March 2008

Impact talks exclusively to Tony Ching Siu-tong, the go-to man for action.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in Asian action cinema and television will be aware of Tony Ching Siu-tong and his unique style of action choreography and direction. His credits range from epic Chinese language productions such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers and, more recently, The Warlords, to Japanese swordplay in Dororo, Bollywood super heroics in Krrish, Fantastical swordplay in Uwe Bohl’s In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and even Steven Seagal in Belly of the Beast. Ching’s trademarks often include silk and fabric used as a weapon, flying swordsmen, exotic framing and often epileptic editing. For more than 30 years Ching has been defying gravity and realism in his action set pieces. The 54-year-old multiple-award winning filmmaker discusses with us his style, his new approach to action, his collaboration on Peter Chan’s late-2007 box-office hit The Warlords and his fellow HK action directors.

Impact: Many Chinese directors are said to be influenced by Japanese films. During your formative years on TV productions you were influenced by King Hu, who was himself directly inspired by Japanese films...
Ching Siu-tong: Of course, we have tried to mix all the best techniques from all over...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

This month Calum gets to grips with the latest Donnie Yen action vehicle and checks out a trio of original J-horror classics.

How many films have there been about violent police officers who mean well but can’t help breaking a few legs en route to solving a crime? You know how the storyline goes - the captain of the local law squad warns Cop X to soften up but our ‘hero’, a well meaning fella who happens to think that muggers and murderers get a soft deal from the state, just wants to get down to business. The story itself was popularised by the right-wing leanings of Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry (1971) and has since featured in everything from 48 Hours (1982) and Lethal Weapon (1987) to Hong Kong’s Tiger on the Beat (1988) and The Big Bullet (1996).

Even Jackie Chan’s more comical Police Story flicks are based around this central premise - “you have to stay within the law or else we are as bad as the criminals we want to arrest...” and so on and so forth. It is a remarkably simple premise and it is hardly surprising that the violent-copper-with-a-heart storyline has spawned so many successful pictures. However, it is going to take something pretty damn mind blowing to take this formula and make...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Impact’s own Beau Smith is taking on the star of 24 - scripting the new comic based on the hit series. We discuss why the clock is always ticking...

In a time where real men kick ass and kick-ass shows play out in real time... it was a meeting of minds that was destined to happen. Beau Smith. Jack Bauer. In a season without a televisual 24, Impact sets the timer on the comic adaptation...

John Mosby: You’ve been a columnist for Impact over the last year, but let’s give our readers a potted history of your career prior to that...
Beau Smith: Sure. I’ve been writing comic books professionally for twenty years......

I’ve also been on the business side of comic books for the same amount of time. As a writer I began with Eclipse Comics writing the adventures of Beau LaDuke - Real Man, a character I co-created with Tim Truman for his comic book SCOUT. I was also the vice president of sales and marketing for Eclipse Comics. In the last twenty years I’ve written for every major comic book publisher, writing such franchises as Star Wars, Guy Gardner, Wolverine, Spawn, Batman, Wildcat, Catwoman and currently 24... obviously based on the FOX TV show. I’ve also written and created many of my own characters such as Wynonna Earp, Cobb, Parts Unknown,...

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Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge discuss the upcoming Stargate DVD movies and the heaven and hell of future projects...

This has been the first season without a regular SG-1 outing in ten years, has time flown or is this a moment to breathe out and relax a little?

Michael Shanks: There’s mixed emotions. I’ve done nothing for ten years before. I haven’t stayed in the same school for ten years, never had a job before this for ten years - or nine of the ten years on Stargate. Just to have a job in this industry, a steady place to go and be in a city you like... to have that kind of comfort is great. But to not have that situation, to have that family with me, to have your schedule be wide open as opposed to - I hate to say it - telling you what to do... It’s like being institutionalised and then being let out of prison... what do you do NOW?

After ten years I have thousands of options. But looking back, it’s been a tremendous achievement. You’ll always ask what would have happened if you’d chosen a different route. You realise that’s not an option, so don’t waste the moments. We’re very proud of what the show accomplished. It’s now down in history...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Impact hits the high seas for some jolly rogering with MVM’s latest acquisition, the piratical Black Lagoon.

