I can’t believe Hugh Jackman won’t be in the Oscars next year. He gave such a great performance with his musical number at the 2009 Oscars. Maybe he is just too busy making movies to give awards for them or host these kind of ceremonies.
Here are the ten best action movies that got our adrenaline pumping and the dynamite exploding.
10. Robocop: A cop is transformed after he is brutally murdered execution style by a notorious gang leader. He becomes a super crime fighter, a Robo Cop who is mostly machine with some remnants of his human memory/life. This film had lots of innovative fight scenes with robots, when that was the huge craze and robots were just becoming known in the late 80’s. Interestingly, Darren Aronofsky has been hired to film the remake, and Aronofsky is a brilliant director (The Fountain, The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream).
9. Commando: One of Arnold’s earlier films in the 80’s, the title speaks for itself. Schwarzenegger is on a mission to get back his kidnapped daughter, and not even an army will stand in his way. “You know when I said I’d kill you last… I lied.” This is Arnold doing what he does best, shooting machine guns and blowing stuff up. A movie where you don’t have to think.
8. Mission Impossible: Another great film with suspense and excitement. The Mission Impossible team is stealthy and sneaky. Suspended above lasers detection and holding on for dear life as an elevator rockets towards the ceiling. This message will self destruct in five seconds.
7. Rocky: You gotta love this one, “Yo Adrian!”. Rocky Balboa is the prototypical Philly Boxer, he don’t know much, but he can fight. This series was full of excitement except for Rocky V, that one sucked. But with Rocky heads up against fighters like Apollo, Clubber, and Drago, there is tons of boxing action!
6. The Transporter: Fast cars, fast fighting, and hot women. What could be better? Not much, “The Transporter” has it all and like to show off. The car chase scenes and fight choreography are to be admired. The plot is intriguing too, the women, are the package to be delivered.
5. Rambo: An ex special forces guy who can take out an entire police department with a rock and some sharp sticks. The Rambo series show us that with enough will power and makeshift technology, one man can be “an army of one”. One thing you don’t want to do is get on Rambo’s bad side. And yes they’ve made too many in the series, Stallone obviously never says die.
4. Aliens: The first and second and resurrection films in this series were well done. The Aliens depicted in these films are not to be messed with. They are scary looking and will haunt your dreams. Only flamethrowers and a helluva lot of ammunition will take them down. And even then after you shoo them, there could be acid splash back at you. Only Ripley seems to know how to take them down, and maybe that’s because she is carrying one of them inside her, and they don’t want to kill their own. These Aliens are like worker ants only much bigger and much deadlier. The hierarchy is the same though.
3. Predator: How do you kill what you can’t see? Arnold thinks “if it bleeds we can kill it”. Easier said than done as the Predator lives for the hunt and wants humans for trophies. His technology is vastly superior to the measly humans, but lucky for them he will fight on their level for “honor”. This is the only weakness that allow Arnold to have a sporting chance.
2. Terminator: First Schwarzenegger plays a cyborg from the future that comes to kill Sarah Connor, then in T2 he plays one that comes to save Jon Connor to fight for the resistance against Sky Net. I don’t know why but I always think that this apocalyptic scenario is always possible with our technology available. We all await to see whether Terminator: Salvation will be a blockbuster or a failure.
1. Die Hard: “yippy ka yay” This film has action ingrained in its cellophane. Most definitely the best action film of all time. An NYPD cop is trapped in Nakatomi plaza with a bunch of terrorist who hold his wife’s co workers hostage at during an office party. John McClane slips away when they seize control, and manages to undermine and kill off the terrorist one by one. John McTiernan directed this film along with the Predator film, and does an impeccable job.
British actress Natasha Richardson was recently involved in a skiing accident. She was taking lessons at the famed Mont Tremblant ski resort located in Montreal when she suffered a head injury after falling. She was rushed to the hospital and is in critical condition. Her husband, Liam Neeson stopped work on his upcoming film “Chloe” to head straight for Montreal. Our thoughts and prayers are with Natasha and her family.
The Boondock Saints was one of the greatest cult classics of the last century. From the very beginning it had been plagued with setbacks and complications that eventually led to the film being released straight to DVD. The film has been arguably the most successful cult film, winning over millions of fans and becoming highly popular in a sense that it managed to become part of an almost mainstream type of pop culture for many teenagers and remains so to this day.
Director Troy Duffer wrote the screenplay after witnessing a horrid scene: he came home to find that a woman had died in a drug dealer’s room across the hall from his apartment. The film would be plagued itself with bad luck. After impressing Miramax with his script, Harvey Weinstein had decided to give it a $15 million budget. Everything seemed on track for a major launch at the theaters.
