April 20, 2024
BYOB
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Flipping channels the other night, I was shocked to see that The Killer Inside Me premiered on Showtime this week. Typically Showtime airs something 12-18 months after it’s in theaters, far behind HBO, Cinemax, and Starz, where it’s mostly around 9 or 10 months, and even less in some cases. I’m glad because I recorded it and look forward to checking it out, but I was quite surprised.
Yeah, that seems unusually early. Hopefully it will be airing again, since I haven’t seen it yet. It’s one I was curious about, but not enough to rent before certain other things I still need to see.
It’s on tonight and at least once over the weekend if I remember correctly.
So this is a BYOB from the future (101811)? Cool. Anybody going to see BREAKING DAWN today?
Yancy, already saw it, and the pool scenes were fabulous!
I confess some fascination with the sort of hairless, obese ghost-mice the TSA’s scanning gizmos produce, like chilling soul autopsies. Are SF valley kingpins or avant-garde provocateurs already exploring the cinematic potential of this violating surveillance gaze?
I saw Skyline last night. Good fucking god was it awful. Not in a “so bad it is good” kind of way – just a “so bad it is more fun to get kidney punched” kind of way. I don’t think there was an original idea in the entire film. And I call bullshit that they were paying homage to sci-fi films of past. The ending? Easily the most laughably absurd ending of any film this year…or last year…or probably even next year.
JPK: It was like a little kid reenacting the coda of “District 9” with Bionicle and Barbie dolls, wasn’t it? And not in any sort of good way. I think the most laughable notion was that Eric Balfour’s brain is some sort of valuable organ.
Nick: I think watching a little kid playing with Bionicles and a Barbie would have been a more entertaining – and more intelligent – film.
SKYLINE POWER.
I actually liked it. Though I was totally annoyed that a pair of no-charisma TV actor show-killer douches like Eric Balfour and especially Donald “Urkel” Faison were pulling THAT level of tail. Plus the part where Faison’s mistress shows her feet was some Tarantino-level HOLY SHIT fetishism I can’t believe I was seeing. Holy HOTNESS.
Fun movie. And David Zayas cracked me up in the official “Annoying Guy Who’s Actually Right” role from NOTLD.
But after a year of movies where EVERY SINGLE ONE is filmed in rural hilljack Pennsylvania or Michigan, was almost MICHAEL MANN level to see LA skyscrapers and sunsets and actual buildings again, instead of cricket-chirping backwoods.
I think it’s no small coincidence that BAD TEACHER with Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake has been moved to open opoosite GREEN LANTERN shortly after GL’s trailer came out.
The Green Lantern trailer WAS pretty awful and I really like Ryan Reynolds – can we please give Blake Lively like ten more years before we allow her to start playing military officers???? I mean, COME ON…first Jessica Biel in The A Team and now this bullshit. Yeah, I get it studios – you want to put whispy blonde eye candy in to get the get the likes of LexG to show up to these movies, but this is getting out of hand.
No talk about the Cowboys & Aliens trailer? AWESOME – one of the best teasers in years, really has a cool old-school forboding look about it and yeah, it’s a kick to see James Bond and Indiana Jones team up to fight aliens. Daniel Craig could have a very big year, next year, with this and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – sad to say, but I have a feeling he’s never returning to play Bond, again….
LIVELY POWER. LOOK AT HER.
I don’t care if they cast Taylor Momsen in the role of a five-star general. I just want to look at hot young chicks.
If you wanna see a really cool sci-fi flick, rent MONSTERS on-demand. It’s really cool and very low budget so it has to (gasp!) focus on character! I was really surprised by it.
Don’t talk smack about the Star Sapphire, Geoff. You don’t mess with love! YOU DON’T MESS WITH LOVE!
Krillian, it will get killed, destroyed, and ripped apart by GL. Counter-programming rarely works and you better put some cash down that any film where Timberlake is the star is not going to get that much bank.
I really dug Monsters too.
Io, you seem to foeget the awesome power of Edison Force!
