"Warrior" Press Release

The action/adventure fantasy feature film "Warrior" was shot in the jungles of Costa Azul and the City of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico ... and should entertain the prime movie going audience of eighteen to forty year olds (both male and female) as we have in "Warrior" a unique story in an extremely topical setting ... the ongoing wars between competing Mexican drug cartels ... and the setting of Native American folklore, a multi-ethnic cast and a rap star recording artist (a la "The Fast And The Furious"), action, adventure, fantasy, romance, comedy, a major studio movie music score and exotic locations.


WILL THE MAGIC OF AN ANCIENT CULTURE
TRIUMPH OVER AN EVIL OF MODERN CIVILIZATION!

PALISADES PRODUCTIONS

PRESENTS

"WARRIOR"

March 10, 2002 LOS ANGELES TIMES

THE WORLD
Mexico Captures Tijuana Drug Lord
Narcotics: The arrest, and the recent death of another Arellano Felix leader, could spark a power struggle within and outside the cartel.

By CHRIS KRAUL, TIMES STAFF WRITER

MEXICO CITY -- Declaring one of the world's most powerful drug gangs "dismantled," Mexican authorities announced the capture of Tijuana drug mobster Benjamin Arellano Felix on Saturday while confirming the death of his brother Ramon in a police shootout last month.
The blows to the Tijuana cartel are significant because it is thought to control a quarter of all cocaine entering the United States from Mexico. Both brothers were on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's most-wanted list and carried $2-million bounties for their arrests.

"Competing Mexican drug cartels are destroying each other ... and that's where 'Warrior' begins ..."

... with Mexican drug lord, Carlos Eldoran (Ron Joseph, "Navy Seals", "Barfly", "Scarface", "Born in East L. A.") ruthlessly executing an informer, then bribing the government's new anti-drug czar, General Figueroa (Hector Mercado, "Delta Force 2"), to conspire with him in the perfect partnership ... using the military to establish a drug traffic monopoly by building a secure operation deep in the remote jungles of Costa Azul.

Unknowingly ... the General is about to invade the quiet and peaceful enclave of the Native American Esselen Indian Tribe who are hiding deep in the Mexican jungle ... and meet an opposing force he could never imagine ... the supernatural son of a divine force with magical powers: Dreadmon (Vincent Klyn, "Cyborg", "Point Break"), who, separated from his biological parents at birth and having discovered that he has been adopted by the Chief of the Tribe, has set off on a quest to find the secrets of his true identity. Dreadmon must use his magical powers only for good or lose his powers and feed the strength of the evil witch Mootin ... the supernatural daughter of the divine force ... if he misuses his powers.

As General Figueroa's soldiers clear the jungle to build their drug manufacturing and distribution center, they invade the tranquil existence of the Esselen. Dreadmon, witnesses the execution of his adoptive father in cold blood and, contrary to the "way" he has been taught, reacts in anger and unleashes a lethal charge of electricity and fire ... driving off the soldiers ... but drawing to him the evil Mootin ... who is re-ignited with the desire to seek him out and destroy him.

After an argument with his "brothers" about whether to flee or fight the soldiers, Dreadmon leaves the exotic jungle behind and enters the concrete jungle of Puerto Vallarta ... to seek help from the local "policia". The local police captain is a cartel puppet who tells Eldoran that Dreadmon is seeking help to defeat the slave raiders who have killed his father. And when Dreadmon is arrested after using his supernatural powers in a bar fight, the cartel's hit man (Matt Gallini, "End of Days," "Crimson Tide", "Rudy") bails him out and takes him to meet Eldoran, who cons Dreadmon into using his powers to destroy competing drug cartels.

To see through Eldoran's deception and become the Warrior he must become to save his adopted homeland, Dreadmon must undergo an agonizing inner battle, which calls forth his own inner spirit in the form of the Midnight Sun (international rap star recording artist "Yukmouth of the Luniz"). Only when Dreadmon surrenders to the truth does he gain the strength he needs to defeat the treacherous Eldoran drug cartel ... and face the dreaded Mootin in spectacular climactic combat.

"Warrior" is a richly photographed action/adventure fantasy, filmed on location in the exotic jungles of Costa Azul and the urban grit of Puerto Vallarta in the State of Jalisco, Mexico, which matches mythological powers against modern day corruption in a unique portrayal of the classic confrontation between "good and evil".

