Biehn there, done that.

Tonight it occurred to me that despite my fascination / obsession with 80's action movies and the tremendous actors that starred in them, I had never given the slightest mention of my all-time favourite 80's actor, Michael Biehn. Then when I realized the completely ridiculous potential puns that I could come up with to use as the title of the post, it kind of seemed like a no-brainer to write something about Michael. From 1984 to 1989 he was James Cameron's golden boy, appearing in the Terminator, Aliens, and the Abyss, 3 of the best genre pictures ever made, and yet was somehow never able to translate this success into official leading man status. In 1990, he did star in Navy Seals with Charlie Sheen, but after that, besides Tombstone in 1992 and the Rock in 1996, all he's really done is a bunch of crappy TV movies that no one saw, like Asteroid, or critically reviled theatrical flops like Jade.

This just kind of upsets me just because he's so great in the hard-assed hero role in both Terminator and Aliens. I vividly remember crying uncontrollably when he sacrificed his life to save Sarah Connor, and...shit I just realized I cried uncontrollably when his character died in the opening minutes of Alien 3. I honestly just realized that. That is actually fucked up, even for me. Do I have some kind of weird, Freudian pshychosexual obsession with Michael Biehn? You know what, on second thought, don't answer that. Um, anyways, he was also awesome as a scary military psychopath in the Abyss (where he also sported one of cinema's all-time great moustaches, seen above.) He proved he had range, was in some damn successful films, and had some, dare I say, ruggedly handsome good looks, so I don't see why he never became more of a movie star. By 1999, he was slumming it by "acting" in the videogame Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. That is just not cool at all. He did do a bunch of other movies in the 90's but a lot of them are quite obscure and I have a strong feeling that many of them are played late at night on Cinemax, and feature gratuitous butt shots. I have too much respect for the guy to find out.

Anyways, I was delighted to see him pop up in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, even though I wasn't crazy about the movie itself, and the whole Grindhouse experiment was pretty much a massive theatrical flop. Nevertheless, I do see that he has an astonishing 5 movies in post production right now, including Streets of Blood with Val Kilmer, Sharon Stone, and 50 Cent. So that's kind of a big deal. Here's hoping that more directors realize that there has been a serious lack of Biehn - a Biehn-vacuum, if you will - in modern day cinema, and that it would be foolish to allow this virtually untapped ass-kicking resource to continue wasting away in late night Cinemax purgatory. Because trust me: this guy is no has-Biehn.

the Dark Knight.

Well, I finally saw it. And there's not much I can really say about this movie that hasn't already been said. Is it the greatest film of all time? No, its not. But it does represent something really cool, and that's the coming together of a group of really talented filmmakers and actors who have taken source material that is inherently stupid - that is, a man dressing up in a bat suit and beating up criminals - but treated it in an intelligent, adult way, resulting in a final product that is both entertaining and thought provoking, and is still making absolutely fucking insane amounts of money.

On top of that, you have Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker who automatically becomes one of the most iconic screen villains of all time; I was absolutely mesmerized by him for every second he was on the screen, and its really quite sad that we'll never seem him reprise this character, or act in another film ever again. Although pretty much every performance gets completely overshadowed by Ledger, the rest of the cast was amazing, especially Aaron Eckhart who I thought was fucking fantastic as Harvey Dent. He gets just as much screen time as Christian Bale in this movie, and he really makes you believe in this character, and that adds a lot of weight to the unspeakably tragic story arc this guy has in the Batman universe.

So all in all, my hat is off to Christopher Nolan, he wasn't given an easy task to reinvent this franchise, which had been absolutely destroyed by Joel Schumacher, and the campy ridiculousness of the previous two films. But with good writing, completely perfect casting, and his usual skill behind the camera, (which has grown exponentially since his first major film only a few years ago,) Nolan has managed to make an instant classic: an Oscar-worthy crime drama about a dude in a bat suit. Amazing.

And now I've gone and said a bunch of things about the movie that have already been said hundreds of times but much more reputable sources than myself. I was seriously trying not to do that.

mark on prince.

mark says:
it would seriously not surprise me to find a large stable of rare or mythical creatures at prince's north york palace

in your tiny, mutant eyes.

I've already gone on record with my love for all things Schwarzenegger, so it goes without saying that I consider Total Recall to be one of the greatest films ever made. On a completely unrelated subject, I am also a big Peter Gabriel fan so obviously I have a profound love of the song In Your Eyes, which was forever immortalized in the classic Cameron Crowe movie Say Anything.

Yet as I discovered today, when you put together these two seemingly unconnected pop culture standards, the end result is literally the greatest thing I've ever seen.



By the way, I found this video on Best Week Ever, which is one of my favourite blogs, and one of the places where I routinely steal content without any sort of proper acknowledgment.

me and her we had us some fun.

Speaking of Americana, I have been ridiculously obsessed with the Bruce Springsteen record Nebraska recently, but that album kind of exists on the opposite end of the spectrum from Bob Seger. There's really nothing cheesy about Nebraska at all (even though Bruce can lay on the schmaltz from time to time,) it is just a beautiful, haunting record. As much as I enjoy the rocking E Street Band songs like Born To Run, I prefer these stripped-down tunes about downtrodden midwestern Americans attempting to carve out a living, sometimes on the wrong side of the law.

old time rock and roll.

I was taking the train home from my brother's wedding today and I got into a pretty serious Bob Seger kick. I'm a pretty big fan of his particular brand of cheesy, Americana rock so today I'm going to switch things up by posting not one, but two, YouTube Seger clips, for two fucking classic tunes.

Hollywood Hills:



and Night Moves:



Wow, I've never really realized, but Bob Seger was massive! Those crowds are going Seger crazy. Good for them.

they're already here.

I'm not one of those super-weird conspiracy nuts like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, but I am a firm believer in the UFO phenomenon. The continued expanse of the internet, and the spread of user controlled internet video sites like YouTube has created a huge database of information on the subject which was just never available previously because its not something that's really ever reported on in the mainstream media. Slowly but surely there are more and more credible sources that have come out and admitted that there is something fishy going on, but just a few days ago Dr. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and the 6th man to walk on the fucking moon has come right out and admitted that we have been visited by aliens and its been covered up for the last 6 decades. His entire radio interview where he drops this bombshell is posted below:



I for one believe everything he says. I mean he's a fucking astronaut. He clearly knows about this kind of stuff, and why would he lie? I for one welcome our new extraterrestrial overlords. Let's hope when we finally meet them they look like this:



and not this: