Archive for the ‘Bruce’ Category

Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars and Last Man Standing

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

YOJIMBO
and
FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
and – why the hell not -
LAST MAN STANDING

I’ve been doing alot of themed movie-watching lately and I don’t want that to grow stale, so I decided to mix things up a little. Three movies starring my favorite badasses, but from different years and different countries. Just a real variety of material here. YOJIMBO is about this bad motherfucker who wanders into a small town torn apart by two warring gangs, and he goes back and forth working for them, plays them against each other, rescues a woman from them then gets beaten up real bad but escapes and hides out and then tricks them some more and also I forgot to mention there’s alot of good jokes about the town coffin maker getting business from his activities. FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, on the other hand, is about this bad motherfucker who wa– hey, wait a minute!

Nah, I’m just fucking with you. Actually I thought it would be a good experiment to watch YOJIMBO and its two remakes all in the same day. See what happens. This is kind of a miracle of badass cinema we have right here. Three of the greatest badass icons – Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis – all starring in the same story. Plus you got the directors: Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, and Walter Hill ain’t in their league but he’s no slouch either.

You know, I’ve seen YOJIMBO before and I liked it, but it wasn’t until watching it this time that I really realized what was right in front of my nose: this is WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE MOST BADASS MOVIES OF ALL TIME (or WADOOTMBMOAT). And definitely one of the most badass characters. I mean I always think of Clint Eastwood as the very top of the badass totem pole, but you gotta take into account that the role that started that persona was based on Mifune in this movie. So he’s the grandaddy of it all. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Bruce, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller, Western | 8 Comments »

Live Free or Die Hard

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007

“No one has that power. There is a much more powerful guy in Hollywood, and his name is Rupert Murdoch. It’s his corporation. I only work there.” –Bruce Willis to Vanity Fair, on not being able to do an R-rated DIE HARD

“This city is like a big CHICKEN, waiting to get PLUCKED.” –SCARFACE, edited for TV version

Fellas–

DIE HARD, the motion picture, characters and their likenesses, are the copyrighted intellectual property of the Twentieth Century Fox Corporation. To them DIE HARD is a franchise, a license, a property, a brand, a tentpole, a consumer product, an opportunity for cross promotion with Arby’s and whichever candy bar it was. To them DIE HARD is a dollar amount for an opening weekend, a domestic gross balanced against a marketing budget. But to the rest of the world, to the people with beating hearts, DIE HARD is something more.

There’s alot of ways you can interpret those two words. I used to think it had something to do with the saying “old habits die hard.” But it sounds more like a command, like it’s telling you to DIE HARD. If you believe in something, die standing up, die with your boots on. Or in this case with your shoes off. Die hard.

I never really thought of it as a noun, like “John McClane is such a die hard,” but that might make the most sense. If you look up “die hard” on dictionary.com (this new one’s about computers so why not) it tells you it’s “a person who vigorously maintains or defends a seemingly hopeless position, outdated attitude, lost cause, or the like.” Obviously that describes McClane to a T. He’s a die hard who dies hard. (more…)

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6/25/07

Monday, June 25th, 2007

I also reviewed the new DVD of WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?, a good ‘76 Spanish horror movie.

For those who have been asking, yes I will be reviewing DIE HARD WITHOUT AS MUCH OF A VENGEANCE THIS TIME, THINK OF THE CHILREN. I expect to have a review up on The Ain’t It Cool News opening day (Wednesday). Keep in mind, I am hoping against hope that I will somehow enjoy this movie, but then if I write an at all positive review alot of people will probaly be disappointed in me. So basically it is a lose-lose scenario. So either way, please be nice to an old DIE HARD fan in this trying time.

By the way, I went back and re-read my piece comparing DIE HARD to the book, and found this passage which seems kind of ironic now:

“McTiernan doesn’t seem to know it, but it’s still a pretty brutal movie. The guy is running around barefoot on broken glass, covered in blood. That scene where he swings shirtless and barefoot through a broken window, then gets dragged across the floor… and what about that fight with Karl, he’s pounding on him and grunting like an animal, says “Motherfucker! I’m gonna kill you! Then I’m gonna fuck’n cook ya! Then I’m gonna fuck’n eat ya!” and then he wraps a chain around his neck and tosses him off the stairs… I mean, shit. This is not the watered down PG-13 action movie bullshit we got today.”

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5/11/07

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Since the fury of my DIE HARD love magically summoned Bruce to The Ain’t It Cool News, they are too busy dealing with that to post my review for a little documentary coming out today, BRUCE WILLIS’S THE HIP HOP PROJECT by Bruce Willis. So you will have to read it here instead.

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The Hip Hop Project

Friday, May 11th, 2007

Here’s a little documentary not many of you will probaly bother to see, but I just saw it and I have to vouch for it. I know THE HIP HOP PROJECT sounds like a working title they never bothered to change, but it’s actually the name of the youth outreach program documented in the movie. This is the story of a guy in his 20s named Chris “Kazi” Rolle who finds some troubled teenagers with a talent for rapping and helps them record an album. It’s not only his way of keeping them off the streets, or giving them a voice for self expression, or even getting into their lives to be a mentor and a positive influence. It’s all of those things, but it seems like it’s also a form of redemption and self discovery for him, having been an orphan and a homeless criminal and still not having come to terms with where he came from.