So it seems that I have! I will state that Timberlake’s highest grossing film should be Yogi Bear. Seriously, I have made freaking faith Yogi making bank.
Ok, Lex and IO – I dig both of you guys, but let’s get serious here…..female eye candy has its place.
But let’s use this casting logic and go back to 1988, Die Hard: cast Meg Ryan (then 27) in the Reginald Veljohnson role. Now I ask you, would that IMPROVE the movie? Any one?
Exactly!
has HP&TDHPT1 not opened there yet?
enjoyed it v. much. quite different in tone and pacing from the hogworts entries; i was very curious how kloves and yates would handle the adaptation, particularly the long stretch of angst-y wandering aimlessly in tents not knowing what to do, and it was surprisingly deft (tho admittedly slow – it should be interesting to hear how this goes down, people’s reactions); effective use of setting/locations for mood and scope, and the holy trinity acquitted themselves admirably with solid/fine perfs all around, particularly watson and grint. a few very dark moments as nazi-style totalitarianism looms menacingly over the land, some quite intense moments, and dashes of humour for relief – but not many. far more a pensive exercise in interpersonal drama w/out a great deal of action (or magic really, but weirdly that didn’t bother me), i was pleasantly surprised and engaged, lovely (my boy absolutely loved it, babbling about it for hours afterwards and this morning)
no attempt at the pretense of making pt 1 a stand-alone flick so i can’t wait to see how they tie it all up in pt. 2. i’d imagine rickman has some fine moments ahead of him, and lots more creepy bald flat-face slit-nose fiennes as the battle royale looms
It does not open here for another 3 hours on the east coast and your review, Leah, made the most sense of any I read anywhere. Seriously, the reviews for this movie are just all over the place and totally freaking annoying.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaways Entertainment Weekly
cover
http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/11/18/jake-gyllenhaal-anne-hathaway-cover/
oh really io? interesting. it is a bit of a departure, i’m curious what you’ll think since you’re obviously a potthead
Yeah, they seemingly are pissed at the movie for being PT. 1. It’s easily one of the weirdest things that I have ever come across in movie reviews in the longest time. I really cannot fathom how someone, who knows part 2 is coming out, gets so fucking pissed at part 1 for being a PART FUCKING ONE!
First Jessica Biel in A-Team? How about first Jessica Biel in Stealth.
Every rare once in a while, counter-programming works. See Speed Racer vs. What Happens in Vegas. Or they both make a bunch of money, like The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia.
Geoff, casting Meg Ryan in the Veljohnson role wouldn’t have done much, but she damn sure could/should have had the Bonnie Bedelia role, and the movie would look a lot more timeless.
As it stands, watching Die Hard in 2010, you’re wondering why buff, cool, A-list superstar pussyhound Bruce Willis, who TO THIS DAY dates models and porn stars and taxes 19-year-old ass, is going to all this trouble for some blowsy middle-aged Grandma in bad shoulder pads who SERIOUSLY looks like his MOTHER even in 1988.
If they made DIE HARD now, with Willis 22 years older, they’d give him a 28-36-year-old chick. Who ever paired him with Bonnie Bedelia?
And before leahnz gets on my case for ageism, sexism, I’ve had two separate WOMEN see DH1 for the first time in the last five years and opine aloud that Bedelia looked like Bruce’s mom, and they couldn’t get over that pairing.
Bzzzzzzzt….WRONG GUESS, LexG – would you like to try Double Jeopardy where the scores can REALLY change? 🙂
Could a chippy Meg Ryan have pulled off standing her ground against Hans Gruber after her boss gets shot OR successfully punched out William Atherton???
You’re making this too easy – casting for eye-candy just does not always work, man.
