Good Morning, World

I have of course posted this iconic, fetish-defining moment of Jean-Claude Van Damme's in Bloodsport here on the site before -- with a few more gifs, see 'em here --but this week's news that several of JCVD's classics are hitting 4K early next year got me reminiscing. Unfortunately Bloodsport is not among them -- even the blu-ray is out of print! Don't they get it -- the people demand the above shot in 4K dammit! You'll be printing money! Anyway the one I'm genuinely considering buying, which is probably the worst one of them all truth be told, is Double Impact where he plays twins. It just doesn't get much more 80s-trashy than that movie, and I love it so. 

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Lethal Weapon (1987)

I guess it's been longer since I'd seen Lethal Weapon than I realized because I have no memory at all of this ridiculous scene -- why the hell is Tom Atkins suddenly holding a carton of Egg Nog in front of himself like that??? Why did Gary Busey just shoot him through it... besides Busey gonna Busey??? But truth be told the only thing I do actually remember about Lethal Weapon is Mel Gibson's ass reveal...

...and, granted, that was enough in my tender youth to get Little Me to watch this movie dozens of times. This one definitely fell under the banner of straight guy movies that little gay boys could watch and get something out of them that their peers were not, alongside every movie Jean-Claude Van Damme made. Anyway I'm not here to ogle the ass of an asshole -- I'm here to celebrate the 87th birthday of the genre icon Tom Atkins, who inexplicably cradled that carton of egg nog like the goddamned professional he is. Legend!

Hit the jump for links to all the previous Ways Not To Die...

One Potato, Two Potato, Me Potato, You

They say that reality is stranger than fiction, but a good storyteller knows how to make reality even stranger still, and it turns out that Wes Hurley, the director of Potato Dreams of America, is a damned good storyteller. Potato Dreams tells Hurley's own autobiographical tale of growing up gay in the Soviet Union of the 1980s, tracing his unlikely path from watching bootleg American movies through static to eventually -- a thorough eventually -- making them himself. And it tells its often sad and scary story through big sparkly bursts of creative movie-magic -- what a gem this little Potato turns out to be.

Following an introductory quote from Quentin Crisp, because naturally, we first meet our little Potato (his mother's nickname for him) when he is indeed little, real little -- so little he's able to magically transform the scene of his mother being beaten by his father in front of him into a spectacular song-and-dance routine (but in black-and-white, because nobody in Vladivostok has a color TV yet) just by framing it in between his fingers. But this isn't just some Iron Curtain Walter Mitty, of gritty realism butting heads with fantastical escapes -- in Hurley's capable hands this Potato World, even in its seedier moments, always feels extra special.

The USSR of his youth is as hyper-stylized as late Fassbinder, half-naked Russian soldiers dance-fighting in silhouette against the horizon, stagey rubble scenery and prison-scene pietàs. This is the delectable stuff of a Jarman movie, purposefully pretend, memory made arch and unreal. Because how else would Potato, cinema-lover, remember anything? Time's turned my own remembrances of childhood poverty and abuse into their own operatic movements, with shifting scenery and stage directions -- it only feels right to go big or go home, and Hurley gets that.

Because as big as Hurley's embellishments go -- and Potato first figures out he's different from the other boys while watching Jean-Claude Van Damme movies with his new best friend Jesus Christ (yes, The Jesus Christ, played by Mean Girls actor Jonathan Bennett) for god's sake -- they land squarely on real feelings and a genuine shared experience I think any one of us can relate to. Okay, some of us more than others -- I too learned I was different from the other boys while watching Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. And I too dreamed of a way out of my frightening circumstances through the movies.

There are second and third act surprises I wouldn't want to ruin but Potato Dreams of America sees the young boy become a young man, switching actors and settings but never losing its sparkling sense of humor and community and wild creativity -- people keep surprising Potato, and the world keeps revealing itself to be weirder and, weirdly, kinder; as we move through the 90s and Potato learns of Gregg Araki and other gay people (in the Biblical sense) his story, so singular, really does begin to feel intrinsic to all our own. America might be a physical place but Hurley reminds us it's even more an idea, a boundless one, built on every immigrant imagination and dream.

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Potato Dreams of America is screening at SXSW right now!

Good Morning, World

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I included that shot of "Janice" (Leah Ayres) waking up the morning after a night spent with "Frank Dux" (yes really that is Jean Claude's character's name in Bloodsport) to happily gaze upon his perfectly framed ass -- to get comfortable, take it all in -- because it brings me right back to being 11 and being forced to watch shitty action movies with my Dad, and these magic moments where it all seemed worthwhile. Janice is basically the only female character in Bloodsport, which is far more concerned with greasy half-naked rubbing on each other for other's men's eyes than it is with women and romance, but this moment of the female gaze inserted all of a sudden into its otherwise preoccupied self fascinates me. 

