ITEM! Examiner - Bone up on your James Bond(s)
With the release of Skyfall, 007 is back in business after four years. But this is the fiftieth anniversary of the film franchise, and there have been six men to play the role. If you're not very familiar with the lineage, this is a brief primer.
Read more here.
ITEM! Comics Reader - Artifacts #10 & Origins
Top Cow and Ron Marz have quietly built an entire mythology around thirteen totems of power, including signature characters Witchblade and the Darkness, but there's plenty more where that came from. Here's a primer on another subject!
Read more here.
ITEM! Hub City - Thoughts on Our Mutual Friend
The last completed book by Charles Dickens, and I nearly decided to spend all my reaction on the TV show Lost! But there's a lot to think about on that score, not the least of which are the parallel fates of characters John Harmon and Bradley Headstone, and their island counterparts Jack and Locke. But I end up talking about Dickens instead.
Read more here.
ITEM! Hub City - Reading List: Alexander the Great
Who doesn't love a good Macedonian? Anyone who fell to them in battle, or didn't love being absorbed into an empire. And elephants. I don't think elephants liked Macedonians. Otherwise everyone does! Or at least they should take them pretty seriously, not the least for Alexander. He was great.
Read more here.
ITEM! Star Trek Fan Companion - Enterprise 2x21 "The Breach"
If you like Phlox and other assorted Denobulans, you may or may not like this one, as it's all Denobulans all the time, and that's not always a good thing.
Read more here.
SOAP BOX
1991 was the year Arnold Schwarzenegger had his first and only #1 hit. Do you know what it is?
1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($204 mil)
The first modern blockbuster, full of awesome special effects. It's pretty awesome.
2. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves ($165 mil)
Kevin Costner being a blockbuster movie star. You know he made a cultural impact with this one when all anyone ever says about it is that he doesn't use an English accent. That's the kind of negative press you can only get when people who don't care about something comment on it!
3. Beauty and the Beast ($145 mil)
Everyone was so surprised with the resurgent Disney animation whizzes that it actually received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. That's the kind of respect only Pixar would be able to duplicate years later, however.
4. The Silence of the Lambs ($130 mil)
Probably still responsible for all the cop shows we still have, and very soon a TV spinoff of his own for Hannibal Lecter! Not bad for a supporting character.
5. City Slickers ($124 mil)
Billy Crystal and the late Jack Palance deliver one of the more entertaining attempts by Hollywood to revive the Western.
6. Hook ($119 mil)
Spielberg returns to box office glory, Robin Williams play an adult Peter Pan, and probably the only thing anyone remembers about it is how awesome Dustin Hoffman was as the title character.
7. The Addams Family ($113 mil)
I suspect this became a phenomenon thanks to the emerging Goth culture instigated by Tim Burton. But this was not Tim Burton. It was Barry Sonnenfeld. Burton himself tried to make this exact movie with Dark Shadows. Except we already had this one, Tim.
8. Sleeping with the Enemy ($101 mil)
Julia Roberts has a hit being something other than a pretty woman. Her career is assured!
9. Father of the Bride (89 mil)
Steve Martin duplicates his Parenthood success. And later duplicates his Father of the Bride success with Cheaper by the Dozen. And later duplicates his Cheaper by the Dozen success with...
10. The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear ($86 mil)
I hope you didn't interpret those ellipses to lead to this movie, because medical science has proven that Steve Martin is not Leslie Nielsen. They just happen to be both old white dudes. Although they've never appeared in the same movie...
Other notable movies: Fried Green Tomatoes ($82 mil; another hit chick flick? Hollywood you've deceived me), Cape Fear ($79 mil; Scorsese and De Niro reunite for a remake), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II ($78 mil), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country ($74 mil; Klingons! get your Klingons! with pepto bismol blood!), JFK ($70 mil; Oliver Stone, Coster, magic bullet), Hot Shots! (69 mil; Charlie Sheen!), What About Bob? ($63 mil; Bill Murray learns all about baby steps, drives Richard Dreyfuss crazy), The Last Boy Scout ($59 mil; Bruce Willis already had Die Hard, and now apparently wanted Lethal Weapon, too), My Girl ($59 mil; Dan Ackroyd mournfully plays a tuba), Boyz N the Hood ($57 mil), Doc Hollywood ($54 mil), Bugsy ($49 mil), New Jack City ($47 mil), The Rocketeer ($46 mil), Thelma and Louise ($45 mil; Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Brad Pitt, Ridley Scott), Point Break ($43 mil; Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Kathryn Bigelow), The Fisher King ($41 mil; Terry Gilliam, Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams), Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey ($38 mil; evil robot us's!), Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare ($34 mil; more lies from the horror genre!), White Fang ($34 mil), The Doors ($34 mil; Oliver Stone, Val Kilmer), King Ralph ($34 mil; it's an injustice that John Goodman has starred in so few movies), An American Tail: Fievel Goes West ($22 mil; incredibly, the last movie credit for James Stewart), The Neverending Story II ($17 mil), Hudson Hawk ($17 mil; an infamous flop for Bruce Willis), Highlander 2: The Quickening ($15 mil; a different edit removes those pesky aliens the few fans of this series worried about), Shipwrecked ($15 mil; one of the earliest movies I really enjoyed from my own lifetime), The Commitments ($14 mil; the Irish working class does American rock), Ernest Scared Stupid ($14 mil), Stone Cold ($9 mil; the wrestler Steve Austin took his famous nickname from this movie), My Own Private Idaho ($6 mil), Barton Fink ($6 mil), La Femme Nikita ($5 mil), Return to the Blue Lagoon ($2 mil), Kickboxer 2 ($1 mil; stars Sasha Mitchell, before a scandal ruined his career)
Source: Box Office Mojo
6 comments:
"More lies from the horror genre" LOL Lots of good movies that year Tony. T2 was an instant classic.
It's sad that I've never watched Silence of the Lambs all the way through. Wasn't there already a Hannibal Lecter show called "Dexter?" I mean it's pretty much the same thing.
I think you're right about "The Addams Family vs. Dark Shadows." That's exactly how it seemed but then I only saw the latter in commercials. Anyway, I like the Addams Family sequel a lot more, especially when they burn down the summer camp. I think my sisters and I could pretty much do that entire movie from memory because it was one of those that was always on TV for a while.
Horror movie franchises can never just admit "no more sequels...y'know, unless."
Dexter is a show that pretty much offends me. Better to do it with a character that deserves the distinction.
Good ol' Arnie can always be relied upon to make a movie that'll draw in the fans and the bucks. Terminator 2 is awesome. Who else is gonna jump into a pool of molten steel all for the sake of saving humanity?
He needs to appear in another Terminator. I know he's committed to another Conan, but it's Terminator that made him iconic, and it's a role he far more easily play in advancing age, considering it was always a robotic one that didn't required advanced stuntwork.
A calendar year where I saw 9 of the top 10 in the theater!!
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