EXECUTIVE CREW:


PRODUCER: BRUCE H. SINGMAN
WRITERS: WILLIAM LAWLOR AND WILL HARPER
CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: MARIO FRANK
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: DAVID SHOSHAN
DIRECTOR: WILL HARPER
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RICK LAMB
EDITOR: ROLLIN OLSON
MUSIC COMPOSER: PETER MEISNER
COSTUME DESIGN: TERESA BRADFORD

CAST: VINCENT KLYN, YUKMOUTH OF THE LUNIZ, HEATHER MARIE WAYNE, RON JOSEPH, BLAIR VALK, JAMIE LUNER, CHRISTIAN GOMEZ, TONEEY ACEVEDO, HECTOR MERCADO, DANNY WAYNE, ZARON BURNETT, MATT GALLINI, MERCEDES COLON, ESTELLE BERMUDEZ

DELIVERY DATE: AVAILABLE

SUGGESTED RELEASE DATE: TO BE DETERMINED

RUNNING TIME: ONE HOUR THIRTY FIVE MINUTES

PRIMARY LOCATIONS: COSTA AZUL, PUERTO VALLARTA MEXICO

SUMMARY: THE ACTION/ADVENTURE FANTASY FILM "WARRIOR"
(ABOUT THE SON OF A DIVINE FORCE) IS A STORY OF A YOUNG MAN'S
QUEST TO FIND HIS TRUE IDENTITY SET AGAINST THE TWIN BACKDROPS
OF NATIVE AMERICAN FOLKLORE AND THE TREACHEROUS MEXICAN
DRUG TRADE AND A PORTRAYAL OF THE CLASSIC CONFRONTATION BETWEEN "GOOD AND EVIL"



CAST


"WARRIOR"

Vince Klyn (Dreadmon) Jamie Luner (Alana
Teresa)
Film: Cyborg (star w/ Jean Claude Van Damme)
TV: Profiler
Melrose Place
Point Break (star w/ Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves) Savannah
Red Surf (w/ George Clooney)
TV: Baywatch (guest star)

Danny Wayne (Jericho) Hector Mercado
(Figueroa)
Film: Batman and Robin Film: Delta Force II,
Hair
Power Rangers: The Movie TV: Acapulco Heat
Power Rangers: Turbo NYPD Blue
TV: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (series regular) McGyver
Tales From The Crypt

Matt Gallini (Chavez) Blair Valk (Marias)
Film: Crimson Tide International Model
Rudy and The End of Days Film: Alien in L.A.
TV: Melrose Place w/ Steven Baldwin)
NYPD Blue Nemesis
Seinfeld TV: Babylon 5
Young And The Restless Seinfeld

Ron Joseph (Eldoran) Heather Marie Wayne
(Mootin)
Film: Navy Seals Film: That Thing You Do
Barfly
Scarface Austin Powers
Born in East L.A. TV: Boston Common
TV: Space: Above and Beyond Life With Roger
Northern Exposure Step By Step
Murder She Wrote California Dreams
Moonlighting Silk Stalkings
Broadway: Sweet Charity


BIOS:

PRODUCER: Bruce H. Singman is a graduate of the University of Illinois and the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law. Prior to his association with William Harper and Palisades Productions for the production of "Warrior", Mr. Singman created, wrote and produced an HBO Sports Video Spirit Award and Telly Award winning sports entertainment series and several other sports entertainment programs for broadcast television and home entertainment and was engaged in the private practice of law as a securities and entertainment attorney.

DIRECTOR: William H. Harper is a graduate of San Francisco State University and a member of the Director's Guild of America. He has over fifteen years of experience in the production and creative development of television properties for studios including Paramount, Universal/MCA, Fox, NBC, ABC and Buena Vista. He won an Emmy Award for creating, directing and producing the kid's show "Superkids". Mr. Harper created and produced the special "The Winans: The Real Meaning of Christmas" and directed and produced "The Making of 'Bird' " with Clint Eastwood.



"WARRIOR"

TV Guide Review

This chimerical bit of movie exotica combines elements of fantasy films, sarong flicks and action movies into one super-hero package. Three Indian teenagers, Jericho (Kenny Greyson), Dreadmon (Zaron Burnett) and Sonata (Mercedes Colon), spend their adolescence frolicking in a tropical paradise near Mexico's Sierra De Vallejo. Meanwhile, city-based drug dealer Eldoran (Ron Joseph), who's been waging an ongoing war against competing cartels, is looking to relocate his drug laboratory someplace quieter. Spurred on by corrupt anti-drug czar General Emilio Figueroa (Hector Mercado), Eldoran orders his soldiers to open a jungle facility in the teenagers' homeland. Chief Papolli (Toneey Acevedo) is gunned down when he waves an olive branch at the dope manufacturers. Meanwhile, half-breed Dreadmon experiences a revelation as he strives to reach his tribal majority. Born in Vanuatu, Dreadmon (Vincent Klyn), wields such powers as telekinesis and lethal kickboxing. Unaware that drug lords are a far greater threat to his tribesmen than slave traders, the headstrong Dreadmon foolishly wastes his newly discovered powers. His spirit guide warns him about the dark forces of evil personified by trampy vamp Lola (Estelle Bermudez), but she introduces him to the pleasures of the flesh, distracting Dreadmon from his mission to rescue his people and preserve their way of life. Dreadmon travels to the big city and becomes Eldoran's pawn, losing sight of the forces menacing the jungle. Despite Jericho's efforts to wise up his buddy, Eldoran dupes Dreadmon into eliminating the urban competition. Will Dreadmon wake up and smell the coca before his powers dissipate? If he doesn't, the palm trees will soon be replaced by a forest of crystal-meth labs. Dreadmon is certainly a novel savior, battling inner demons and city slickers armed with little more than a loincloth and his natural assets. Overall, this David vs. Goliath tale is choppy but entertaining. - Robert Pardi




http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-shorty5jul05,1,7105917.story?coll=la-headlines-world

