Tekken Tops the 3rd Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards

Video game adaptation Tekken has won Best Picture in the 3rd Annual Straight-to-DVD Movie Awards, also grabbing the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy award. Other winners include Tamer Hassan who won best actor for his performance in Bonded by Blood, which also took Best Director for helmer Sacha Bennett. Romola Garai won Best Actress for her work in Glorious 39. Ballistica took both Worst Picture and Title-S0-Bad-It’s Good kudos.

Here’s the full list:

Best Picture: Tekken

Best Actor: Tamer Hassan, Bonded by Blood

Best Actress: Romola Garai, Glorious 39

Best Director: Sacha Bennett, Bonded by Blood

Worst Picture: Ballistica

Best Comedy: A Matter of Size

Best Horror: Hostel: Part III

Best Action/Thriller: The Man From Nowhere

Best Family Film: Barbie: Princess Charm School

Best Documentary: Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

Best Sci Fi/Fantasy: Tekken

Title-So-Bad-It’s-Good: Ballistica

Super Hybrid Reivews: “Stupid, but Effective”

While no one seems to really like killer-car flick Super Hybrid, some reviewers at least find a couple of pleasing aspects to the chiller.  FEARnet’s Scott Weinberg finds the premise behind the car—that it is, in fact, a shapeshifting monster capable of turning into any car it wants—original enough, and appreciates the look of the film—”for a silly Canadian low-budget car-monster movie, Super Hybrid is surprisingly nice to look at”—and ultimately finds it “mindless but adequately colorful.”  Mike Long at DVD Sleuth has a similar reaction: “The story is pretty stupid, but the movie is one of the better ‘it came out of nowhere’ low-budget horror movies which I’ve seen lately.” Porfle at HK and Cult Film makes an equally conditional recommendation:

“If you’re in the mood for a low-budget version of ALIEN with a car instead of an alien and a parking garage instead of a spaceship, and you aren’t expecting something on the level of CHRISTINE, you can probably have some fun watching SUPER HYBRID.”

IMDb users aren’t nearly as forgiving.  They give it 3.8/10 stars with 322 votes counted.

Super Hybrid, starring Oded Fehr, is out now.

Tekken: The Straight2DVD Review

When first asked to review Tekken (2010), I thought this is going to suck because:

1. I have never played any of the actual Tekken video games, either in the arcade or on the console;

2. I have only played a few hours of Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive on my Xbox, and never really enjoyed them because I am a button-masher with no patience to memorize combos;

3. I don’t care for mixed martial arts as from what I’ve seen, it is mostly two dudes rolling around on the floor, kidney-punching one another; and

4. Given that this was a straight-to-DVD release here in America, it was going to be low budget, poorly written, and poorly produced.

After all, the other movies based on fighting video games which I had seen that made it to actual movie theaters were pretty bad: 1995′s Mortal Kombat starring Christopher Lambert as Raiden the Wacky God of Thunder, and poor Raul Julia’s last film before his untimely demise, 1994′s Street Fighter, did not foretell an enjoyable experience in viewing Tekken.

Imagine my surprise then, after the opening credits (which unfortunately are marred by a horrible song with trite lyrics), when my genuine interest in the film’s story began to mount.

Am I actually enjoying this?

The first thing noticeable is the production value. Internet sources claim that the film had a budget of $35M, and that may be the most money spent on a S2DVD film reviewed on this website! Quickly, the writing quality becomes apparent too. This is no slap-dash job in terms of the characters and plot meant to serve up action scene after action scene. Now, they may be a little formulaic, but there are no real groaners in the dialogue, and combined with the strong acting performances, it’s all believable. You can feel that everyone is taking this seriously, and it benefits the film as a whole. If at any point, someone had phoned it in, the illusion would have shattered.

So why did this film fare so poorly, review-wise? Personally, I think it’s because the few reviewers who took the time to watch it either didn’t want to give it an honest attempt at entertaining them, or just aren’t used to seeing the dreck that comes across my desk here at S2DVD. Maybe it’s me though, strongly embracing something that’s made well and reasonably produced and written like a welcome breath of fresh air.

What else is good?

1. Luke Goss (in his second S2DVD review appearance!) gets to relax and speak in his native British accent. He’s good when he’s not playing a prequelized character!

2. Awesome actor Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa brings a much-needed gravitas to the movie. Another great performance!

3. Ian Anthony Dale = smoldering badass.

4. And of course, the lead, Jon Foo as Jin, brings to his role a fresh youthfulness for single-minded vengeance.

5. There’s a fight scene between two women, and at no point before, during, or after the fight does either woman call the other a bitch, which I find one of the most annoying and trite conventions in the writing of fight scenes between two females. Bravo, Mr. McElroy.

6.  The obvious attempt by the fictional Tekken Corporation to have the decor of the fighting ring change occasionally as it does in the actual games. Props to the set designer for that coolness.

