by Shane “Kung Fu Cusack” Hnetka
The awards season has come and gone, and I barely paid attention. I guess the winner was Birdman* — at least at the Oscars and the Independent Spirit Awards, anyway. Boyhood cleaned up at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and everywhere else except the Canadian Screen Awards, which haven’t even happened as of this writing. I’m going with the safe bet and guessing that Mommy will win, like, IDK, nine Canadian Screen Awards (totes guessing). Unless Tatiana Maslany wins all the CSAs — best actress, movie, animated short, everything. ALL WILL BE MASLANY. That’d be cool.
Anyhoo, Birdman and Boyhood are good but personally I like The Grand Budapest Hotel more.
*Also cleaned up at the NAMBLA (North American Man/Bird Love Association) Awards.
Blades Of Fury
Other than co-starring in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars (also released in 2014), John Cusack’s last box office hit was Hot Tub Time Machine back in 2010. Ha! What a loser.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 was released in theatres Feb. 20 and it bombed. John Cusack was noticeably missing from the sequel. Where could Cusack beeeee?
What if I told you there’s a kung fu movie starring Cusack, Jackie Chan and Adrien Brody, and it was already released? You might assume I’d gone cwaaaazy, or maybe that it’s a direct-to-video effort (Cusack has made quite a few of those lately: The Bag Man, Drive Hard, The Prince and Reclaim; and that’s just for 2014).
In fact, Dragon Blade is REAL and Cusack is all up in Chan and Brody’s bidnezz. The Chinese period piece/action film about Roman soldiers fighting in the Han Dynasty was released the same weekend as HTTM 2 in theatres across China for Chinese New Year. It opened with $US55 million. Not too shabby, and certainly better than HTTM 2 (or any other recent Cusack movie).
Now, I’m not too sure if Dragon Blade is any good. Reviews are scarce but IMDb has a rating of 6.9 out of 10. The reviews I’ve found seem less than kind but then that’s par for the course with Cusack’s films for the last few years. Jackie Chan’s too, come to think of it…
He’s A Cop On The Edge (Of The Full Moon)
Wolf Cop finally gets a Blu-ray/DVD release on March 10. There will be lots of commentaries and outtakes plus a music video and the original concept trailer. You should buy it, unless you’re a traitor to Canada, disrespect police and hate wolves.
Shane Hnetka is a Regina film and comic book nerd. He also writes Dog Blog’s weekly “Sunday Matinee” column at prairiedogmag.com.