Displacement In Production Now! Exclusive News And Photos!

Update June 20th 2014: Displacement official sites!

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/DisplacementMovie?ref=br_tf

Twitter @ https://twitter.com/Displacement13

Official Site @ http://www.maderfilm.com/displacement.html

Time travel, temporal displacement, all very cool, and highly interesting subjects. Kenneth Mader's Displacement promises to be a whirlwind of intrigue and diverse characters.

Have you ever wanted a second chance?  Give someone a gift you were not able to give?  Tell them you loved them one last time?  These are the questions at the heart of Displacement, our indie film passion project that we're really excited about sharing with you which explores themes of love and loss, the power of forgiveness, and the consequences of turning back the clock.

Above Photo Courtney Hope in Displacement (C) 2014 Kenneth Mader

All of this within the context of a mind-bending thriller that follows the story of a young physics student Cassie Sinclair (Courtney Hope), who must solve the murder of her boyfriend while battling memory loss and timeslips caused by a Quantum Entanglement Event.
Told in the tone of Memento meets Primer, with a dash of Fringe thrown in for fun, Displacement is ultimately a story about letting go of the past.  Of guilt, of grief, of all that stuff that holds us back and beats us down. It’s about making oneself whole. Using the metaphor of quantum physics and particle pairs to tell that story.  

Hi everyone, Ken Mader here.  

By now you've all heard the stories of how difficult it can be to get a film made in Hollywood, especially a passion project like this one.  Even if you're lucky enough to find a 'deal', with endless rewrites for the sake of rewriting (not to improve the story of course, merely to cover the studio's backside), multiple producers on projects, and foreign "queue scores" determining your cast, it's amazing anything gets made at all in this town, let alone anything of quality.
True story: I have a screenplay I've been trying to get set up for years now.  It has won awards.  It's a modest budget by studio standards.  I even have an Academy Award winning actor attached to play the lead role.  And yet, unless I'm willing to step away from directing it, or make major changes to the script that would frankly ruin it, I've been unable to get it made.
So I decided to go back to the drawing board and design a script that could be produced on a low budget yet at a very high quality, with a compelling story and characters that would attract solid, reputable, talented actors.  Something I could go to my crew members with and cut deals based solely on their desire to be involved in something good, that had creative integrity and enormous potential.  I began writing it 4 years ago.  That screenplay became DISPLACEMENT.
My desire with this story is to explore the human condition, utilizing real science and real experience blended with fiction to illustrate that we can in fact alter our destinies, even in small ways, simply by being present in the moment and looking towards the future, rather than the past and allowing it to consume us. It is a lesson I have to keep revisiting to this day. Something I imagine all of you have experienced to one degree or another as well. Perhaps together through the shared experience of this finished film we can all experience a sense of healing and release from some of those emotional shackles. A collective “letting go” of what binds us, as experienced through the journey of our character Cassie. All the while enjoying what I endeavor to be an entertaining and emotionally engaging 90-minute moving picture.

DISPLACEMENT is a character-driven thriller inspired by the loss of filmmaker Kenneth Mader's mother to cancer and the inability to grant her final wish.

Besides being a cool quantum time thriller with an engaging, character-driven story, this film has deeper meaning: My mom was my biggest fan and greatest supporter. She talked my father into letting me build movie sets in their garage back in Chicago.  Cooked food for the crew.  Came to every screening of every one of my films.  And moved her and my dad out to Los Angeles after me so we could be close as a family. 
Four years ago my mom passed away from cancer, which came on so suddenly there wasn’t time to grant her final wish: to see the ocean one last time.  That life experience inspired me to write this script, and the ensuing emotions now reside at the core of this film, essentially the heart of the picture driving our character Cassie forward. My dream is to fulfill my Mom's last wish as best I can by making this film. 

Click Here to see International Directing Guru Mark W. Travis talk about the Displacement script:

Kenneth Mader and Courtney Hope

Writer-Producer-Director and Star/Co-Producer
KENNETH MADER is a multi-award-winning filmmaker whose very first feature film was distributed by 20^th Century Fox and premiered on the SyFy Channel.  His next film Passing Darkness won numerous awards and helped solidify his career in Hollywood. He’s since produced and directed dozens of independent projects, was recently nominated into the NBC Universal Directing Fellowship, has worked with and shadowed directors on television shows like Criminal Minds, Star Trek: Enterprise and Voyager along with studio feature films. He’s trained with DGA directors Mark W. Travis, Ed Bernero, John Gallagher, Mark Rosman, Roxann Dawson and many others, and will be joining the prestigious Director’s Guild of America himself later this year.
COURTNEY HOPE http://www.courtney-hope.com/ is a rising star in Hollywood, having played lead roles in films like Mob Rules and Prowl from After Dark Films/Lionsgate, and recently starred in the film Swelter alongside Lenny James, Josh Henderson, Grant Bowler, Alfred Molina and Jean-Claude Van Damme. She’s also guest-starred on the shows NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds, CSI: Miami and recently starred in the popular Somebody Picked the Wrong Girl commercial that went viral with over a million hits on YouTube!

