My friend (and recent FPW convention co-speaker, as well) has optioned his first book, Rain Fall, as a movie. It will be advertised during the upcoming Bond film. It's filmed mostly in Japanese (as the setting is in Japan and the "protagonist" is half-Japanese). Gary Oldman is cast as a CIA agent tasked to bringing in John Rain, our protagonist hit man.

Here's the Japanese site: http://www.rain-fall.jp/ Kenji? What it all say?
Here's a write-up about Oldman in the movie:http://www.beyondhollywood.com/gary-oldm...rain-fall/

Looks to be good, and the advertising in the Bond flick can't hurt....

I am watching Rush Hour 3, and it turns out that you were born in Tokyo, but were orphaned, and adopted into China as Jackie Chan's brother, and now are one of the leaders to an undercover crime organization. And you didn't even tell us!!!!(:p)

Hi everybody, I am a long-time RH fan but a brand new poster.

I received today only "By the sword" through Amazon, and I had the surprise (and delight!) to see that is was a limited signed edition. Are those editions scattered among regular books? Has there been a snafu somewhere and I received a book which was not for me? (I was supposed to received it sometime around 1st June, and only delaying messages kept arriving).

I'll be very happy to share my impressions and questions about "By the sword" once I've read it!

From one of the minds that brought you "The Blair Witch Project" this movie has "surprise twist ending" written all over it. It's not bad acted, or directed or written, it just *isn't* what it wanted to be. [SPOILER]For the ending to have the punch Daniel Myrick wanted it to, let's just say he should have made it before Frailty.[/SPOILER] Trust me, in the first ten minutes you will know exactly how the movie will end.

My other complaint is what exactly is this movie trying to be? It's not horror as there's nothing horrific in it. The "bad guys" are generally nice, peace-loving people, a little inattentive, but accomodating and the head baddie has severe allergies and doesn't like contact with people. If they don't know they are bad, how am I supposed to know?

I got this in my Blockbuster queue a week ago and just didn't have the strength to write a review. A really cool concept that just wasn't explored to the degree it should have. Imagine, a world-wide phenomena and you only explore a paltry few characters. There's a signal broadcast across all televisions and if you stare at it too long, you'll go crazy. Not just any crazy, but a rational, even conversational crazy sometimes as you maim and dismember anyone within arms reach.

That's how this movie starts out when the woman (I don't have the energy to look up the names of the characters) comes home after sleeping with her lover to find her husband entertaining some buddies. Her husband beans one of the guys for almost hitting her with a baseball bat and then proceeds to bash in his head. The other buddy restrains him and she runs out to see some guy chopping people's throats with a pair of hedge clippers.

And then it goes downhill.

The movie is told in 3 segments, the 2nd one being the weakest in which the entire story is told from inside an apartment without even a hint as to the chaos going on outside. Then in the last segment when characters have cause to go outside they are met with virtually NO opposition, no throngs of the teeming mad they have to struggle through to get to where they are going. I don't want to blow the whole film so the only other thing I want to add is people, normal and crazy, are for some strange reason extremely hard to kill. This film begs for a sequel if only to develop the ball dropped that is the semi-original concept.

I saw this in another forum and think it's really fun. Especially if you don't mind spoilers. Someone lists a spoiler and whoever guesses which movie it's from gets to list their own spoiler and so on...

I'll start with an easy one.

Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.

I don't think there's already a topic on this movie, please move if there is.

I just got back from watching this movie. It may now be my fav animated movie. It was all-around satisfying, well-paced, had very nicely animated action scenes, nice music (they featured my fav instrument, the er hu) and incorporated a fair amount of Chinese wuxia xiao shuo (martial arts literature) culture. The plot isn't the most original one you could find as it's still a kid's movie in the end, but everything else more than made up for that.

If you're in need of a few laughs, and especially if you have kids, I would highly recommend this movie. If you see it, share your thoughts!

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH

I saw it Friday afternoon. I had no expectations.
It was frighteningly mediocre. I want my money back.
I give this cinematic embarrassment ONE-HALF OF A CAN
out of five cans of diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper.

Non-Spoiler Breakdown:

Unfortunately, the failure of this film is one of simple Hollywood hubris.
They obviously rushed this puppy out WAY too quickly, before a decent
final draft was written, and put it into the hands of amateur filmmakers.
The script was TERRIBLE and the Directing and Editing were incompetent
and confusing at best. Hamhanded segues from one scene to the next
gave the appearance that they never actually finished principal photography,
and were missing several shots.

The cast is a seemingly inspired grouping of talented actors, but when
thrown into dragging scenes with weak dialogue backed up by a weaker
plot, there are just only so many nervous stares and bouts of dry wit that
Steve Carell (Maxwell Smart - Agent 86) can conjure up to save the
moment.

Anne Hathaway is a bit of a cipher as Agent 99, looking so much
younger than Carell that an obviously rushed and ridiculous
backstory was squeezed into the movie at the last minute in a
lame attempt to tone down the creepiness factor (and no, it doesn’t
work).

Terrence Stamp does a creditable job keeping a straight face as
Siegfried, the arch villain of C*H*A*O*S. Looking more than a little
bored, he delivers villainous pronouncements with all the gravitas that
has made his 'General Zod' (of Superman II fame) a cult badguy
among fanboys.

And what of the brilliant Alan Arkin, seemingly perfectly cast as
the Chief of C*O*N*T*R*O*L? While a few short moments of comic
wit occasionally arise, Arkin spends half the movie standing around
looking confused, perhaps wondering if this is how Peter Sellers
felt during his last few weeks working on the apocryphal and abyssmal
“The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu” shortly before his demise.

What is your favorite old movie? I LOVE Some Like it Hot and the original Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

Anyone have an idea when Gauntlet will be shipping the limited editions of Legacies?