list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Hot Shots! Part Deux on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Hot_Shots_Part_Deux/15991/default.aspx Title: Hot Shots! Part Deux
Year: 1993
Director: Jim Abrahams
Plot: Movie references, sight gags, silly puns, and double entendres abound in Hot Shots! Part Deux, Jim Abrahams' sequel to Hot Shots -- only now the object of the skewering is the Stallone Rambo movies instead of Top Gun. Charlie Sheen returns as the lunk-headed Topper Harley, who has retreated to a Buddhist monastery after being dumped by Ramada Rodham Hayman (Valerie Golino). In this far-off retreat, the monks have "taken a vow of celibacy, just like their fathers and their fathers before them." But Topper bulks up and goes back into action when his superior officer, Colonel Denton Walters (Richard Crenna) is captured by a Saddam Hussein look-alike, missing somewhere between "Iraq and a Hard Place." Topper charges into Iraq (after barreling through a Beverly Hills barbecue) along with sexy CIA operative Michelle Rodham Huddleston (Brenda Bakke) in tow, his guns ablazing. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 5
Number of Lists: 11
Number of blog posts: 5
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Tue, 12 May 2009 01:58:05 GMTHot Shots! Part Deux1993Jim AbrahamsMovie references, sight gags, silly puns, and double entendres abound in Hot Shots! Part Deux, <a href="/players/P____78951/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Jim Abrahams</a>' sequel to <a href=/films/85484/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Hot Shots</a> -- only now the object of the skewering is the Stallone Rambo movies instead of <a href=/films/35489/default.aspx style='text-decoration:underline'>Top Gun</a>. <a href="/players/P____65046/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Charlie Sheen</a> returns as the lunk-headed Topper Harley, who has retreated to a Buddhist monastery after being dumped by Ramada Rodham Hayman (Valerie Golino). In this far-off retreat, the monks have "taken a vow of celibacy, just like their fathers and their fathers before them." But Topper bulks up and goes back into action when his superior officer, Colonel Denton Walters (<a href="/players/P____86209/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Richard Crenna</a>) is captured by a Saddam Hussein look-alike, missing somewhere between "Iraq and a Hard Place." Topper charges into Iraq (after barreling through a Beverly Hills barbecue) along with sexy CIA operative Michelle Rodham Huddleston (<a href="/players/P_____3472/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Brenda Bakke</a>) in tow, his guns ablazing. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide5Slightly Tagged (1-5)1153http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/t21016zj3ai.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Hot_Shots_Part_Deux/15991/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/the_mow/archive/2009/5/1/41971.aspx Post By: The_MOW
Post To: The_MOW Blog
Post Date: 5/1/2009 8:13:50 PM
Body: "Topper Harley" (Charlie Sheen), who has lived with Buddists since his last mission, has been asked to return to duty to save servicemen being held hostage on the compound of Iraqi dictator "Saddam Hussein" (Jerry Haleva) that is somewhere "between Iraq and a Hard Place." "Harley," who has not gotten over "Ramada" (Valeria Golino), agrees to lead a small band of soldiers into "Hussein's" compound. However, he doesn't expect that the mission will also see him fall for two women -- "Michelle" (Brenda Bakke) and his team's contact in Iraq who happens to be "Ramada". This movie is simply hilarious! It blends great comedic dialogue with some gut-busting sight gags and movie parodies scattered throughout the film. The cast is simply fantastic at playing the movie straight -- even when the sight gags are flying around them. I wish the film had a blooper reel during the closing credits just to see how hard it was for them to not laugh while filming. Sheen and the legendary Lloyd Bridges stand out as "Harley" (Sheen) and "US President Tug Benson" (Bridges). However, the entire cast is simply marvelous in their roles. There is a little problem with the visuals -- the sight gags keep coming with very little break between them. However, your laughing so much, you will miss many of the gags. Only a minute amount of the jokes will go by without even a chuckle, or will cause you to groan rather than laugh out loud like the majority of the jokes will. To sum things up, you will have way "Deux" much fun watching a simply fabulous comedy gem.
