Pop Culture for Fun

Action movies will always be popular because people like heroes. Heroes that walk away from explosions without flinching, dodge bullets, ignore serious injuries, do death defying stunts and witty one-liners along the way. The number one prerequisite of being an action movie character? Toughness (and the ability to generate suspension of disbelief). So let’s count down the most popular and toughest action movie characters.

10. Han Solo

A space smuggler with a lot of charm and a thing for princesses. Along the three original Star Wars movies, Mr. Solo(wittily played by Harrison Ford) escapes Death Stars, space worms and Imperial Destroyers in his hamburger shaped spacecraft, has a couple of shootouts with Storm Troopers, rescues Luke from a frozen death, and gets the girl in the end. Bonus points for a capable, memorable sidekick in Chewbacca (who wouldn’t like a Wookie as a partner?), less so for treacherous old friends (even though Lando eventually joined the rebels).
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Likely to end up frozen in carbonite.

9. Rocky Balboa

The ultimate boxer, the Italian Stallion (Stallone that is) comes out of nowhere and manages to last all 15 round with the champion, and defeats him in the rematch. Couple of movies later and he’s fighting Mr. T, the rock that was Ivan Drago (I honestly believe in an honest match between Stallone and Lundgren at their best would end up with Lundgren over Stallone beaten to a pulp) and his protege in a street match. The man gets a bonus for unorthodox training methods(punching meat in a slaughterhouse? check, using terrain and training in the snowy mountains? check) and stubbornness.
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Likely to come out of retirement at 80 due to brain damage.

8. John McClane

I honestly would’ve placed McClane(Bruce Willis is one of the ultimate action actors) higher, if not for the fact that he’s had a lot of luck over the years (right place, right time? check, arrogant villains? check, help from sidekicks? check). The character that started all the “Die Hard in a…” trend (of which Seagal took advantage to its fullest), his favorite type of villain is always intelligent and overconfident (preferably from Europe). He defeats a gang of bank robbers by himself (with a little help from a cop named Al), and jumps from an exploding building, stops terrorists who’ve taken over an airport, stops another high-profile robbery planned by the brother of his first villain, and finally takes down a hacker, while driving a car into a helicopter and escaping an F-16. Bonus points for witty deliveries and for the Yipee-kay-yay.
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Likely to stop ending up in dangerous situations (besides this guy, only Jack Bauer is more prone to unknowingly end up mixed up in something)

7. Indiana Jones

This one may be surprising, but there’s no putting down Indy(Harrison Ford’s second appearance on the list). Give him a whip, a fedora and a gun in a sword fight and he’s all set. Mostly gets in trouble over artifacts that almost never get to a museum of any sort. Defeats Nazis in Egypt, a religious cult in India, defeats the Nazis again and finds The Holy Grail (the one King Arthur and his knights couldn’t find), survives a nuclear explosion locked in a fridge, defeats the Russians and escapes alien wrath. Bonus points for having James Bond, I mean Sean Connery for a father.
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Likely to retire due to a phobia of snakes.

6. Ellen Ripley

So, need I say this? Survives aliens (“the” aliens) encounters throughout 4 movies. Starts out by blasting one into space while wearing tiny underwear, outlasts marines to kill an alien queen in a exoskeleton, kills herself so as not to become experiment fodder (thus denying the alien in her survival and victory), gets resurrected with a bit of alien DNA mixed into her own (yes, she gets super powers), kills off a human alien hybrid by getting it sucked into space through a tiny hole. Bonus for a killer line delivery – “Get away from her, you bitch!” while manning a mech suit.
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Likely to break down over long lost cat.

5. Mad Max

“Mad” Max Rockatansky(as played by Mel Gibson). Now that’s a name. Due to his family getting brutally killed (always a good origin story), he picks off the gang responsible one by one in his supercharged Pursuit Special (1973 Ford Falcon XB GT coupe), then becomes a wanderer. That doesn’t last for long, as he gets sucked into helping an outpost of humans against raiders lead by Lord Humungus , defeats half of Master Blaster (namely Blaster) in the Thunderdome and clashes with Tina Turner.
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Likely to die due to dehydration due to his antisocial behaviour.

