THE HIT LIST - July 27, 2015

This past week was pretty busy for me, so content has been slower than usual. But, that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with with what's happening in independent material and other matters of visual feats of sports and athleticism of which you will see plenty.

Time to get things rolling, and as always with a new playlist of stunt and training reels with performances by Aaron Gassor in full Sith mode, stunt players Moussa Sako, Luciano Arnieri, Deangelo Harding, Laura Beamer, Hayley Wright, Jesse Haus, Jennifer Li, Chistopher Leps, Mallory Thompson, Jwaundace Candace, Jared Losano, Sina Ali, the latest action director reel by Mark Mottram featuring scenes from the 2014 thriller, The November Man, and a new director reel by lensman and action director Godefroy Ryckewaert.

For the next leg, while I don't always feature freerunning in these, gems featuring any aspect of stunt performance are welcome with solid video production to boot. Damien Walters himself has since applied this in a new video of his own in a new video where he pretty much freeruns while engulfed in flames. It's not the first time I've seen this particular stunt, but it's also seldom done since the last time I'd seen a traceur on fire was about two years ago, which is pretty amazing.

Walters kicked off the new year in great fashion as well with the release of Matthew Vaughan's Kingsman: The Secret Service in which he performed stunts and helped train in the fight action as well, and he also put together an impressive short video ahead of the film's release. This is a guy that really knows his stuff, so I wouldn't fall asleep on him.

Other videos to accompany this segment include a new globetrotting reel featured on Team Farang's new channel in which parkour wunderkinds Luci Romberg, Anan Anwar and Jason Paul went leaps and bounds around Los Angeles, Bangkok and Japan.. thus the perks of being a traceur; you literally get to run around the world. Not. Even. Kidding - And speaking of, you will also find Romberg's latest video in the form of a submission sampler among a playlist of several now online for this year's Red Bull: Art Of Motion completion in the lush outskirts of Oia, Greece. I didn't include them all in this playlist because there are so many, but these are the ones that stood out to me while fishing through them.

Submissions ended today as well, so click here to say hello to the fanpage and learn more about the event!

While we are on the subject of athletic competition, martial arts trickerd from across the country are being invited out to East Windsor in Connecticut for Battle Of Fury 2015. Tricking gatherings are full of electricity with badass performances by young and inspired martial arts purveyors and experts from nearly all walks of life, which is worthy of noting as much as the phenomenon has taken shape in recent years, so help keep the spirit alive and if you're interested, headover to the link to get your tickets today and check out the promo for the event below!

Well into the new year, little is known about the future endeavors of Just Kidding Films duo Bart Kwan and Joe Jo outside of their usual feats of comedic spectacle. However, whatever their later aspirations may be, it clearly involves martial arts, and they've undergone quite a bit of training for some time now with martial artist, actor and action trainer, Force Storm Entertainment's own Noah Fleder. This week, Kwan and Jo are offering up another journal entry enviting subscribers of their network into a day of weapons training at South Coast Martial Arts.

Keep in mind, martial arts training is some serious stuff, especially with weapons...although clearly that doesn't take away from any of the hilarity you're about to see. They really do put the 'stick' in "slapstick". Watch please.

Alas, we've come to the last leg of this week's Hit List and the fight stuff is a bit light this time around, but still worth lending an audience to. First up is a trailer for the August 3 premiere for the new webseries, Warigami, a vengeful tale of martial arts and fantasy where paper is the deadliest weapon of choice.

The proceeding two videos thereafter include a new group test fight by Gay Alexandre with Thomas Lorber leading the badassery, and the newest fight short from the growing crew over at Wolf Stunts titled, The Bag.

The next video comes from director Andy Hourahine with the new shortfilm, Karate Girl: Brawl. Produced by Blair Johannes, the project sequelizes last year's Karate Girl: Streetfight with martial artist Julia Hourahine back once more and leading a story that takes our martial arts heroine's journey into further contemplation. The project here takes on a more spiritual shape here, and with your help, her path can go even further, so subscribe to the project's fanpage and lend your support, accordingly.

And lastly, and all the better for it, is a filmmaker who I've rambled about for nearly as long as I've run this blog. Stuntman and oft-filmmaker Emmanuel Manzanres has returned to charm the hell out of the online action fanbase once more with a spectacular new group offering in the new short, Monster. FMA purveyor and action actor Bryan Sloyer plays our captive forced to fight from the bloodthirsty clutches of four goons led by Jerry Quill in a scrumptious onslaught of hand-bound fistcuffs and full-fledged, no-holds-barred bat-cracking, headbashing, flesh-wounding facial reconstruction of only the brutal kind. This jewel of a video is literally so good it hurts, and bares all the markings of what it truly means to create quality content.

Someone get these people on a TV show please. Who must I bake cookies for in order for this to happen?