Bonnie is sexy and tough and terrific actress in DIE HARD.
yeah, bonnie bedelia is PERFECT casting in die hard because she’s a bit of a ‘broad’ but also a ‘lady’; she’s a woman you might look at her and bruce and conditioned by the patriarchal paradigm think she’s not bruce’s’ ‘type’ because she’s actually THE SAME AGE and not a vacuous post-teen glamour-puss, but that’s precisely WHY she’s believable and works in the part, because you watch her and bruce and the’re like one of those married couples and at first you think, what does this buttoned up professional woman who looks like she graduated from vassar see in this working-class, smart-ass cop? and you look at bruce and you think, what does he see in this woman who appears to have come from the other side of the tracks to some extent, a bit conservative and ‘plain’? but then you see how they work together and you realise she has sass and spunk and he can be tender and caring and realises he would do ANYTHING for her, and you know couples exactly like that (or i do anyway), sorta chalk and cheese but at the end of the day they love each other and fancy the hell out of each other even as they drive each other crazy, their differences are what spices it up and makes it interesting and exciting; in proper relationships the attraction of looks alone lasts about 5 minutes and then there has to be something more to make it real. plus, THEY ARE SEPARATED in the story so there’s obviously been conflict w/out resolution. bruce and bonnie are perfect. so there. (and if that makes no sense take it up with smirnoff as the makers of premixed pomegranate martinis; i usually pooh-pooh premix but well done smirnoff. and this post may prove i’ve seen die hard one too many times for my own good)
(“I’ve had two separate WOMEN see DH1 for the first time in the last five years and opine aloud that Bedelia looked like Bruce’s mom, and they couldn’t’t get over that pairing”)
yeah, right. pfft.
re: harry potter, the more i think about it, it’s amazing how much heavy lifting watson and radcliff have to do in part 1 and how entrusted they were by the film-makers to carry that tremendous load, harry and hermione’s deep and abiding friendship is so pivotal and crucial and CENTRAL to the story, and i think the kids genuinely pull it off with the benefit of having grown up together as people and actors, i believed it so good on them.
(and who gets ‘pissed-off’ about it being part 1, did they not know it was a two-parter or see the one-sheet that says “part 1” before walking in? grumpy bastards. if you can’t handle that it’s in two parts then don’t go watch it for fuck’s sake. i for one am glad they didn’t condense it all down into oblivion and extract all the intimacy and angst, so far the adaptation feels quite honest and true)
She’s actually not THE SAME AGE as Willis.
She’s seven or eight years older. Which was as odd then as it is now.
oh boo hoo so she’s a bit older and not 10, who fucking cares. some men like older women.
oops, i meant 19 not 10
LexG, I hate to tell you this and it might seeme directed at you, but it’s not – whatever predilection Willis has had for young chippies, dude has been premature bald since his mid-’30’s and has often been cast with women his age or older. The shallowness works both ways im Hollywood, you know.
If you had cast him against a Meg Ryan back in the late ’80’s or early ’90’s, he could have easily passed for her father or maybe her younger uncle. Heck, I can remember a few years later they put him against Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her – it took a marginal amount of aging makeup (not that much) to pair him up with either of them.
Sorry, have not seen the case made otherwise: if you like good action movies or comedies – real “guy” movies – cast REAL MEN and sometimes REAL WOMEN in the authority roles; otherwise, it does not work. Rosario Dawson is a hottie, no doubt; but she’s in her mid-’30’s and is supercool and tough – she WORKED as the officer in Unstoppable, but just barely.
Ok, I’ll give you an extreme example but sorry, I can easily see it happening today – let’s recast Stripes from 1980. Today’s Hollywood logic would have put Cheryl Ladd (then 29) in the Warren Oates role as Sargent Hulka. Now granted, 1980 Cheryl Ladd was much more of a hottie than Warren Oates, but how would that have worked out? I rest my case.
Some men like older women, but NO MEN like those shoulder pads or that 1988 hair Holly Genero was rocking.
Point being, folks in “our” age range (say, 35-45) like to think DIE HARD is some unassailable classic of the genre and “the best action movie ever made!”, but it’s starting to look a little long in the tooth, antiquated, and, sadly, cheesy, especially to new viewers.