Then Duffy happened. After repeated arguments with Duffy over casting, Miramax dropped the project. Due to these troubles, Duffy was forced to find a smaller independent company to finance the film, with a smaller budget and not the cast originally hoped for. Nonetheless, the film he made would become a blockbuster sensation, but not in the way anticipated, and in more ways than one.
The release of Boondock Saints in theaters in 1999 was, according to Duffy, unfortunately timed. Due to the Columbine High School shootings recently occurring, the film was reduced and limited to only five screens in the entire United States, and even then, only for one week. With help from Blockbuster Video, who had discovered it to be widely popular in their stores, Troy Duffy secured financing to re-release the film in 2006. Due to word-of-mouth, Boondock Saints had gained a cult following, which some critics might argue is undeserved. The other die-hard fans have proven it to be a success despite the monumental problems it’s release faced.
With this given trend of bad luck, especially in the development and production of the film, when Duffy announced a sequel to have financial backing in 2002, many would be right to be skeptical. The release date of 2005 never came to be, and Duffy made clear later on this happened due to litigation with the company in control of the film rights. 20th Century Fox would eventually step in and agree to back the production of the sequel. It finally seems that for now, the troubles for Duffy and the crew may now be over. The film has been marked as in post-production, and Duffy states possible release by the end of the year.
You thought a 300 sequel was impossible, right? All the 300 Spartans are dead beside the story teller, how can they live to fight another day?
Well they can’t. This sequel takes place after the Battle of Thermopylae right before the Battle of Plataea and into the epic battle of course. This film might possibly come out in 2010 and they may start filming towards the end of this year if we’re lucky. Zach Snyder will direct this one, so we are pretty sure it will have mind blowing cinematography and story telling. Frank Miller is currently working on the graphic novel that will inspire the film to greatness.
While the Battle of Plataea is not quite as epic as Thermopylae as far as odds are concerned, it is still a huge battle in it’s own right. You know with Frank Miller’s added creativity it will be more stylized than the actual battle. The only thing is they will need a big star to lead the Spartan army. Casting has not started yet but I’m sure they’ll do a good job like on the last film.
The odds were still astonishing at 3:1 in favor of the Persians. The Persian’s army numbered around 300,000 whereas the Spartan/Greek army totaled around 100,000. “A paltry 3 to 1″ as the narrator said in the original film.
There are all sorts of great moments that would be dramatic enough for the film. Like when a large portion of the Persian army was trapped in their camp, and slaughtered. There is also the pseudo retreat by the Greeks that enabled the Persians to charge in and meet their doom against the reformed Greco/Spartan lines.
There is also the gathering of the Greeks and Spartans uniting together against a foreign threat. We saw the army that was formed in “300″ but we didn’t see the call to arms and political bantering to gain support against Xerxes army.
This film will do exceedingly well in theaters. It seems everyone really wanted to see what would take place in the next battle. Frank Miller and Zach Snyder’s work has been doing exceedingly well lately. Snyder directed Watchmen which made 55 million and his directing career is just getting started. Think once he masters the art how great he will be. If they didn’t want to make this film about the Battle of Plataea they could always make it about the Romans battling the Gauls with Julius Caesar or the Romans vs the Huns and Attila. Whatever route they end up taking, I’m sure it’ll be a great one.
It should be no surprise that positive publicity can help determine the success of a business venture. Yet in no industry is it more critical than in the film industry. Recent movies have proven that often times, the trailers for movies can determine their successes more than the quality of the films themselves, except in the cases of complete bombs. One group of films based on Frank Millers’ novels has used trailers to amazing effect, drawing massive crowds. Hollywood better take note, or be left in the dust.
Take the recent release “Watchmen”. Before the movie even was released, many were prepared to call it the greatest film ever, even people who had never read the comic books. Regardless of the content, it is apparent that the hype was perhaps out of proportion to the film’s true quality, as ratings for the film began to fall in the preceding days, rather than rise. Nonetheless, the trailers served to bring crowds, which in turn helped “Watchmen” claim the top spot at the box office, which is sure to bring in more movie goers to see the popular film.
Another example is yet another Frank Miller based film “300″, which soared at the box office and managed to gain an eye-popping number of people to the theater who may have been unfamiliar with Frank Miller. Many who did not take a liking to Sin City, still showed up as the trailer was so impressive in portraying the ferocity and amazing artwork of the war film. The film is remarkable for it’s amazing box office earnings while lacking truly big name actors. The film overall impressed audiences, bringing back repeat watchers as well as earning it extremely positive mentions from fans, helping increase the buzz.