*sigh*.. Watch below, in awe.

A few more honorable mentions go out this week to independent filmmaer Vlad Rimburg's latest fan reel attributed to legendary action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, as well as actress and filmmaker Toy Lei for her Best Actress and Best Action Film victory among the winners this year's 11th installation of the 72-Hour Shootout competion hosted by the Asian American Film Lab in NYC for her new short, Boxer. The short is currently not available to the web yet, but the stills are still available in case you missed them...

...As for all else, feel free to view last week's Hit List roster in case you need catching up, and if you have QUALITY content that could use an audience, send it over to filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com

Cam's Eye Review: THE NOVEMBER MAN (2014)

SYNOPSIS:

When the past lures Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) out of retirement, the ex-CIA agent finds himself entangled in a political conspiracy involving high-ranking CIA officials and the Russian President-elect. 

Tasked with protecting Alice Fournier (Olga Kurylenko), a woman whose secrets threaten the future of old alliances, professional circumstances pit Devereaux against his former protege, David Mason (Luke Bracey), a sniper with deadly aim. 

Based on Bill Granger's political thriller, There Are No Spies, the seventh installment in The November Man series.

REVIEW:

Here's what (ugh!) Wikipedia says about this action thriller: The November Man is a 2014 American spy action thriller film based on the novel "There Are No Spies" by Bill Granger, which is canonically the seventh installment in The November Man novel series, published in 1987. It stars Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, and Olga Kurylenko with the screenplay written by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek. The film is directed by Roger Donaldson, who previously worked with Brosnan in Dante's Peak. Beau St. Clair once again teams up with Brosnan to co-produce the film.

"People are power. We collect people," states John Hanley (Bill Smitrovich, of The X-Files and Millenium TV series fame). And that is evident in this particular fare brought to us by producer Beau St. Clair (among others), and executive produced by Mr. Brosnan's production company, Irish Dreamtime (among other executive and assistant producers).

Our film starts where veteran CIA operative Peter Devereaux is assigned to protect a US Ambassador in Montenegro back in 2008 under orders from CIA Director Hanley. Devereaux's new recruit, David Mason (Luke Bracey, an Australian actor, best known for his role on Home and Away as Trey Palmer), is given the task as a sniper to take out anyone who has threatened the ambassador since he had received a threat before at an upcoming public meeting. But things turn from controlled to uncontrolled when Mason notices a tall man pull out a gun from his suit from his gunsight and walk toward the ambassador. Mason is eager to shoot but Devereaux argues with Mason not to fire until the assassin is clear of the crowd. A young boy runs toward the area where Devereaux and the ambassador are but Mason shoots anyway, and killing the child by accident. From that horrific scene, Devereaux retires from the CIA and goes back to Switzerland and opens a coffee shop.

Less than a few years later, we see Devereaux at his coffee café, sitting outside in the sun and light breeze as a man approaches: his old boss, John Hanley. He smiles, greets Devereaux, and asks him for one last assignment to do. Refusing, Hanley reveals that it's an emergency extraction of a deep cover CIA operative from Russia, Natalia Ulanova (Mediha Musliovic, a Bosnian film and TV actress). She has been posing as the aide of presidential candidate and former Russian Army General Arkady Fedorov and knows the name of a witness who can tie Fedorov to war crimes in the Second Chechen War. Hanley says Natalia won't turn over the name unless she is brought in and wants Peter's help in getting out of the country. Hanley also tells Devereaux that Fedorov's personal assassin Alexa (Caterina Scorsone, best known for her role as Amelia Shepherd in the ABC medical dramas Private Practice and Grey's Anatomy) has been assigned to murder all of Fedorov's former associates who have knowledge of his past crimes.

Devereaux accepts when he asks if Natalia specifically requested him. Hanley assents. However, unknown to Devereaux, former partner and friend David Mason's own team is dispatched to extract Natalia as well, with CIA station chief Perry Weinstein (Will Patton, Colonel Dan Weaver in the TNT science fiction series Falling Skies) in charge of the operation. Mason's team is also unaware of Hanley's own actions.

Managing to break into Fedorov's personal safe, Natalia copies several photos of an unkempt young girl and a younger Fedorov. She manages to escape and contacts Mason's team to ready her for the extraction. However, Fedorov notices that his safe was broken into and alerts the FSB, who chase her through the streets of Moscow until Devereaux arrives and rescues Natalia. Natalia, though surprised to see him, gives him a name, Mira Filipova, which he relays to Hanley before she is shot by Mason who was ordered by Weinstein to kill her. Before she dies, she gives him the cellphone with the incriminating photos.

Now Devereaux has to find this Mira Filipova while being chased by Alexa, Mason, and his team.

Not wanting to give too much in the way of plot details, the above does nicely. Even though some reviewers think that the story was hard to follow, I think someone who is mentally lazy would write that. As a reviewer I need all my wits about me to follow the storyline and if it's a logical progression with the characters involved.

To be honest, I thought the pacing, the storylines, and characters were top-notch.  Brosnan gives us a human character we can all relate to in many different ways which is completely opposite to his Bond persona we all got to know and love for more than a decade. Post-Bond, he has made some very interesting choices in his career: the true-life movie Evelyn, the action-packed Dante's Peak, the western Seraphim Falls alongside fellow Irishman Liam Neeson, the film adaption of the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! and the Danish romantic comedy Love Is All You Need. I should make a note here that in December 2005, Mr. Brosnan was to star in the screen adaptation of The November Man but the project was cancelled in 2007. It was only through his own efforts (since he still had the film rights), along with others, that the project was greenlighted once more in 2012 and released to generally negative reviews in 2014.

As for me, I love the action thriller format. Even when politics are involved. The Manchurian Candidate (both original and remake), the Bourne films, V for Vendetta, and Three Days of the Condor (1975) come to mind. And The November Man is among this proud pantheon. But I'm a reviewer - so what do I know? I know what's good to me and I can give a legitimate, informed, and critical review.

The sharp writing, the pace, the violence, the filming (apart from a little sloppy steadicam work in the coffee cafe scene), and the backdrop of Serbia serving as Russia and Belgrade gave this film character. And we see a little tiresome slow motion shots that could have been cut back a bit more but I could follow every character's story arc well and how they lived and breathed. Not to say is wasn't edited tightly -- apart from showing a guy's head cracking on a tile floor which they could have done without as Peter Devereaux shot some "bad guys" -- but one humorous moment jumped out at me: actress Olga Kurylenko as Alice Fournier (a key role I should refrain from elaborating), picks up a shovel from a construction wheelbarrow, hides off to the side, and then smacks the athletic and remarkably stoic Alexa in the face with it, trying to run away from the hired assassin. An effective tool for the job, I might add.

We are treated to car chases, people running, and dialogue from CIA operatives as Devereaux tries his best to keep Alice Fournier safe from harm and from the clutches of David Mason and his team who get picked off one-by-one by Brosnan's character. All in the name of finding the elusive Mira Filipova. Devereaux also has to deal with his own issues when Mason finds out that Devereaux has a young daughter and she gets caught up in the mess as she is kidnapped and held by one of the main characters who wants Mira Filipova found and turned over to the Agency.

When Devereaux finally confronts the presidential hopeful, Federov, we are treated to a stereotypical mainstay of confrontations: Russian roulette. All in the hope of getting a confession out of him about his war crimes and the serial raping of Mira Filipova who was only 12 at the time.

But the scenes with Mason and Devereaux are really eye-opening.  Finding out that Devereaux did not want Mason in the field made him harder and more focused on the job; doing what he was ordered to do. But when he sees Devereaux for the first time after killing Natalia, he hesitates and both characters walk in opposite directions. Back at the Command room, they record from a camera feed of both men walking away and the station chief, Weinstein, demands why Mason let him go.

Mason's story gets complicated by the presence of a cat that shows up at his apartment in Belgrade and we're treated to a blonde American girl, Sarah (Eliza Taylor, an Australian actress, best known for her role as Janae Timmins in the Australian soap opera Neighbours [2005-2008] and can currently be seen in The CW series The 100 as Clarke Griffin). Sarah find Mason "somewhat attractive" and it's not too obvious that he is attracted to her. It's only when Devereaux inserts himself in Mason's apartment after he and Sarah have sex and holds Sarah as a hostage with a knife, trying to ask Mason to "take the shot" and asked him over and over to choose and if Sarah's life was more valuable than Devereaux's. It's the culmination of Mason taking the woman Devereaux loved (Natalia) and the threat of losing someone Mason was beginning to love. I won't give away what happens to Sarah in this dueling exchange but it captured my attention and interest.

If you can handle some of the action and follow the storyline closely, this film will thoroughly entertain you if you're a fan of political action/thriller films and keep your blood pumping. I am also sure that you won't be disappointed on who Mira Filipova turns out to be and the mental gymnastics are few and far between to keep you guessing until the last act. This is no James Bond ride -- it's not bold and overblown with a lot of special effects. This is a smartly written and well-acted thriller that would probably want you wanting more of in the future. Despite other reviewers claiming "dull genre clichés" by Rotten Tomatoes, I don't think they get the historical significance of this film nor even read the book the work is based on.

Cameron Farmer is a freelance writer based in California with a shared interest in several topics other than film which you can learn more about via his Facebook fan page over at Kingspirit Entertainment. Feel free to subscribe to his page and follow him on Twitter @CameronFarmer8.