4. Dirty Harry

Now here’s a man’s man. This is not only Dirty Harry, it’s Clint Eastwood (also though of including his “Man with no name” on the list) at his best. Inspector Harry Callahan is a hard man, a tough cop and a gun-toting lunatic at times (” “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?”). With his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world”, he’s the archetype for the lawful cop, held back by bureaucracy, he gets stuck with “every dirty job that comes along.”. He gets extra points for the big gun, and tough guy attitude, enough to get the villains to surrender on its own.
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Likely to get too old for this ****.

3. Snake Plissken

So you’ve got an ex US Special Forces soldier, with 2 Purple Hearts, who turned to a life of crime, being disillusioned by the government. When you’ve got only one eye (double points for the eye patch and for Kurt Russell’s raspy voice), get sent into no win situations in inescapable(popular belief) locations on a daily basis (at least in every movie you make), and you survive, it’s no wonder people keep telling you they thought you were dead. He fights off lunatics, mad doctors, evil terrorists, soldiers, you name it. He survives where no one else would and manages to stay cool and walk away laughing (as a figure of speach).
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Likely to end up poisoned or blown up by the military in yet another of their plans involving him.

2. Rambo

The ultimate killing machine? Almost, that’s reserved for number 1 on our list, but Rambo is as effective as he is tough. According to dialog in the movies, the Green Beret received a Medal of Honor, 2 Silver Stars, 4 Bronze Stars of Valor, 4 Purple Hearts and 1 Distinguished Service Cross – that’s enough for 3 or 4 action hero backgrounds. Fighting off an entire town’s police force (and recruited hillbillies) returning from the war he ends up back in Vietnam, where he rescues a bunch of POWs while gunning down, and hacking off anyone that stands in his way (and there’s plenty of those). After this he retreats to a monastery in Thailand, where he often meditates and participates in violent stick matches, donating his winnings. When his old friend, Col. Trautman gets captured in Afghanistan, he embarks in a mission to save him, while killing Soviets left and right, and driving a tank into a helicopter (take that, McClane!). In the 4th movie, he defeats a whole lot of Burmese soldiers while battling arthritis.
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Likely to die of old age while strangling a couple of enemy soldiers to death at the same time.

1. The Terminator

Here you have it. Though not exactly a hero if you count the 1st movie, this is the true killing machine, built for that purpose only. It helps that he’s mostly metal and that he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. Blasting away an entire police force, or defeating a superior model (not once, but twice), The Terminator is very much unkillable. It helps that there’s more than one model, and John Connor is always happy to reprogram them. Oh, there’s also a cool motorcycle/truck chase, fending off an entire SWAT team without killing them and while carrying a huge coffin, and also the cool sunglasses.
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Likely to have the highest body count before throwing himself into molten metal.

Building up franchises is nothing new to the world of cinema. It has been going on since the early days (William Powell and Myrna Loy enjoyed three movies in the Thin Man series starting 1934, I don’t have to mention Bond, but I do, and even Sergio Leone did his Dollars trilogy). Now, taking the blockbuster and horror movie sequels off the table, we’re left with a few peculiar types of sequels. There’s the TV to film sequels (as in Firefly went Serenity), the sequels that follow book series (see the Bridget Jones’ Diary series, Twilight, Lord of the rings, the Jason Bourne movies), the actual trilogies (not counting anything that wasn’t thought out as a trilogy from the start, so The Godfather, Star Wars), and then there are the recently popular sequel/reboots. Instead of going for something like J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek, or Christopher Nolan with Batman Begins, the studios are doing updated sequels to long dead movie series, hoping to draw in fans of the originals, promising the same experience by getting some of the people involved back, which is both interesting and scary at the same time.