That’s not to take ANYTHING away from its very particular 1988 lens-flared skyscraper awesomeness… But when I or you or we talk it up to anyone younger than us, with what constitutes action and state-of-the-art in 2010, believe me, we’re starting to sound like Leonard Maltin in 1982 telling me that Chevy, Danny and Murray had nothing on the fucking Bowery Boys. Twenty-two years might seem like a blink of an eye to “us” of the Gen X years, but to some kid today, DIE HARD is as old as IN LIKE FLINT was in 1988, and probably just as goofy and unrelatable.
And, think about this: When DIE HARD dropped, THE TOWERING INFERNO, which looked like a shitty 1974 Television Movie to me at age 15, was as recent then as THE ROCK is now. And yeah, whether you love or hate Bay or THE THE ROCK, you’d probably think THE ROCK looks like some fairly current, un-dated shit.
But I bet to some kid born in 1995, it’s already some epic howler, just like INFERNO was to me in ’88. So what do you think they experience watching Bonnie Bedelia and Dwayne T Robinson and Ellis snorting coke at his desk? Probably looks as old as HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL.
LexG – of course, Die Hard is DATED a bit. That was never in dispute, man – for christ sakes, they play RUN DMC over the opening credits! I got no problem with that and I’m sure some kids today will think it looks antiquated, doesn’t bother me at all.
I like being in mid ’30’s – sort of cool for my age, but never cool enough. I have two little girls and am newly divorced – there, I said it. Happened a few months ago, wasn’t my choice, but I have adapted. Heck, I have started dating recently, which has been kind of cool and easier than I would have thought – Chicago is a fun place to date and there are a suprising number of my women my age or a bit older, attractive, successful, mature, and seeimgly sensible. It’s kind of scary, but most men my age are still chasing after the young girls in their ’20’s going to bars in Wrigleyville every other night.
Completely off topic, but LexG – don’t knock it until you’ve tried it: women our age or even in their early ’40’s are awesome! Except my ex wife. 🙂 They age really well in the midwest unlike the west coast, where women older than 30 tan WAY too much and get work done. You just might dig Chicago, man – and a lot of these women are white, pretty, and never had kids. Your preference, of course.
Anyways….movies like Die Hard have aged, of course. Every cool action movie from the ’80’s has – Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon hairstyle has to be one of the most obvious datemarks that has graced the screen, but does not change the awesomeness of those movies.
My point was casting – Hollywood has ALWAYS cast women to men who are at least ten years younger. Cary Grant, any one? The dude was routinely paired with leading ladies that could routinely pass for his granddaughter. But it is a RECENT trend to start casting ingenues in authority roles – police chiefs, DA’s, military officers – and it just does NOT work.
You want to have Kim Basinger in her ‘early ’20’s paired up with gray and aging Sean Connery? Fine, go for it – she’s the “love interest” who he has to rescue. But have Mr. Bond reporting to an M played by Jessica Alba???? I don’t care how hot you think she is, it’s never going to work.
Casting women like Bonnie Bedelia in thankless wife roles was routine in the ’80s and early ’90s. See also Anne Archer. I’m sure there are more examples that I’m forgetting at the moment.
Bonnie was 40. Bruce was 33. And she was great in that movie.
DIE HARD might be visually dated, but the giggle factor of “I’m not the one that just got butt-fucked on national TV, Dwayne!” remains eternal.
Getting back to the very first post: Paul, are you sure it’s the new version of KILLER INSIDE ME and not just the original with Stacy Keach? Has the new one even hit DVD yet?
Opening two Cameron Diaz movies opposite each other is dumber than dumb.
I am totally and completely positive cadavra. I watched the first 10 minutes but it started really late so I recorded it and stopped watching. It was without a doubt Casey Affleck I was watching on my TV screen.
http://www.sho.com/site/movies/movie.do?seriesid=0&seasonid=0&episodeid=137067
Bonnie Bedelia rules. Stills does. Hating on her in Die Hard sort of goes against how she does not look seven years older than Willis in that movie, how beautiful she is in that movie, and how awesome her hair is in that movie. Seriously, I saw that film on a Sunday sneak preview the week before it came out and from there forward, I have always found Bedelia hot. Not finding her hot in that role is really perplexing to me.