7.  If you like good-looking girls, Kelly Overton is given every chance to look hot as fighter Christie Monteiro. She can act, too, though her part here is basically one-dimensional.

Screenwriter Alan McElroy’s established skills mean that this script is much more logical and thought-out than other S2DVD films, so I didn’t have many issues with the writing, except: 1) Jin’s girlfriend, Kara (Mircea Monroe), gets short shrift until she pops up at the very end to do nothing but cheer him on from the crowd, and 2) Where are the ring-side medics for this competition? The poor fighters get the snot kicked out of them, and then hardly get a band-aid for their troubles.

Should you watch it?

If you like the Tekken game series, you’ll probably appreciate a lot more of the inside baseball references to the games’ overall story that I did not catch (or you’ll get angry about changes to it and grouse about it on the Internet). If you like fighting movies, I think that it has enough to keep you interested. I can’t speak to the realism of the fighting techniques, but it looked like the actors did their own fight and stunt work. So if it sounds like your kind of thing, it would be a fun 90 minutes for you. It was for me.

Watch the Opening Scene of Super Hybrid

Anchor Bay has released the opening scene from their upcoming car-gone-mad horror flick Super Hybrid, available August 23rd on Blu-ray and DVD.  In the film, a shapeshifting monster automobile goes all tear-ass on humanity.  In the opening scene, we see it claim its first victims.  Super Hybrid stars Oded Fehr, Shannon Beckner, and Ryan Kennedy and is helmed by One Missed Call director Eric Vallette.

Watch the clip:

And while we’re at it, here’s the trailer:

Tekken Trailer Released

Though it’s been circulating the globe for a year or so, video game adaptation Tekken is finally coming to the States on Blu-ray and DVD on July 19th.  Anchor Bay has a released a trailer in which we see Jin Kazama (John Foo) swear vengeance against Heihachi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa—whom you may remember as the main baddie in another tournament-style-video-game-turned-movie)  for the death of his mother, entering a fight-to-the-death tournament to get the job done.  Much ass-kicking ensues.

Tekken also stars Kelly Overton, Ian Anthony Dale, Darrin DeWitt Henson, Gary Daniels, Cung Le, Roger Huerta, Tamlyn Tomita, and Luke Goss—who’s on his way to winning this year’s Val Kilmer Award for straight-to-DVD ubiquity.

Here’s the trailer:

See stills from Tekken.

Best Tag Line of the Year?

In Cross, Brian Austin Green plays the eponymous superhero given super powers by an equally eponymous Celtic cross.  The bench here is pretty deep, with Vinnie Jones playing an immortal villain (again), Michael Clarke Duncan (playing Kingpin again, essentially), C. Thomas Howell, Tom Sizemore, and Jake Busey.  To look at the trailer, the filmmakers are going more for The Asylum than Warner Bros.  There’s a note from director Patrick Durham on the film’s website that says about as much.  Also, there’s the tag line:

To stop an ancient evil, it’s gonna take big guns, hard sticks and exploding balls.

Cross arrives May 31st on DVD.

Images from Tekken

The live action feature adaptation of the popular video game Tekken is coming to DVD and Blu-ray on July 19th, and we’ve got (captionless) photos.  Enjoy!

Upcoming Release Calendar Added!

For years now (has it been that long?) you’ve been clamoring (okay, asking politely) for an upcoming release calendar.  We’ve finally got one.  From here on out, you’ll be able to find it in our top nav bar, right next to “Reviews”.  It’s only got a few months so far, but we’ll add more as we go.  Check it out!  (And thanks for your patience.)

New Wolfman Installment Likely to Go Straight-to-DVD

Bloody Disgusting reporting that a second installment in the Wolfman reboot franchise is, according to their source, likely to be (a) a sequel—not a prequel or re-re-boot, (b) straight-to-DVD, and (c) written by Michael Tabb.  Tabb has some direct-to-video experience as one of the four writers on the 2006 Tom Sizemore horror flick Ring Around the Rosie.  Given that the original’s worldwide theatrical plus home video grosses only barely covered production costs (much less marketing), a straight-to-DVD sequel—if any—seems a likely next step.

All Star Superman Interview: Director Sam Liu

Crave has an interview with Sam Liu, director of All Star Superman, which is available now.  Liu also directed Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and the upcoming Batman: Year One, which he discusses in the interview.  He also talks about what was left out of the movie from the original comic and discusses a  bit about the ending (in a way that doesn’t sound too spoilery, but reader beware).  The animated film features the voice talents of Christina Hendricks, Linda Cardellini, Anthony LaPaglia, Alexis Denisof, Arnold Vosloo, Edward Asner, Frances Conroy, Michael Gough, Matthew Gray Gubler, and James Denton as the Man of Steel.

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