Mike Smith Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I've never lived in Canada, so I haven't been able to enjoy the TV series on which the movie Trailer Park Boys is based. I can't tell you how faithful the movie is to the TV show. I watched the movie, which had its U.S. premiere at SXSW, as an American being exposed to the gang for the first time. So I can tell you that you don't have to be Canadian or a fan of the show to get a kick out of Trailer Park Boys. However, you do have to enjoy drug, alcohol and strip-club humor.

I feel like I could essentially recycle my Smiley Face review for this movie: it's the same overall tone and has similar lightweight humor, although Trailer Park Boys pretends to have more of a plot. Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian (John Paul Tremblay) and Bubbles (Mike Smith) reunite after Ricky and Julian are released from jail for trying to rob an ATM. They all live in Sunnyvale Trailer Park: Ricky lives in his barely functional car next to his girlfriend Lucy's trailer, and Bubbles lives in a shed with innumberable adorable cats. Julian reveals his great criminal idea: robbing parking meters and other change dispensers because they can't get jail time for robbing change. Ricky, however, wants to go for "the big dirty," an enormous heist that will give them enough money to retire, so Ricky can enjoy life with his longtime girlfriend Lucy and their daughter Trinity, and grow weed on the side. While they're debating over their next job, the trailer-park manager Mr. Lahey is plotting to evict them so he can have a trouble-free community.

Stunt coordinator Mike Smith recently sat down with Sci Fi Wire to discuss the methodology he used in creating the fight choreography for upcoming Sci Fi/Comic Bookish movie Ultraviolet. The Kurt Wimmer helmed film is regularly referred to as "high action," and Smith put in a solid two months on set in China working on his personal challenge to keep the fights unique. Smith, claiming that "fights in movies are either real or they're cool," used a mixture of exaggerated/poetic action and wire-fu to craft the action within the film - although Smith indicated that he tried to keep the wire-based action under 10% of the overall action.

Smith also implemented dance choreography into his fight scenes, on the urging of Kurt Wimmer. To aid this, Wimmer brought on Russian-born gymnast and dancer Youlia Galenko from Las Vegas, who exhibited/interpreted what dance moves might look like if done while holding a knife or a gun. Said Galenko, "As it turns out, it could be very beneficial to use some of these dance moves when you're ever in a gun fight."

While I suppose the dance/wire/etc information is interesting in its own right, I think that information was overshadowed by Smith's forthright claim that "fights in movies are either real or they're cool." In my mind, I start to protest at that statement as absurd...but as I begin to think, I realize that even much of what I consider "real" action in movies is highly stylized, at the very least. Nonetheless, I've still got to believe that real action can, in fact, be "cool" in the right films. Thoughts?