COLUMN ONE

Mexico's Master of Elusion

Since his escape, drug cartel chief Joaquin 'Shorty' Guzman has expanded his empire, waged war on rivals and become a legend.
By Richard Boudreaux
Times Staff Writer

July 5, 2005
BADIRAGUATO, Mexico — The voice was unmistakably his. Mexico's most wanted criminal was back in his rural stronghold in the western Sierra Madre.
But when 200 army paratroopers swooped in by helicopter minutes after the voice registered on a wiretap, he was gone. The soldiers found only a few ranch hands and the drug baron's Hummer and Dodge Ram pickup, which they blew up before retreating in frustration.
The November raid was the closest a government search party has come to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman since he slipped out of a maximum-security prison in a laundry cart 4 1/2 years ago.




Monday, July 2, 2001

Multiethnic Movies Ringing True With Youths
Hollywood: Colorblind audiences flock to films that capture a culture.

By ROBERT W. WELKOS, RICHARD NATALE, Special to The Times

Hollywood was stunned late last month when the youth-oriented action film "The Fast and the Furious" streaked past the competition to become the No. 1 movie, with $40.1 million in ticket sales.
With its relatively unknown cast of whites, Latinos, Asians and African Americans, heavy doses of high-speed chases and a driving hip-hop soundtrack, the movie defied expectations and sent studio executives scrambling to understand why this film about the illegal street-racing subculture had become a summer hit.
But the teen-oriented movie's success isn't so surprising when one glimpses the youthful crowds flocking to theaters such as the Cineplex Odeon at Universal CityWalk. With their ultra-baggy cargo shorts, doo-rags wrapped around their heads, and bodies festooned with tattoos and piercings, the look of these young moviegoers mirrors the multiethnic melange of actors on the screen.
Esteban Mejia, 20, of east Hollywood, who wears long shorts and a diamond stud and hoop "cartilage pierce" in his left ear, said the racial diversity of the movie has a distinct appeal that most mainstream movies don't have. He wouldn't go to primarily white teen movies like "She's All That," Mejia said, because he doesn't relate to white kids trying to act "hard" like their Latino and black peers.
"I don't want to see 'Clueless,' " he said, recalling the 1995 Alicia Silverstone teen comedy set in Beverly Hills. "Did I live a 'Clueless' life? No. Do I live a 'Clueless' life? No. If there's something that I've been through, then, yeah, I'll go."
Hollywood likes to pride itself on being ahead of the cultural curve, but with last summer's sassy white-versus-black cheerleading comedy "Bring It On" grossing $68.4 million domestically and this winter's "Save the Last Dance," with its once-taboo interracial dating, raking in more than $90 million in North America alone, the studios have only begun to catch up with the colorblind nature of today's MTV generation.
Rob Cohen, who directed "The Fast and the Furious," said the film not only reflects today's "multiculti" youth culture without purposely drawing attention to it, but depicts what is really going on.
When the movie opened, it drew a cross-section of races. Cohen said surveys taken at theaters where "The Fast and the Furious" played showed that 50% of moviegoers were white, 24% were Hispanic, 10% were black and 11% were Asian.
"I look at this and go, 'This is exactly what I'm talking about,' " Cohen said. "If that had been 80% ethnic and 20% white, that is not what we wanted. We wanted to affect the whole culture. This picture is not an 'ethnic' movie, it's an everybody movie."
Attracting a young audience across the country--a mainstay of big summer popcorn hits--"The Fast and the Furious" has grossed an estimated $78 million in less than two weeks and is on track to make well over $100 million.
Touchstone Pictures' romantic drama "crazy/beautiful," which opened Friday, deals with a Latino boy from a working-class East L.A. neighborhood who falls for a troubled girl from affluent Pacific Palisades. Mary Jane and Harry J. Ufland, who along with Rachel Pfeffer produced "crazy/beautiful," say that today's youth increasingly see the world as colorblind.
"I think we live in a multiracial world, and we want to make movies everyone identifies with," Mary Jane Ufland said. "When we started off . . . we wanted to tell a good story reflective of teenagers across the country, but also specifically about Los Angeles. We live in Santa Monica next to the Palisades, and we're very aware of Pali High and busing kids in from all over L.A."
Marc Abraham, one of the producers of "Bring It On," noted: "There is a much more interracial aspect [in today's culture] than the way this country used to be. Any movie that reflects that--and it doesn't mean they'll all be hits like 'The Fast and the Furious'--will ring true with the audience."
Over the years, studios have produced a steady diet of "niche" films targeting demographic markets such as African Americans. They know that black-themed movies can readily draw huge crowds from African American communities--"Waiting to Exhale," for example--but these films rarely capture the "crossover" white audience that is crucial in turning a moderately successful film into a blockbuster.