On one hand, you’ve got Mad Max 4 (or Mad Max: Fury Road as it is called), with George Miller on board, but no Mad Mel Gibson (though insane is more likely these days). Personally, despite Miller having done a couple of interesting movies after the trilogy (The Witches of Eastwick, Lorenzo’s Oil, Babe: Pig in the City – yes, Babe: Pig in the City), I can’t picture, all puns aside, a Mad Max movie without Mel Gibson. They’ve got Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky, which isn’t too bad a choice, he was fine in RocknRolla and Layer Cake, but it’s just not the same. Thinking back, it was probably Gibson’s inherent craziness that served him so well in the portrayal of not just Mad Max, but other characters as well (think Lethal Weapon’s crazy-suicidal Martin Riggs, that was obviously him playing a restrained version of himself).

Tron: Legacy has a solid cast and a link to the past, just like Mad Max, in none other than Jeff Bridges(I’m sure I’m not the only one that would watch anything as long as he’s in it). That’s enough to get the inner geek cheering, but the director, Joseph Kosinski, is pretty much an unknown, with little to no previous experience. This is pretty much geek territory and those, as you know, are pretty hard to please. So, while the trailer looked good, and the movie also stars Olivia Wilde (about time she was in something more high-profile) and Michael Sheen (you have to love a talented serious actor that loves to do entertainment), I’m pretty apprehensive about this one.

Then there’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a.k.a. Wall Street 2 (I don’t really know when studios started applying the Bond naming technique to sequels), Why they think it’s a good idea to do a sequel to a classic so long after the original, I don’t know, but as with the others, there are callbacks to the first movie, namely Oliver Stone returning as director, and Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas back to being Bud Fox, and Gordon Gekko. While the timing is somewhat right for economy themed movie, the writers attached aren’t exactly attuned to the field of economics, neither are they big names. Then there’s the issue of Shia LaBeouf. While I have nothing against him and consider he’s a decent actor, taking this role means he’ll be in yet another (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull being the other) movie that will fail to please die hard fans, and he has the same task of picking up the reins, which didn’t go so well for Mutt the last time. On the other hand, Susan Sarandon, Eli Wallach and Josh Brolin are on board so it may turn out to be an OK movie.

While I’m not exactly the type to cheer dusting off the old cape (some things should be left alone), I’m not one to consider a downright awful sequel does anything to the original. So, besides tarnish the reputation of those involved, what harm can come of these movies? After all, isn’t it better to maintain some continuity in the land of the three Rs – reboot/remake/re-imagining?

Season 4 of the critically beloved drama series just debuted and the show seems to still be on a roll.So, if you’ve been ignorant to the tons of praise it has been getting here’s a couple of reasons to watch Mad Men.

The depiction of the ’60s

Pretty much 90% of the movies done after the time and set in the ’1960s are about the war, the hippie movement, the racial discrimination still going on or biopics of political prominent figures. Mad Men doesn’t discard those issues, but rather incorporates them in what is the story of an ad agency, and most importantly one upper-class man and those around him. You’ll get a whole episode set during the events following Kennedy’s assassination, but it’s all through the eyes of the main characters. If there is one thing they do not side-step(and that’s thanks to the importance of the characters) is the status of women in the era. And it’s all told through the eyes of several women, all with different approaches to life.

Smart Writing

If there’s one thing missing on the tube these days, it’s intelligent writing. Sure, you have a couple of shows that offer constant clever episodes, like Breaking Bad, Dexter and the likes, but for each of those there’s a couple of formulaic police procedurals or reality shows. If there’s one thing Mad Men doesn’t shy away from is churning out double entendres, scenes full of symbolism and a deeper meaning in whatever the characters do or say. And there’s little to no loose ends, not to mention a tightly knit plot that manages to juggle multiple characters and devote plenty of time to each and every single one.

