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Post by oldounce on Dec 4, 2007 23:31:26 GMT -5
PS: Leprechauns I'm downloading but it's hard to be downloaded. if you see anything funny or good scenes, could you show some pictures or videos here? ^_^ Sure can! hoho...great.....
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Post by oldounce on Dec 6, 2007 8:35:25 GMT -5
Just finish The Purifier...not bad actually and luckily he didn't "die"...why didn't he take a role as a sire of vampires?...he looks very like an modern bloody king.
his native accent is very funny...L= R , T= D, sometimes er = era...@_@ I think The Purifiers is cool, he could using Kungfu to fight...but that good gay is...annoying...
Now this is my list...may get more...
The Last Legion (2007) Rome [TV- 22 episodes] (2005-2007) Hannibal Rising (2007) Journeyman[TV] (2007 - ?) The Virgin Queen [TV] (2005) Kingdom of Heaven (2005) De-Lovely (2004) The Purifiers (2004) The Rocket Post (2004) Gunpowder, Treason & Plot [TV] (2004) 16 Years of Alcohol (2003) Does God Play Football (2003) Nicholas Nickleby (2002) Dog Soldiers (2002) Topsy-Turvy (1999) Hideous Kinky (1998) Bedrooms and Hallways (1998) Father Ted A Christmassy Ted (1996) Trainspotting (1996)
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Post by Leanne on Dec 18, 2007 7:22:13 GMT -5
Trainspotting Star Gets Teeth Into Scottish Werewolf Movie 13 May 2002 A tale of a group of soldiers doing battle with wild dogs in the Scottish highlands could be the best British horror in years. Brian Pendreigh meets the director and star. Hounded to death - Kevin Pertwee jabs away at some bloody thing It is being acclaimed as the best British horror movie in years. It has Kevin McKidd following in the footsteps of Ewen Bremner and Ewan McGregor as the latest Trainspotting star to swap a syringe for Army fatigues. And it is set in the Scottish Highlands... even if it did shoot almost entirely in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Dog Soldiers is wowing critics (although The Wolf was not won over) with its assured style and simple premise of pitting a troop of soldiers against a pack of werewolves in a remote Highland wilderness - 50 miles from the nearest phone and a four-hour drive from the nearest town. It is like a cross between An American Werewolf in London and Deliverance, with a dash of Aliens thrown in. Doubts dispelled McKidd was dubious about a script that arrived unsolicited at the stage door of the theatre where he was appearing, a script for a low-budget horror movie that was without a star two weeks before it was due to start shooting... in Luxembourg. Now he is hailing Geordie writer-director Neil Marshall as a genius. "I think Neil Marshall honestly is the British answer to Spielberg," McKidd enthuses, comparing Dog Soldiers with Jaws. "He’s got scripts coming out of his ears. When you read them you go, ‘Wow, this is a bit overblown,’ but he knows how to put it on the screen." Birth of a horror It all began years ago on a farm in Arisaig in the West Highlands of Scotland. "I was taken on holiday there by my parents for the first 14 years of my life," recalls Tyneside’s newest auteur film-maker, a bearded, balding, jolly-looking 32-year-old. "From living in Newcastle, I mean it was as wilderness as you could get. It was just a fabulous escape to another world and it really inspired me - the ruggedness, the people, and also the strangeness... You’ll find boats on top of mountains, and a farm that’s just full of cars that have been driven into a field and left to rot, or a caravan stuck up a tree." Marshall distanced himself from the artier students at Newcastle Film School by making a zombie movie. Since graduating ten years ago, he has directed shorts and worked as a storyboard artist, editor and writer. When it came to Dog Soldiers it seemed a small step from a caravan up a tree to soldiers exercising under a full moon... and something howling in the distance. Scotland was "an obvious, natural setting". He wrote it six years ago and tried every possible UK source of finance. But he raised only £5,000 from a local Newcastle agency, leaving him £2.5 million short. In the end Dog Soldiers was financed through advances on foreign sales, and American and Luxembourgeois backers. When a film is set in the vastness of the Scottish Highlands, shooting in the smallest of the European Low Countries is not normally the obvious option, but it was a condition that came with the money. In the end Marshall hired a helicopter for aerial shots of Glen Affric and stitched them together with the rest of the film. Looking for a star He had his money, but no star. Marshall seems a little cagey about why he chose McKidd. The Elgin-born actor suggests it was because he was close. "I spoke to Neil afterwards and he says, ‘Well, we were all sitting in our office in Soho and we were about to start shooting in two weeks time and we still hadn’t found the guy we wanted.’ And he said, ‘I had always thought of you for it and somebody mentioned that you were in the theatre, so we thought, well, let’s be cheeky and just send it there and see what happens.’" Marshall may have always seen McKidd as Cooper, the level-headed private who pulls the troop together when things go bump in the night and body parts detach from bodies; McKidd was less certain. "I thought, oh no, I don’t really want to do this because I’m trying to concentrate on more serious stuff," says McKidd, who played drugs victim Tommy in Trainspotting, and has since appeared in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy and, as Vronsky, in Channel 4’s Anna Karenina. "But by the end of the script I was kind of hooked... Within 15 minutes of speaking to Neil, I just realised that the guy is on a mission - he knows what he’s doing, he’s got a very clear idea of what film he wants to make, and he wants me to play the lead... I finished the play on the Saturday night and then Sunday morning flew out to Luxembourg." Faking it Marshall knows his craft. He was meant to have a pack of werewolves, but could afford only two mechanical heads and three body suits. Wisely he does not linger on the beasts and cranks up tension and excitement with a howl on the soundtrack, misty breath over a shoulder, a sudden camera-jump, a spurt of blood across the screen. He knows his movies too. One of the joys of Dog Soldiers is spotting the borrowings from other films: men hunted in a hostile environment - Deliverance; soldiers hunted in a hostile environment - Southern Comfort; soldiers hunted in a hostile environment by a nasty big beastie no one sees - Predator. The second half, with the soldiers holed up in a remote cottage, suggests a remake of Straw Dogs, with Scottish werewolves instead of horny Cornish yokels. "It was an opportunity to pay homage to all the films that I love," says Marshall, swearing that the classic westerns My Darling Clementine and The Searchers are in there too. You're in the army now McKidd has no military background - he was not even in the Scouts, though he did have some experience of camping in Scotland. "You get that whole waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night, and weird noises going on. And you’re like, ‘What the hell is that outside the tent?’ And usually it’s just the farmer coming to tell you to get off his land." Military experts put McKidd and his co-stars, through a few days of preparatory exercises in Luxembourg. "That was really physical and really bonded everybody," says McKidd. And did they sleep under canvas? "This isn’t Band of Brothers mate, this is a werewolf film. I put my method in my back pocket and we went for a few beers in the bar afterwards." There is dark humour in the script - such as a scene in which McKidd cannot get the innards of another soldier to "fit" back in, but the actors play it straight. "Neil basically wanted me just to be myself and be the hero," says McKidd unironically, before adding: "I think what he wanted was that character to be the kind of reluctant hero." Despite initial scepticism, McKidd found himself enjoying the experience. "It was the happiest shoot I’ve ever been on... You go, ‘What are we doing today Neil?’ And he’d say, ‘You’ve got to jump through this wall of flame, and then fire off about 20 rounds of your machine-gun, do a somersault and then chop a werewolf’s arm off.’ "I managed to severely bruise my rib on the first day. I got a bit over-excited during one of the manoeuvres. You run and then dive with your gun and all that stuff and I dived and landed on this piece of rock and buggered my rib, so basically for the rest of the stunts and whole of the shoot I was in agony." McKidd spotted the odd geographical glitch, but resisted the temptation of acting as expert on Scotland. "There’s nowhere you could be in Scotland that’s four hours from anywhere... I was like, should I mention it? I thought, well that’s not the point of this film." If you are going to get hung up on detail, there are no werewolves in Scotland either. This is just the beginning... Half-way through filming, in the best horror tradition, Marshall revealed all was not quite as it seemed. He revealed that Dog Soldiers was the first instalment in a trilogy, with Cooper as the John McClane of horror - an allusion to Bruce Willis’s Die Hard character, forever turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time. "He very roughly sketched out the plotlines for the other two movies," says McKidd. Next up would be zombies and then a modern re-jig of the Frankenstein story, with human clones. "And I was just sitting there aghast by the end going, ‘You’re either mad or a genius, or both.’" McKidd is not ruling out a reunion. He is currently shooting a new film of Nicholas Nickleby and has another Scottish project lined up this summer, Richard Jobson’s 16 Years of Alcohol. "That will actually be in Scotland, thank Christ." Meanwhile, Marshall is developing a "post-Arthurian, medieval heist movie" with some of the characters left over from the story of King Arthur. It was perhaps just a matter of time before Marshall outgrew Newcastle. Sure enough, he has moved on... he now lives in Carlisle. But, then, this is the man who made a Scottish werewolf movie in Luxembourg. credit : www.iofilm.co.uk/feats/interviews/d/dog_soldiers.shtml