]]>Sat, 02 May 2009 00:13:50 GMTThe_MOWThe_MOW Blog5/1/2009 8:13:50 PM"Topper Harley" (Charlie Sheen), who has lived with Buddists since his last mission, has been asked to return to duty to save servicemen being held hostage on the compound of Iraqi dictator "Saddam Hussein" (Jerry Haleva) that is somewhere "between Iraq and a Hard Place." "Harley," who has not gotten over "Ramada" (Valeria Golino), agrees to lead a small band of soldiers into "Hussein's" compound. However, he doesn't expect that the mission will also see him fall for two women -- "Michelle" (Brenda Bakke) and his team's contact in Iraq who happens to be "Ramada". This movie is simply hilarious! It blends great comedic dialogue with some gut-busting sight gags and movie parodies scattered throughout the film. The cast is simply fantastic at playing the movie straight -- even when the sight gags are flying around them. I wish the film had a blooper reel during the closing credits just to see how hard it was for them to not laugh while filming. Sheen and the legendary Lloyd Bridges stand out as "Harley" (Sheen) and "US President Tug Benson" (Bridges). However, the entire cast is simply marvelous in their roles. There is a little problem with the visuals -- the sight gags keep coming with very little break between them. However, your laughing so much, you will miss many of the gags. Only a minute amount of the jokes will go by without even a chuckle, or will cause you to groan rather than laugh out loud like the majority of the jokes will. To sum things up, you will have way "Deux" much fun watching a simply fabulous comedy gem. http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/12/3/37896.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/3/2008 3:00:52 PM
Body: It’s more difficult to be convincing as a real person when acting on film than on the stage. The camera can get closer and your image ends up projected many times larger than life size. So, despite giving a Tony Award-winning performance as Richard Nixon in the theater version of Frost/Nixon, Frank Langella was not initially thought of as worthy to reprise the role in Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of the play. Part of it was that he’s not a big name, but another reason was that he looks nothing like Tricky Dick. Ultimately, Langella did get the part, and while he doesn’t resemble the former president, he apparently does a bang up job in the role. But the transition could easily have been as awkward as Ralph Bellamy’s reprisal of his Tony-winning portrayal of Franklin Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. In the film version of that play, Bellamy’s vocal impersonation comes off more like a Scottish brogue (he sounds exactly like Sean Connery, in fact) than FDR’s signature “Locust Valley lockjaw.”  Instead, Langella is on track for an Oscar nomination, and is sure to join the following actors who also gave convincing performances as world leaders. As a handicap, SpoutBlog has limited the selections to modern era leaders whose real persona exists on film/tape and are therefore more easily comparable to actors’ representations. 10. Anthony Hopkins as President Richard Nixon in Nixon (1995) The performance is exaggerated almost to the point of out-doing Dan Hedaya’s comedic portrayal in Dick, but Hopkins’ Nixon isn’t the failure that many reviews criticized it as. The art of a convincing portrait is not so much about presenting an exact likeness as it is about expressing a perspective, and Oliver Stone’s employment of Hannibal Lecter as the (then) most hated president brought the viewpoint across right away. It may not be Hopkins’ best Oscar-nominated presidential performance (that would be his John Quincy Adams in Amistad), but it is one of his most spectacular accomplishments. 9. Josh Brolin as President George W. Bush in W. (2008) Stone surprisingly went a different way with his latest presidential biopic (which was not, as has been claimed, the first film about a sitting president; see #6). Brolin is much less a caricature than was expected, and the actor even welcomes sympathy from Bush-haters. It’s not necessarily an exact impersonation; it’s better. Brolin makes the role his own while also doing some requisite aping, and it’s a performance that should garner him an Oscar nomination next month. 8. James Brolin as President Ronald Reagan in The Reagans (2003) Like son, like father, though instead of appropriately portraying the elder Bush (he might have done as well as James Cromwell in W.), Josh Brolin’s father plays that president’s predecessor in this made-for-TV biopic. He looks a little silly in the role, but James Brolin does an excellent job with the voice and the overall execution of the actor-turned-leader’s public persona. The conservatives may have hated the movie, but the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences were convinced enough to nominate Brolin for an Emmy Award. 