The One-liners

I doubt there is a single show out there capable of churning out so many fun one-liners (most of them uttered to perfection by one John Slattery). Let’s get it straight, this is a drama, but there’s plenty of humor (if sometimes dark, as evidenced by one scene involving a British man’s foot and one lawnmower). Here’s a couple of memorable ones:

• “But that’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawn mower.”
• “You know what my father used to say? ‘Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually they hit you in the face.’”
• “When God closes a door, he opens a dress.”
• “We’ve got Beef Wellington, Oyster’s Rockefeller and Napoleons. If we leave this lunch alone it will take over Europe!”
• “What you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.”

Christina Hendricks

Well, I shouldn’t have to explain this. Mad Men has a lot of attractive women walk in and out (Julie McNiven, Alison Brie, Peyton List to name a few), but the reigning queen is Joan Holloway as played by Christina Hendricks. To keep to the era of the time, she’s the Marylin Monroe of the ad agency. Unlike Peggy Olson’s character she doesn’t want success, but adheres more to the standards of the era (as we’ve seen her try and be a housewife), while still being a strong woman that knows what she wants and how to get it. Plus, her red hair and curvy figure are plenty to look at.

Don Draper

Played by Jon Hamm, Don Draper is at the center of the show. An enigmatic, complicated and less than perfect individual, men want to be him and women want to be with him (as painful as it were to write this cliched line). He’s a fascinating character to watch as he discovers himself, and we discover his secrets. He’s like Cary Grant met Christian Bale, charismatic yet silent, handsome yet troubled, modest yet proud (as big as an oxymoron that is). He gets so built up as a persona that the writers could make him a superhero and it wouldn’t be too weird (think about it, Don Draper fits the bill as far as secret identity names go, at least for Marvel).

“Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.”

This is a man that in order to escape the fame of his family name (Coppola), took the name of a superhero. Luckily, he didn’t go for the obvious and was more subtle, choosing Luke Cage (his kid wasn’t so lucky, being named after Superman, Kal-el). So, what do you do as an actor trying to prove you’re not in the business just because of uncle Francis Ford? Get roles in good movies, movies directed by the big director – The Cotton Club. Also a romantic comedy with Cher (?!?) and a whackjob role in a fun movie – Raising Arizona. Then keep on acting, whatever roles you get (from David Lynch’s Wild at Heart to the not so great Amos & Andrew together with Samuel L. Jackson) until you get you big change to star in an Oscar winning role – Leaving Las Vegas. After that, you’re pretty much set and can do whatever you want. And what did Nicolas Cage want? Action.

The three facets of Nicolas Cage’s acting

Serious, talented, respected actor

Knowing (also a semi-serious movie starring Cage) he can’t only play action heroes or crazy individuals full time if he wants to maintain his career, Nicolas knows how to keep up interest in his acting chops by starring in more high-profile movies, like Lord of War, Knowing, Matchstick Men and Snake Eyes that give the critics a peek at his potential, while letting him do a little action, or crazy (don’t tell me he didn’t like his uber cool arms dealer scenes in Lord of War, or the phobic con man in Matchstick Men). At the same time he has the connections and the resume to get roles in such movies as Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation(also netting him an Oscar nomination), Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center or Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead. Considering there seems to be a consensus he can act that hasn’t been too hurt by his other endeavors had he stuck to only such roles he probably would’ve had more than one Oscar under his belt.

Crazy oddball freak

Though easily observed in the previously mentioned Matchstick Men and Adaptation, the intensity Nicolas Cage can bring to dementia is probably unparalleled. Give the man the role of a deranged individual and he’ll do wonders with it. The good natured oddball he played in Raising Arizona might have been the moment he realized he can do crazy like no one else and also scare the crap out of anyone while doing it. Look at his role in the fiasco that was Kiss of Death – I’d personally be scared of drug dealer Nick Cage with facial hair and that crazy look in his eyes. He was pretty much insane in Kick-Ass – and I’m just talking about a character that shot his daughter in the chest to teach her about bulletproof jacket pain. Which brings us to his most intense unscrupulous character yet – Terence McDonagh in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans. The unscrupulous, drugged out, scared out of his mind enough to be despaired cop was one fun, full of thrills trip, and I don’t think that’s the peak of his crazy (personally I enjoy the mirror scene in Face/Off).

