No love for D-War?

You know, I think I remember seeing a trailer for this or something at some point. Was this the one that had dragons in sort of an urban setting or am I totally off the mark?

I kinda love it, in the similar kind of vein that I enjoy Uwe Boll's HOUSE OF THE DEAD, or my kids' farts. The 10 minutes late in the film where the dragons attack downtown LA was pretty sweet though. I'll probably end up buying the Korean DVD at some point, to see how much (if any) was edited out of the US cut.

Jared- you got it. It was known as Dragon Wars over here.

I wrote about half of a review before giving up on it. I dug it for what it was, but it truly is a shitty movie.

Probably worth it just to see Forster break out the kung fu, though.

I caught this at the drive-in late in the summer and really, truly hated it. Bored me top to bottom, though Forster's big expository speech stands as one of the most purely absurd things I've seen on a screen this year.

Yeah, it was out there. I'm hoping Forster ("I am Bo Chun!") morphs into other random people for no apparent reasons in the original cut.

I believe it involved warring dragons - I could be wrong.

This is the one with Darryl from The Office, right?

His name is Jason Behr.

You'd do well not to forget that, yt.

One of the greats.

And Jason Isaac's SKINWALKERS. What a year he's had.

My favorite bit is when our heroes go to some random hypnotherapist's house, get the information they need from him, then run away without regret as his home is crushed by the snake dragon. He most likely dies in the process, but they just don't care.

I'd never call it a good movie, but I have all manner of respect for Shim Hyung Rae for getting it made at all. Ridiculed in the media throughout production, exponentially overbudget, investigated by the government for bogus rumors of tax evasion, years over schedule, and largely filmed in a language the director didn't even speak - I don't really think very many people expected this film to ever make it to completion, let alone box-office success at home and a wide release in the US, where it's now the most successful Korean movie ever released, not that that's saying much. After home video they may even break even, which seemed unthinkable not long before it came out.

People forget that this was largely a DIY effort from beginning until post-production. Prospective distributors and investors came and went, and still they struggled on with the film. For YEARS. Shim recruited a lot of his FX team from the d-war.com bulletin boards. He didn't care about which school you went to or who's uncle's cousin's sister you knew - he just cared about how your demo reel looked. He hired a lot of really talented people that the major Korean studios wouldn't touch because they didn't "know somebody" or they were just inexperienced or too damn young. Needless to say, those people are now quite a bit less young, and it'd be laughable to call them inexperienced given the sheer amount of FX work in D-WAR. Shim has his own loyal and experienced team of FX artists, whose services can be yours for a nominal fee. That's always good for a couple bucks in-between movies of your own.

After the movie was over my friends and I started to wonder what it would be like to date Ethan after the events of the film.
"Listen baby, I love you and all, but my true love is a Dragon Princess, and she's waiting for me in Dragon Heaven, so this whole relationship is really just a space filler until I die and get to spend eternity with a real woman."

I didn't think it was possible to love "House of the Dead", but watching Dragons attack LA has GOTTA be worth it. I bought a Nintendo Gamecube years ago in lieu of one of the (ultimately more successful) systems just because it was the only platform that supported "Godzilla: Deatroy All Monsters Melee". It's just so fucking cool to play Godzilla or Ungilus (my personal favorite) and drop a building on somebody. This aspect of the film at any rate sounds right up my alley.

Enjoy, not love. In the broadest sense of the term.

But actually, I take back my original statement. My kids' farts rank way up higher than either flick in my book.

D-War is one of those movies that makes you appreciate the way that competently made movies in general can put together fractured elements to make some coherent sense in your brain, as opposed to an onslaught of disconnected images and sounds that utterly confuse and frustrate.

Yeah, just one of those movies where you kick back with a cold Behr and just let your mind relax.

Actually I kind of resent Alligator being included on that list. That one was suppose to be funny. Otherwise it's a fine list.