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Post by Leanne on May 3, 2008 7:26:55 GMT -5
Ah, for the days of relatively plotless and entertaining B-grade movies when clichés and caricatures were considered an essential part of the film's narrative. The reason that this format still succeeds is that (as time goes by in the film world) the ability to come up with unique plots which are able to surprise an increasingly intelligent audiences is getting next to impossible. Subsequently, you'd be hard pressed to associate Dog Soldiers with such words as "original", "deeply moving" or "realistically plausible", although it tries hard to pretend that it might be by pilfering from many other well-known film-fables. But whatever it might lack in virgin territory makes up for in a slow reveal of its threadline of revelations. When a film wants to tread on ground that has been stepped on before, it should at least try to provide a new angle on the genre lest it appears just like a remake of an earlier film. Even though Dog Soldiers hardly offers anything brand new in terms of thought-provoking character development or satisfyingly complex story structure, it does make the effort to extend upon the various fantastical mythologies already set in place by its predecessors which in turn will help future filmmakers aspire to create something even better down the track. All movies good or bad have what's called the "repeat factor" ... this is sometimes to do with its intrinsic entertainment value but more importantly how much detail you are able to glean from it with multiple viewings. Dog Soldiers is somewhat more unique in this regard since the most desirable aspect here is to come up with how many more movies it pays tribute to (borrows from) - the likes of which extend to An American Werewolf In London, Aliens, Saving Private Ryan and of course the Evil Dead Trilogy. The cast and crew of Dog Soldiers say that there are as many unintentional references in their film as deliberate ones and that some may well have been unconciously dreamt up at the time of filming ... but in my mind the most obvious movie-link here is with something that I doubt anyone else has attributed it to which is Demon Knight from the creators of Tales From The Crypt ... and if anyone can think of any other flicks where the characters have to fortify their positions inside a building structure to keep out the undesirable elements wanting to make balloon-animals out of their intestines, then please let me know. Movie A squad of British soldiers (loosely referred to as underdogs) are sent in at the 11th hour on a training exercise by Special Operations. What begins as a seemingly pointless trek through the highlands of Scotland turns out to be a fight for survival as they are attacked by an unknown yet deadly threat. As night falls they are rescued by a resident female zoologist whereby they take refuge inside an old cottage. She soon tells them that what they are dealing with is Werewolves and ironically the very house they are occupying is owned by the very same beings outside that would otherwise take on human form during the daytime. They only have to survive until dawn, but as usual that's not as easy as it first sounds. The many flaws of logic that abound this movie are easier to punch through than a door made of tissue paper (which the werewolves should be able to do in this movie, but don't), however there is still enough entertainment value here to sit atop the gaping plot-holes that would support an entire battalion of the beasts and not fall through them all. The two main lapses in logic seem to be: the poor attempts by the werewolves trying to gain entry through what appear to be open invitations at every corner of the house, as well as the relative uselessness of the guns fired by the soldiers which ultimately prove little more than psychological deterrents since it's only silver can prove harmful to these monsters from hell. Video The image quality for this DVD is unfortunately far from what I would consider ideal, but this is hardly the fault of DVD compression since this is a shoe-string budget production. What we do get is a very credible rendering of the final film-negative elements which were no doubt generated to invoke a sense of confusion and dread from the soldiers of not quite being able to see what is directly in front of them. The many scenes that take place at dusk time are probably the worst offenders with a greyed-out look to the blacks as well as very limited