Everyone loves a pirate - one only need look at the massive success of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy in cinemas the world over for proof of their appeal. The idea of living a lawless life on the ocean wave, answerable to no one bar your crewmates has held sway over the minds of a certain cachet of society for centuries. Piracy continues to this day with high tech powerboats crewed by AK-47 armed mercenaries every bit as fear-inspiring as their sail-driven counterparts from history. These days though, some of the romance has gone out of piracy - the South China seas and Malaysia continue to be haunted by some of the most dangerous pirates in history, but the harsh naval response to piracy now sees the crews of plundered ships slaughtered to protect the pirates from being identified.

Black Lagoon, based on the manga of the same name by Rei Hiroe, tells the tale of a modern day pirate crew through slightly rosier glasses, but, wielding a certain level of bad language, hefty doses of gun play and violence and some drop dead gorgeous fan service, it remains on the mature side of a fifteen certificate.
...

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More fan-service and giant killer robots as this series takes a second bite of the cherry with a release as a box-set.

Burst Angel should have all the ingredients necessary to satisfy an anime action junkie like me but, for some reason the shown didn’t sit right on first viewing. It is set in a lawless future Tokyo where every man and his dog carries a gun... and uses it but the authorities are clamping down and a brutal response unit called RAPT is slowing taking over the city through a campaign of violence.

Enter Jo and her team - Jo is a genetically advanced killing machine who, when she isn’t battling all and sundry tends to mope around the mobile fortress she and her friends call home and eat noodles. Her boss is Sei, a member of the ruling elite who is slumming it to make a difference on the streets - she also has a stubborn aversion to bras... Jo’s closest friend is Meg, a whiny cowgirl type whose sole purpose seems to be to get herself in trouble for Jo to come and rescue her. Providing the electronic backup you need in a modern world is superkid hacker Amy - when you need the city’s lights to turn green in a hurry, she’s your girl. And the one...

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It’s Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project. This monster movie has divided audiences but is already primed for a sequel. Impact reviews the monster mash.

There we all are, tucked into our cinema seats with our popcorn and our nachos and our giant sodas, waiting for the big robot bang of Michael Bay’s Transformers to begin. One of the trailers begins innocently enough as a going-away party for a rich-boy hipster named Rob (Michael Stahl-David). But then the lights go out. Things start shaking and rumbling, the TV news warns there’s maybe been an earthquake, and everybody runs to the roof of Rob’s building to see what all the commotion is about.

Bad idea. From somewhere near the shore of Manhattan Island, a great explosion erupts into the night sky, sending flaming comets of debris in all directions. Our partygoers escape to ground level, where someone yells, “I saw it! It’s alive! It’s huge!” And then the head of the Statue of Liberty flies across the screen, smacks with a shower of glass into the side of the building and comes skipping down the street, smashing cars and skidding to a sparking, ruined halt. ‘From Producer J.J. Abrams’ and ‘In Theatres 1-18-08’ are the only bits of identifying information we’re given.

Theories ran wild. Some fans thought it was yet another attempt at an Americanized...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Spider-man, Peter Parker... swinging bachelor? Impact editor John Mosby assesses the controversial retcon surrounding Marvel’s flagship hero.

Listen up, true believers. A month ago I was married to Angelina Jolie, had a multi-million dollar script in production and was being considered for the role as the new Doctor Who. What do you mean, you don’t remember that? You don’t believe me? My claim that reality has fundamentally changed and all those key aspects of my life never happened is simply preposterous? Ah well, it could be worse... I could be Peter Parker.

Joe Quesada, Marvel’s Editor in Chief had made no secret of the fact that he felt Spider-man, or more accurately, alter-ego Peter Parker, worked best as a single man. He pointed to the fact that in mainstream comics continuity Parker has now been married to long-term sweetheart Mary-Jane for many years (over twenty in real-time, probably around five in story continuity), with MJ now an actress and model. Quesada believed that the original geeky aspect of Peter Parker couldn’t exist with that kind of personal success in his private life. But more than that, he felt that the marriage itself was a fundamental mistake. He said it made the character seem old and limited the stories that could be told. It...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Action like you’ve never seen it! Get ready for some award winning thrills and spills in this big-top german actioner...

