The First A-Team Trailer

The moment you all have been waiting for is here.

The first trailer for the new A-Team movie got released today and in a word - it looks AWESOME.



A few happies:

1) Liam Neeson looks to be a great Hannibal (cigar and all)

2) Sharlto Copley from District 9 as Murdock

3) Rampage keep the BA Baracus hair-do

3) The A-Team van!

If this is half as good as the trailer looks, then this will more than make up for GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Potential Update on the A-Team Movie

Daytime just sent me over this info on the ever-in-discussion A-Team movie:

The "A-Team" is certainly gearing up for what one would call an A-list cast (though I'm quite fond of George Peppard, Dirk Benedict and Mr. T). According to Variety, it was confirmed that "Hangover" star Bradley Cooper is in negotiation to play Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck. And now, Variety is stating that none other than Liam Neeson (who just starred in the ridiculously entertaining "Taken") is in negotiations to play John "Hannibal" Smith. Joe Carnahan is set to direct, with Ridley Scott producing. OK, great. But where's Mr. T in all of this?

The source is here.

I would have never thought of Liam Neeson as a good Hannibal (of course Faceman would need to be played by a pretty boy, so no surprises there), but after seeing him in Taken, I would certainly like to see his interpretation of the role.

Now of course the big question for me (aside from the concern of Hollywood destroying all of my childhood icons in the name of making a buck, i.e. Transformers, GI Joe, etc.) - is where in time will they set the story?

The A-Team is fundamentally a 1980's post-Vietnam story, but I am not relying on Hollywood to keep the story in context.

I am sure that the A-Team will have been accused of a "crime they did not commit" - some kind of robbery of a big bank in Iraq or Afghanistan. But to make the story politically correct for modern times (and Hollywood), it'll turn out that the bank is being run by an evil military contractor - who was really defrauding the government for its own nefarious purposes.

I wonder if they will push the envelope and make the team mercenaries during the conflict - certainly believable in our contractor-based neo-warfare model - or if they will be a real US Army A-Team (Special Forces) that is assigned the infamous task? If they are US troops, then of course Mr. Neeson would have to do something about that accent . . .

Or . . . they could go all UN-style like Streetfighter.

Just kidding . . . seriously. Don't do it, Hollywood!

Ok - so the Transformers movie wasn't that bad . . .

Tropic Thunder – Now with More Retards

Tropic Thunder will open this week to a hail of criticism from various members of the press and polite society. Much to my surprise, it had little to do with Robert Downey, Jr.'s black-face performance of a tough Vietnam-era sergeant, but rather dealt with the copious use of the epithet “retard” oft-used by the characters to describe themselves.

Their indignation caused a bit of a row at the opening of the film, attended by advocate, and openly retarded actor, Tom Cruise. The “beautiful people” were met on the red carpet by a group of protesters coming from across the street.

Dozens of people from organizations such as the Special Olympics and the American Association of People with Disabilities protested the movie-industry spoof across the street from the film's Los Angeles premiere at Mann's Bruin Theatre on Monday. The protesters held up signs with slogans such as "Call me by my name, not by my label" and chanted phrases like "Ban the movie, ban the word." More.

One of the film''s writers recently spoke to the controversy, saying:

"Some people have taken this as making fun of handicapped people, but we're really trying to make fun of the actors who use this material as fodder for acclaim," co-writer Etan Cohen told MTV. "The last thing you want is for people to think you're making fun of the victims in this who are having their lives turned into fodder for people to win Oscar."

Whether we like it or not, I think there are certain offensive words that have crept into our national lexicon – and retard is one of them. It’s become a way to describe things or people, and in the absence of mentally handicapped friends or family, it’s probably something folks say a lot without the hesitation that comes from personal involvement with affected individuals.

Honestly, I didn’t really think much about it until I saw a post on my Facebook page from a high-school friend who is a regional leader of the Special Olympics and has a sister with Down syndrome.