John Singleton's "Boyz N the Hood" was able to cross over, but few movies do. Where they do work is in broad comedies where there is an identifiable African American star, such as Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence or Chris Tucker.
Studios realize they can attract a crossover audience if a film realistically portrays the ethnic mix of society, so long as it doesn't appear cynical or calculated.
"[The movie business is] certainly catching up with what's happening in society," said Thomas Carter, who directed "Save the Last Dance." ". . . Youth culture has been shifting a long time, but because of the generation that runs the studios, there's been a certain attitude, and it has taken them a while to catch up. Places like MTV are right on the edge and totally involved in the change. In filmmaking, we lag behind."
If Hollywood made a movie like "Save the Last Dance" 10 years ago, studios would have emphasized the interracial love story. This movie, however, was sold more like "Flashdance" and did not sensationalize the love affair. And Carter noted that in "The Fast and the Furious," little attention was paid to race.
This shift is starkly reflected in recent U.S. census statistics, which show that nearly one in three Americans is a member of a minority group and that 15.4 million people--most of them Latino--said they were "some other race" than white, black, Asian, Pacific Islander or American Indian. The census also found that 6.8 million people identified themselves as belonging to two or more races.
"I think the segregated groupings are breaking down in today's America, and I think today's movie audience is a complex mix," said Marc Shmuger, vice chairman of Universal Pictures, which released "The Fast and the Furious."
But Shmuger warned that if the movie industry starts making multiethnic movies "in a calculating and cynical fashion," the audience will sense that and stay away.
The Motion Picture Assn. of America said that in 1998, 71% of all movie admissions were white, 11% black and 11% Hispanic; all others accounted for 7%. In 1999, the fastest-growing group was Hispanic, which saw its moviegoer percentage climb to 15%.
Just as "The Fast and the Furious" shows young people of all races gathered in large groups unmindful of their racial differences and not hung up on sex, Gary Scott Thompson, one of the film's writers, said today's young movie audiences also are that way.
"It used to be a boy and a girl would go on a date," he said. "Now what's happening is groups of kids who are friends--multiracial boys and girls--all move in date packs together. It's like a date, but they don't consider it dating. They just consider themselves friends. Some of them might neck, some of them might not. None of them think anything much about it. They are much more open when talking about sex, teasing about it, too. They've broken down the cultural barriers."
In Hollywood, where studio executives dine at trendy watering holes and hobnob with people of like lifestyles and social strata, it isn't any wonder that the film business has been slow to pick up on this trend, observers said.
"I think the conservative nature of the movie business comes from the fact that movies cost a considerable amount now," said producer Kevin Misher, former head of production at Universal. "The first instinct is to find the movie star to protect your investment.
"What's begun to evolve, however, is the question of who is a movie star," Misher said. "This youth audience may be embracing a whole new breed of movie star. They are multiethnic and don't necessarily just come from music."
Rob Friedman, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group, said the studio began noticing the colorblind nature of young audiences with its 1999 high school pigskin drama "Varsity Blues."
"It's really about their peers, regardless of race, and to a certain extent, gender as well," Friedman said. ". . . When it came to 'Save the Last Dance,' it became more and more apparent young people don't care [whether the relationship is interracial]. The music is great, the story is great."
Director Carter said that since the birth of jazz, music has been colorblind. Destiny's Child and TLC, Janet Jackson, are bought by everyone, he noted. The video for "Moulin Rouge" for example, features Pink, Lil' Kim, Mya, Christina Aguilera. "And you're not thinking who's white, black or Latino. You're thinking those are some hot ladies," he said.
"Ultimately, that's where we want to get," Carter said. "These groups don't lead with race. They lead with a common interest. Kids who like science and computers get together. Kids interested in sports get together. Those were the things that separated them, not race. We're just playing catch-up with that."
For teens like Alvaro Alvarez of Los Angeles, it doesn't matter that "The Fast and the Furious" has no big stars or makes a statement about race. It's "the cars, the action" that draw him.
"I'm just going for the cars," said the 18-year-old. "It doesn't matter who the actors are. It's something that's in style right now."
* * *
Times staff writer Emmanuelle Soichet contributed to this story.
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times