Action Concept is a German based production company that specialises in action orientated products. With a real back to basics feel, Action Concept is an old school purveyor of the action sequence: no CGI, everything done for real. Scoring huge hits with their German TV series Der Clown and Alarm For Cobra 11, both of which feature many a spectacular vehicular stunt and explosion, the company has now moved into cinema territory. They recently released their second feature Kampfansage (aka The Challenge), a modern day martial arts flick, but their first main feature was 2005’s Der Clown: Payday, a spin-off movie from the original TV series. And while, yes, the main protagonist likes to wear a clown mask during scenes of high risk danger and the plot often seems to be an excuse to destroy as many BMW’s as possible, Der Clown: Payday is an action movie that delivers in spades...

Der Clown or The Clown first saw incarnation as a TV movie for German television. Featuring the exploits of Max Zander (Sven Martinek), his trusty sidekick, Dobbs (Thomas Anzenhofer) and sexy heroine, Claudia (Diana Frank), the TV movie became a TV series and had the three vigilante types...

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The mammoth gaming franchise spawns another incarnation and Daryl Crowther catches up with the game’s creator...

It is one year since we first met Vaan, a young sky pirate wannabe, on the PS2 for the 12th incarnation of Final Fantasy. Now, on the Nintendo DS, we pick up Vaan’s story once again one year on from those initial events. Now a sky pirate, in command of his own ship, Vaan roams the skies looking for adventure.

Although Revenant Wings is a sequel to Final Fantasy XII, Square Enix have done a good job of making it function just as well as a stand alone game so new players or Final Fantasy veterans can pick up and play it with similar ease. Several of the first few missions are done in a tutorial style, first showing how to perform an action, before presenting you with an ideal situation to put your new skills into practice. Similarly, whilst players of Final Fantasy XII will no doubt benefit from previous knowledge of storylines that flow on into Revenant Wings it in no way hinders new players who can just easily follow the new elements.

There are two different control systems to Revenant Wings and both work pretty well. Firstly you can use the bog standard buttons as with any...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

This month we have a mix of game, DVD and book reviews covering:
Games: Devil May Cry 4 and Burnout Paradise
DVDs: Mushishi, The Condemned and Stardust
Books: Secrets of 24, Incredible Comics and The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics.

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Darth Vader Vs. Mace Windu: the rematch? Not quite, but this sci-fi romp may just transport the audiences and suspend their disbelief as teleporters go global!

Admit it. We’ve all had moments where we think ‘Anywhere but here...’ and wished we could just close our eyes and immediately be somewhere else. The new action movie, Jumper, which stars Hayden Christensen (he of young Darth Vader fame) and Samuel L. Jackson (of generally famous fame) sees a young man, David Rice, finding he has exactly that ability. However, the downside to this literal ‘get out of jail free’ card is that some people don’t ONLY want to put him in jail, but possibly kill him as well. Elaine Lipworth interviewed Christensen to get the lowdown on his hi-jinks...

Elaine Lipworth: What can you tell me about your character and the story?
Hayden Christensen: David Rice is your average Joe who discovers one day that he has the ability to teleport. He’s a bit of an oddball type of guy, he’s not very sociable and now he has a profound secret that he cannot share with anyone. It ostracises him from society and he becomes even more reclusive, but he is also interesting. He comes from a broken home; his mom left when he was five and he has an abusive relationship with his father, so things...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

The death of Heath Ledger in January came as a shock to fans and colleagues. John Mosby takes an overview of the young actor’s promising career and the inevitable coverage in the days that followed.

It would be almost inappropriate to claim that the news coming out of New York, late on 22nd January sounded like a cruel joke, but there would also be an element of sharp ironic truth... Heath Ledger, due to play the Joker in one of the year’s most anticipated films The Dark Knight, was found dead in a New York apartment.

At the age of only twenty-eight, Ledger was already one of those actors that both audiences and critics loved. While it was true that not all his films set the box-office alight, he still had the ability to pick edgy and unexpected roles and deliver them with aplomb. Many were first exposed to his comedic side with the fun A Knight’s Tale, though he made his fans with key roles in 10 Things I Hate About You, The Patriot (with Mel Gibson) The Lords of Dogtown, Casanova, The Brothers Grimm, The Order, Ned Kelly, Candy and Monster’s Ball. But, arguably, it was the controversial Brokeback Mountain that launched him to huge international success.