That aside; HP and the Deathly Hallows pt. 1 is fucking tremendous. It once again is a progression in this series that makes me very happy as a fan of the series and just film in general. Few franchises ever get this better especially if they get to a seventh movie, and that this series is where it is now, is rather incredible.
Holy crap IO. You saw Die Hard at a sneak preview in 1988? Were you in the womb?
Hotness aside (and she is rather hot, despite the dated hair and shoulder pads): Bedelia in Die Hard was able project the authority needed to believe her in the role of wife / mother / corporate exec. Don’t forget she spends half the movie trying to undermine the terrorists, rather than as a passive victim. Maybe it’s all in the voice.
If they were casting the movie today, they’d pick an actress that you wouldn’t believe answering the phones in a large company, let alone working her way up it. It’s the difference between a woman and a girl, and it’s not just age.
Nah just a lee lad who had friends at a movie theatre and realized early on how fucking awesome Die Hard was going to be. I watched Moonlight at the time as well.
which movies coming out in Dec 2010 actually deserve to be
seen in theatres ? The Fighter ? The Tourist ? Tron 2 ?
the rest – over 20 films – seem good enough to be on dvd
^^ True Grit
Bruce Willis has never shied away from acting his age. My favorite aspect of “Armageddon” — he was cast opposite a female lead young enough to be his daughter. And he played — her father.
As for the goddess that is Bonnie Bedelia: My lust for her dates back to “Lovers and Other Strangers” and “Heart Like a Wheel.” As I’ve said before: i knew I was getting old when I started seeing movies in which the hero’s mother looked hot to me. When I saw “The Prince of Pennsylvania,” in which Bedelia played Keanu Reeves’ mother — oh, mama!
I remember being quite fond of Bedelia in Judicial Consent. She shows some skin in that one and looks fantastic. Watched it a lot in my teen years.
“NO MEN” — see Lex, you’re disqualified right there.
I eagerly await your next tired rant against the hair styles in STAR WARS and how it’s embarrassing today.
geoff: just to say sorry to hear about your recent split. good luck for the future to you and your wee girls.
Leydon’s heartfelt defense of Willis’s integrity for daring to play the FATHER of a certain hot new It Girl back in the day is nice and all, but wasn’t there a very persistent if unproven RUMOR (sheer tabloid gossip probably, but very frequently reported) that his closeness with said “daughter” on the set earned him a figurative rolling pin over the head from his then-wife?
My point isn’t really that Willis isn’t afraid to play his age or older, or to make himself look like shit, or to play opposite age-appropriate women. It’s that in real life you always know he’s taxing Brooke Burns or some porn star he banged on a webcast or some 19-year-old model.
In other words, he’s AWESOME.
As an addendum, I CANNOT CONCEIVE that on a board where the members kinda shrug off Kristen Stewart THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN OF ALL TIME with an “Eh whatever,” that we’re talking about how hot BONNIE BEDELIA is or was. Not even in Salem’s Lot. You guys are NUTS.
Actually I can’t believe BONNIE BEDELIA has gotten the MCN blog readership more compelled to post than 90% of the great movies that are out there, or the awesome interviews Poland’s been posting. Bonnie Bedelia????
Uh – you brought her up in another limp rant.
Re: Die Hard.
Do you know what it was originally supposed to be?
Commando 2
Are you sure Martin? I know the book had been around since the seventies (never read it and am sure it is very different from the finished film), but didn’t this concept bounce around for a few years and like First Blood was turned down by half of Hollywood before finally landing its star? One of the more famous names that admit to passing on it was Burt Reynolds and he would have killed it if he did it in the mid eighties but I can’t imagine him being offered a project of this magnitude in his Malone-Rent a Cop phase.
And Die Hard is STILL the greatest action movie ever made, hasn’t aged a day. Cut 45 seconds out and it is a perfect movie.
