News flash: Uwe Boll is here to stay. According to his publicist, Bill Wanstrom, the prolific German director who recently challenged his critics to a boxing match (and won) is officially a landed immigrant. I’ll explain why this is a fantastic development for the Canadian production community.

I was apprised of Boll’s passport status recently while sitting on a couch in a downtown Toronto hotel room. I’d signed up for back-to-back screenings of a pair of his video game adaptations shot in Vancouver – the US$60-million In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Boll’s attempt at Lord of the Rings, and the inflammatory ‘satire’ Postal, which attempts to cram a commentary on virtually every strata of American society, budgeted at US$20 million.

One reason why more Boll is desirable is simple economics. Vancouver prodco Brightlight Pictures has acted as service partner on his last six films, dating back to House of the Dead (2003), and is on tap for several more.

An early trailer of Postal hit YouTube and featured an opening scene of two Al-Qaeda pilots arguing over how many virgins they’ve been promised, prompting a quick call to bin Laden to confirm, before heading straight for a skyscraper. An outraged New York Post labelled Boll a pariah, and, sight unseen, the movie – which as a game is banned in 12 countries – ‘a towering insult.’

Unfortunately, Wanstrom is having trouble figuring out the connection between the DVD player and a cheap TV, which it turns out has no video input. While we wait for the TV to be replaced by an identical one with video inputs, he reveals that critics from the New York Times and the Post saw the full version of Postal on his recent junket to New York. He adds eagerly that the Post wants to screen the film for 9/11 survivors.

Wanstrom is traveling town-to-town somewhat like Robert Preston in The Music Man, with a suitcase full of Boll movies (the other is the $10-million horror film Seed, about a serial killer who defies electrocution and burial to wreak havoc on those who sentenced him), seeking press both good and bad, but above all, distributors.

Through a combination of necessity and invention, Boll works outside of the studio system, financing his movies through a combination of private investment and his own German film fund (which several years ago was pegged at US$47 million), and worrying about who will get them seen and sold after they’re made.

That Wanstrom is shilling his wares from a downtown Toronto hotel on Jarvis Street known for its proximity to local hookers is apt. Boll opted for real Romanian prostitutes in a scene with Meatloaf in last year’s box-office disaster BloodRayne ($3.6 million worldwide on a $25-million budget) because they were cheaper than actresses. They reportedly got 150 euros each for their services.

Technical difficulties surmounted, Dungeon Siege begins. Fifteen minutes into the two-hour running time (trimmed from three hours plus) Wanstrom asks me what I think. I respond that I’d like to reserve judgment until at least the half-hour mark – that is, if the disc stops skipping.

While we call down to replace the DVD player with a similar one that doesn’t skip, Wanstrom laments that it’s tough being the publicist for a man who stands in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and says he hates Hollywood. But Boll’s business model is the envy of every indie producer in Tinseltown. Wanstrom estimates a worldwide take of $120-million and counting for House of the Dead (2003), Boll’s first foray into video game adaptations, adding that half of this is pure profit, explaining why Boll can’t step away from the slot machine even as it spits out diminishing returns.

Boll has six more films in development – but none with a $60-million price tag like Dungeon Siege, which hits U.S. theaters in September through small distrib Freestyle. Not exactly a New Line kind of reach.

I’m no film critic, I tell Wanstrom when the credits come up. But if Siege is Boll’s shot at Lord of the Rings, he’s come up short. While the production value is competent, the Krug are the poor man’s Orc. Goblin-like creatures in the video game, they’re wrinkled Ninja Turtles in bad prosthetics circa 1990 in Boll’s film. Think the Putty Patrol from Power Rangers. I could go on, but that’s enough to ruin the medieval illusion for me.

Up next is Postal, which Boll boasted is ‘so politically incorrect and harsh, it’s like a mirror to American society.’ I appreciate its brevity and production values, but Wanstrom is waiting to see if I recoil at the sight of President Bush gamboling into the sunset with bin Laden under a mushroom cloud or run for the bathroom to purge myself when the sex and gunplay get nasty. Admittedly, I came close when former Kid in the Hall Dave Foley flashed some full frontal Johnson and then flipped his robe back and sat down on the toilet as if he was alone in his dressing room.

That aside – and little Verne Troyer (Mini Me in the Austin Powers films) being raped by a thousand monkeys (Wanstrom tells me that 2.5% of the profit from Seed will go to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) – Postal is Boll’s best video game adaptation yet.

Suffice it to say that being a foreigner who has obviously ingested a lot of reality shows and bad American late-night TV has provided grist for Boll’s mill. That he feels informed enough to show Americans ‘who they really are,’ and has untold millions to do it in and around Vancouver, shouldn’t be offensive to anyone familiar with the worst offered up from the Hollywood machine.

We say keep ’em coming, Uwe. Your movies may be as satisfying as a $9.95 all-you-can-eat buffet and just as healthy, but your money is as green as Hollywood’s.