We were comparing movies to Die Hard last night. Jean Claude Van Damme’s charisma was tough to translate for a good long while there (though those splits need no translation! To be honest, I hold a warm place in my heart for “poor people get bored too” but, seriously, his charisma took a while to mature). Stephen Segal has a kind of anti-charisma that radiated from the sense that “this guy is a sociopath”.
Now Arnold has his own weird, alien, charisma and Stallone benefits from being capable of writing a monologue that will turn most full-grown men into moist puddles.
But Bruce Willis? He’s mastered this persona where he comes across as just a guy who probably would have been happier being born 20-30 years earlier but, let’s not dwell on that, we’ve got a job to do. (With, of course, a villain who fits into this world effortlessly and seamlessly.)
Which is why we’re still watching Die Hard in 2014 and nobody watches Hard Target.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Re-watching the Sopranos right now. I confess, I’d forgotten just how good the show is — and how groundbreaking. In fact, the biggest negative I get in watching it in 2014 is that it seems a little cliche now — because you can see how everything since has patterned itself after it to one degree or another.
AS far as books, I should probably write a separate post. For those of us that are fans of writers that get billed as “literary fiction authors,” these past few weeks have been a bonanza. I have a very large stack of just-released books from favorite authors that I am excited about digging into.Report
Are you in the first two seasons? Because, for what it’s worth, I agree with you 100%. The mother character? My goodness. There aren’t enough superlatives. Now, if we are discussing seasons 3 and beyond, well… we may start disagreeing.Report
I’m in the middle of season 2, in fact. We’ll see how the rest hold up these coming weeks.Report
I am reading Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday. Zweig was a Jewish-Austrian novelist who committed suicide in 1942 to escape the Nazis. This is his memoir/history of Pre-WWI Vienna and Europe and his experience in it. It is critical but also elegiac (anything is preferable to the Nazis and WWII). There are also some great examples of the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is Zweig’s description of university life in late 1800s Vienna:
“Every ‘fox’, the term for a novice, was assigned to an older fraternity member whom he had to serve with slavish obedience, and who in turn instructed him in the noble arts required by the student code of conduct, which amounted to drinking until you threw up. The acid test was to empty a heavy tankard of beer in a single draught, proving in this glorious manner that you were no weakling….”Report
The more things change…Report
@tod-kelly
I think I wrote this above 🙂Report
Comment in mod, por que?Report
Butter. (Dunno. I’ve released 3 comments from the filter so far today.)Report
Reading Virtual History by Niall Furguson (and others) which I’m finding…surprisingly dry. I typically love books like this but this one really hasn’t hooked me. Well, the chapter on Irish Home Rule was good, but otherwise I’ve found it rather dull. Which is why I’m reading it alongside Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis. I didn’t know the myth of Cupid and Psyche, so I read up on it before diving in and that somewhat spoiled some of the story for me, but I’ve found it to be somewhat of a page-turner.
I’m also finding that my weekends are chock-full of more fun stuff now that I’ve decided to quit American Football cold turkey.Report
And sometimes I somewhat would like some sort of access to some kind of sort of edit button or something so when I discover that I’ve sort of somewhat overused a word or phrase I can go back and somewhat edit it so I don’t come across as so much of an idiot. Somewhat.Report
I just saw that The Shield is on Hulu – it looks like they’re cycling through the seasons for free. I watched Season 5 over the past week. I’ve got to be the only person who thinks that that show is hilarious. It’s like Sgt. Bilko or Hogan’s Heroes with Mexican drug gangs. “Commandant, there’s five pounds of heroin missing from the evidence locker.” “Hogan!”Report
That’s… not a take on The Shield I’ve heard before!Report
Also, the central plot is the same as the movie Major League: Assistant Chief Gilroy set up a precinct of wacky ne’er-do-wells to drive down the property values so he could move the team to Florida. The show was a weird addiction for me. I thought the scene where spoiler spoiled with a grenade was comedy gold. Remember, everyone, if you want to get away with murder, use something quiet like a grenade, then stay around for a while shouting at the top of your lungs.Report
I’ve started watching Doctor Who and am enjoying it. The silly concepts and terrible special effects add to it, in a way – it’s fun to watch a show that doesn’t always need to take itself seriously.Report
@katherinemw
Are you watching the classic Who or new Who?Report
I started watching the new one but decided to hold off until they dub it into English.Report
Vik,
the heck? you don’t do subs?
Or are you talking about Tennant?
I think he did a decent job even when the writers were deliberately fucking with him.Report
I do sometimes use subtitles. Especially with BBC shows. But the new Dr. Who was particularly unintelligible to me.Report
@vikram-bath
Well Peter Capalidi is Scottish. I find I can understand it without subtitles though. Billie Pipper is the only person I had a hard time understanding. It doesn’t help that I think she is a horrible actor.Report
New Who.Report
I don’t have trouble understanding anyone, but the show’s certainly opened up to me a vast new variety of British accents.
And while I’ve been keeping up with the current Capaldi series, I’m also getting DVDs from the library of the earlier seasons. Rose is okay, and it’s nice to have a working-class heroine, but I like Martha better. She seems more competent and proactive.Report
Kat,
Martha was a good solid character, but made a pretty poor companion — as “companions” go. Not that I think Moffat cares about giving the Doctor good companions anymore — he’s really pushing the “equality” thing — which means giving the companions worldwrecking powers.
Sheesh, Rose was bad enough (she spawned an entire TV show!).Report