Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
ACF Middlebrow #15: Die Hard
My friend Pete Spiliakos and I are doing our 10th podcast and it’s about a movie on its 30th anniversary. Die Hard is well-loved and little talked about — we’re here to remedy that. We discuss the great everyman performance Bruce Willis put in and how director John McTiernan crafted the entire movie around him. With remarkable coherence, you get a view of the working class moral realism and virtues of American men and, from that perspective, of the arrogant incompetent of all sorts of institutions: Corporations, media, government, police, etc. We also talk at length about the social changes that have made action movies almost inconceivable and replaced working class heroes with oligarchs and mythical aristocrats, who alone seem to deserve our attention and billions of box office dollars… This is what our Middlebrow series is all about: How movies reflect society and also reflect on our ideas and beliefs.
.
Published in Podcasts
I gave up on Seagal in 1996, with his “Executive Decision” movie. It was the last movie I have seen of his.
Its terrible – although Steven Seagal isnt (entirely) to blame, as he dies very early in the film. (Spoiler Alert!) … I only saw bits and pieces of “On Deadly Ground” I was under the impression that it was a fictionalized biopic of “Red Adair” – not sure how I came to that idea, but was very disappointed with the resulting movie.
If you’re unfamiliar with Red Adair he’s truly an American Hero. Without the kung-fu mojo.
Of course, he then started doing pop music & then, well, Putin. Maybe we could have made him karate chop inspector at the EPA & things would have been better…
Sounds more like the FDA’s jurisdiction… His karate chop would go full pork…