Hollywood

This documentary about Bruce Lee and his final film, Game of Death is well worth your time if you are a fan of martial arts. It’s available on the web for free at the link.

Tom Hardy, last seen in Inception and who played Picard’s evil clone in Star Trek: Nemesis has been picked by Chris Nolan for the next Batman film. They didn’t say for what role, but Hardy is great at playing villains. Here is his viruoso performance in Bronson, which was about Britain’s most violent prisoner.

I remember when Nolan picked Heath Ledger for the Joker. I was like, well, not my pick. But he was amazing. I could see Hardy taking on someone like the Riddler, for example, and really making him scary.

He says he’s done with acting, except voice over work. The biggest mistake he ever made was turning down Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. He would have made $400 million if he had taken it. Ian McKellan was great but I would have loved to see Connery play the role. Ah well.

These interviews with Jackie Gleason from 1984 are really wonderful. That man was a creative genius in the true sense of the word, he could do almost anything very well. And you can see from this interview he not only tells good stories, his comic timing is effortless.

His music albums are really great. His show, the Honeymooners is still funny and played on TVs all over the world half a century later. And it only ran 39 episodes.

It’s interesting to listen to him talk about that show and his description of it, because it reveals why it hits home. It’s about real people, in a situation that should be depressing, but it’s funny and the characters have great affection for each other despite their battles. People can relate to the show because it has truth in it that so many shows could fail to come close to. While the Honeymooners is about a loser bus driver always trying to get rich and failing, a lot of TV shows today are about some elite team of incredible detectives or spies or some such rot. Perfect people are boring. Today’s TV is full of actors based on their youth and looks. Gleason was a fat man making $15 million a year in TV when that was like half a billion. There’s a lesson to be learned from that, I think. Gleason made a couple’s miserable life funny and in turn help a lot of other people deal with their own lives by making it a little brighter with humor.

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This is really outrageous. David Prowse has been banned from Star Wars events. This is the actor who played Darth Vader in the costume (he did not do the speaking that was dubbed in by James Earl Jones). The former body builder who was also in movies like A Clockwork Orange is now 76 and crippled with arthritis. Here is where it gets infuriating.

“It is with regret that I have been informed by my friends at C2 Ventures, Ben and Phillip, that I am not to be invited to C5 this year or any other Lucas Film associated events. After enquiring, the only thing I have been told is that I have ‘burnt too many bridges between Lucas Film and myself’ – no other reason given…I have also been advised by the promoter of Paris Manga in September that LFL (Lucas Film Limited) have requested no photo opportunities with the 501 Squadron, even though I am commander in chief of the 501″

It’s possible this stems from complaints he made to Slashfilm last year that he isn’t getting any residual checks because, according to LucasFilms, the films “never made a profit.”

Here is some scenes with the new Spiderman lead, Andrew Garfield. In case you were wondering what his acting was like. I’d say he looks credible. Maybe even better than Toby McGuire, who I liked.

My latest Big Hollywood piece about the faux outrage over the casting of the Prince of Persia and The Last Airbender. I don’t know about you, but the stench of the media’s hypocrisy about race is beyond tiresome.

My latest Big Hollywood piece, how Hollywood has been running a blacklist and a demonization of people for their politics for decades. Just not of communists.

How Hollywood was once in worse shape than it is now. and how Robert Evans was one of the first studio execs who showed the way to their boom times to come.

My latest Big Hollywood piece.

Over at Big Hollywood I am upsetting some Avatar fans. C’est la vie.

It’s how Hollywood has turned the traitor into stock and trade. The latest in a long lost of cliches they tend to overuse.

I can’t believe they didn’t use my title. Anyway, here is my latest Big Hollywood post.

It’s about how boorish Hollywood partisans have become. How they’re shooting their careers in the foot.