Action star

And here’s what the man loves most apparently: being the cool guy that doesn’t look at explosions. After winning his Oscar, he followed it with a trio of movies that left everyone surprised to see him in an action movies and also a bit stunned that he could do it (let’s face it, the first thing that comes to mind when looking at him isn’t “action star”). He started off slow, as the (always viable) untrained civilian thrown in the midst of a conflict in The Rock (though a much older Sean Connery kind of stole his thunder) then followed it up with the preposterous, yet extremely fun Con Air, where he kicks John Malkovich’s ass (and gets to do a redneck accent, which he also likes apparently). Last, but not least, he had personality disorder issues opposite John Travolta in Face/Off (which also played into Travolta’s growing need to play bed boys and villains). After that, he was a guy who liked cars more than Angelina Jolie in Gone in Thirty Seconds, a soldier in WW2 in John Woo’s Windtalkers, and a more fun, more American version of Robert Langdon in National treasure. And who can forget, he also played a flaming skull in Ghost Rider, which apparently will get a sequel. An assassin and a Las Vegas magician later and he’s playing a sorcerer and a 14th century knight.
Frankly, although he is a big comic book fan, and by definition he wants to be a superhero, I think he does action movies just to play opposite whatever beauties the marketing department has in mind.

The women of Nicolas Cage’s action movies

Miscellaneous

If there’s one thing he can do, while in action movies or otherwise, is his stiff, brooding persona. Best observed in City of Angels (or any other romantic comedy he does), where he’s supposed to be an angel (the man has range what can I say) or Bangkok Dangerous – here he’s supposed to be the silent, experiences, cool assassin, I just found him uninteresting. Which brings us to another Cage acting method: the running in the wind with long hair, or the flashlight intrigue repetition (aspiring actors take note), which have never let him down (as observed by one Cracked columnist).

Season of the Witch is coming out later this year, he’s already promoting his next movie, Drive Angry, a revenge movie starring next to the lovely Amber Heard and has National Treasure 3 and Ghost Rider 2 in development, so he’ll probably continue to delight (or baffle) us with a host of interesting (or laughable – don’t forget The Wicker Man) characters.

  There’s been a lot of buzz about The Avengers movie ever since Marvel announced it and it’s understandable. As it stands, it would be the biggest, boldest superhero movie ever made and as the studio sees it, a huge payday. The idea is to gather most of Marvel’s superheroes under one roof. By “roof” I mean movies, and by “most” I mean the profitable ones: Iron Man, The Hulk, and the probably bankable Thor and Captain America. I’m betting on the latter as a bigger hit, Kenneth Branagh directing Thor seems a lot like Ang Lee directing The Hulk, and while I didn’t find it terrible, something was off.
  The problems are many and are just starting to surface. So far, Marvel’s had a modest hit with The Incredible Hulk, and two big hits with the Iron Man movies. Nothing so far suggests they might have any problem with the Avengers, but then again, Captain America and Thor have yet to be released. If any of the two flop at the box office, that’s a big question mark on The Avengers – as I see it, it will have a huge budget to recover. And a movie doesn’t have to be a flop to fail. It’s enough to not be released.
  The ensemble cast sounds amazing: Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, not to mention whoever manages to spill from any of the standalone movies to this superhero fiesta. The only problem is, it’s an ensemble cast and people might not get along. Think of it: they’re coming from their solo projects, more or less successful, to this behemoth, and they’re expected to share the spotlight. While some may not mind, others will. Look at the recent falling out between Marvel and Edward Norton, whatever the reason was. The studio implied Norton is not a team player, he denied it – fact is he won’t be returning to the role of Bruce Banner. And by 2012 who knows who else might pull out. And continuity is something people want from this movie. Sure, some people might not mind a different actor for any of these superheroes (the comic book fans should not, they face a different looking character every time they switch artists on a comic), but for some, knowing someone who did a decent job won’t be returning, would be a reason to forget the movie altogether.
  Last, but not least, Joss Whedon as director? I have respect for the man who brought us Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible and so on, but let’s face it, besides several TV episodes, he’s only directed one movie, Serenity, where he had a very good relationship with the cast and crew, developed while doing the series. As good a writer he is, directing a movie of this scale might prove tricky for him. But, I get ahead of myself, considering situations like The Hobbit, you might even wonder if Whedon will end up directing the thing.
  As far as I see it, The Avengers is but a dream for now, but it does have a chance of happening, and that’s enough for me.