7. Jerry Haleva as Saddam Hussein in The Big Lebowski (1998) Sometimes professional impersonators are the most perfect people to play figures on the big screen. Unfortunately, people like Queen Elizabeth look-alike Jeannette Charles (The Naked Gun; European Vacation, Austin Powers in Goldmember) aren’t famous enough or talented enough actors to carry a whole film like The Queen. The late Haleva made a career out of portraying the Iraqi dictator, appearing prominently in such comedies as Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux and Jane Austen’s Mafia! But it’s his silent performance in The Big Lebowski that works best (though his lisped Hussein in the Hot Shots! sequel is hilarious). Even Hussein’s own sons could have made the mistake of thinking it was the real dictator up there on the screen. 6. Bruce Greenwood as President John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Back in the 1960s, President Kennedy got to be part of the casting process for Warner Bros.’ depiction of him in the WWII drama PT 109. His selection of Cliff Robertson was fine, but if he’d been alive long enough to also assist the production of Thirteen Days, he would have surely agreed with the casting of Bruce Greenwood. The actor doesn’t look much like JFK in this non-biopic about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but to agree with Kevin Costner, Greenwood is Kennedy in the film, only bettered by Steven Culp as RFK. Too bad Costner has to be in there at all. As usual his talent for accents is atrocious, but at least he didn’t bother attempting to play the president. Greenwood was definitely deserving of an Oscar nod for his portrayal, but apparently only one presidential role (Jeff Bridges in The Contender) was enough for the 2001 Supporting Actor race. 5. Gary Sinise as President Harry S. Truman in Truman (1995) The problem with famous actors portraying well-known real-life figures is that the audience more than likely sees the actor first. It’s a problem with most of the portrayals on this list, and it’s certainly true for Gary Sinise in the role of Truman. He looks just like Gary Sinise with some necessary prosthetics. And his voice is distinctly his own, too, despite an attempt at the accent. Yet the performance is engaging enough to make the viewer forget all that and become adequately convinced enough to accept Sinise as the president with the difficult task of ending World War II through drastic measures. 4. Bruno Ganz as Adolph Hitler in Downfall (2004) It’s easy to play Hitler; just don the signature mustache and you’re good to go. Ganz went above and beyond, though, to not just convincingly represent the Nazi dictator but also to capture his thought-non-existent humanity. His voice is perfection and his overall performance is astounding. Had the three-dimensionality of the portrayal not been so controversial, Ganz could have garnered an Academy Award nomination. 3. Edward Hermann as President Franklin Roosevelt in Annie (1982) A lot of actors have attempted FDR, from Bellamy in Sunrise at Campobello to Kenneth Branagh in Warm Springs (and let’s not forget Jon Voight’s laughable turn in Pearl Harbor), but nobody else is as good as Hermann, who played the four-term president in two TV movies prior to reprising the role in this screen version of the lovable Broadway musical. The only reason he deserves more credit here than for his two Emmy-nominated portrayals is because in Annie he joins in to sing “Tomorrow” with the li’l titular orphan, and that’s believably something the real FDR would have taken much pleasure in. 2. Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Queen (2006) Langella and his Frost/Nixon costar, Michael Sheen, are equally being recognized for their performances in that film. But a couple of years ago, Sheen was upstaged by the Oscar-winning Helen Mirren in The Queen. Still, despite his lack of a deserved nod from the Academy, he was highly acclaimed for his portrayal of Tony Blair, a role he’d already perfected in the British TV movie The Deal (from the same writer-director pair as The Queen). And the performance rushed him to the top ranks of acting talent, allowing him to be unquestionably worthy of reprising his stage role as David Frost and easily thought of as a front-runner for the Oscars this time around. 1. Martin Sheen as President John F. Kennedy in Kennedy (1983) Sheen was so good as JFK in this TV miniseries that in The Goonies “Mouth” (Corey Feldman) confuses the president for the actor on a 50-cent piece. And well, Mouth, as Cyndi Lauper sings on the soundtrack, “What’s good enough for you is good enough for me. It’s good enough. It’s good enough for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:00:52 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com12/3/2008 3:00:52 PMIt’s more difficult to be convincing as a real person when acting on film than on the stage. The camera can get closer and your image ends up projected many times larger than life size. So, despite giving a Tony Award-winning performance as Richard Nixon in the theater version of Frost/Nixon, Frank Langella was not initially thought of as worthy to reprise the role in Ron Howard’s movie adaptation of the play. Part of it was that he’s not a big name, but another reason was that he looks nothing like Tricky Dick. Ultimately, Langella did get the part, and while he doesn’t resemble the former president, he apparently does a bang up job in the role. But the transition could easily have been as awkward as Ralph Bellamy’s reprisal of his Tony-winning portrayal of Franklin Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. In the film version of that play, Bellamy’s vocal impersonation comes off more like a Scottish brogue (he sounds exactly like Sean Connery, in fact) than FDR’s signature “Locust Valley lockjaw.”  