Coming from a family where we have a middle school teacher on staff, our language tends to degrade the deeper we are into the school year. Whereas we would once describe things as being "unfortunate," as time goes on they become “retarded” or “gay”. There is a certain primal element that goes into the use of some of these words and a sense of empowerment that comes with using a mean word becomes a tribal designation to separate “us” from “them”.

We are this, they are “gay” – or whatever the nom du jour happens to be.

That’s not spoken as a disparagement of gay folks, but I think the language also becomes a short-cut to create a funny reaction in folks and the shock-factor of a lot of jokes is more often based on language that creates offense by stereotyping one group or another and putting them into the awkward position where we can point at them and laugh.

It all comes back to asking why things make us laugh, and I think we either laugh at things because they are really are funny or sometimes we laugh at things because they make us uncomfortable – and somewhere up in the cerebrum similar chemicals are being mixed around and it elicits the same “laugh” response.

And speaking of gay and funny, I remember watching Ellen DeGeneres’ bit a few years back at a relatives' house (we still don’t have cable). It was really funny, really clever, and above all – really clean.

We were all amazed later on when recounting the show that it was funny without having the normal potty talk or “seven words” to make us laugh.

It’s a rare comedian that can elicit such riotous laughter without working blue.

But I think there is something more to the protests that the disabilities advocates have hit on.

“I just think Ben Stiller and the people involved in this movie just didn't think it was going to be offensive."

Andrew J. Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities

I think he’s right. I don’t think Hollywood thinks a lot about what they put together.

Movies are a business – a big business – and Hollywood writers and producers have put together a John Grisham-novel-esqe algorithm for making money on their product.

There is no motivation to try to challenge perceptions of comedy and what makes us laugh because it’s just too risky. If it’s too high-brow no one will get it, or even another group will come out of the woodwork and be offended by the material because it’s considered snobby.

So we’re back to where we started – watching the latest stars push the envelope of what’s socially acceptable and maybe even highlight the hidden biases within ourselves.

At least now we have explosions and cool special effects.

New Punisher Movie Posters

Some new Punisher: War Zone movie posters were released into the InterWeb.


They look pretty cool - kinda in the "Welcome Back, Frank" style that Steve Dillon/Garth Ennis used to revitalize the series. I really liked that series, as it did away with a lot of the silliness that had become the hallmark of the character - Microchip, The Battle Van, using a mini-gun in downtown New York and not activating the National Guard in the process . . .

It also gives a closer look at the "action collar" thing that has been bugging me from the trailer.


I supposed that its some kinda armour, but I think if you were going that route, you'd probably wear some kind of DEA-mask or helmet as well? Or maybe the slicked back hair has been rated to Level 2, so it's not a concern?

The director is some German chick, so maybe its a goth/industrial thing?


The film is being described as a reboot of the first series, which is great, since that movie was so bad and didn't at all set itself up for a good sequel (SARCASM ALERT).

There's a credit for Microchip in the cast list, so let's just hope this one doesn't leave us longing for Dolph Lundgren.

More info on the train wreck that led to this movie here.

Space Nazis!

Holy crap - Clive Cussler was right all along!



Here's the site.

"The following tale of alien encounters is true . . . . and by true I mean false. It's all lies but they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth. The answer is no."
- Leonard Nimoy

Terminator Salvation?

I, like many of my movie-going ilk, was really excited to see the 3rd Terminator movie, as the preview made it out to be what I had been waiting for the whole time - a story set in the future showing the few human survivors going at it all laser-Red Dawn-style against the worst that Skynet could throw out.

Unfortunately, after sitting through this uninspired remake of the 2nd movie with a different cast and . . . oh wait . . . this time the Terminator is a girl (wow! - gee that's never been done before) . . . I realized that the scene in the preview that I thought was going to show the future was just that - a quick scene in the movie showing the future. Ahem.

I wanted to see the 2000s version of the best parts of the first film - showing Reese and the rest of the gang driving around in retrofitted El Caminos and shooting T-800s with the plasma rifle with the 40-watt range (hey, only what ya see, pal).

In either case, Warner Bros has released a teaser trailer for the new movie and it looks like its at least getting closer to the goods.

