271 days from now. . .

Having grossed more than a quarter-billion dollars upon release last year, the sequel to The Expendables will debut at the end of next summer. Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are set to reprise their roles from the first movie, while Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme have been added to the mix for the second film.

To borrow from another movie – there will be blood.

Did You Know (or Care): Al can make you tap

c/o Michael Pomerleau

Sometimes people think they know an actor by a role that he/she plays on television or in a movie.  Here's an example of how wrong than perception can be.

Ed O'Neill, perhaps best known for playing the perpetually demoralized "Al Bundy" on Married... with Children for 11 seasons, is, in real life, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under the direct tutelage of original UFC founder Rorion Gracie. (Here's a brief clip showing his promotion from brown to black belt in 2007.)

BJJ is different from most other martial arts, as it often requires no less than eight years of hardcore training before one is considered proficient enough to meet the requirements necessary for advancement.  In fact, O'Neill himself needed more than a decade to rise from the white, blue, purple and brown belt ranks before he achieved the coveted black belt status.  And that's pretty much par for the course.

Just remember y'all – it isn't usually wise to judge a book by its cover.  That sad looking couch potato is possibly capable of making you squirm. 

Just Thinking Out Loud: Pamela

I was reminded over the weekend about perhaps the greatest of all my cinematic crushes.  Although there haven't been as many as one might assume, recalling those of the utmost brilliance is never difficult, especially when such prodigious quality is first encountered during a simpler and more innocent time.

Lorie Griffin, a quintessential all-American beauty who played "Pamela Wells" in the '80s classic Teen Wolf – one of the defining movies of my youth (try not to laugh) – knocked my socks off when I saw her in the aforesaid flick as a fifth grader living in the College Park area of Virginia Beach.  Some 25 years later, I remain astounded over both her timeless splendor and the deficiency of comparable talent that has come along since.

My girl all but withdrew from the limelight almost as soon as the film that could have led her to stardom was released.  How such a tour de force didn’t eventually become an award-winning national treasure is a conundrum of immeasurable proportions that is sure to remain well beyond my limited grasp.  Yet this is one specimen who will endure, perhaps for another 25 years, as the gold standard of refined loveliness among the plethora of Hollywood's most exceptional.

Iconic Shot: The Four Kings of Hollywood

What's so funny?

In a shot that personifies Hollywood's "Golden Era," Slim Aarons, a prominent photographer of the day, caught Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart in a jovial moment during a New Year's party in 1957.  The picture was later dubbed "a Mount Rushmore of stardom" by Smithsonian magazine and "the very image of American he-men" by novelist Louis Auchincloss.

Who could possibly disagree?

Two sides of the same coin

One shouldn't fault a guy for exploring every available option to make a boatload of money, but O'Shea Jackson's mammoth leap from "Straight Outta Compton" to what the man better known as Ice Cube ultimately became is, all by itself, a remarkable commentary on reinvention that has circumscribed an almost unprecedented career.  That being said...

Original source unknown

Did You Know (or Care): A lapse of otherworldly proportions

The Star Wars franchise is predominantly defined by characters with whom people throughout the entire world have held a special affinity for over three decades.  Although never infatuated like the myriad of devotees I've encountered since childhood, understanding its cult-like allure was somehow never difficult.

Science fiction has maintained a following since the earliest days of cinema, but the unyielding enthusiasm (and resulting mass appeal) inspired by the vision of one George Lucas is, in and of itself, a love story between the practitioners of what ultimately grew into a pseudo-religion and their idealized heroes who live "in a galaxy far, far away" for which the mere fantasy of their existence makes these noble knights quite real to the hardcore loyalists whose hankering for more is never satisfied.

Among the most revered of these benevolent warriors, by far, is Obi-Wan Kenobi.  And like Master Yoda, his counterpart on the Jedi Council, little was known of Obi-Wan's home planet.  But that all changed last August during Celebration V in Orlando, Florida.  While being interviewed by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, George Lucas revealed that Obi-Wan Kenobi's home is now known as "Stewjon" -- a tuckerization of Stewart's name.

As if Lucas purposely intended to anger even the most nostalgic fans, a man for whom money is no longer an issue threw his own franchise under the proverbial bus and named Obi-Wan's home after a guy who is best known for making strange faces and profanity-laced jokes.  And from this, I don't know what else there is to add to the story.

Sunday's Quote: The duality of manhood

We don't appreciate our heroes for being paradigms of chastity and virtue.  We revere them for inspiring us to the point that overlooking their imperfections, however numerous, becomes reasonable.  A new favorite writer of mine expanded on this point in the most recent edition of Esquire:

"This magazine recently commissioned a survey of twenty- and fifty-year-old American men, and when asked to name the coolest man in the country, both groups chose [Clint] Eastwood by a wide margin.  The guys born in 1960, the ones who grew up growling, 'Feeling lucky punk?' to their friends, make sense, but the ones born in 1990?  How did they end up picking the old guy from 'Space Cowboys' over Clooney and LeBron?

"The answer is simple, really: During all the real and imagined crises of American masculinity that the past half century has coughed onto our screens, Eastwood has been the one stable figure in the midst of the darkness and the turmoil, a man entirely apart from the boring and draining established types that have dominated movies for four decades -- macho pigs, lovable schmucks, merry pranksters, and impossibly cool hipsters.

"Eastwood's endurance is the endurance of saints, and what he embodies more than anything is the definitive virtue for American men both then and now: restraint.  He rides the line between his own terrible desires and the world as it is with the grace we all aspire to."

-- from "Why is Clint Eastwood Still the Man?" by Stephen Marche; Esquire, November 2010 (with the ravishing Minka Kelly on the cover)

Sunday's Quote: Hollywood

I just finished watching the Academy Awards (Oscars).  Clocking in at over three hours, this marks the first time that I've ever watched an awards show of any kind from start to finish.  Here's a quote that sums up the industry in a nutshell:

"This film cost $31 million.  With that kind of money I could have invaded some country."
-- Clint Eastwood