Regardless, it may have well been quite possible that “300″ could have gone relatively unnoticed at the box office had it not been for the amazing trailers. The “300″ trailers had gotten millions of views on YouTube and other sites, and it’s worth noting that is free advertising to millions of potential moviegoers. Without the great trailers, that would of never occurred.
Many great films had releases with only a small initial turnout or earnings. These cult classics failed to make any sort of splash. Donnie Darko being one great example that failed to make any significant earnings at the box office but went on to become widely popular with steady DVD sales. Others went straight to DVD and never managed to get the type of box office earnings they could have, such as “Equilibrium” and “The Boondock Saints”. Overall, a flashy trailer can do far more for a film than even the reputation of a big name actor or a massive marketing budget can do, as the Frank Miller films have shown.
We all know Joaquin Phoenix is a great film actor, his rapping career however, well let’s just say the only reason you would go to his concert is to see him, not his rapping.
When we first saw him on stage rapping, we thought “oh he’s just having some fun, doing something different”. But when he came out saying he was “quitting acting” to pursue his rap career, we thought he must be joking and this is crazy.
He even went on Letterman for an awkward appearance. Letterman razzed him as Phoenix basically said little to nothing. Phoenix even put gum on the Letterman table when Letterman said “how bout I come to your place and chew gum”. But at the end of the show Joaquin shook hands with Letterman and took off his glasses. So if he was really irritated with Letterman like he appeared why take off your glasses as a sign of respect? He seemed to pick up his mood when the interview was over. He went from depressed to happy in a second. That makes me think Letterman was in on it, or being a good sport. Usually on talk shows like that you go over what you are going to talk about with the interviewee that way the conversation goes smoothly so no one is caught off guard. Now Letterman may be able to roll with punches and ad lib, but he seemed to know something was going on and played along very well.
Another thing to add to the “staged” concept is that Casey Affleck a known director (Gone Baby, Gone) has been filming all along this Joaquin journey. This leads some to believe it will be a mockumentary of some sort akin to that of “Borat”. See the reaction you get from people when you drastically change careers, or the film could be about the comedy of the situation. Now, you definitely have enough material for an hour and a half movie. Especially if you add in Ben Stiller’s imitation of Joaquin with the beard and mannerisms.
If this whole thing was a stunt to get publicity for his next movie, he wouldn’t need someone to film it. Besides couldn’t you pay some Joe Smoh to film it instead of an in-demand director like Casey Affleck. That’s pretty nice of Affleck to film something like that just so Joaquin can have a video to remember his crazy rapping adventures.
Now Joaquin attacked a heckler at his most recent rap concert. He yelled back at the heckler “We have a (double-expletive) in the audience,” he said before jumping into the crowd. It was not immediately clear whether the two men exchanged any blows. This makes me think it was all a stunt to “act like a thug” and more material for his mockumentary. Especially since Affleck didn’t stop filming the whole event. Why wouldn’t he go help his friend in a fight I wonder? Maybe the heckler was also in on it. Course there would naturally be hecklers due to Phoenix’s lack of hip-hop talent.
I just don’t see how this mockumentary will actually be successful. In this day and age with youtube and mass media and blogs we’ve already seen or read about most of these events. So when the film comes out it will be so re-hashed it will be boring and repetitive. Unless the film makers make a really bizarre spin on the film like “how the media treats you if you go off in another direction in your career.” But that seems unlikely as no one will feel sorry for him (Phoenix), when he’s already made millions and we are in a Great Recession.
Set in a world similar to Sin City, Watchmen takes place in a cold dark world where evil is good, and good is evil. Even the heroes are not squeaky clean like Superman or Ironman. The Comedian is rough around the edges to say the least. He would do things most people would view as villain-esque. The closest comparison would be a philandering Punisher type hero.
Rorschach seems to be most peoples favorite. He sees things in black and white as his inkblots project this theme. The blots also serve to show his changing expressions. He has seen horrible things and is willing to do whatever it takes to serve vengeance to criminals.
Dr. Manhattan has had his atoms re-assembled by a scientific machine he was trapped in by accident. Now he is detached from humanity, but could be the one that could save them from nuclear annihilation. He has a love for the Silk Spectre II. But because of the disaster he can not give her the emotional satisfaction she needs. He is a lonely sort and only his superpowers make him interesting.
The Night Owl II can see in the dark and has a great invention named “Archie” that can fly and shoot fire out of it. He is one of the duller characters and a bit of a dork. The story seemed to revolve around him but only because the Silk Spectre II is his love interest. You start to sympathize with him a little towards the end, but not enough that he would be the favorite character.