  Soccer, or football, as they know it in Europe, is quite the world phenomenon (if the world doesn’t include the U.S.). Practically a religion in many South American countries (like Brazil or Argentina), a revered tradition in others, like Italy or the United Kingdom, the sport is both an industry and a way of life for many people. So it’s surprising there are only a few movies out there about the sport (less surprising counting that most movies come from the U.S. where they have more “popular” sports to make movies about, like golf). Then again, considering most soccer fans would rather watch an amateur game than a movie with some soccer thrown in, maybe it’s understandable. Here’s a couple of movies that managed to achieve some popularity, despite that fact (none of them involving the currently on going World Cup in South Africa).

Bend it Like Beckham

  Obviously a British movie, it stars Keira Knightley before corsets and Johnny Depp, and sports a big name of the sport in the title – good marketing I say, though, unlike Being John Malkovich, this one isn’t quite centered around the title character. Using soccer as an escape from overbearing family tradition this one is much more the coming-of age story of an Indian teenage girl with a touch of ethnic comedy.

Goal! The Dream Begins

  The first movie (there are 2 sequels, I don’t even know if I should call it a trilogy) was surprisingly above average, considering it probably has more soccer on display than any other movie on the list (with cameos by players, including the above mentioned Beckham). Despite that, it managed to have a decent, albeit cliche as far as rags-to-riches stories go, storyline and likable protagonists (also, Anna Friel before Pushing Daisies or the Land of the Lost disaster). And although the sequels manage to step into soap-opera territory, the first movie is a decent enough sports tale.

Victory

  Now here’s a movie with all kinds of pedigree. Directed by one of the best directors of all time, John Huston, with a cast with actors such as Michael Caine and Max Von Sydow (and Sylvester Stallone, but we can omit him from the list), and players like soccer legend Pele, Bobby Moore, Osvaldo Ardiles and Hallvar Thoresen, this is an entertaining soccer movie, but less so as a war movie. The only American movie on this list.

Shaolin Soccer

  Despite the title, the Hong Kong comedy is more Shaolin than soccer. Directed by Stephen Chow (who also made the deliciously fun Kung Fu Hustle), the movie is a slapstick comedy about using Shaolin martial arts while playing soccer. If anything, the film is as close to a cartoon as possible, complete with the violation of the laws of physics and a musical number. A big hit in Hong Kong and an international cult classic since, the movie is loony escapism fun at its best.

Mean Machine

  A British remake of an American football movie – The Longest Yard (also remade with Adam Sandler later), it’s all about a soccer match between the prisoners team and the guards team. Part comedy, part drama, it’s a decent enough movie, starring Vinnie Jones back when he was still a tough guy British movie star, coming off his time as professional soccer player, and not some guy that keeps popping up in Hollywood movies as a villain(part now occupied by Mark Strong) or comic relief. Also starring Jason Statham before the Transporter or Crank movies and his rise to fame.