“I had such great hope for him,“ said Mel Gibson, in a statement, “He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Impact begins its coverage of the bollywood genre and finds an industry to rival its Hollywood counterpart...

In our coverage of the global face of action entertainment we try to explore all aspects of the genre in all formats. From big screen to comics, from games to special effects, from television to DVD. One aspect of the genre that we haven’t covered as much as we perhaps should have, is ‘Bollywood‘. In the months to come Impact will be taking a closer look at the industry with an output that challenges Hollywood itself. With thousands of releases and estimated ticket-sales of over $3.6 billion it’s a true force to be reckoned with.

We’ll be taking a look beyond the West’s idea of Bollywood, often mistakenly stereotypical and associated with a limited style or geography, and examining the real challenge they are making to serious action entertainment and drama. Though some deplore the ‘Bollywood’ moniker as being too closely associated with the US system, it has become a term widely used within cinematic circles and the general public with its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary and recognised as an important financial and creative contributor to world cinema. Though it should more accurately be called the ‘Hindu Film Industry’, one suspects the ‘Bollywood’ shorthand, however...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Shy, retiring, modest Scotsman seeks wannabe hero. Must be willing to fight, cuss and entertain thousands. Form a queue...for our kick-ass Q&A.

Mark Millar is the go-to man for kick-ass superheroic action, so it was only a matter of time before he created a comic of that very name. Kick-Ass hits the shelves this month and is one of several projects Millar will be helming over the coming year for Marvel (he takes over writing chores on Fantastic Four, pens 1985 a story about the Marvel Universe crossing over into our own in said year) and examines the later years of an ageing Wolverine from late summer. Oh, and he’s been hanging out with Angelina Jolie on the set of the film adaptation of his comic Wanted. We hate him.

Impact: Who’s the most kick-ass action star of all time?
Mark Millar: There can be only one: Chuck Norris, of course. Accept no substitutes.
What’s the most kick-ass action movie of all time?
Easy. Enter The Dragon... My brothers used to have posters of this all over their walls when I was a wee boy and the minute we got a video I had to see this. It didn’t disappoint.

Favourite all-time kick-ass comics industry story moment?
Batman fighting the mutant leader in Dark Knight Returns. It remains the dirtiest, most...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Albert Pyun has been delivering action and adventure just the way Impact likes it for years. Andrew Skeates delivers the exclusive first review for Pyun’s latest project.

Ever since The Sword & The Sorcerer, director Albert Pyun has been delivering action and adventure just the way Impact likes it! In the course of his career Pyun has worked with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Christopher Lambert, Ice-T, Robert Patrick, Gary Daniels, Rutger Hauer and Andrew Dice Clay on such films as Captain America, Cyborg, Kickboxer 2, Radioactive Dreams, Hong Kong 97 and more recently Max Havok and the wonderfully named Bulletface. Impact’s Andrew Skeates delivers the exclusive first review for Pyun’s latest project.

The ever eclectic and prolific Albert Pyun returns to our screens with a gothic western horror that pulls no punches in its depiction of violence, and its full throttle approach to narrative. Left for Dead mixes gun slinging with Saw style torture in the tale of a preacher, Mobius, who comes back from the dead to take vengeance on those who done him wrong. The town of Amnesty lies deep in the heart of Mexico, a broken down town run completely by women. Whores to be exact, at least that is how Mobius (Andreas Bagg) sees them, the whores who killed his wife and left him for dead. Returning from the grave...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Get ready for Phoo Action - hitting BBC3 and based upon Jamie Hewlett’s Get The Freebies and featuring a high kicking kung-fu hero clad in a yellow and black tracksuit, Carl Weathers and a seven foot Purple gorilla. Seriously... what more could you want?

British genre television is back with a vengeance. In the last few years we’ve had the triumphant much deserved return of Doctor Who, the trying-maybe-a-bit-too-hard-to-be-controversial Torchwood and the dinosaurs on the loose action of Primeval, but isn’t it time for something with Kung Fu? Well, gentle Impact reader, get ready for Phoo Action - hitting the small screen on BBC3 and based upon Jamie Hewlett’s Get The Freebies... Featuring a high kicking kung-fu hero clad in a yellow and black tracksuit, a teenage anarchist named ‘Whitey Action’, Carl Weathers, the Royal family, basketball headed bad guys, a seven foot Purple gorilla and Hong Kong Legend Richard Ng... And did we mention the ‘Buddhist Pants of Destiny’!? Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder takes a first look...

