I tried to do a podcast once. Alas, The Bookshelf Battlecast was thankfully short lived. Actually, it never really lived. It was dead on arrival.
I enjoyed using the software to cut sound clips together and it’s funny how you never really learn how to do something until you try to do it. It all seemed very confusing at first but before I knew it, I was mixing sound and fading in background music, the whole shebang.
Sadly, I, BQB was the weak link in the BQB cast. I have a face for radio, a voice for print, and a writing style for unpaid blogs that any schmuck with a computer can start. On the mic, I was about as exciting as listening to paint dry and I realized I was better off not on air at all.
The fun byproduct is that I hired various celebrity impersonators to do intros for the podcast. With their talent, they brought scripts I wrote for them to life and a few of them even told me that they had a lot of fun performing what I wrote. I’m like 50 percent sure they weren’t just saying that.
Anyway, here’s a clip of a talented Arnie impersonator doing a bit I wrote:
Scrolling through Netflix last night with a bowl of pasta in hand, I caught this flick and was transported to me teen years, to a time when seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger on a movie poster meant the film was guaranteed to be good (well, good to fans of action flicks, anyway.)
As it turns out, that era was soon to come to an end. In my mind, this movie is Schwarzenegger’s last good film. In the years since, he’s had a couple of flicks that were mildly OK or at least tolerable, and some bona fide garbage, but at any rate, this is the last movie he made that I remember being awesome.
Side note: Maybe he disagrees, but in hindsight, I think it was a mistake for Arnold to run for Governor of Cal-eee-fornia. Maybe he did it because he thought he was getting older and his movie days were behind him, but I think he might have missed a shot to transition into more seasoned roles. Maybe he might have, gasp, found an Oscar worthy vehicle.
I know. He’s a giant weightlifter action star with an Austrian accent but he also had a lot of Hollywood pull. He could have found his Oscar film. Is it too late now? I don’t know.
Anyway. Back to the movie. This film takes us into the Federal Witness Protection program. Spoiler alert: our first intro into this world is when Arnold evacuates a mobster turned witness and his wife who are about to get whacked.
Arnold dumps ketchup all over the mobster and his wife, takes a polaroid, puts it into the pocket of one of two hit men he’s offed. He then replaces the husband and wife with corpse ringers pilfered from a morgue and drags the hit men’s bodies to the front lawn. He shoots one, then puts the gun in the other’s hand.
The mobster (Robert Pastorelli, by the way) is confused. Arnold, as his character, US Marshall John Kruger, explains, “They killed you, then turned on each other.”
Pastorelli replies, “Right. Sons of bitches!”
I don’t know why, but that line made me laugh as a kid and so many years later it still does.
As the movie goes on, I saw a lot of stars I haven’t seen in a long time – James Caan as the film’s villain, Vanessa Williams as the witness Arnie must rescue and James Coburn as the head of the witness protection program. Oh, and that guy who plays Roger in “Mad Men” has a bit part as an FBI agent. Sometimes it’s fun to watch old movies and catch actors in parts before they get big.
Alas, if only we had known that not too long after this film, Arnie’s movie career went into the witness program. It’s not dead, it’s just in hiding – probably in a farm house in rural Illinois, secluded from civilization and far away from anything resembling a restaurant that can provide a good meal. Maybe it will come out of hiding someday.
For now, it’s just Arnie doing the old actor’s cash-in routine – lots of cash grab sequels to films Gen Xers feel nostalgia for. As if wrecking “Terminator” with “Genisys” wasn’t enough (Terminators with gray hair, my ass), he’ll be out with a new Conan film I hear. Something tells me he’ll be wearing more than a leather speedo in this one.
Oh well, who am I to judge? I’ve never been speedo ready in my life.
Will you please drop what you are doing and listen to “Not Arnold Schwarzenegger” make fun of me, my fat flabbiness, my lack of muscles and love of pizza and so on?
Hey by the way, “The Bookshelf Battle Cast” is on iTunes so, yeah, go listen, subscribe, vote, leave a review.
This little soundbite is short, and is hilarious so, check it out:
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jamie Lee Curtis. Total awesomeness.
BQB here with a review of True Lies.
I was flipping through the channels, caught this film on TV and it immediately made me feel like a kid again.
THE PLOT: Arnold Schwarzenegger is a secret agent for a U.S. spy organization, Omega Sector. However, he keeps this secret from his wife, Jamie Lee Curtis, who thinks she’s married to a lame, boring computer salesman. In search of adventure, Jamie Lee gets taken in by a used car salesman played by Bill Paxton, who pretends to be a spy in an attempt to get into her pants.
When Arnold’s real pursuit of a terrorist organization intersects with Paxton’s pursuit of Jamie Lee’s nether regions, shit hits the fan.
THE AWESOMENESS: Movies tend to be a snapshot of the time in which they are made, and you don’t realize until years later why they are so awesome. But here are many reasons why this movie is awesome:
It was Arnold at his best. The 1980s saw Arnold with many great action films that were high on energy but low on plot. This film was packed with great writing and comedy. Sadly, I think it may also be the last really good movie Arnie ever made.