highlighting of the characters and surroundings, again the result of portraying the difficult naked-eye viewpoint of the soldiers. Things generally improve once the squad takes shelter at the old house with blacks and shadow detail a lot more acceptable than before but it is still far from reference standards. Colour is on the whole quite muted, general focus being quite soft although definable enough and grain is prevalent throughout, but since the image is pretty much shrouded in darkness you tend not to notice much of these problems in the end. The filmmaker's would probably excuse these shortcomings by claiming a "documentary feel" to the action, but I'd prefer to use the term "as cheap-arse as possible" for the filming conditions and production values therein. I should also note that the screenshots in this review have had their brightness bumped up since their reduction in size does not show up all that well on a PC monitor. Audio Thankfully, the soundtrack has a lot more going for it than would usually be the case for such a low-budget affair. The use of the surround channels is involving and inventive, especially with some of the jarring effects that make you turn around in shock and wonder if someone isn't trying to break into your own house (that was from the rattling of the door-knob halfway through the movie, by the way). Sub-woofer usage too is plentiful with generous support to both the music and effects although there are a couple of instances where it inexplicably goes missing, but I'm willing to bare with this shortfall. Dialogue is clearest when it's time for the necessary expositional scenes, but the action sequences probably don't need much more verbal comprehension other than getting the general gist of the increasingly peeved-off attitudes from the soldiers towards their relentless enemy's onslaught. Extras The two audio commentaries present on this DVD are as different as chalk and cheese, but go together like peaches and cream. The peaches are in the form of the first commentary helmed by the director, cast and crew as they have an absolute ball taking the piss out of each other reliving the experiences they had creating the film, this is just as informative as it is entertaining. The cream is that of the second commentary where the producers take a much calmer approach to the discussion of the many methodologies and shortcuts required to make this film a reality.
The making-of documentary is around 20 minutes long although the first fifteen is just interviews and the last five only ever delves into anything resembling actual behind-the-scenes material, I did expect more from this outing unfortunately. The deleted scenes are always a welcome addition to any DVD and these missing sequences help to expand even further on the characters and their situations, which is all finished off with a much-too-small gag-reel (all of this comes with an optional commentary track). There are also a few storyboards that will appeal to the budding filmmaker in general.
There are four theatrical trailers which show different aspects of the movie's main theme. And finally there is a short film by the filmmakers entitled Combat which is a pretty inventive look at the goings-on at your local pub backed by the sounds of war machinery but with absolutely no dialogue - clever really.Overall Ever since its release in 2002, Dog Soldiers has become one of those unassuming cult hits amongst the horror fans, although this could have more to do with the extreme lack of quality scary movies that Hollywood always has extreme difficulty in mustering after the genre got a much-needed boost with Scream. It has taken the much smaller independent filmmakers to show them how it's done with modern classics such as UK's 28 Days Later and the upcoming Aussie flick Undead. If the term Werewolf invokes the same feelings in you as that of Godzilla, then you will know whether or not this flick is your cup of tea ... but if you are expecting the next big thing in intelligent apocalyptic-type storylines then I'm afraid you'll have to keep on waiting. And for you lot out there in Region 4 Australia, this DVD has just been released with the encoding slightly different to the R2 UK DVD but the content is exactly the same, however the Region 1 US DVD is an inexplicably poor quality bare-bones release. Finally, if there's one thing that this film has taught me is that I now know why my parents have wanted to keep their prized collection of silverware cutlery for so long ... www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/dog-soldiers.html
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Post by anaterra on May 3, 2008 17:06:39 GMT -5
Yeah, that´s the commentary I was talking about! I´ve already ordered another DVD - hopefully, this time I´ll get the right one - and am looking forward to watching the extras soon. BTW, I also ordered Understanding Jane, and there´s a "Making of" featurette advertised.