The reason I was way into Jean-Claude's films was these moments are in every single one of his films -- more than Arnold or Sly (although they too had their moments) JCVD invited the viewer to luxuriate his physique; he liked the attention to be specifically sexual, whereas the other dudes (well Swayze excepted I guess, although Road House aside he didn't do a lot of Capital A Action Flicks) were mostly about being impressive walls of mass that bullets bounced off of. Jean-Claude bled, and Jean-Claude screwed, and we were all the better for it. (Bloodsport is on Amazon Prime.)

Good Morning, Adewale

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What is it the kids are saying? Good morning to Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje alone? Yeah that. A happy 51st birthday to the British actor known as "Adebisi" on Oz and "Mr. Eko" on Lost and as "that dude who wanted to have sex with Kit Harington" in Pompeii and "that dude who showered with Jean-Claude Van Damme" in some movie.  (pic via)

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10 Off My Head: Siri Says 1989

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Well it's Tuesday so you know what that means - there's about a 20-25% chance that I won't be lazy and I will actually do one of our "Siri Says" series posts, wherein I ask the robot lady inside my telephone to give me a random number between one and one hundred and then, once she has, I take that number and I turn it into a year and then I pick my five (well usually five) favorite movies from that year. For example today my phone gave me the number 89, and so we're going to list out favorite movies from The Movies of 1989.

On first glance through 1989's movies I thought this was going to be a small sad strange bunch, since the year was mostly populated with junk like Weekend at Bernie's or Born on the Fourth of July or (horror of horrors) Driving Miss Daisy. Blecch no thank you - I am with Spike Lee; Morgan Freeman should have driven Miss Daisy right off the cliff. But then I started digging deeper and there are a bunch of buried gems that came out this year, and what follows is probably one of the strangest most erratic batch of movies I've ever listed for one of these.

There are movies in here that I loved as a 11-year-old kid and there are movies that I have come to appreciate with a more adult sensibility, but side by side these all seem a little bit bonkers. Anyway once I did get to digging I found plenty to adore - indeed too many, and this week's list is twice the standard. And I could've made it even longer and brought several of those runners-up up too - Indiana Jones and Batman should've made my top list probably, but I decided to just stay weirder.

And before you write an angry defense of Do the Right Thing (obviously the true masterpiece of the year) please remember these aren't the "best" movies of the year, they are the ones I personally get the most joy from. My "favorites." My "best" list would be pretty different. (There are also some real glaring oversights in the list of movies I haven't seen, for that matter.) I give you...

My 10 Favorite Movies of 1989

The Little Mermaid

(dir. Ron Clements & John Musker)

-- released on November 17th 1989 --

Road House

(dir. Rowdy Herrington)

-- released on May 19th 1989 --

Heathers

(dir. Michael Lehmann)

-- released on March 31st 1989 --

Dead Calm

(dir. Phillip Noyce)

-- released on April 7th 1989 --

Steel Magnolias

(dir. Herbert Ross)

-- released on November 22nd 1989 --

Meet the Feebles

(dir. Peter Jackson)

-- released on December 8th 1989 --

Apartment Zero

(dir. Martin Donovan)

-- released on October 18th 1989 --

The Seventh Continent

(dir. Michael Haneke)

-- released on May 19th 1989 --

The War of the Roses

(dir. Danny Devito)

-- released on 1989 --

Society

(dir. Brian Yuzna)

-- released on May 13th 1989 --

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Runners-up: Batman (dir. Tim Burton), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (dir. Spielberg), Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee), Sante Sangre (dir. Jodorowsky), Back to the Future: Part II (dir. Zemeckis), Parenthood (dir. Ron Howard), Drugstore Cowboy (dir. Gus Van Sant), The Abyss (dir. James Cameron), Troop Beverly Hills (dir. Jeff Kanew)....

.... Ghostbusters II (dir. Ivan Reitman), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (dir. Gilliam), The Fabulous Baker Boys (dir. Steve Kloves), Akira (dir. Otomo), Crimes + Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen), Parents (dir. Bob Balaban), Major League (dir. Irby Smith), When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner), Sex Lies and Videotape (dir. Steven Soderbergh), The Burbs (dir. Joe Dante)

Never seen: Casualties of War (dir. Brian De Palma), My Left Foot (dir. Jim Sheridan), Roger & Me (dir. Michael Moore), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (dir. Peter Greenaway), Dekalog (dir. Kieslowski)...