The year is 2012 and the world has changed, but not for the better. London is being ravaged by a terrible crime wave, with mutant criminals running amok and disturbing society and unhinging the establishment. What the world needs now is a shiny hero who will come down and save the day.

What they got was Terry Phoo (Eddie Shin), a Buddhist Kung Fu Cop from Hong Kong who forms an unlikely alliance with Whitey...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

After some years on the fringes, Stallone returns to the frontline, but is the modern audience ready for another bandana’d Rambo outing?

There are movie stars and there are actors. Sometimes, those terms aren’t synonymous. But legends are born when that lightning strikes twice. John Bierly examines just such a strike as Rambo returns...

Wanting more than the supporting roles that had dominated his career throughout the early 1970s, Sylvester Stallone put paper to pen and wrote Rocky for himself in a tiny little room no wider than his height. It won the 1976 Academy Award for Best Picture and was inducted thirty years later into the National Film Registry.

John J. Rambo first appeared in First Blood, a 1982 film about a Vietnam vet bullied by sadistic local law enforcement until he snaps and stands up for himself the hard way. Visceral and emotional, the film’s international success gave Stallone yet another icon to hang his talented hat on. In fact, the second and third highest grossing films of 1985 were Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV.

Rambo III came along in 1988. While the first sequel took Rambo back to Vietnam, Rambo III tackled the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but didn’t make as much as its predecessor. Maybe the times were changing. Action movies changed, too, with gimmicks...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

This month, Impact’s Tokyo based stringer, Andrez Bergen, begins a spotlight on essential, ground-breaking action anime produced this millennium. We’re calling it: From the Back of the Fridge - starting with Gonzo’s Samurai 7.

Samurai, swords, innocent peasants in distress... and mecha rice cookers in outer space?! Samurai 7 creator Gonzo turned Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1954 live action katana-and-honour tale, Seven Samurai, on its head in invigorating new ways when they cut 26 episodes of this anime version in 2004 - yet, all the same, they retained a healthy slice of respect for the original saga’s overall premise and integral themes.

While the producers of The Magnificent Seven may have taken their own liberties when they adapted Seven Samurai to the Wild West 48 years ago, Gonzo depth-charged the story light years into the future, to a planetary system imbued with machines and space travel as much as it is with the age-old potpourri of honour, heroics, retribution and redemption that the original classic exuded. Produced in the 50th anniversary year of Kurosawa’s best-known opus, to say that Gonzo’s ambitions were bold is an understatement.
Seven Samurai was a tour-de-force nominated by many buffs as one of the top ten movies of all time (rating at #5 in the IMBD website’s 250 best movies of all time), and it placed Japanese cinema - not to mention Kurosawa himself - firmly on the...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]

Wong Jing is one of the most prolific and controversial filmmakers in Hong Kong. This issue we begin a interview in which he explains many of his creative decisions...

Prolific because he has directed, produced and written more than 150 films in a three-decade long career. Controversial, because his films - blending exploitative low-brow comedy, parodies or mere copies of international cinematic hits (from Basic Instinct to Matrix), with action, sexy actresses and other blatant commercial elements - have been very successful at the Hong Kong box office, even when general box office draws were down, his films have continued to be successful. We didn’t say Wong was the best filmmaker, but he surely is a hell of an entertainer and his philosophy is to provide 90 minutes of pure pleasure to his audience. Wong is also a very honest and straightforward person who has been quoted as bitching about everyone in the film industry.

Mind you, the rotund, multi-hyphenate filmmaker is one of the smartest (well educated, he holds a degree in literature and speaks fluent English), most honest and sincere moviemakers we’ve ever met. In late 2007, Impact’s Thomas Podvin sat down with Wong to discuss his film career, his personal philosophy and much more in this two part Impact interview.

Son of Wong Tin-lam, a veteran prolific and successful Hong Kong director from the 1960s himself,...

[To read this article in full you must buy the March 2008 edition of Impact]