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Post by Leanne on May 4, 2008 5:23:51 GMT -5
This is the DVD of Dog soldiers that I have Anaterra are going to love the commentary LOL Yes Understanding Jane Has a short behind the scenes Clip ...I actually have the screencaps of that I will put it up sometime soon.....
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Post by anaterra on May 17, 2008 16:11:46 GMT -5
I´ve already watched (or better, listened to) the cast and crew commentary twice, and Leanne you´re right, I loved it! I think I´ll have to listen to it a few more times - all those guys talking at the same time in very different British accents are hard for me to understand. But by the fun they´re having in commenting the shooting you can just picture the fun they had during the real shooting. I never realized how many film references the movie had - it´s almost like an encyclopedia of classic films!!! Some of them become quite obvious after you hear them mentioning it (Saving Private Ryan, The Shinning) and other are just hillarious - The Sound of Music!!!
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Post by Leanne on May 21, 2008 8:31:50 GMT -5
Anaterra Im so glad you enjoyed the commentary.... This is an article I found not really about KMK (just one small pix of him from the last scene) the article basically covers the Set Design www.simonbowles.com/films/dog/dog.htmlits quite interesting
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Post by anaterra on May 21, 2008 17:32:11 GMT -5
Interesting piece, thanx for posting. Also interesting is Neil Marshall´s interview linked at the end of the page, and there´s a small mention of Kevin. "Kevin McKidd also worked well as the hero. Kevin was totally bowled over that we offered him this, as he normally plays serious parts. His agent said, "You don't want to do anything daft like a werewolf movie", but he said he quite fancied it as it could be fun, so his attitude was just perfect from the start. He was a dream to work with, like Sean." www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/04/15/neil_marshall_dog_soldiers_interview.shtml
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Post by anaterra on May 22, 2008 21:34:16 GMT -5
Found this interesting article from the time Dog Soldiers was released - I think it has not been posted before. Film: Ahead of the pack Trainspotting didn't do it. But, reckons Wendy Ide, co-starring with a werewolf will bring Kevin McKidd the recognition he deserves It's a bright, chilly day in Bloomsbury and the seasons have blurred enigmatically between winter and spring. Until yesterday Kevin McKidd was shooting a short film in the north of England. Within a week or so he'll be summoned to the set of his next movie, an adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby written and directed by Douglas McGrath, the American film-maker behind the successful cinema version of Jane Austen's Emma. Downstairs, in this immaculate Georgian townhouse, a photographer is trying (rather optimistically) to create a Blair Witch-type atmosphere with some twigs and leaves in a large, airy reception room. The photographer is from one of the film maga zines currently vying to outdo each other with superlatives to describe McKidd's hugely acclaimed latest film, Dog Soldiers. Yes, Kevin McKidd is in demand. It must be particularly sweet for the unassuming Scottish actor -- a vindication of his notorious decision to hit the beach rather than the billboards. (He took his girlfriend on holiday after completing Train spotting, and as a result lost the chance to appear as #6 on that iconic poster.) Until a couple of years ago, it was impossible to read an article on him that didn't lament the neglected opportunity. While his co-stars were on a fast-track to the A-list, it was suggested, McKidd had missed out a vital boost to his career and was destined to be an also-ran in the great ego race. For a while, McKidd did seem to be rather stuck in a rut, his fair skin lending itself all too easily to druggy pallor in a string of roles as junkies and deadbeats. But, like his fellow low-profile Trainspotter Shirley Henderson, he kept cropping up, turning in consistently excellent performances and proving himself as an exceptionally versatile actor, equally at home in costume or contemporary drama, comedy or, in the case of his latest picture, a werewolf action thriller. His looks don't hurt -- strong, almost brutal features and a frosting of blond hair that look unarguably Scottish, but are no less convincing as Russian nobility or yuppie lawyer; equally effective on big screen, small screen, or the West End stage -- where he was appearing in a show directed by Stephen Daldry when the script of Dog Soldiers arrived at the stage door. 'I thought about it: is this a good idea? It's a werewolf movie; I've just been doing this really worthy play; people might look down their noses. Then I thought: No, f*** it actually, I've always wanted to do that kind of thing.' McKidd admits that, having taken little interest in sport during his formative years, horror movies were a key part of his adolescence. 'Evil Dead and things like that, they're kind of rites-of-passage films for a lot of teenage boys,' he says. 