30 Seconds of Wick: On Va Voir (11:11-12:25)
Hey. Sorry to be away so long. It’s been an astonishingly bad year for me personally, in the midst of a bad year for the planet in general. I’ll probably post about it soonish — it’s a story that needs to be told — but all the matters right now is I’m back, the blog […]
30 Second of Wick Chapter 17: The Best Fight Begins (57:55-58:25)
We’ve finally caught up to the best fight in this movie. Yes, I’ll say it again: as good as Red Circle is, Perkins vs Wick is the best fight of the movie and possibly the best fight in the three movies so far. I covered the second segment of this fight (58:25-58:55) back in my […]
30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 16: Annnnnndddd…scene (54:30-55:00)
I have to say I still find it a bit strange just how well the Wick fights scene fall into thirty second chunks, which is especially true about the fight AFTER this one. That being said, we end the action here at Red Circle neatly at the 55:00 mark with John staggering out of the […]
30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 15 (54:00-54:30): High Kicks Are For Rockettes
Wick is hiding behind a pillar, chest heaving from the pain of those torso shots he took in the last thirty seconds. Keanu looks sweaty and disheveled, one would assume partially from the high fever he was running when they shot this scene, partially to show that John’s calm and control are breaking down around […]
30 Seconds of Wick Chapter 12: That’s Certainly A Mustache (53:00-53:30)
I love this section of the fight, both for the nonchalant way they just let squib blood splatter across the perspex protecting the camera lens (happens multiple times throughout the movie) and for the way the stunt crew here works their asses off to make Keanu look like a god. On the strategy/tactics side of […]
Prologue: Russian Nightclub 48:00-50:00
The Russian Nightclub “fight scene” in John Wick became almost instantly one of the greatest set pieces ever put on film. It’s the ultimate expression of what “Gun-Fu” should be. (Gun-Fu is a term from the Christian Bale movie Equilibrium that posits a kind of close combat martial art with hand guns involving an instantaneous, […]
Mockingbird and Hawkeye, Part 1
Mockingbird and Hawkeye: A love letter to love Super heros hate marriage. Or at least the men who run the major superhero comics hate it. Joe Quesada famously obliterated Spiderman’s charming, logically consistent marriage to Mary-Jane (though the current “Renew Your Vows” series may correct that mistake). DC lost the award winning Batwoman creative team […]