes alike.
Tag: Steven Seagal
2009 Review: The Best Kung Fu Movies
Raging Phoenix
[Yesasia] [IMDB]
I would love to cite Raging Phoenix as the first awesome martial arts film with a female lead. I would love to do that. But its choreographers and writers conspire against me.
Raging Phoenix is the story of a young female rocker (played by Jeeja Yanin) who gets caught up in a ruthless kidnapping ring. Women are abducted off the streets of Thailand, drugged, and taken to a secret laboratory hidden within a Temple of Doom, which is in turn hidden within a metropolitan sewage system. Naturally, the women’s tears are harvested there, to concoct a patent medicine for eccentric billionaires.
Only one force is strong enough to thwart the kidnapper’s plans: a small group of drunken vigilantes who learned to combine Muay Thai boxing with stylish hip-hop dance moves.
Now on DVD: The Best Martial Arts Movies of 2008
Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
[Amazon] [IMDB] [Netflix]
Starring Dustin Nguyen, Roger Fan, Aiko Tanaka and M.C. Hammer
Loosely based on the true story of Bruce Lee’s “lost footage”, Finishing the Game is a dry, sharply written satire of 70’s era Kung Fu filmmaking. Martial artists and genre fans will enjoy it immensely, but newcomers may not appreciate its subtle humor.
My rating: A-
Finishing the Game
Fist Foot Way
Steven Seagal Redeems Himself As Cock Puncher
Where did Steven Seagal go wrong? His early movies—Hard to Kill, Out for Justice, Under Siege—reinvigorated the action genre, with their breathtaking displays of no-holds-barred Aikido.
His next two-dozen films weren’t so well received, or so I hear. I didn’t watch them myself.
It wasn’t the thin plots or dull acting that eventually turned me off Steven Seagal’s work; it was his characters, or rather his character.
Watermelon Dim Mak with Steven Seagal
Steven Seagal reaches new heights of self-parody, in this scene from his latest movie Shadow Man:
Steven Seagal: So the idea of dim mak, or any kind of internal technique, is not to hurt others but to help others. Dim mak can be used to heal people, it can be used to kill people. This is the nature of chi. Chi can be used in striking for just external, or internal. If you go to the internal organs you’ll do great damage; external, you can just move them a little. [Applies ji posture to send Student 1 reeling backwards.] Or, you can go internal. [Strikes watermelon held by Student 2, ruining lunchtime for everyone.]