Kazi lures these kids in with the promise of recording, and then he tells them the catch: you can’t talk about “money, hoes and clothes.” He wants them to talk about their lives, their problems, try to touch somebody emotionally, maybe change somebody’s life. We do see a scene of some rappers battling, insulting each other to each other’s faces, and it’s very entertaining. But Kazi is trying to get at something more sincere and from the heart. As an exercise he asks them to tell about something that has happened to them in their lives. This leads to an amazing scene where one of the kids rhymes (and I’m not clear whether he has had time to write this or if he is improvising) about his father. While he’s rhyming he starts to cry, his voice quivers, tears start pouring out. But he keeps going. I heard DMX gets tears on stage sometimes but I don’t know if he rhymes while crying. I never seen anything like it.

So then the movie starts to go into the lives of these kids. The girl whose dad got locked up 3 weeks before the movie started, the guy whose mom dies during the 4 years of the project and his landlord uses it as an excuse to evict him. You can see how having the album and the influence of Kazi keeps them going. The lyrics they write about their troubles sometimes sound a little forced, a little too much like an assignment, but sometimes they’re really good. The most powerful is probaly the song by Princess about the pain and guilt she feels over having had an abortion. That’s one topic I haven’t seen Little Jon or 50 Cents delve into yet. (more…)

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5/9/07

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

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5/3/07

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

LIVE FREE OR DIE WITH SOME CONTENT THAT MIGHT BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR CHILDREN BUT NOT RESTRICTED? Can you believe they are thinking of releasing the new John McClane as a god damn children’s PG-13? As soon as Ed Wilson tipped me off to this bullshit I wrote an angry rant for The Ain’t It Cool. Judging by all the emails I got and the talkback (my biggest since CHAOS) I’m not the only one that finds this blasphemous.

As a protest I will not be using the word ‘hard’ in conjunction with this movie until I have been offered evidence of an R-rating or higher.

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The pansy-assing of the 4th DIE FLACCID movie

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

A reader named Ed Wilson tipped me off to the following outrageous lunacy:

“In June’s VANITY FAIR, it states that Bruce Willis was initially  disappointed that his fourth DIE HARD film will likely be cut to get a PG-13 rating rather than an R. ‘I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first one, which I always thought was the only really good one.’ And he’s not happy about it. ‘That’s a studio decision that is becoming more and more common, because they’re trying to reach a broader audience. It seems almost a courageous move to give a picture an R rating these days. But we still made a pretty hardcore, smashmouth film.’”

Dearest 19th Century Fox:

Howdy. Name’s Vern, nice to meet you. I am writing to ask you one question. WHAT IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU JOKERS TRYING TO PULL?

Before you blow me off to go bathe in that champagne/money/panda blood mixture you have in your hot tub, please be aware that I am not speaking as a member of the internet community, or associate of the nerd community. I think ALL communites agree with me on this, except maybe the Amish, who don’t watch movies and are therefore neutral. I am speaking as an American, and as a citizen of the world. You can’t fucking do that to DIE HARD.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the movie was called LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. But from what Vanity Fair is saying here, it sounds more like LIVE FREE OR DIE– WELL, LET’S NOT DIE TOO HARD, THERE ARE CHILDREN PRESENT. Which, in my opinion, is not as good of a title.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. If we make a horrible movie for babies and make it PG-13, it will make lots of money. The movies that make money these days are worthless garbage intentionally designed to be of a low quality, intelligence and entertainment value, in order to lower standards, make people stupider, destroy our culture and make short-term, tainted money for our evil corporation. Okay, fair enough. You know your business, I can’t argue with your money piles. (more…)

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Grindhouse

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

PLANET TERROR and DEATH PROOF

PREAMBLE

Here in the US these two movies were designed and released as a double feature with trailers for fictional movies in between. They were released under one unifying name that starts with a ‘G’ that is a word used to describe the shitty theaters that used to churn out sleazy horror, sexploitation, kung fu and blaxploitation movies back in the day.

I am not going to be using the g-word in this review, because I am sick and fucking tired of hearing it. It’s a perfectly legitimate title for this concept, but here is the problem. Mr. Tarantino is a huge fan and expert on these types of movies, he is the human IMDb judging from some of those interviews. So I don’t mind seeing him talk about it in every article about KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and then KILL BILL VOLUME 2 and then when they announced this g-word movie, and then while he was filming it and now to promote its release. Tarantino can use the g-word all he wants, he has earned it. So I don’t mind him and the trailers for his movie trying to explain to the kids what the g-word means.

That’s him, that’s his thing. But it makes me want to jump out a window to read the guy from the local newspaper or the dumbed down weekly entertainment magazine deciding that he too has to explain to you what it is. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Bruce, Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 2 Comments »

3/19/07

Monday, March 19th, 2007

It’s a little late for St. Patrick’s Day, so I’m celebrating Bruce’s birthday with a review of the entire LEPRECHAUN series. Unless you count parts 2 and 3, I didn’t watch those. Also, over on The Screengrab I wrote a thing about those fucks remaking another John Carpenter picture, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.

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