Ozymandias is an unusual character as he is super intelligent. And not in a “gigantic brain” cheesey way. They say he can dodge a bullet he is so fast. He is always thinking ten steps ahead. With his brain power anything could be possible. A true mastermind and doesn’t have the physical weakness that you would think a brainiac would.
All these diverse heroes working together is a bit of an oddity. But that’s what makes Watchmen unique in it’s dark world and twisted scenarios. They are more human in their flaws and I think that’s what endures them so much to us. We can’t relate with the Bruce Wayne or Superman archetypes. But we understand emotional scarring that the Comedian, Silk Spectre II and Rorschach deal with. The people that they save are ungrateful and even riot to have masks removed. How like real life, the villains are idolized and the real heroes are villainized.
Firstly, it’s good to recognize that there would be no Star Wars without Lucas. That said, the idea that Lucas birthed has taken a life of it’s own, branching off franchises worth billions of dollars in gaming, memorabilia, TV shows, and many other areas of life. From Star Wars bedding to Star Wars t-shirts, the influence of the artwork that his mind created has inspired a generation.
Some may argue, to such a point that it is the generation who have now taken possession of the true idea of what is “Star Wars”. When Lucas decided to start directing the prequels, many fans rejoiced, only to later flee in horror at what was to take place.
First, it is worth nothing that Lucas did not direct much of the original Star Wars series. One might dare say he was relegated to the role of a screenplay writer with little much else. The producers had the ultimate say, and had definitely helped to take Star Wars in a much different direction than what Lucas had intended.
Not so, the second time around, and perhaps with devastating results. Star Wars had become Lucas’ playground for his imagination and whatever desires he wanted. His little daughter liked boy band N’sync, so Lucas thought he had the right to allow N’sync members to become Jedi in the film. Despite the often bad image given to executive producers as being “corporate fat cats”, had producers been still in charge of the Star Wars series’ direction, this type of insanity would have never come to pass.
So outraged were the fans that tens of thousands signed petitions to stop him. They succeeded in preventing what they viewed as an assault on the series by the creator himself. At the very least Justin Timberlake was not seen waving light sabers. But fans were in for a surprise of a different sort.
Whatever anyone may think of Jar Jar, even George Lucas himself conceded the massive damage done to the series by the two eyed and perhaps even mentally ill creature, by removing him from the next parts of the series after protests against his inclusion had swelled in size. A cut of the film without Jar Jar has been released by fans, and it seems notably improved from the original cut. The decision by Lucas may have had more to do with his family and his own desires than anything else. The presence of Jar Jar was severely reduced, to some fans relief, but for many the series had died the moment Jar Jar set foot on the screen.
Perhaps George Lucas has lost all touch with the fanbase. George once said at a luncheon that the Empire Strikes Back was the worst Star Wars, despite the fact that many if not most Star Wars fans consider it to be the greatest.
It seems like all we see in the movie industry is sequels and remakes. If that is not the case then it was a book or comic strip. Are there no original ideas left in this world? Saw 5, High School Musical 3? Rocky Balboa (6th one in the series). When do you draw the line or cut em off? It seems as long as the sequels keep making money, the producers will keep at it. I know it’s no big news that movies are all about money in Hollywood. But we as movie goers need to stop supporting this drivel.
Look at Japan, they have original concepts and amazing imaginations. They think outside the box and actually use their brains. They still care about cinema as an art form. Sure there are some exploitative animes and B films, but they don’t have as many as America does. “The Ring” came from Japan, and was a refreshing revamp to the horror saga. Their horror films get inside your head, and you think about them long after you leave the theater. Whereas American films you forget about the second you walk into the parking lot.
I just wonder how much repetitions Americans can possibly take? Rambo 15? Saw 20? Scarily enough, these seem like real possibilities. You could eventually see those movie posters and not be dreaming. They saw that “Watchmen” won’t have a sequel. Ahh, but they never said it wouldn’t have a prequel, gotcha! They could do a story about the original watchmen. The producers and marketers never quit thinking how they can milk a movie concept for all it’s worth. Why did they need to remake “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” the original can not be outdone.
I recently gained another perspective when I went into a book store. Yes, books, they’re those things with paper pages that you look at. First off, I noticed tons of these best sellers had been made into movies or were about to. Secondly, I noticed when I left the store someone said “I don’t really read books anymore” that pretty much sums up American culture. Nobody reads anymore. Movies are never as good as the books. We can never fully match the amount of imagination in our minds using a movie to portray it. I love movies myself, but I realize how much our culture has shifted away from books and the imagination. Losing creativity and imagination is never good for a society that wants to progress.