Click here to see another clip from Mark W. Travis talking about Ken Mader and Displacement

In addition to our extremely talented star COURTNEY HOPE, who plays our lead character Cassie Sinclair, an emotionally tortured young woman on a journey to discover the truth and change the past at any cost, the film also features legendary actress SARAH DOUGLAS (Superman I & II, Conan the Destroyer, Green Lantern: The Animated Series) who plays Dr. Miles, an enigmatic figure at the head of the Quantum Initiative Group, a mysterious organization funded in part by the U.S. Defense Dept. that deals with Einstein's Unified Field Theory, Quantum Entanglement and Time Displacement.  Dr. Miles is seeking to extract information from Cassie that could correct the anomaly and save their lives... or perhaps she has more sinister intentions.  
CHRISTOPHER BACKUS (Elevator, 3 Days Gone, Amongst Friends) plays the murdered boyfriend who may or may not be secretly involved in this mind-bending plot.  And we have the script out to more great actors for the remaining roles, with other big casting announcements coming soon.

Mark W. Travis again talks about the cast. This clip includes a sneak peek at a scene of Courtney and Sarah in action!  Enjoy!

David Abramson

Quantum Physics Story Consultant
Emmy-Nominated Editing Advisor
A member of the Editors Guild for over 15 years and a graduate of the USC Film Production program, David Abramson has edited and assistant-edited features, movies of the week, and miniseries for Columbia/SONY, Disney, Paramount/DreamWorks, NBC, Warner Bros., Universal, Lionsgate, MTV and numerous independent production companies. Projects have ranged from features grossing $250 million worldwide to small independent features and television movies, including portions of Michael Jackson’s This Is It for Columbia, a UK-broadcast concert special starring Matthew Morrison (Glee), 70 minutes of all-new documentary material for the Blu-ray release of the Oscar-nominated classic Das Boot, and the festival-winning feature film The Indian, available on DVD, starring Matt Dallas of the hit ABC Family series Kyle XY. 

He cut three series pilots for Disney, The Replacements for executive producer Jack Thomas (Fairly Odd Parents) which was immediately picked up to series and began airing in 2006. Perhaps most notably, in 2001 Mr. Abramson edited significant portions of feature-length Episode 3 of Steven Spielberg's ten-part miniseries Taken. That episode was nominated for an Emmy for Best Editing. 
David is also a talented writer-director and brilliant quantum physics major who's been helping hone the science aspects of the Displacement script.

Mark W. Travis

DGA Director, Author, Teacher
Creative Consultant

Mark W. Travis is The Director's Director.  He is regarded by Hollywood’s top brass and international film professionals as the world’s leading authority on the art and craft of film directing.  All of his techniques stem from the pursuit of organic authentic performances that are deeply felt by audiences.  He is currently on the faculty of HFF (Munich), HSU (Kiev) and has taught at AFI, UCLA, The Binger Institute (Amsterdam), PU (Pixar University), FAS Screen Training Ireland and many other internationally acclaimed institutions and film schools.  He has served as directorial and creative consultant to Mark Rydell, George Tillman, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and dozens of Independent filmmakers in Hollywood and internationally.  He is respected and recommended by top actors such as Beau Bridges, Henry Winkler and Bill Pullman.  
Productions directed by Mr. Travis have garnered a total of 30 awards including:  an Emmy, Drama-Logue, L.A. Weekly, Drama Critics’ Circle, A.D.A and Ovation awards.  His film and television directing credits are equally impressive, including The Facts of Life, Family Ties, Capitol, Hillers, the Emmy Award-winning PBS dramatic special Blind Tom: The Thomas Bethune Story, Going Under for Warner Bros. starring Bill Pullman and Ned Beatty, the documentary Earlet and The Baritones.  On stage over the past 20 years, Mark has directed over 60 theatre productions in Los Angeles and New York.

                 Yes, we have this covered too.

Swelter Movie Review

Well Go USA Entertainment  (C) 2014

It is high noon in a sleepy western town!  The story of Swelter swings back ten years when a bank heist of 10 million dollars goes awry. The criminals are put behind bars. Eventually, the men get out, and are looking for the money.

