Category: Movies

Inigo Montoya? No. Steve Guttenberg.

(Link courtesy, or direct all blame to, Exultate Justi.)

Because The Girl, The Gold Watch, and Everything had seventies hair.

The Sentinel: Okay, Kiefer Sutherland as a shouting government agent, we can accept, but President Sledge Hammer!? Not so much.

The split second shot (no pun intended) of David Rasche along with the words “the President” were enough to pitch my wife and I into gales of laughter during the preview.

James Frey, author of the fictional A Million Little Pieces, says:

“I think writing a book about this experience would be trying to capitalize on it in some way and that’s not something I want to do at all.”

This does not, however, rule out a movie a la Shattered Glass.

16 Blocks: Because The Gauntlet would have been much better without Sondra Locke.

So when I was watching my traditional Christmas movies last week (Die Hard and Lethal Weapon), I noticed that both movies starred two different actors (or an actor and an actress) in small roles:

Actor	Lethal Weapon	Die Hard
Mary Ellen Trainor	Dr. Stephanie Woods	Gail Wallens
Al Leong	Endo	Uli

Tonight, we watched Coming to America, and we got a similar effect, and oddly enough it was Die Hard II:

Actor	Coming to America	Die Hard 2	Die Hard with a Vengeance
John Amos	Cleo McDowell	Major Grant
Vondie Curtis-Hall	Basketball Game Vendor	Miller
Samuel L. Jackson	Hold-Up Man		Zeus Carver

Okay, Samuel L. Jackson is bonus credit, but isn’t it weird how the Die Hard series is the touchstone in this? Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Insert Die Hard, and you immediately knock off two degrees.

I reckon it’s because producers and directors prefer to work with known quantities for their projects (Joel Silver, for example, was behind Lethal Weapon and Die Hard), but it’s still amusing and impressive to identify groups of actors who appear in several movies that are not sequels of each other.

Gentle reader, I invite you to do the same. Drop a couple of your own eureka moments in the comments, or post such on your Web site. Or, I guess, you can bother me with the list of the obvious when you see them. I mean, crikey, I know Clint Eastwood used a bunch of cowboy actors from his films in Every Which Way But Loose. Show some originality!

Originally posted Christmas Eve 2003:

1. Die Hard
2. Lethal Weapon
3. Die Hard 2
4. Gremlins
5. Invasion USA

James Bond writer ‘reinvents’ spy:

James Bond is to be given a new image as a younger character with no gadgets, a writer on the next film has told trade paper the Hollywood Reporter.

Paul Haggis, who is working on the script for Casino Royale, said: “It’s going to be good.

“We’re trying to reinvent Bond. He’s 28 – no Q, no gadgets.”

Just like the time they made the movie James Bond into a modern 80s man. Or so I’ve heard; I’ve never actually seen a Dalton James Bond movie, but it took a return to the old form and to Pierce Brosnan to keep the franchise going for another decade or so.

This writer and the studios are willing to sacrifice the traditional Bond fan for a young, edgy audience that might not be there anyway. Like other entertainment businesses, such as sports teams, who might underestimate the traditional appeal of a franchise and the effects of altering/moving it.

‘Transporter’ carries holiday weekend.

Did you know that the Transporter drives an Audi? I do, and I’ve never seen either movie; I did, however, see the trailer for Transporter 2 and noted that the Audi logo on the grill of the car was visible no fewer than 9 times in the two minute trailer.

Angelina Jolie Grabs Monster-Mom Role, Teams with De Niro:

Finally, an Angelina Jolie movie her kids can watch. Jolie has signed on to star in a big-screen adaptation of the epic English poem “Beowulf” to be directed by Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”).

The film, like Zemeckis’ previous movie, “The Polar Express,” will use performance-capture technology to transform live acting into computer animation, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The story of the Scandinavian hero of the sixth century who slays a beast will star Ray Winstone (“Sexy Beast”) as Beowulf, who saves the Danes from Grendel the monster, portrayed by the always creepy Crispin Glover (“Willard,” “Charlie’s Angels”).

Jolie, who played Colin Farrell’s youngish mother in “Alexander,” will again portray a maternal character in the film, taking on the role of Grendel’s mom.

Fortunately, with Zemeckis at the head, it’s unlikely that Grendel will be an allegory for the imperialistic American hegemon and Angelina Jolie will channel Cindy Sheehan, but one never can tell with Hollywood….

I’ve made that assertion before, but Junkyard Blog lists some coming attractions. Friends and countrymen, I ask: are you the target audience for these?

I think not.

Perhaps it’s time for an alternate movie industry to emerge in the midwest, built on new video technology, new Internet distribution, and actors who’d work for points and not millions of dollars up front.

Last week, Land of the Dead exemplified something bad about Republicans. Now, Joe Williams explains how War of the Worlds symbolizes 9/11:

It’s a thrilling ride, but even those viewers who aren’t troubled that the most expensive film ever made is a parable of American victimhood may grow weary of the family’s close-call heroics.

There you have it, you crude reader of this blog. 9/11 is a parable of American victimhood, not a trespass to which America responded. If you’re reading this blog, you wouldn’t be troubled to equate something with 9/11, although victimhood would be another matter. But you’re not a cognac-swilling intellectual paid to write criticism of cinema in a dwindling major paper in a diminishing city in the middle America.

I didn’t catch his review, gentle reader, of Herbie Fully Loaded, but I surmise it was a parable of environmentally-conscious and fuel-efficient small cars fighting pluckily against the Republican Big Oil machine.

Muppets Statler, Waldorf review movies: Curmudgeonly commentators on Movies.com

From a review of Land of the Dead:

Then again, maybe you’re one of those people who are incapable of running. In director George Romero’s parallel universe, “walkers” are the living dead, the zombies who are slowly invading Pittsburgh. They’ve been doing it since 1968, biting and converting one victim at a time. As the zombies have become increasingly resourceful in tracking human prey, they’ve also been increasingly potent symbols of the conformity and consumerism that Romero sees as sucking the life out of America.

The fourth installment in the series (not counting the recent remake of “Dawn of the Dead”) is his most unmistakably symbolic movie yet, a savage indictment of the bunker mentality that has zombified the United States in the age of terror.

In the Nixon years, it was conformity and consumerism. In the George W. Bush years, it’s the bunker mentality. Undoubtedly, for most of the Clinton years, they represented the restrictive legislators and their government protection limitation. One wonders what the zombies represented between 1992 and 1994. Probably the undead menace of “Republican Democracy” that could erupt at any time and did.

UPDATE: In a later review by the same “critic,” War of the Worlds becomes a symbol of Republicans run amok, too.

I’m glad I am neither a politician nor a celebrity flogging a product. Regardless of what you think of this blog’s quality, gentle reader, it vapidousity falls below the common watermark of truly inspired.

For example, Jane Seymour on filming her first topless scene at 54:

“But I wanted to appeal to this generation. The script was the funniest thing I’d ever read. I thought the topless scene in particular was the funniest moment in the whole movie. Despite my anxiety I recognised this to be a great role.”

Inadvertent condescension to this generation and a skewed sense of humor that finds Owen Wilson tearing the shirt and bra off of Jane Seymour the funniest moment in a movie in which Owen Wilson appears?

Ew.

UPDATE: Double ew.