Those 45 are the terrible “not dead yet” reemergence of Goudinov only to be shot by Carl (Oh yeah, he got his confidence back and is able to kill again). Not only was it unneccesary but completly ruins the suspension of disbelief when you figure the EMTs must have thought “hey lets get that guy down hanging from the chains, no need to check his pulse, just throw him in a body bag ALONG WITH HIS MACHINE GUN and take him out, its certainly not a crime scene or anything.”
late to the party, but i just have to say…
MOONLIGHTING…
The show Bruce Willis was on in the 1980’s
Moonlight…
come on now.
On the subject of women and age: When Faye Dunaway played the ruthless young “child of television” in “Network” — she was already 35. Think anyone that, ahem, mature would be cast in the role in a “Network” remake?
Network remade today would have Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe, Gary Oldman, Liev Schreiber, and Ciaran Hinds in the Dunaway, Holden, Finch, Duvall and Beatty roles, respectively.
But to be fair, the captains of industry today are quite a bit younger. It would be within reason that someone under thirty would be the young turk at a network. But does that mean Dunaway was only forty when she did Mommy Dearest and hit the wall? That’s a tough age to be done after spending a decade at the top of your field.
On the flip side of the age arguement, Hollywood certainly wouldn’t cast two fifty year olds in a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
re: ‘die hard’, i think martin s is correct; from memory ‘nothing lasts forever’ – the thorp novel – was adapted as a mctiernan sequel to ‘commando’ and written to follow the storyline of the novel more faithfully, in which retired cop joe leland goes to visit his daughter in LA where she works for a big-time oil company in a flashy high-rise (i read the book ages ago, curious after seeing the movie), which is taken over by terrorists — but aaahnold bowed out for some reason and the script was rewritten so that the plot involved leland’s – aka john McC – wife instead of daughter, and it becomes a heist instead of a proper terrorist siege.
but many of the other main characters are taken directly from the book; al, dwayne t, karl, ellis, gruber (who is ‘tony’)… who else…
the novel is much darker in tone, such as:
–spoiler —
when leland kills gruber, he takes the daughter down with him and kills her, thus spurring leland on in his merciless killing spree, and the oil company is indeed guilty of what the terrorists accuse it of if i remember correctly, funding an illegal regime in chile or something like that, can’t remember the exact details. also re: the corny bit at the end of the movie where al kills karl and saves john/holly, that’s taken directly from the book, but in that story karl first shoots dwayne t while trying to kill leland (i think leland ducks behind dwayne and basically gets him killed), and leland is badly injured. the book ends ambiguously as he drifts into unconsciousness, unclear if it’s just temporary or he is in fact dying.
anyway
On a different note, I have to say after seeing the trailers for Cowboys and Aliens and the Warriors Way…I am much more excited about seeing the latter. Hope to get around to Good Bad and Weird this weekend. Can’t wait for True Grit though, it will be nice to have an honest to god western as opposed to all these genre mash-ups.
Hcat, Carl shooting that asshole with that piece of music is one of my favourite scenes in any film. Cutting that, taking away Carl’s moment, and that ending sucks.
io, you mean al. al shoots karl. and in the book, karl shoots dwayne t robinson before al shoots him
Leah, he played Carl on Family Matters (not sure if that ran down under), so I was just rolling with hcat on his name. Thanks for bringing up AL because yeah I totally forgot his name and when you gave spoilers for the book, I thought; “Why is she giving a spoiler warning for Die Hard?” Luckily I re-read that post and it made more sense to me :D!
The scene at the end with Al is a cheap shot to be sure, but everytime in the theater it brought the house down. And with Horner’s music from ALIENS, you have to go along.
Leah, thank you very much for the kind words – it’s really alright, the divorce was coming for years. I just did not realize it. And let’s just say that my ex did certain things, post-filing for divorce, that made it much easier for me to move on and start dating. It will take some time for my daugthers, but I will be seeing them very frequently and will live nearby – not trying to be naive about the whole thing, but you have to be hopeful.
Great to hear all of the Die Hard love – when you think about it, it really is the protypical action screenplay. Beatifully shot of course, but as written, there is not ONE boring character in the bunch…think about it: Ellis, Argyle, Powell, the Johnson agents, Karl, just a great assortment of characters.