On the positive side, it is staring Christian Bale, who seems to be reprising a little harder Reign of Fire-type action (leading the numbed herds out the valley) and besides . . . he's freakin' Batman.

Check it out.

Bateman

In honor of the upcoming release of The Dark Knight - one of the best recuts on YouTube.

Random stupid on the new GI JOE Movie

Ok - I know it's really hip to say how bad things are, everything sucks (remember how cool this made you feel back in high school?), but there are some things that should never be touched.

And one of those - is the mission of GI Joe - A Real American Hero.

Apparently, this is more than liberal, USA-hating Hollywood can stand, and thus, the producers of the new GI Joe movie have made some slight alterations:

Paramount has confirmed that in the movie, the name G.I. Joe will become an acronym for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity" — an international, coed task force charged with defeating bad guys. It will no longer stand for government issued, as in issued by the American government.

That's awesome, because there really is a world standard for who the "bad guys" are. Hmm . . . do we give it an Eastern angle, and support the status quo of the world superpower in that region, or do we base it on natural resources and thus look out for the interests of the Middle East?

I know . . . we can all have a vote and then decide on what's best - oh, wait . . . most of the world's countries don't believe in silly concepts like "God-given rights," "freewill," and freedom to worship and express yourself.

No - they're too busy dragging political dissidents off to gulags, harvesting their organs, or chopping the arms off of their neighboring tribes.

Oh, wait . . . that's right - we're supposed to be the "bad guys" now. Bringing all that awful foreign aid to all of the good countries of the world, selfishly being first to provide medical support and supplies in times of disasters, and adopting unwanted children from other countries that just throw them away if they are unlucky enough to be born female instead of male.

The word is that in the current political climate, they're afraid that a heroic U.S. soldier won't fly.

I first saw this on AintItCool.com, but here's the full article on Fox.

Thanks, Hollywood . . . but didn't you already made this movie?

More A-Team Rumors

Just saw this number over at aintitcool.com:

Regarding indications Tyrese [Gibson] would play the Mr. T originated Bosco Baracus ("B.A.") in John Singleton's upcoming adaptation of THE A-TEAM, sounds like the interest & intent is there...as long as scheduling permits.

Ice Cube had previously been rumored for the role, although Tyrese talk is getting louder these days.

Tyrese said that a mohawk is not out of the question, but otherwise he's excited to bring BA into the 21st century, so don't expect a ton of bling around his neck.

I really wished they would have tried to run this in the 1990s and we could have seen the Ving Rhames Mr. T . . .

Here's his profile on IMDB.

While I was there I noticed one of his creds looks a lot like a remake of Death Race 2000.

Is nothing . . . um . . . er . . . sacred?

The A-Team - Movie Update . . . Again.

So once again, the talk of an A-Team movie is hot again, even while my first-tier list of actors grows older and less appropriate to take on the signature safari jackets, black leather gloves, and AR SP-1 rifles.

Here's the latest:

The A-Team Countdown Begins

If you've been holding your breath for The A-Team movie, well, we feel sorry for you.

But help is on the way for you and your oxygen-deprived brain. So just hold on. Until June 12. Of next year. Feel better? You should, actually.

The release date, as reported by Variety, is the first for the long-discussed, long-suffering project.

John Singleton, who last yelled cut on Four Brothers, will direct; Michael Bandt and Derek Haas, who helped shoot the lights out with 3:10 to Yuma, are writing the screenplay.

As reported, the movie will follow the basic recipe of the 1983-87 TV series: Take four ex-military men; add one war crime they didn't commit; mix in chases, pursuits and more chases.

Given the source material, Singleton has promised an action movie, a serious action movie—"wall to wall kicking ass and talking s--t," as he put it to Collider.com. The film presently is sans actors, A-list, B-team or otherwise, as Singleton himself has made very clear.

There are a few hints of potential actors, despite the director's misgivings about giving out any hints.

Singleton did allow that he "really, really want[s]" Woody Harrelson to play "Howling Mad" Murdoch, the sanity challenged pilot given life on the TV series by Dwight Schultz.

In the interview, conducted in January, Singleton sounded a lot like a man who's been a little bit hounded by fans demanding to know who's going to play Mr. T.