'If you weren't into football, I think you bonded with your male friends through things like that. Gory films or Spinal Tap.' So McKidd signed up for a gleefully violent, darkly funny werewolf movie set in the forests of Scotland. But in a cruel twist of fate for this most vocally homesick of London-based Scottish actors, he was cheated out of six weeks barging through the undergrowth of his home country by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth. 'It was just too difficult logistically. But,' he adds, with a glimmer of nationalist fervour, 'I did a film straight after that, in the outer Hebrides, so I was up there for three months. It was summer and it was just beautiful. The beaches are just so white -- it's like nowhere else on earth.' For Dog Soldiers, meanwhile, he had to make do with rural Luxembourg doubling for the Scottish countryside. Dog Soldiers is the debut film from Neil Marshall, a director with an agenda to bring quality horror back to the UK. And his first picture is a giant step in the right direction. McKidd stars as Rifleman Lawrence Cooper, part of a squad of British soldiers on a routine exercise in the wilds of Scotland. Somewhere out in the woods, there's a group of Special Operations Division soldiers, who -- led by Cooper's mortal enemy Captain Richard Ryan (Liam Cunningham) -- are tracking the squad's progress through the forest. But unknown to everyone, another, far more deadly foe is on their trail. When Cooper's sergeant (Sean Pertwee) is wounded, he's forced to take control and prepare the men for the battle of their lives. What follows is a hilarious, horrifying siege -- rather like a cowboys and Indians scenario, only with eight-foot slavering beasts standing in for the Cherokees. McKidd admits to some reservations about the shoot -- in particular the potential for macho bad behaviour that came with putting a load of actors in uniforms and giving them large guns to play with. 'Actually I was nervous,' he says. 'I was thinking: Oh God, if this turns into some kind of Lock, Stock thing ... but actually everybody was really cool. I mean, it was a bunch of blokes and we were all getting really, really pished all the time. A good time was had by all. It was a real work-hard-play-hard environment. Christ, you can't put 10 guys in the same hotel for six weeks and not have that, but there was no male rivalry. We're all really good mates now. We bonded on it, but in a proper way, not in a luvvie way.' The way his lip curls slightly when he says the word 'luvvie' suggests an innate suspicion of the pretentious, poncy side of acting. McKidd is not prone to histrionics and tantrums; he's the kind of good-natured, no-nonsense bloke you'd like as a regular in your local pub. He's still the kid who was raised in down-to-earth Elgin, who, at the age of seven, couldn't allow himself to cry during ET because he was watching it with his dad. 'We walked home,' he recalls. 'It was a summer's night. And my mum was sitting watching television, and she just turned and my dad was in the doorway and I was just holding it back. She said, 'What was it like?' And I was like, 'It was sad.' And I was crying for about an hour. My dad was like, 'He's no son of mine.'' Deep down, he's also still the kid who was so blown away by ET that he used to lie in the bath imagining that a limousine would pull into the cul-de-sac and Steven Spielberg would knock at the door, asking him to be Elliot in ET: The Sequel. And perhaps it's the occasional glint of childlike enthusiasm for the job that makes him so appealing as an actor -- although he admits that over-excitement nearly brought him to grief on the set of Dog Soldiers. 'I remember the first day. I flew there on the Sunday. I'd just finished this play, and drove straight out into the middle of the woods in Luxembourg, got into an army uniform and had my head shaved. And I meet this guy, this scary big guy -- he was teaching us manoeuvres. I was getting into it, really up for it. And we had these big utility belts on and I dived down to the ground, and I don't know what was in it, but it just went bang. And I just got this huge pain. I'd broke my rib. I was like, 'Oh this is so typical, man. You're just too excited.'' It turned out the rib was not broken, just severely bruised -- although it took McKidd two days to admit that he'd hurt himself. 'I didn't let on, because I just felt such a thingy. Eventually I was hobbling about and people were going, 'What's wrong with you?' They took me straight down to the hospital.' Interview over, McKidd is summoned downstairs to pose among the artfully arranged twigs and leaves. Balanced on the mantelpiece is the disembodied head of a werewolf. He gives it an affectionate pat. Kevin McKidd: altogether nice bloke and friend to animals. Even the ones that recently tried to rip his legs off. Dog Soldiers is released on Friday Sunday Herald 5 May 2002 www.burninggold.net/kevinmckidd/words/sundayherald050502.html
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ruralstar
Kevin McKidd Online staff
website McFic
Life is a Journey of the Mind. Anything can happen....Just wait
Posts: 2,233
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Post by ruralstar on Oct 14, 2008 9:16:45 GMT -5
Oh those were some delightful interviews. Thanks Anaterra and Leanne.
