30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 6: Slasher (31:30-32:00)

This is the last segment of the Siege of Casa Wick, the first fight of the movie. And it’s the least dynamic, least athletic and most interesting bit of the fight. Because it’s here, in this moment, the audience first sees exactly what kind of movie John Wick is. It’s only superficially an action film. […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 5: Cleaning the Kitchen (31:00-31:30)

Our current sequence begins as John Wick shoulder throws the opponent he was grappling with onto the kitchen counter. He uses a variation of the shoulder throw we’ve seen before and will see again but this time he actually flips the opponent up over his head, from his right to his left to land him […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 4: Drywall gets in your eyes (30:30-31:00)

I think I’m going to alter the format here just a bit — rather than giving specific time markers I’m going to mark the beginning of each segment with the times and leave it there.  This section is 30:30 – 31:00. This is another favored sequence, with two cinematically beautiful moments. John is waiting at […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 3: Grappling

We just got through thirty very gun heavy seconds of the first fight in John Wick. Now we move onto a smaller, more personal altercation with both grappling and wrestling. 30:00 on the nose and we begin with another moment I could parse better watching it back a few dozen times. John has just reloaded […]

30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 1 : Perkins Takes A Bite

Welcome to the first installment of Thirty Seconds of Wick — the blog breakdown of each thirty seconds of the fight scenes in the movie John Wick (2014) I’m beginning not at the beginning (the fight in John’s house) but a little over mid-way through the movie and a little more than mid-way through my […]

The Loss Of Fear

(Reblogged from the WarpWorld blog Aug 2016 — http://www.warpworld.ca/on-loss-loss-of-fear/) I have been afraid my whole life. Afraid of sharks in the bathtub. Afraid elevator doors would close unexpectedly, crushing me to death. I was afraid that having two Christmas tress meant we would get carpenter ants in the house. I was–and still am–mocked by my […]

Choices, the damage there caused

​​​​​I lie awake at night and feel guilty about my pain. I know a number of people who suffer chronic, debilitating illness. Who live every day as an exercise in pain management, in negotiating with the world to get simple tasks done. I’m not one of them. I’m in chronic pain…and I did it to […]