"Nobody is playing Mr. T—the character's name is B.A. Baracus," the filmmaker reminded.

And, no, before you bother Mr. Singleton again, B.A. Baracus hasn't been cast yet, either. Ice Cube, however, has thrown his Mohawk into the ring.

I wouldn't have thought of Ice Cube, but now that you mention it, I think he would be great for the role.

I was always pushing for Ving Rhames, but that was when I first started hearing whispers about the project - ala mid-90s. I don't think he would be such a good fit now.

As for Hannibal Smith - the role immortalized by George Peppard - that would be a hard one to cast, especially with today's focus on younger, more carbon copied actors.

May be a good role for a more grizzled Tom Berenger . . . my personal favorite for a late 80s Frank Castle.

I'll always hold a grudge that the earlier Punisher movie wasn't shot more in line with the comic.

More.

Yo, Joe.

One of the first (promotional) pics of Ray Park as Snakes-Eyes from forthcoming GI Joe movie.

I just caught wind of this from a fellow Raider, but I have to admit this looks freakin' cool.

The cast is listed out on the IMDB page and there are some good choices in there.

Fingers crossed . . .

Surviving the End Times with only One Clip

Ok, so I never intended this to be a blog about how guns are used in movies. MadOgre does that on his site and does a great job. However, being a movie dude and also a lifelong student of the martial arts - I just have to notice these things from time to time.

I didn't intend this to be a movie review blog either, but movies - for better or worse - are a big part of the Orion culture. Although it's great to come up with good paintball combat scenarios from real-life military action (i.e. the now infamous Civil War game), it's a helluva lot more fun to base things on movies (i.e. the OK Corral scenario - someone is required to wink).



Besides, both of the people who probably actually reading this are most likely folks that were with me at the movie. So unfortunately, they're having to hear this twice.


I am a huge fan of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. And yes, I read it before the movie came out and even read it before I realized that Heston's Omega Man was based on the same source material. In fact, I had a moment in reading the book where I realized that Heston's character and the protagonist of the book had the same name - Neville. This is a pretty big revelation coming from the guy who spent a most of Les Misérables thinking thinking that Father Madeleine and Jean Valjean were different characters . . . but I digress.


In either case, the moral of the story is that I Am Legend is something near and dear to my heart, but I am straying from the point.

I don't want to give the whole farm away, but to me the story of I Am Legend is first a psychological work about what someone goes through mentally being the sole survivor of a major disaster - in this instance a massive biological outbreak. It is secondly a story of someone "staying alive" by going out and hunting those who would attempt to stop him.

I knew that the Will Smith version of the story would be highly Hollywood-ized, but the whole idea that Hollywood as a general collective knows better how to reimagine literature is trying at times. I understand having to cut things down for time - no one wants to spend 5 hours in a theater - but this can't be at the expense of plot and character development.

Don't get me wrong - the movie wasn't all bad. I have come to appreciate movies per their parts - rather than the sum of those parts. Give it a shot, it'll make you feel better about spending $1-2 on good 30-minute chunks, instead of $9 on a crappy movie.

Here's my major flaws with this film:

Hunting scene
Ok - if you are that hungry you either (a) run down the deer with the Mustang (I am sure Ford had something in their contract specifically against this) or (b) open fire like a mad fool at the herd of deer. I saw the scene with the "gun closet" - I think he has more than a few rounds of ammo. Though he never actually fired at any of the deer . . . or the lions for that matter. If that would have been a Raider, the next scene would have had Will Smith wearing a giant lion mane coat (ala James Earl Jones in Coming to America) and would have had both of those lion cubs made into a pair of very stylish and comfortable slippers.

NYC
Are there even any guns in NYC? I think this would have been a much more entertaining film if it took place in Texas, Arizona, or the Deep South.

Blowing up the place to save himself
Wasn't this dude in the Army? Surely he had access to some claymores . . .

Arms
So we all know that M4s are the rage, but . . . . well see above.

Ok, ok . . . it's Hollywood.