Instead, Langella is on track for an Oscar nomination, and is sure to join the following actors who also gave convincing performances as world leaders. As a handicap, SpoutBlog has limited the selections to modern era leaders whose real persona exists on film/tape and are therefore more easily comparable to actors’ representations. 10. Anthony Hopkins as President Richard Nixon in Nixon (1995) The performance is exaggerated almost to the point of out-doing Dan Hedaya’s comedic portrayal in Dick, but Hopkins’ Nixon isn’t the failure that many reviews criticized it as. The art of a convincing portrait is not so much about presenting an exact likeness as it is about expressing a perspective, and Oliver Stone’s employment of Hannibal Lecter as the (then) most hated president brought the viewpoint across right away. It may not be Hopkins’ best Oscar-nominated presidential performance (that would be his John Quincy Adams in Amistad), but it is one of his most spectacular accomplishments. 9. Josh Brolin as President George W. Bush in W. (2008) Stone surprisingly went a different way with his latest presidential biopic (which was not, as has been claimed, the first film about a sitting president; see #6). Brolin is much less a caricature than was expected, and the actor even welcomes sympathy from Bush-haters. It’s not necessarily an exact impersonation; it’s better. Brolin makes the role his own while also doing some requisite aping, and it’s a performance that should garner him an Oscar nomination next month. 8. James Brolin as President Ronald Reagan in The Reagans (2003) Like son, like father, though instead of appropriately portraying the elder Bush (he might have done as well as James Cromwell in W.), Josh Brolin’s father plays that president’s predecessor in this made-for-TV biopic. He looks a little silly in the role, but James Brolin does an excellent job with the voice and the overall execution of the actor-turned-leader’s public persona. The conservatives may have hated the movie, but the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences were convinced enough to nominate Brolin for an Emmy Award. 7. Jerry Haleva as Saddam Hussein in The Big Lebowski (1998) Sometimes professional impersonators are the most perfect people to play figures on the big screen. Unfortunately, people like Queen Elizabeth look-alike Jeannette Charles (The Naked Gun; European Vacation, Austin Powers in Goldmember) aren’t famous enough or talented enough actors to carry a whole film like The Queen. The late Haleva made a career out of portraying the Iraqi dictator, appearing prominently in such comedies as Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux and Jane Austen’s Mafia! But it’s his silent performance in The Big Lebowski that works best (though his lisped Hussein in the Hot Shots! sequel is hilarious). Even Hussein’s own sons could have made the mistake of thinking it was the real dictator up there on the screen. 6. Bruce Greenwood as President John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days (2000) Back in the 1960s, President Kennedy got to be part of the casting process for Warner Bros.’ depiction of him in the WWII drama PT 109. His selection of Cliff Robertson was fine, but if he’d been alive long enough to also assist the production of Thirteen Days, he would have surely agreed with the casting of Bruce Greenwood. The actor doesn’t look much like JFK in this non-biopic about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but to agree with Kevin Costner, Greenwood is Kennedy in the film, only bettered by Steven Culp as RFK. Too bad Costner has to be in there at all. As usual his talent for accents is atrocious, but at least he didn’t bother attempting to play the president. Greenwood was definitely deserving of an Oscar nod for his portrayal, but apparently only one presidential role (Jeff Bridges in The Contender) was enough for the 2001 Supporting Actor race. 5. Gary Sinise as President Harry S. Truman in Truman (1995) The problem with famous actors portraying well-known real-life figures is that the audience more than likely sees the actor first. It’s a problem with most of the portrayals on this list, and it’s certainly true for Gary Sinise in the role of Truman. He looks just like Gary Sinise with some necessary prosthetics. And his voice is distinctly his own, too, despite an attempt at the accent. Yet the performance is engaging enough to make the viewer forget all that and become adequately convinced enough to accept Sinise as the president with the difficult task of ending World War II through drastic measures. 4. Bruno Ganz as Adolph Hitler in Downfall (2004) It’s easy to play Hitler; just don the signature mustache and you’re good to go. Ganz went above and beyond, though, to not just convincingly represent the Nazi dictator but also to capture his thought-non-existent humanity. His voice is perfection and his overall performance is astounding. Had the three-dimensionality of the portrayal not been so controversial, Ganz could have garnered an Academy Award nomination. 