Tom Arnold proves himself. At the time, Tom Arnold was kind of a joke as a comedian. He was married to Roseanne Barr, and he was in a lot of crap that wasn’t funny at all, so the public perception was that he only got gigs via Roseanne related nepotism. At least that’s what I thought at the time. But he totally nails the part of Arnold’s bumbling loser sidekick. He is, in many ways, the best part of the movie.
Eliza Dushku. As far as I know, this was her first role, as Arnold and Jamie’s daughter, long before she became Faith the Evil Vampire Slayer on Buffy.
Tia Carrere. Tia has got to be one of the most underutilized actresses in Hollywood. She got to be Wayne’s girlfriend in Wayne’s World and then she got an awesome role in this movie as a villain. Then she kind of disappeared. We need a Carrere comeback.
Awesome action scenes, including Arnold on a horse chasing a terrorist on a motorcycle. Arnold kicking ass in a men’s room. Arnold fighting a terrorist with a Harrier jet. Also, this movie was the first time I learned that Harrier jets even existed. All jets should be Harrier jets.
Charlton Heston as the chief of Omega Sector. One of his last roles.
When Bill Paxton passed away recently, this was the role I instantly thought of. He was so funny as a pervy weasel.
The Mother of Dragons forgets her turquoise dress! An elderly terminator that needs to be in bed by 4 pm!
Bookshelf Q. Battler here with a review of Terminator Genisys
OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING
At the outset, let me give this film a compliment (of sorts):
1) It’s the best Terminator film since T2: Judgement Day…
2) …but that’s not saying much because Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation were a couple of hot steamy turd sandwiches served up on a pair of silver platters.
That’s not intended as an insult to this film. I just think it might be impossible to beat the moments of sheer terror and exhilarating action provided by the first two films in the franchise.
For a moment, that’s what I thought this film was trying to do. Hell, for a moment in the beginning, I thought it might even achieve that miraculous feat.
The film starts in 1984. Without letting the cat out of the bag, let’s just say that the original evil Arnold terminator from the first movie (i.e. a totally buff CGI version of Arnold in his prime) squares off against a nice Arnold terminator akin to John Connor’s protector in the second film. Meanwhile, a T1000, the shapeshifting liquid metal baddie from the second film jumps into the mix.
Sarah Connor (played by the Khaleesi..er I mean Emilia Clarke) and Kyle Reese (Sarah Connor’s human protector from the original film, played in this installment by Jai Courtney) round out the action.
In other words, it seemed like a great idea. Take the best parts of the best two films in the franchise and throw them together in one big mashup.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t last long as the story jumps to 2017, where Genisys, a new form of Skynet that takes advantage of our love/lust relationship with cell phones, social media, and non-stop connectivity, needs to be stopped.
Arnold plays “Pops,” another “good terminator,” this one having been sent back in time to be Sarah’s protector. We’re told that synthetic terminator skin ages over time, thus explaining why a man/machine looks like he’s ready to play a rousing game of bingo at the senior center. We (or at least I) go along with it to give the Governator another bite at the apple.
Why not? The guy did give us so many awesome action flicks when he was in his prime and oddly enough, the “old terminator” concept is touching at times.
I don’t want to give away who the ultimate baddie is in this film but suffice to say, I thought that part was dumb. Alas, I can’t tell you why without spilling the beans. Maybe after a week or two after folks have had the chance to see it I’ll talk about it.
Clarke provides a great performance in her first major role that doesn’t involve dragons. (Still, if there could be a Terminators vs. Dragons crossover that’d be epic).
That being said, she’s a far cry from actress Linda Hamilton, who as Sarah Connor in the first film, convinced me that she was a damsel in distress and in the second film, convinced me that she’d turned herself into a gung-ho no holds barred ready to rock robot killing machine.
Throughout the film, there’s a whole lot of “timeline stuff.” This happened in this timeline so that happened in that timeline. If that happens now will it happen later? Can people have two sets of memories, one from one timeline and one from another?
I don’t know. That part’s confusing. If you can figure it out, be my guest. I have a life, folks, so I don’t have time to sit down with a flowchart and a slide rule and figure out the various outcomes of what happens when fictional manbots do various things at different times.
1) If John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother, Sarah Connor (in the original 1984 version and in this one)
2) And John Connor is conceived as a byproduct of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese boinking in the first film (I’m sorry, as a result of their love)
3) Then how is there a damn John Connor to send Kyle Reese back in time in the first place?
Thank God there’s a super sleuth in my employ to answer questions like these. This one’s been rattling around in my head for ages.
If you know the answer, help Hatcher out.
Overall, it is a solid summer blockbuster and it’s great to see aspects we loved from the first two films on the big screen again. It doesn’t rise up to the level of the first two, but it does surpass the third and fourth installments.
(The fourth installment being that one where Christian Bale played John Connor and famously shouted all kinds of abuse at a lightning guy for breaking his concentration.)
SIDENOTE – The CGI version of Arnold in his 1984 prime was pretty convincing. Will there ever be a time when movies could be made entirely using CGI characters? Do actors/actresses have something new to worry about?
Bookshelf Battle 