Interesting Movies on the Radar

I see Drudgebart has linked to a review of the new Clint Eastwood film, Gran Torino. I can’t wait to see this one.

Think about it. It’s about a crabby old guy who drinks beer and has too many guns, who sits on his porch glaring at punks who set foot on his lawn. I can relate! This is my dream lifestyle! I’m nearly there NOW! I just hope there are a couple of parrots in the film.

Looks like Jean Claude Van Damme has a film out, too. Weird. It’s called JCVD, and it appears to be a strange mixture of truth and fiction. Playing himself, Van Damme confronts things like his drug and domestic problems, as well as the difficulties of being an aging action star with a dead career.

Van Damme has made a lot of bad movies (and bad decisions), but he seems like a more sympathetic character than, say, Schwartzenegger, who has never publicly admitted wrong or questioned himself. Have you ever seen Arnold admit he did something dumb? I haven’t. I would be surprised if he was capable of admitting fault. People seem to love him now, but they’ve forgotten Pumping Iron, the old documentary in which he displayed his true personality. He was quite obnoxious.

People who never have a moment of humility are a little scary. Except for me, of course.

According to Wikipedia, Van Damme is not lying when he says he was a karate champion. True? I don’t know. It says he got a reputation for lying because people who checked out his claims didn’t realize he competed under his real name, which is not Van Damme.