3. Edward Hermann as President Franklin Roosevelt in Annie (1982) A lot of actors have attempted FDR, from Bellamy in Sunrise at Campobello to Kenneth Branagh in Warm Springs (and let’s not forget Jon Voight’s laughable turn in Pearl Harbor), but nobody else is as good as Hermann, who played the four-term president in two TV movies prior to reprising the role in this screen version of the lovable Broadway musical. The only reason he deserves more credit here than for his two Emmy-nominated portrayals is because in Annie he joins in to sing “Tomorrow” with the li’l titular orphan, and that’s believably something the real FDR would have taken much pleasure in. 2. Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair in The Queen (2006) Langella and his Frost/Nixon costar, Michael Sheen, are equally being recognized for their performances in that film. But a couple of years ago, Sheen was upstaged by the Oscar-winning Helen Mirren in The Queen. Still, despite his lack of a deserved nod from the Academy, he was highly acclaimed for his portrayal of Tony Blair, a role he’d already perfected in the British TV movie The Deal (from the same writer-director pair as The Queen). And the performance rushed him to the top ranks of acting talent, allowing him to be unquestionably worthy of reprising his stage role as David Frost and easily thought of as a front-runner for the Oscars this time around. 1. Martin Sheen as President John F. Kennedy in Kennedy (1983) Sheen was so good as JFK in this TV miniseries that in The Goonies “Mouth” (Corey Feldman) confuses the president for the actor on a 50-cent piece. And well, Mouth, as Cyndi Lauper sings on the soundtrack, “What’s good enough for you is good enough for me. It’s good enough. It’s good enough for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.” Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/10/1/35765.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 10/1/2008 12:01:21 PM
Body: Will this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool. So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team? But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with. 10. President Lindberg (Tony “Tiny” Lister), from The Fifth Element I’m not saying that being cross-eyed or incessantly receiving calls from your mother is cool, though both could very well be thought so in the year 2263. That’s so far in the future that Lindberg isn’t just the President of the United States, he’s head of the “United Federation” (like in Star Trek). No, I’m saying that Lindberg is cool because he’s really big and badass and could probably do some sweet damage to some Mangalores all by his lonesome. Unfortunately, Lister never gets to display his old wrestling moves in any action scenes. 9. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews), from Idiocracy Another African-American wrestler-turned-president, also in a future setting. Only this time it’s the character who is a former pro wrestler (Crews is instead a former pro football player) and the setting is even further in time, 2505, when the people of the world are very, very stupid. But is it stupid to elect a man with an awesome chopper and a tendency to sing his speeches? If Teddy Roosevelt were alive, he’d probably also have a motorcycle and a machine gun, though maybe he wouldn’t shoot the latter while standing before Congress. Or maybe he would, and maybe we’d still re-elect him. 8. President Devlin (George Clooney), from Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over If George Clooney stopped simply talking politics and actually ran for president, a lot of people would vote for him regardless of what he stood for. Simply because he’s a cool celebrity. Fans of the Spy Kids films kind of got a taste of what President George Clooney would look like when his character, Devlin, became commander-in-chief by the third installment. 7. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson), from Mars Attacks! Of course, if there’s one actor even cooler than Clooney, it’s Jack Nicholson. What if the presidential race consisted of these two actors up for the position? If you truly voted based on the coolness of the candidate, you’d have to go with Jack. But only if he wore sunglasses during every public appearance, including especially the State of the Union Address. 6. President Joseph Staton (Dennis Quaid), from American Dreamz American Idol may not be the coolest thing on television, but it is one of the most popular TV shows, and it’s pretty cool to a good percentage of the people old enough to vote for the president. Perhaps if the voting age was lowered to 14 (see #1), it would be cooler for the President to appear on MTV or at a Jonas Brothers concert. However, as the election tends to be more in the hands of older folk, it would be cool for a president or presidential hopeful to appear on Idol, as Staton does in this movie (with a fictionalized version of the show, titled American Dreamz). 