I must admit I had my doubts. I'm not a horror fan. Having seen so much of Kevin's more serious work I thought, "How bare were his pantry cupboards to take a role like this?" My husband had the right idea. It apparently sounded like fun to Kevin and, according to the interviews and the commentary I haven't actually heard yet, it does sound like a good time was had by all.
"You think it's over? Well it is now!" *snorts* Love that last line. I've seen a handful of 'horror' flicks in my life. Actually thrillers like "What Lies Beneath" and the classic "Fatal Attraction" scare the pants off me alot more than something as farcical as werewolves. This turned out to be alot of fun.
In the featurette one of the cast/crew comments that you actually care about the characters. That was more than I expected. I didn't know if Cooper would survive until the end and I found myself really hoping he did. The Sargent and the rest of the squad were all great characters. I would have liked to know a bit more about the chick and Ryan. Ryan is a character you love to hate but you really don't get to know him well enough. Maggie's history would have been something to sort out a bit. She hints at it just before she turns completely. You see her humanity in trying to help the Sergeant and her obvious attraction to Cooper. I thought the scene where she played piano was particularly sweet and unexpected. I love how Cooper kept his head straight right until the end but we still got to see him angry and betrayed. More meat for Kevin to play than I would have expected from this kind of story.
There were the necessary grisly bits of blood and goo and the unexpected laugh of the partially eaten cow falling into the middle of the campfire scene. After I stopped jumping I had to giggle. I enjoyed the final showdown featuring Cooper and the Sargent but I couldn't help thinking of the huge plot hole concerning the gas. Gas like that settles. Cooper would have asphyxiated from the gas settling down through the floor boards before the Sargent set off the explosion. Not to mention that the destruction of the house appears to be total so the debris would have been on top of Cooper. *shrugs* Of course then we wouldn't have had the final battle with Ryan and that fateful last line. Love how we came full circle with Cooper refusing to kill the dog for Ryan and the dog in the house saving his life.
I do hope they don't do any sequels to this as Kevin has moved so far beyond it. Still, I'll have to show this to the husband. He'll get a laugh.
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Post by Leanne on Oct 14, 2008 10:21:25 GMT -5
Nice review once again ......ruralstar Oh I had a few jumps in this one LOL (not good with horrors) Re the sequel...unfortunately Marshall wasn't going to direct and the story line revolved around cooper being picked up by a troop of American Marines ....Kevin apparently read the script and turned it down.....or so the rumors go. When I asked Kevin in August about the Sequel he just said that it was never going to happen.... Oh yeah this is a good movie to include the hubby's/boyfriends it goes down well with them.... enjoy the Commentary .....
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ruralstar
Kevin McKidd Online staff
website McFic
Life is a Journey of the Mind. Anything can happen....Just wait
Posts: 2,233
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Post by ruralstar on Oct 14, 2008 11:33:38 GMT -5
Ah I remember the refence in Kevin's note but didn't know it was a proposed sequel to Dog Soldiers. Good decision to move on IMO.
I'm looking forward to the commentary.
ETA: Us North Americans get screwed. There are no deleted scenes or a commentary with Kevin and the cast. Only the producer's commentary. *grumbles*
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Post by bubba89 on Apr 29, 2009 0:10:42 GMT -5
I just recently saw this movie and I thought it was great! I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not really into horror movies but I watched it to see Kevin and I thought the characters and storyline were very interesting.
