{"id":61,"date":"2015-09-22T18:36:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T01:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/22\/42movies-day-12-and-a-twinkle-in-his-eye\/"},"modified":"2015-09-22T18:36:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T01:36:00","slug":"42movies-day-12-and-a-twinkle-in-his-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/22\/42movies-day-12-and-a-twinkle-in-his-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"#42Movies, Day 12: And a Twinkle in His Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, <a href=\"http:\/\/hotsheet.snout.org\/2015\/09\/42movies-day-11-egregious-egyptology.html\">speaking of Kurt Russell<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>Big Trouble in Little China (1986)<\/b><br \/>and<br \/><b>Executive Decision (1996)<\/b><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/b54MNSQ3esE\">Breakdown<\/a> after the trailers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1P0A8pS1JF8?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/1P0A8pS1JF8\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/1P0A8pS1JF8<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3dyQBOBTmHw?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/3dyQBOBTmHw\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/3dyQBOBTmHw<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a bold claim for you: <b>Scott Bakula<\/b> is to television as <b>Kurt Russell<\/b> is to movies. That is to say, they&#8217;re both perennially pleasant leading men who can inhabit a decent range of roles. I&#8217;ll go out on a limb and say that Russell&#8217;s a bit more versatile than Bakula&mdash;case in point, he played both Snake Plissken in John Carpenter&#8217;s <i>Escape from New York<\/i> and the voice of the hound in Disney&#8217;s <i>The Fox and the Hound<\/i> in the same year (1981).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/ouZkkIsLiNg\">The thing<\/a> I love about <i>Big Trouble in Little China<\/i> (also a John Carpenter joint) is that Kurt Russell&#8217;s character is actually the bumbling sidekick to Dennis Dun&#8217;s protagonist&mdash;Wang Chi&#8217;s desires and relationships are what drive the story through its crazy funhouse of Chinese mysticism, and the white dude is just along for the ride.<\/p>\n<p>Ten years later, Russell played another unlikely hero in <i>Executive Decision<\/i>&mdash;he&#8217;s not a <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/4oeW9sflsdg\">soldier<\/a> or anything, just an intelligence analyst. I suspect the filmmakers were trying for a <i>Hunt for Red October<\/i> vibe, which didn&#8217;t quite work out. This isn&#8217;t what you&#8217;d call a &#8220;good&#8221; movie, but the parade of familiar faces who have done better work is pretty amusing: <b>Steven Seagal<\/b> shows up, <b>Halle Berry<\/b> helps save the day, <b>David Suchet<\/b> picks up a paycheck, and <b>John Leguizamo<\/b> plays what may be the straightest role of his career.<\/p>\n<p>Kurt Russell is now 64 years old, and still getting good roles; his appearance in <i>Furious 7<\/i> was brief but entertaining, and apparently he&#8217;s doing Westerns again? Whatever. He&#8217;s come a long way from <i>The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"Curtis\" title=\"Curtis\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, speaking of Kurt Russell&#8230; Big Trouble in Little China (1986)andExecutive Decision (1996) Breakdown after the trailers. https:\/\/youtu.be\/1P0A8pS1JF8 https:\/\/youtu.be\/3dyQBOBTmHw Here&#8217;s a bold claim for you: Scott Bakula is to television as Kurt Russell is to movies. That is to say,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[46,13,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-42movies21days","category-movies","category-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}