... Kiki's Delivery Service (dir. Miyazaki), The Killer (dir. John Woo), Last Exit to Brooklyn (dir. Uli Edel), New York Stories (dir. Various), The Rainbow (dir. Ken Russell), Sweetie (dir. Jane Campion), Valmont (dir. Milos Forman)

What are your favorite movies of 1989?

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Good Morning, World

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A happy 59th birthday to the bodybuilder turned actor Ralf Möller today! Ralf co-starred in a couple of Van Damme movies (Universal Soldier and Cyborg) and was the lead in the Conan television show in the late 90s and is still playing heavies (literal heavies - he's an enormous 6'6" tall on top of almost 300 pounds of nothing but muscle) in movies up through today. He was in Gladiator! 

I grew up in the 80s so despite me technically "knowing better" I've got a soft spot for the Movie Muscle Men a la Schwarzenegger - Möller is supposedly a good friend of Arnold's (love these pictures of the two of them in 2014 where The Daily Mail goes on about Rolf making Arnold look teensy) which makes sense since he's a German Mr. Olympia. (Yes I know Arnold is Austrian, shut up.) Anyway this tidbit from Rolf's IMDb trivia page gave me a chuckle:

"Ralf Moeller and Dolph Lundgren co-starred together in Universal Soldier (1992). Years later, both actors auditioned for the role of Hagen in Gladiator (2000), with Lundgren losing it due to Ridley Scott being unimpressed by his acting and Moeller winning the role."

Who Wore It Better?

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Want to feel old, you guys? Zac Efron is turning 30 today. 30! Hollywood will be making a Dirty Grandpa 2 any day now starring him as the grandpa. Anyway if you want to feel even older (and why not while we're at it) the one-time prime slab of ass called Jean-Claude Van Damme shares a birthday with Zac and he's turning 57. 57! So here in honor of these two hunks we have all touched ourselves at one time or many another over, a short shorts poll...

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Which Is Hotter? Which is Hotter?

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Tom Hardy's gay twin movie Legend is finally out here in the US this weekend; I'm pretty sure the definition of forever is how long I've been clamoring to see this, but whatever. Reviews have been pretty mixed, blah blah, who cares, Tom Hardy gay twins. In its honor then let us look back upon a double pair of sexy movie twins, and choose our two sides...

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Today's Mood

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Programming Note: I have a crazy morning ahead so don't expect much out of me here until this afternoon. So much off-blog junk to do, you have no idea! It's 10AM and I'm already thinking about how sweet a stiff drink would be -- that's healthy, right? Oh shut up.

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Good Morning, World

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Have I really made it through my entire life up until this moment without seeing these old pictures of Jean-Claude Van Damme in a wee little jockstrap? Woe is me and everything that happened before now, it's all been meaningless, then. (click to embiggen) I don't know if they're from a movie or what, but I'd like to see said movie if a movie is what they are. My guess is they're not from a movie though, since he's posing directly for the camera.

Charlie Hunnam's Going To Prison

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And he's going to become a kick-boxer. 

You know, like Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Hopefully very much like Jean-Claude Van Damme! Although I shouldn't get my hopes up, the movie sounds more serious than Van Damme's classic 80s odes to bullets bouncing off his buns-of-steel were - it's an adaptation of Billy Moore's book A Prayer Before Dawn about his real-world experiences in "a barbaric Thai prison" where he picked up Muay Thai boxing in order to protect himself. So kind of Midnight Express...

... meets, well, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. 

Sounds good to me! I'm there.

We All Liked Lookin' At Them There

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I kind of feel like a dickhead for wishing Kellan into straight-to-video-ish obscurity so early in his career but if he can have the, uh, ample and, uh, bountiful career that Jean-Claude Van Damme, um, bounced around in for us, then I say we all should consider ourselves lucky. That Java Heat movie he put it in the air for was already a step straight in that blessed direction, and lord knows that Hercules thing wasn't doing him any favors in the upwards mobility department. Embrace the exploitative B-movies, darlin'.

This strange set of pictures via JJ is from a trip Kellan took to Thailand to christen a new resort there with his presence - why does that whole sentence read sketchy as hell to me? It's like... I don't know what you're good at, Kellan, but if it's at the Cheetah it ain't dancin'. We take the cash... 

... we cash the check, we show 'em what they wanna see. Speaking of what we all wanna see, hit the jump for a few more pictures including some shots from that Hercules movie that missed me the first time past (doesn't it look like Liam McIntyre is grabbing his ass in the picture on the left here?)...