JCVD as Stillman in Swelter (C) 2014 Well Go USA Entertainment

Jean-Claude Van Damme is the criminal mastermind, named Stillman. He is out for revenge in the small sleepy, and I mean really damn sleepy town of Baker.There is a scene in the film where a text crawl actually says "In the middle of F$%in nowhere!" Van Damme is very, very soft spoken, and a quiet reserve in Swelter. His character is too inconspicuous to make an impact.

Swelter tries to be cool, hip, in the vain of Tarantino, High Noon, etc... Sadly the film feels a bid drab, save for a few characters. The doctor, who is consistently trying to be funny, he tells a a patient that he should have opened an abortion clinic, another older lady with a yeast infection, "that she has a brewery down there". The preacher, who uses the "Good Book" as a weapon, and the odd quirky way everyone in the town speaks, acts etc...

Above photo: Courtney Hope as Halle in Swelter (C) 2014 Well Go USA Entertainment

My favorite odd character in the film is Halle, portrayed with coolness and toughness by Courtney Hope. Courtney is one to watch in the business, she has the combination of beauty, brains, and knows how to portray a wide variety of emotions on film. In Swelter, she is the waitress in the small town's diner, and just has to deal with the weirdness that comes through and the bevy of very odd town folk. A patron gets a bit frisky with her and she calmly states he was 'just playin'.  Obviously she has seen it all and nothing phases her, yet she is not cocky or arrogant. More info on her @ http://www.courtney-hope.com/

Back to our Swelter, more of a tepid, mildly intrepid film:  Why yes you asked, ha, there is the town saloon, The Dry Mouth, it is a combination brothel, bar, place of sexy lady worship, where no one actually gets naked. Seriously, the girls punch a time clock, old-school style, and dance for a bit, and get off stage. Of course there is a bar fight, not entirely sure the reason, no matter, a bar fight always livens a film up.

The sheriff does not carry a gun, and only claims to have shards of memories. In fact, no one in this damn town knows much of anything haha! Will they find the money, what will happen to the loot, how hot is it i the town according to the huge thermometer? The film is definitely not Hollywood happiness on the ending!

Unfortunately, the elements of Swelter all just do not add up, the quirkiness of the film is plagued by very slow moving parts, and characters that are rather uninteresting, and just not thrown enough meat. I rate the film a "very" cautious 5 out of 10, possible marginal rent, but that is about it.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Swelter/517069108359539  Facebook Official

Legends of the Martial Arts! New Seminar! Sunday June 29th!

Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Seminar with Grandmasters Koe Woong Chong and Chang Il Do to be held at Splitrock Resort on Friday June 27, 2014 before the USA National Karate Championships and the Legends of the Martial Arts Hall of Fame Awards. Inbox me for details on how to register for this amazing event.
Limited Space available, don't miss this seminar!!!!!
Also, if you have not made your reservations or sent in your nominations for the Legends Event, hosted by Grandmaster Rothrock and myself, there is still time! Contact me Erik @ asap at 570-307-5425 or 570-780-3801. God Bless!!

Please feel free to add tags and tag your martial arts friends!

Super Seminar Sunday with the Legends in the martial arts....If you have not already signed up for this amazing event, please call the headquarters at 570-307-5425. Limited space is available and we are more than half booked!!  Seminar is Sunday June 29th @ the Splitrock Resort 

Art Camacho, Cynthia Rothrock, Billy Blanks, and Master Eric Kovaleski all will be in attendance, learn from the best! 

Legends of Martial Arts Seminar in PA, @ https://www.facebook.com/LegendsOfTheMartialArtHallOfFame

Metal Hurlant Chronicles "The Endomorphe"

Above Photo: (C) 2014 SyFy Michael Jai White, Silvio Simac, Darren Shahlavi , Michelle Lee

Although I rarely review TV shows, on Dan's Movie Report,  I must make an exception, for the fantastic beginning to Metal Hurlant Chronicles Season 2. The Endomorphe is a whirlwind of action and force. No wasted filler, just 22 minutes of seething energy from director Guillaume Lubrano , based on a comic by: Stéphane Levallois .

Beginning with last years Mortal Kombat, and her brutal and seductive portrayal of Mileena, Michelle Lee, has taken the big leap from stunts to acting. In Metal Hurlant her character is Gas, is a tough soldier destined to protect, the young boy who has powers that will eventually control the Endomorphes.

The star of the episode is none other than the amazing Michael Jai White. White excels here as the tough commander. strong, silent, and stoic. He exudes confidence, but he never wavers in his quest to protect a small boy destined to overcome the Edomorphes, beings with metal skeletal fused over flesh. When a tentacle leaves their body it implants a homing beacon, on a victim, leading them right to that person.

