Blood, Guts, Bullets, Octane, and A Whole Bunch of F-Bombs

This review could best be summed up with one sentence:

Joe Carnahan, you demented f&*king genius!

If you’ve seen “Smoking Aces”, you know how incredibly violent and insane Joe Carnahan can take a story, but if you haven’t treated yourself to “Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane” you’re denying yourself one of his best works.

The premise is actually similar to Aces in a lot of ways.  It starts out seemingly simple in telling the story of a pair of used car dealers down on their luck, and quickly turns into a violent race to the finish.

This was Carnahan’s first movie, and I was introduced to it when I was on my independent kick in the late 90s.  This is the kind of movie that makes me love independent films and it is one of the films responsible for my current career path.

For comparison, it’s similar to Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi” in tone and slightly in the style, but with Tarantino’s dialogue choices.

Just trust me on this, if you like Carnahan’s work in “Smoking Aces”, or just cool action films in general, do yourself a favor and check out “Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane”.

You’ll be glad you did.

 

William, the Movie Nerdfighter

who wants to just run out and shoot a feature after seeing this movie again

Comic Book Movies Part 01: Rise of the Movie Nerdfighter

My friend Jason and I started a podcast where we talk movies and other stuff.  The first two episodes were all about comic book movies.  The first one was posted on March 13, 2008.  Now that this blog is up, I’m going to repost both of them, and all subsequent podcasts, here as well.

Download this episode (82 min)

 

William (the Movie Nerdfighter) and Jason talk about comic book movies in the first episode of the 5 Regular Guys new podcast: Movie Talk!

This is the first, trial episode. Please pardon our progress…

Introductions

Hello all!

This is my first post, so I thought I’d introduce myself.  My name is William and I like movies.

I’ve been a fan of the movies since I was very young.  The first movie I saw in the theaters was “Return of the Jedi” when I was only 3 years old.  That started my fascination with the Star Wars franchise and the magic of the motion picture.

Since then, I have been a regular movie-goer for the great, the near great, the not-so great, and the absolute crap.  I’m quite voracious in my viewing and will watch just about anything at least once (a great exception comes from the run of horrible parody movies that have been coming out in the wake of the “Scary Movie” franchise.  I think the final nail in that coffin will be when they come out with one actually called “Parody Movie”.  It’ll be shit, and we can all move on).

The purpose of this blog will be for me, as a movie-goer and hardcore cinephile, to give (hopefully) honest critiques of movies.  I will review every movie I see without abject malice (if there is malice, it will have a purpose).  Not only will you find reviews of the newest theater releases, you will also find the smaller titles, the classics, the cult classics, and the independent stuff you’ve never heard of before.

Now, I feel the name deserves a brief explanation.  For those who don’t know what a Nerdfighter is, here is the simplest “official” definition:

    People who instead of being made up of cells and organs and stuff are actually made out of awesome.

The term was coined by brothers Hank and John Green during their year-long vlog project Brotherhood 2.0.  The viewers of this project make up the Nerdfighter populace.  I consider myself one of their number and am fascinated with movies, thus movie nerdfighter.

So, now you know a little about why I am doing this.  Also, you may like to know that I am a writer and filmmaker living in Wilmington, North Carolina.

That’s it for the introduction.  Reviews to follow quite soon.

 

William, the Movie Nerdfighter