We know we can't have a scene with the protagonist out at some ex-Mil desert installation, sitting on the roof of the hooch with a Barrett M82, waiting about 10 minutes or so for the hoard to get into AP range.

That would just make too much sense.

The Predator Mad Minute

Last night I put Predator on in the background while I was working on some projects. I have probably seen the movie a good fifty or so times and I still notice little cool things about it.

I looked up from the work table at the scene where Bill Duke's character Eliot rushes up on the recently slain Blain (Jesse Ventura) and sees the eyes of the Predator. He picks up "Ol' Painless" the minigun and starts to ventilate the jungle. He is soon joined by the team in a massive shoot-out at the unseen Predator. I always thought this was a great scene for all of the different weapons the team took out on the mission.


I had no idea these kind of shenanigans could serve a tactical purpose.

My first clue came from the Predator entry in font of all true knowledge in the universe, Wikipedia:

Eliot starts screaming and immediately opens fire and is joined by the remaining members of the unit. In what is known as a "mad minute", all members of the team saturate the jungle with bullets. They stop firing and to their shock, are unable to find any bodies.

So learning more, I found out that a 'mad minute' is a real military term, having come from the British:

Originally, "Mad Minute" was a pre-WWI term used by British riflemen for the act of getting 15 aimed bullets into a target at 300yds within one minute using a bolt-action rifle (usually a Lee-Enfield or Lee-Metford rifle).

Now for someone that grew up shooting all of the weapons of the pre-WW2 British Army, I have to say I am pretty ashamed at having never heard of this before.

But wait - there's more!

Mad Minute is a military tactic used to surprise enemy snipers when their location is unknown. If there are too many possible positions to determine where the enemy fire is coming from, each likely enemy position is assigned to one or more soldiers. Upon receiving the signal, all simultaneously fire a specific number of rounds. The tactic has a long history of effective use; it also has strong secondary value as a morale booster.

The name "Mad Minute" comes from the experience of "madness" during the time of heavy firing upon various targets without knowing the exact location of the enemy, leading to heavy use of ammunition.

Hell, I even found a video on YouTube showing a 'mad minute' with a surplus British SMLE rifle (WW1 vintage). Too cool!

I had no idea our post-paintball-game antics had a real tactical purpose.

Thanks, Wikipedia!

No Endings For Old Men

Last weekend I had the good fortune to break-away from my burgeoning family responsibilities and check out the new Coen Brothers movie, No Country For Old Men.

I have been a fan of the Coen Brothers for years and have consistently stood in line for everything they do. Hell, I even saw The Ladykillers at the theatre and fully expected a personal letter for that one. When I saw that the Coen Brothers were getting involved in a modern-western-border-wars picture and it had a psycho hitman carrying a captive bolt pistol (yes, I had to look this up) - I actually pre-scheduled some time to check out the movie before the baby was born.

Ahem.

Now I was already a bit cautious as this movie had both really good reviews from the usually Hollywood shills and was only showing in the local 'art' theatre - usually a kiss of death for any movie that I am coming at from an 'thinking-action-genre' perspective. However, I was undaunted, as for the aforementioned cattlegun (i.e. captive bolt pistol, captive bolt stunner, hereafter referred to as a CBP) and a few trailer scenes of a weapon that looked very suspiciously like a silenced automatic shotgun.

The movie started off great - the characters were well developed and the eerie mood of the west Texas frontier meshed great with the faceless menace of the Mexican drug runners. The dialogue was crisp and witty and dotted with the regionalisms and sayings that are such a big part of western Texas culture.

I was rocking with the protagonist and held breathless at the unstoppable pursuit of the killer. There were threats of revenge - the protagonist referring to his Vietnam-trained combat skills and prowess with weaponry.

They moved closer to each other . . .

And then it just ended.

I can't remember the exact length of the film, but if it was two hours - the last ten minutes killed everything I had loved so much in the majority of the film.

I read a review after the fact with the Coen Brothers that had mentioned that a lot of folks would probably be pissed at the way the movie netted out. They mentioned a few significant events off-screen (read: you are left wondering what the hell happened) and that it was a movie made the way they wanted - rather than how the audience would probably like it.