Though Lex, I kind of agree with you – where did all of the Bonnie Bedelia love come from? If you’re talking about age-appropriate loves interests from the ’80’s, I always had more of a thing for Kate Capshaw, though she could never act for shit – I’m trying to think, was she ever truly convincing in one movie?
anyone who has a problem with bonnie b in die hard…
go watch the green lantern trailer. watch blake lively murder every line she delivers. and try to remember a time when actresses were cast as the female lead that didn’t look like they should be prepping for the SAT.
Amen, Anghus! Blake Lively should be doing films like Easy A (which I loved, by the way) for the next five years and leave more grown-up movies to the adults for a while….
aw hang in there geoff. and when you’ve had time to grieve your lost love and heal and the dust has settled, find some way to make it work with your ex so that your relationship is always civil for the sake of your girls, so they feel apart of a family in whatever form that takes, safe and secure with parents who put aside their grievances/settle them privately and put the family first. then you can always look yourself in the eye and be proud, knowing you personally did your very best for your kids (that’s my parenting advice anyway for what’s it’s worth, probably about 15 cents)
isn’t ‘family matters’ the urkel one? i don’t think i ever watched an actual episode but now i think about it al was the dad, had no idea his name was ‘carl’ tho, i get it
what is the statute of limitations on spoilers anyway? i once had this guy at a party get upset with me for giving away the end of ‘the omen’, donner’s one, bloody hell
re: bonnie b, i was wracking my brain trying to remember where i’d just seen her and it came to me: ‘salem’s lot’, which i watched for ‘shocktober’. david soul and bonnie, lovely
Leah’s info is pretty wild to read. I know it from the other side.
Darabont wrote Commando 2,(which I got years ago with Oliver Stone’s Conan), and it’s Matrix (Ahnuld), working, IIRC, as some kind of high-tech security guy when the building is taken over. I don’t remember if he’s already in the buidling or if they incorporated the Alyssa Milano daughter character, which would have fit from Leah’s description. A lot of similar beats to Die Hard.
Ahnuld pushed Commando 2 to the side and got Silver to focus on Hunter aka Predator.
Jeph Loeb, main force behind Smallville, Lost, Heroes and now Disney’s Marvel TV projects, originally wrote Commando. That guy is a machine.
i loved commando in the 80’s. it’s funny that die hard was an intended sequel at one point. because for me, die hard was the film that made most of the action films that came before seem mediocre.
die hard was a game changer. a massive leap in quality. you could debate how well it held up, but i would say die hard is the best action film of all time. if you can’t agree with that, you can probably agree ‘top 5’.
anyone want to play ‘name an action film better than die hard’. might be fun.
my ‘commando 2/die hard’ info is basically what i remember from an interview (or possibly interviews, i may have condensed them in my brain) w/mctiernan, in which he said he originally wouldn’t do the movie as adapted because it was too dark and sinister or something to that effect (as the novel certainly is; i think he also said he never actually read ‘nothing last forever’ at one point), arnold had passed on the project so it was agreed to rewrite the script with a lighter tone w/the protag as a more relatable ‘ordinary joe’ rather than a gung-ho muscle-bound hero type, and make it into a heist movie rather than the original ‘nothing lasts forever’ concept of a proper terrorist siege.
(not sure that even conflicts with martin s’s version, which sounds like it could well be one of the earliest drafts before the re-working to suit mctiernan, something along those lines)
all-time best action movies? i’ll have to ruminate on that a bit, but ‘die hard’ is definitely up there as one of the last great classic ‘in camera’ action flicks produced before the cgi revolution began in earnest with T2.
Yeah that’s just how Blake Lively talks. You guys have a problem with her accent more than her acting.
wasn’t blake lively was in sisterhood of the pants? she was ok i guess
wow i totally spaced on picks for the top 5 action movies. that’s too hard. for pure, raw action badassery, i don’t know, maybe:
seven samurai
terminator/t2
die hard
mad max 2 (road warrior for northern hemis)
aliens
the matrix
shit that’s more than 5 and that leaves out so many classics. i can’t do it, i’m too indecisive