Martial Arts champion and actor Silvio Simac also graces the episode with his massive frame, and big personality. I thoroughly enjoy Silvio's work, he has several IMDB credits including an amazing fight with Scott Adkins in Undisputed 2. Simac portrays Sant, a tough no nonsense soldier, loyal and unwavering.

The episode opens with the Endomorphes watching a meteor shoot across the sky, suddenly the serene workers mentality changes to kill humans and overrun the population. The "lead' Endomorphe is a highly advanced being, a mix of predator and leader, he is controlling the charge to find the young boy.

This is a great 22 minute episode. Each 22 minute episode in Metal Hurlant Chronicles is a stand alone story, however, they are all intertwined by this common theme. Metal Hurlant Chronicles is a cool conceptual idea. Although it is derived with themes from other films and TV shows, the 22 minute 'movies; put the viewer, right in the action, kind of like a Poe short story.  The Endomorphe rates a 9 out of 10, excellent, with repeat watch-ability. The series is currently out in France, and has aired in the USA on SyFy.

Check out the recent Dan's Movie Report interview with actress Michelle Lee @ http://dansmoviereport.blogspot.com/2013/09/michelle-lee-interview-exclusive-mortal.html

Later in 2014, a full interview with Silvio Simac on Dan's Movie Report!

Check out the Official Facebook page of the fantastic series @ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Metal-Hurlant-Chronicles-tv-serie/142797009121218

Tigress Shark Movie Review

Shattering the myths of the nature of our most feared ocean predator Tigress Shark, transcends time. Tiger Sharks are amazing creatures, living in a tropical environment, most of my life, I cannot understand why we hunt, kill and try to destroy animals like this. We are not ocean beings, we are land mammals, however, as land mammals, who are naturally curious, we explore the greatest depths of the oceans, climb the highest peaks etc.

Over the past several years, sharks have come to the forefront of our existence , "Shark Week" etc, bad B movies haha!  Yes, the film Jaws started it in 1975. Recently, with the advent of high quality inexpensive underwater cams, everyone seems to want to document their bad ass side, by getting up close to sharks, more often than not provoking aggression.

In Shawn Heinrichs' masterful film, Tigress Shark, shot in the Bahamas, we witness a more serene and respectful approach. Brave underwater model Hannah Frasier, is painted a deep blue hue with markings so as not to startle or provoke the animals. The huge tiger sharks swim by, brush her, and yeah it is real, here is the behind the scenes shoot @ http://tearsofamermaid.com/splash.html

Hannah can hold her breath for two minutes, and was specifically in training for this amazing shoot. Never once do they say that this can be done, by anyone with a camera, jump in the water etc. Hannah knows the risks, but her movements are graceful, and she is as unobtrusive as possible. Crew are excellent, very informed, and knowledgeable. Nothing is haphazard, are there risks, of course, but the rewards are limitless.

Tigress Shark flows with seething energy. The film bursts with form as movement, flowing, at one and in tune with nature. Hannah is not only brave, but she has an serene, calm,  inner peace with with the massive ocean creatures. She has a feeling that she can co-exist with these huge Tiger Sharks, without intruding, flowing like water, fluid in space. I have to give this short film a perfect rating, because, it accomplishes what it sets out to do; inspire, awe, and motivate, and show respect and love for these amazing animals. Tigress Shark is a timeless classic, 10 out of 10.

The film is now on You Tube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Z25E-CrQA

Amazing new Pirates of The Caribbean Inspired Fan Film: Swashbuckling Swindlers!

From the creative minds of Peipei Yuan and Wesley Scarpias comes this wickedly cool take on Pirates of The Caribbean as seen through the minds of Woo Ping! Obviously PeiPei, knows her action, and she likes to fight, but what I loved most about this, is how carefully she follows the coordinating efforts in the style of this master of the action, kicks to the stomach,  random 360s, low sword hits with jump overs etc, ledge balancing, Master Ping, is payed a fitting tribute!

Swashbuckling Swindlers is a short in length, under two minutes, but, makes up for in fun timing, and enjoyable costuming. PeiPei is an up and coming action star, and later in 2014, watch for her exclusive interview only on Dan's Movie Report!

Watch the film on YouTube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vN4bHaLrUk

Subscribe to PeiPei's YouTube channel, cause she is amazing and cool! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNHwEH1Myd_C9DE9VaCGs5Q

Check out her new bad ass action reel @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av66dzJER18

Like her official Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/peppathehotsteppa