Um, yeah.

The movie ended to a cacophony of groans from myself and fellow movie goers. One old man a few rows over even threatened that he would be staying in his seat until "he got an ending." I am sure that is how the book ended up, but come on . . .

My cousin summed it up best as we languidly exited the theatre - they must have just run out of money.

I sure hope that's the case. And I for one would have thrown in an extra theatre admission to see a right-proper ending to what was otherwise a great movie.

So Coen Brothers - WTF happened?

And by the way, you can't slap a silencer on a shotgun without having it blow-up in your face.

Into the Wild - The Movie

I read for the first time today about a film version of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild that is due out later this year. I read the book a few years ago when I friend recommended it because I was "into that survival stuff."

It was a pretty intense read about a fresh-out-of-college kid who thought he was a sort of later-day Daniel Boone. He had a series of semi-misadventures where he got himself into some harrowing situations and by skill and luck managed to survive. He eventually ended up testing his mettle in Alaska and his luck ran out.

Nature always wins . . .

It's a great book and something I recommend to any armchair adventurer who grew up reading Hatchet and thinks they can hack it in the real wilderness. It creeped me out in the same way that Jack London's To Build A Fire creeped me out about being without a nice, warm fire in the out of doors.

It certainly changed my perspective on the whole idea of wilderness survival being anything but glamorous.

The famous bus scene. Creepy.

The real-life Chris McCandless also traveled initially with a lot of guns and really was pro on them - finally regretfully having to bury a few in the dessert to shed weight. The film is directed by anti-gun stalwart and Hollywood B-list loony Sean Penn, so I am sure this aspect of the book will be disregarded.

More info on the move here.

The Action Compound Bow

A few months ago we were having dinner at one of our favorite local hamburger joints. It was someplace we had been to pretty frequently over the past few years, so you get to know the waitresses and staff – and we happened to have a gal we’d chatted with off and on over the while. I think I was wearing a shirt with a hunting theme or maybe it was the conversation, so she casually mentioned to us that she was very anti-hunting.

I took my usual approach to this familiar scene with my well-researched opinions on conservation being led by hunters, the rampant deer population of Texas, CWD, lack of wolves to balance out the populations, the fact that I hunt with primitive, blackpowder weapons, and my Native American-inspired approach to utilizing the whole animal, etc.

She caved a little after our short talk and then added in that she did have a cousin who was a hunter – but that it was ok because he was a bowhunter and that was more sportsmanlike.

Er . . . wha?

No disrespect to bowhunters at all. It’s a very difficult sport – nay discipline – to go out into the woods and harvest game with a primitive weapon. I just find it ironic that the average anti-hunting hippie can think that hunting exclusively with a bow somehow justifies hunting.

First of all, the arrow shot from a bow kills via hemorrhage. That means "bleeding to death" folks. When a rifle bullet hits a target or game animal, a huge amount of force is transferred to the target. In many instances, this force alone is enough to kill an animal. The good news on the ethical hunting front is that it means the animal is more likely to die quickly and humanely – even if the hunter isn’t the world’s greatest shot.

It's really hard to get a clean kill with a bow. This is why many bowhunters practice and hunt at very close ranges – often times within 50 yards or so. Many bowhunters spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. It’s not the kind of weapon you can just go pick-up down at Cabela’s and then expect to go out into the woods harvesting game all Robin Hood-style.

Which brings me to the gist of all of this – why do so many action movies love the compound bow?

Deliverance certainly had its bows (not compound, however), but Rambo really was the start of it all.

Who can forget the great scene when John Rambo, divested of most of his high-tech gear from his ill-fated para-drop into NVA-held territory, whips out his folding compound-bow set – complete with explosive-tipped arrowheads? Eat your heart out Duke-boys and your lame, backwoods dynamite-stick-on-an-arrow trick.

After somewhat of a hiatus, things have come back full guns – or should I say full bow? (I make no apologies for puns) Two recent films – Elektra and The Punisher – both feature the compound bow in full-on action style. Even the deplorable Blade Trinity featured some kind of odd, compound bow/laser hybrid device.