5. President George W. Bush (James Adomian), from Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay This list is basically limited to fictional presidents in film, but we can make an exception for Adomian’s portrayal of Bush, as it’s no more accurate a representation than is Neil Patrick Harris’ portrayal of himself in the same film. In this movie, Bush is a much cooler guy. He gets high, has an awesome rec room, and he’s like a rebellious yet spoiled teenager. Heck, if ‘Rold and Kumar like hanging with him, you’d probably like hanging with him, too. 4. President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), from Air Force One People used to prefer a leader who’d proven himself in battle. Now, it’s not so important for a presidential candidate to have served in war or even been shown to have some sort of fight in him. Now it’s more cool than qualifying for a president to be able to kick a bad guy’s ass without need of assistance from the Secret Service. Even cooler, though, is a president who can kick a bad guy’s ass while also avoiding falling out of an airplane cargo door. 3. President Thomas “Tug” Benson (Lloyd Bridges), from Hot Shots! Part Deux Even tougher a guy than President Marshall is President Benson. In fact, he’s been through enough to make McCain look like a lazy hippie. He caught a bazooka round in Okinawa, took a bullet in Corregidor that went straight through both ears, took a torpedo in the lower abdomen that resulted in the removal of his intestines, he has a shell the size of his fist in his head and he was shot down on more than 194 air missions. He’s not too bright these days, but he’ll still take it upon himself to go into Iraq and fight the enemy face to face. With a light saber. 2. President Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock), from Head of State He’s not as cool as his running-mate (who is also his brother, played by Bernie Mac), and the movie isn’t as funny or insightful as Chris Rock’s political stand-up, but Mays Gilliam is like an even hipper exaggeration of Obama. Not only does he listen to rap, he plays Nelly at formal events and gets old ladies to dance and sing along. He takes mudslinging to a new level with “Yo Mama” jokes. And his “That Ain’t Right” slogan is like a cooler, possibly more genuine, inverse of Obama’s “Yes We Can.” 1. President Max Frost (Christopher Jones), from Wild in the Streets As the hit song from the movie goes, “nothing can stop the shape of things to come,” and I take that to mean that inevitably there will one day be a rock star elected to the presidency. After all, there has already been a movie star president, and eight years ago plenty of young music fans were ready to vote Jello Biafra into the White House, simply because he’s Jello Biafra. Despite the uncool things done by Max Frost and his band, The Troopers, such as putting LSD in the capital’s water supply and detaining citizens over the age of 35 for re-education, they do carry out some really hip ideas, such as lowering the voting age to 14, and more importantly they gave the world some classic garage rock tunes. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:01:21 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com10/1/2008 12:01:21 PMWill this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool. So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team? But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with. 10. President Lindberg (Tony “Tiny” Lister), from The Fifth Element I’m not saying that being cross-eyed or incessantly receiving calls from your mother is cool, though both could very well be thought so in the year 2263. That’s so far in the future that Lindberg isn’t just the President of the United States, he’s head of the “United Federation” (like in Star Trek). No, I’m saying that Lindberg is cool because he’s really big and badass and could probably do some sweet damage to some Mangalores all by his lonesome. Unfortunately, Lister never gets to display his old wrestling moves in any action scenes. 9. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho (Terry Crews), from Idiocracy Another African-American wrestler-turned-president, also in a future setting. Only this time it’s the character who is a former pro wrestler (Crews is instead a former pro football player) and the setting is even further in time, 2505, when the people of the world are very, very stupid. But is it stupid to elect a man with an awesome chopper and a tendency to sing his speeches? If Teddy Roosevelt were alive, he’d probably also have a motorcycle and a machine gun, though maybe he wouldn’t shoot the latter while standing before Congress. Or maybe he would, and maybe we’d still re-elect him. 8. President Devlin (George Clooney), from Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over If George Clooney stopped simply talking politics and actually ran for president, a lot of people would vote for him regardless of what he stood for. Simply because he’s a cool celebrity. Fans of the Spy Kids films kind of got a taste of what President George Clooney would look like when his character, Devlin, became commander-in-chief by the third installment. 7. President James Dale (Jack Nicholson), from Mars Attacks! Of course, if there’s one actor even cooler than Clooney, it’s Jack Nicholson. What if the presidential race consisted of these two actors up for the position? If you truly voted based on the coolness of the candidate, you’d have to go with Jack. But only if he wore sunglasses during every public appearance, including especially the State of the Union Address. 