A few words from the Swedish Shinobi, Ninja Dixon

I've mentioned it before, but I once heard from a less talented journalist that some of his friends at Scanbox, a distribution company, had a nickname for Albert Pyun. "Albert Puke" was the not so witty nickname. It should be noted that Scanbox was the biggest distributor of DTV movies and really didn't have any sense of quality for many years, and this was during the period where they where universally loathed for their bad transfers and lousy layouts. And yes, this was VHS too.

Anyway, I've never understood why someone would use such a mean spirited name on such a talented and stylish director. The budgets were low and the stars were Oliver Gruner, Christopher Lambert, Rutger Hauer and a lot other fine actors mostly known for their DTV-work during this time in their careers. I've always been a big fan of b-movie action, mostly because the filmmakers of those movies understood that people want action in an action movie and not long love scenes and too much character development. Hong Kong 97, Heartseeker, Spitfire, Nemesis 1-3 (I've never seen part 4 to be honest!), Adrenalin and a lot more that flooded the Swedish VHS-market. Two of the movies I want to see the most I've never seen, Knights and Deceit - but now I'm waiting for the latter one. Finally after all these years!

I think my interested dropped a little bit when the gangsta-movies came, mostly because that genre doesn't interest me, but I've always been returning to the movies before that - and now when Albert is kicking again, full of creative ideas and interesting projects, I feel inspired to go through his filmography again, trying to see what people seem to hate - and what they love. Those who read my blog, Ninja Dixon, knows that I have a tendency to see the good things with a movie first. I just don't see any reason to be focus on the negative things. Not all of Pyuns movies are masterpieces... (Ticker... hrm...), but I would say that a majority of them have a lot more class, style and amazing ideas that people tend to forget just because they're low budget, DTV and featuring "b-movie actors".

For us Pyuniversal Soldiers 2010 is a very exciting years. Curnan Film together with Albert is release a bunch of new movies, an updated version of Nemesis and there's promises of a few surprises too. Personally I can't wait to finally see Pyun's take on Lovecraft with Cool Air. I also can't recommend Invasion (aka Infection) enough much. A fantastic little movie, creepy and in one long take. It has been slightly forgotten among all the other "found footage movies" out there, but I'm still claiming it's one of the best of the genre.

What do I want to do with this blog?  First of all collect reviews of all Alberts movies, but also - this is my secret dream - to interview all the actors that have been showing up in one Pyun movie after another. From Tim Thomerson, Yuji Okumoto, Nicholas Guest to all the new talents that have been working hard in the new long line of new movies from Pyun. We'll see what happens.

This was a few words from me, and I hope you all will enjoy the blog!