Elektra was especially silly in this regard. In the scene featuring the bow she was going to assassinate her mark via a compound bow from a few hundred yards’ distance - across a nice, placid lake. She was shooting the target through a window (not open – so there’s glass) and then aiming at the victim’s head.

If the arrow did manage to make it the few hundred yards to hit the window and go through the glass without yawing off at some crazy angle, then it would be a hell of a shot to actually cause a fatality at that point. I must also add-in that the bow and arrow featured a scope. Sniper Bows - sheesh.

In The Punisher, Frank Castle – thankfully not played by Dolph Lundgren in this one – uses a bow as a sentry-removal weapon to enter the lair of the antagonist. I will grant that this is probably a more realistic use of a compound bow in an action sequence, but I still think it’s a little far-fetched that someone would decide that a bow and arrow was the right weapon to bring the fight to the enemy. Especially an enemy armed with assault rifles and sub-machine guns.

Haven’t these folks seen Wild Geese? Hardy Krueger showed us that a crossbow was the right tool for the whole sentry removal job.

Recent history always has had its share of proponents of the bow and arrow. Ben Franklin, when faced with a shortage of ideas on how to best arm the colonists against the British aggressors, famously suggested that the Continental army train soldiers with bow and arrows.

It may not have been the best approach against a battle-hardened army, but I certainly would have given them 10 points for coolness.

Now I do have a bow, love to shoot it, and have taken it on several unsuccessful hog hunting trips. Unsuccessful in that the little piggies decided not to show up, not that I went and wounded some poor animal with a well-placed shot to the rump. I am no Ted Nugent, but I can usually hit what I am aiming at most of the time.

Now if I was going to use a primitive weapon to infiltrate the lair of some villain or other nefarious character, I certainly wouldn’t use a bow.

No, I’d fall back on my well-practiced and battle proven Brick-In-The-Sock.

Patent pending.

The Red Dawn Culture

It all started with the Wolverines.

Maybe there were some hints of it that started earlier – like the car wars of Road Warrior or watching John Rambo use his hollow-handled survival knife. But Red Dawn was the nascent example of “what if?” scenarios before TSHTF became the nom de jour of locker room and campfire discussions of our youth. It was the watershed pop culture event that really got folks thinking about what would happen if America was invaded by a foreign power.

It was familiar and yet something we had never seen before. The scene in the high school with the airborne invasion kept us looking up towards the skies for opening parachutes. I’ll never forget the time Big Mike and I were riding bikes at the elementary school and saw two Apaches going overhead for the first time – we were convinced they were Russian Hinds – or at least some kind of scout ‘copter for the upcoming invasion.

The Chair Is Against The Wall. The Chair Is Against The Wall.

It was empowering to be a kid and see the kids able to hold off the Russian threat from their campsite up in the Rocky Mountains. We knew that we were going to be the ones that would have to repel the invasion forces – hiding out at our hunting leases and taking raiding parties into town for supplies. Never mind that we were too young to drive and were miles and miles away from our un-stocked and completely indefensible deer camps.

And then there was the scene where they geared up in the local sporting goods store . . . They were all weapons we’d known from hunting – a deer rifle, pump shotgun, the ubiquitous Winchester 30-30 we all owned or our fathers owned; even the compound bow that was lurking in the closet of some friend’s older brother.

It showed us the value of hunting and living off the land. It spurned a million conversations about who would do what when the Russians came. I remember endless discussions with my middle school friends about who would make it and who wouldn’t– all on the basis of who hunts and fishes and knew how to camp.

John Has A Long Moustache. John Has A Long Moustache.

Years went by and the Cold War ended. The Russians had turned from enemies to allies and were replaced by eco-terrorists, Y2K and when those ideas failed – became the foundation for our shared obsession with zombie invasions. All of it had roots somewhere in John Milius’ grand vision of WWIII.

Looking back, the movie was far from perfect. The concept of a Russian-led invasion of the United States seems almost silly with post-peristroka hindsight, where Russia didn’t seem to be the military behemoth we feared so much in the 1970s and 80s.