6. President Joseph Staton (Dennis Quaid), from American Dreamz American Idol may not be the coolest thing on television, but it is one of the most popular TV shows, and it’s pretty cool to a good percentage of the people old enough to vote for the president. Perhaps if the voting age was lowered to 14 (see #1), it would be cooler for the President to appear on MTV or at a Jonas Brothers concert. However, as the election tends to be more in the hands of older folk, it would be cool for a president or presidential hopeful to appear on Idol, as Staton does in this movie (with a fictionalized version of the show, titled American Dreamz). 5. President George W. Bush (James Adomian), from Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay This list is basically limited to fictional presidents in film, but we can make an exception for Adomian’s portrayal of Bush, as it’s no more accurate a representation than is Neil Patrick Harris’ portrayal of himself in the same film. In this movie, Bush is a much cooler guy. He gets high, has an awesome rec room, and he’s like a rebellious yet spoiled teenager. Heck, if ‘Rold and Kumar like hanging with him, you’d probably like hanging with him, too. 4. President James Marshall (Harrison Ford), from Air Force One People used to prefer a leader who’d proven himself in battle. Now, it’s not so important for a presidential candidate to have served in war or even been shown to have some sort of fight in him. Now it’s more cool than qualifying for a president to be able to kick a bad guy’s ass without need of assistance from the Secret Service. Even cooler, though, is a president who can kick a bad guy’s ass while also avoiding falling out of an airplane cargo door. 3. President Thomas “Tug” Benson (Lloyd Bridges), from Hot Shots! Part Deux Even tougher a guy than President Marshall is President Benson. In fact, he’s been through enough to make McCain look like a lazy hippie. He caught a bazooka round in Okinawa, took a bullet in Corregidor that went straight through both ears, took a torpedo in the lower abdomen that resulted in the removal of his intestines, he has a shell the size of his fist in his head and he was shot down on more than 194 air missions. He’s not too bright these days, but he’ll still take it upon himself to go into Iraq and fight the enemy face to face. With a light saber. 2. President Mays Gilliam (Chris Rock), from Head of State He’s not as cool as his running-mate (who is also his brother, played by Bernie Mac), and the movie isn’t as funny or insightful as Chris Rock’s political stand-up, but Mays Gilliam is like an even hipper exaggeration of Obama. Not only does he listen to rap, he plays Nelly at formal events and gets old ladies to dance and sing along. He takes mudslinging to a new level with “Yo Mama” jokes. And his “That Ain’t Right” slogan is like a cooler, possibly more genuine, inverse of Obama’s “Yes We Can.” 1. President Max Frost (Christopher Jones), from Wild in the Streets As the hit song from the movie goes, “nothing can stop the shape of things to come,” and I take that to mean that inevitably there will one day be a rock star elected to the presidency. After all, there has already been a movie star president, and eight years ago plenty of young music fans were ready to vote Jello Biafra into the White House, simply because he’s Jello Biafra. Despite the uncool things done by Max Frost and his band, The Troopers, such as putting LSD in the capital’s water supply and detaining citizens over the age of 35 for re-education, they do carry out some really hip ideas, such as lowering the voting age to 14, and more importantly they gave the world some classic garage rock tunes. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/5/8/28378.aspx Post By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 5/8/2008 6:00:38 PM
Body: I’ve always been conflicted by my hatred for war and my love for war films. But I can’t help being excited by cinematic combat. As Miguel Ferrer says in Hot Shots! Part Deux, “War … it’s fantastic!” Certainly his character is referring to the real-life action, but in a reflexive way he’s talking about war on film (he does break the diegetic space when he utters the statement, after all). And I have to say, in that context, no war film in recent years has been as fantastic as Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, which opened in New York yesterday. The difficult thing about war films is that, despite often being exciting action movies, they’re about real, tragic situations, even if they’re fictional stories set in an actual war (the opening of Saving Private Ryan is of course the epitome of war films’ ability to be at the same time both affecting and awesome). Broomfield’s film has the additional difficulty of being about a real battle from a war that is still going on. And of course there’s that whole problem of Iraq War films being box office poison lately. But if the viewer is able to forget all that stuff, there’s a chance he or she will find Battle for Haditha totally exhilarating. The film presents a dramatization