I also loved the final scene, with Kevin of course, I thought it was really original and i've not seen much like it before.
Great Movie
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Post by kaz on Apr 29, 2009 0:23:35 GMT -5
I just recently saw this movie and I thought it was great! I was pleasantly surprised. I'm not really into horror movies but I watched it to see Kevin and I thought the characters and storyline were very interesting. I also loved the final scene, with Kevin of course, I thought it was really original and i've not seen much like it before. Great Movie To my surprise (because I don't like horror either) I enjoyed this movie as well. I wouldn't put it on my top 10 favourite movies list but it was definitely entertaining and not gory, as I expected it to be. K.
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Post by cl3me on Oct 4, 2009 9:59:14 GMT -5
Just found Dog Soldiers for cheap in a used DVD store in town that has a good selection of British/foreign films. Luckily we found a way to re-program our DVD player for multi-region so we can play them.
Gave this a watch and it was a ton of fun.
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Geniusmentis
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I only have 2 neurons and one of them is usually sleeping.
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Post by Geniusmentis on Oct 5, 2009 5:44:34 GMT -5
I love only ghosts horrors, but I like Dog Soldiers very much! Yes, I love the last scene, with the dog (the same breed of Kevin's dogs, if I'm not wrong).
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Geniusmentis
KMKonliner
McVid
I only have 2 neurons and one of them is usually sleeping.
Posts: 4,067
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Post by Geniusmentis on Oct 19, 2009 8:27:16 GMT -5
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/new-moon-rising-return-of-the-werewolf-1805067.htmlNew moon rising: return of the werewolf ........ ...... Dog Soldiers (2002) Another witty werewolf film, this time featuring a platoon of British squaddies – including Kevin McKidd's earnest hero and Sean Pertwee's very ripe (he's disembowelled early in the piece, but is patched together with Superglue) sergeant – who are besieged, 'Night of the Living Dead'-style in an abandoned shack in the woods by dirty great werewolves. Neil Marshall's gory, impudent, potty-mouthed delight is that rare thing – a decent, low-budget British horror flick – and is full of tasty dialogue, such as "We are now up against live, hostile targets. So, if Little Red Riding Hood should show up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the b***h."
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marcy
KMKonliner
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Post by marcy on Dec 5, 2009 23:22:27 GMT -5
Ok, this is our second "Movie of the Week" selection and I was thrilled to watch it again.
When I first saw this film I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be funny or not. But I kept laughing here and there. It wasn't until I saw the dog "interacting" with the wounded Sarge that I realized the film was played for laughs.
It's such a clever film. The humor is filled with both obvious physical comedy, and subtle funny things you have to watch for. I loved watching everyone keep a straight face. It must've been fun for Kevin and the other actors to play soldiers in the woods like little boys. I'm not a big horror fan but this was pretty tame. Some parts were fairly gross but they're fighting werewolves so what can we expect?
There isn't much of a deeper meaning to this one (LOL) so there's not a lot to discuss on that scale. It is however, a great fun romp. Of course, Kevin looks fantastic in his military fatigues, and that big gun he uses helps complete the hotness. I'd believe in werewolves if I had Pvt. Cooper/Kevin to save me from them.
Don't forget to answer the trivia questions on the "Movie of the Week" thread. They're hard questions this time. Can you do it??
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Post by Leanne on Dec 7, 2009 3:34:55 GMT -5
My absolute favorite werewolf movie
Werewolves ate my Platoon ;D
Personally I wouldn't classify this as a true horror, it needs its own Genre (a new breed of horror), make no mistake I got a fair amount of scares but at the same time they were well balanced by a good amount of laughs. Probably for the first time we see some really believable werewolves, our characters are well defined and its all followed up by a superbly written witty script. Kevin as awesome as ever in the role of Pvt Cooper.
Since I enjoyed this movie so much I followed up with another Marshal movie (doomsday) but unfortunately the witty script / Dialogue was missing even though technically it was the same group of actors. I think that Marshal hit a winner with Dog Soldiers I do hope he gets it right again.
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