Still, the scenario that was painted by Colonel Andy Tanner (Powers Booth) seemed realistic enough at the time:

First wave of the attack came in disguised as commercial charter flights same way they did in Afghanistan in '80. Only they were crack Airborne outfits. Now they took these passes in the Rockies . . . They coordinated with selective nuke strikes and the missiles were a helluva lot more accurate than we thought. They took out the silos here in the Dakotas, key points of communication . . . Infiltrators came up illegal from Mexico. Cubans mostly. They managed to infiltrate SAC bases in the Midwest, several down in Texas and wreaked a helluva lot of havoc, I'm here to tell you. They opened up the door down here, and the whole Cuban & Nicaraguan armies come walking right through, rolled right up here through the Great Plains . . . We held them at the Rockies and the Mississippi. Anyway, the Russians reinforced with 60 divisions. Sent three whole army groups across the Bering Strait into Alaska, cut the pipeline, came across Canada to link up here in the middle, but we stopped their butt cold. The lines have pretty much stabilized now.

I don’t think any of us really fear the possibility of a Russian-led invasion at this point, but the idea of “infiltrators” coming up from Mexico certainly does hold some concerns and parallels for the islamo-fascist terroists we face today.

I am sure that the FBI is not actively looking at airborne terrorists as an active threat, but rest assured, I and the rest of the dudes that grew up watching Red Dawn in the 1980s would know exactly what to do if it did happen.

Wolverines!!

He’s Back

Ok – so I try not to completely nerd out on movies before I see them – there is always the inevitability of over-hyping something that turns out to be a big pile of poo, but a new Rambo movie – I mean come on. Even from a purely tac-porn perspective I just can’t wait to see what kind of goods and kit our favorite anti-Hero will be carrying.

And speaking of carrying, here is one of the recently published stills from the film to make its way on the net.


From the image, you can see that he is going to have some kind of cool new blade. Like him or hate him, First Blood and Rambo did more for the custom and semi-custom knife industry than any other film (doubt me? Try to go on eBay or to a knife show and buy a Jimmy Lile knife). It even set the precedent for the inclusion of the Tom Brown Tracker knife in the much-lamented, The Hunted.

I did like that movie by the way, and for more than the scenes showing the field-expedient creation of knives for the ubiquitous final showdown.

Anyway, go check out the trailer here and see what you think for yourself.

The Punisher’s Movie List

I was recently on Ain’tItCool.com trying to find some new details on the new Rambo movie and saw a bit on the back and forth on the new Punisher film.

To go ahead and spoil everyone’s fun, it looks like Thomas Jane won’t be in the new film. Crap. That makes me not even want to see it or even be interested in the project. Next thing they’ll say that Joel Schumacher is taking over the project (nipples on Batman, anyone?) and he’ll be introducing Tom Arnold as Microchip (no offense, buddy – loved you in True Lies) and the ridiculous Punisher Battle Van. Not that I am really against Vulcan mini-gun-mounted anything, but come on – how many mobsters are there really in New York City? And how long can you really drive around with a giant van sporting a big “Hey – I Have Some Crazy Armaments Here – Please Call the National Guard” sign? And you have to capture a lot of contraband to pay for that freakin’ ammo bill.

Ok – I am completely off topic now.

In either case, the site published an email from Thomas Jane that talked about his preparations for the role and a completely badass list of films he watched to get into character.

Here is the list of films:

Leon the Professional, Oldboy, The Seven-Ups (GREAT flick), Point Blank, Escape from NY, The Driver, Magnum Force, The Mechanic, The Great Silence, Sexy Beast, Nighthawks, Cry Vengeance (check it out), Road Warrior, Man on Fire, Outlaw Josey Wales, Rocky (think about it), Serpico, etc etc etc.

I would also add a few from the John Woo canon of films (Hard Boiled, The Killer), some John Milius (Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn), anything by Walter Hill, and Mad Max – the George Miller film that started the whole Road Warrior phenomenon.

Overall that is an awesome list of movies. Netflix, here we come . . .