of the titular incident, in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. marines in a criminally retributive act following an IED attack on a military convoy. In a way, the film’s story parallels the massacre in Platoon, which was also based on a true event, only far more loosely. So, I wonder if Battle would be more popular with the critics (currently it has a low 44% approval on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences if it was similarly more fictionalized. Actually, Battle may be more fictionalized than it seems to be, but as it is shot somewhat like a documentary by a director well known as a documentarian, it’s easy to get the impression that it’s an accurate account of the incident. Of course, the documentary manner in which the film is shot is more relevant to the Iraq War, from which we’ve seen a surplus of great non-fiction films, than a Platoon-style dramatic war film would be. And like those documentaries, Battle smartly addresses the issues relating to the war, such as the damaged psychology of the soldiers and the cause-effect nature of retaliatory incidents like Haditha. Still, despite its difference in discourse and contexts, it may be enjoyed on the same level as fictional war films like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan (and others). And certainly there are other levels on which to appreciate Battle for Haditha. But I figure that people who appreciate war films for the action aren’t really being targeted, and so I feel it must be pointed out that this is indeed an awesome war film and not another depressing Iraq War film. OK, I guess it is both. And therefore it may be too soon to be taken as mere entertainment. But give it a few years (or a lot of years, depending on when the Iraq War ends), and it could be accepted as being as cool as other war film favorites. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 08 May 2008 22:00:38 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com5/8/2008 6:00:38 PMI’ve always been conflicted by my hatred for war and my love for war films. But I can’t help being excited by cinematic combat. As Miguel Ferrer says in Hot Shots! Part Deux, “War … it’s fantastic!” Certainly his character is referring to the real-life action, but in a reflexive way he’s talking about war on film (he does break the diegetic space when he utters the statement, after all). And I have to say, in that context, no war film in recent years has been as fantastic as Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha, which opened in New York yesterday. The difficult thing about war films is that, despite often being exciting action movies, they’re about real, tragic situations, even if they’re fictional stories set in an actual war (the opening of Saving Private Ryan is of course the epitome of war films’ ability to be at the same time both affecting and awesome). Broomfield’s film has the additional difficulty of being about a real battle from a war that is still going on. And of course there’s that whole problem of Iraq War films being box office poison lately. But if the viewer is able to forget all that stuff, there’s a chance he or she will find Battle for Haditha totally exhilarating. The film presents a dramatization of the titular incident, in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. marines in a criminally retributive act following an IED attack on a military convoy. In a way, the film’s story parallels the massacre in Platoon, which was also based on a true event, only far more loosely. So, I wonder if Battle would be more popular with the critics (currently it has a low 44% approval on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences if it was similarly more fictionalized. Actually, Battle may be more fictionalized than it seems to be, but as it is shot somewhat like a documentary by a director well known as a documentarian, it’s easy to get the impression that it’s an accurate account of the incident. Of course, the documentary manner in which the film is shot is more relevant to the Iraq War, from which we’ve seen a surplus of great non-fiction films, than a Platoon-style dramatic war film would be. And like those documentaries, Battle smartly addresses the issues relating to the war, such as the damaged psychology of the soldiers and the cause-effect nature of retaliatory incidents like Haditha. Still, despite its difference in discourse and contexts, it may be enjoyed on the same level as fictional war films like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan (and others). And certainly there are other levels on which to appreciate Battle for Haditha. But I figure that people who appreciate war films for the action aren’t really being targeted, and so I feel it must be pointed out that this is indeed an awesome war film and not another depressing Iraq War film. OK, I guess it is both. And therefore it may be too soon to be taken as mere entertainment. But give it a few years (or a lot of years, depending on when the Iraq War ends), and it could be accepted as being as cool as other war film favorites. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/assassination/MemberTagFilms.aspxassassination
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