In lieu of going out last, some friends and I watched two (that's right, TWO) Jean-Claude Van Damme films. The first, a John Woo creation, entitled Hard Target is truly a large pile of dog shit. It takes place in New Orleans in the very, very early '90s and has a lot to do with hunting homeless veterans for sport. It ends up with Van Damme's character's uncle, played by Wilford Brimley ("I have diabetes, and horses!") shooting a bunch of people and moonshine with arrows that subsequently explode and trigger off a shitload of dynamite. Then Brimley makes shitty alcoholic jokes about moonshine in a terrible French accent which I believe was supposed to be a Cajun/Creole accent. The film surprisingly grossed a total of $32.5 mil at the box office in the US, which proves that people in the early '90s knew jack-shit about everything from music (Paula Abdul) and films (Jean-Claude Van Damme). Needless to say, it was fucking awesome. Check it.
The next award-winning Van Damme masterpiece was 1995's Sudden Death. This action/sports/family/fucked-up piece of cinema stars Van Damme as a fireman-come-headcase-come-security guard for the Pittsburgh Penguins. It is by far the most exciting event in sports ever conceived. Van Damme, a former minor-league goalie in Canada, is working the security for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. He picks up his 7 year-old daughter and 11 year-old son from their mother's house and gives them two tickets to the game (plot bolsterer). The importance of security at this game is crucial. Why? Because the Vice-President is attending the game (further plot development). Obviously, terrorists infiltrate the arena and take the VP hostage. It's up to Van Damme to stop these scoundrels from taking frozen accounts and transferring them into their own. Certainly there are about thirty predictable plot twists throughout this debacle. All that I can say is that Van Damme kills about thirty or more people, saves a goal in overtime and crashes a helicopter. The game directly coincides with the transfer of funds because (spoiler) if they don't transfer an account per period they execute a hostage and if they don't get all of the money by the end of the game, they blow up the stadium (with what? C4 of course). Therefore, at one point the action goes down to the last second, as predicted. The children in this film are doomed to a life of therapy and behavioral issues. It's worth seeing for the incredibly horrible one-liners, exaggerated deaths (the last one is especially fucking good) and utter ridiculousness.
So to keep things interesting we drank to these classics. A drink for every great one-liner, that's pretty much all the dialogue. A drink for every round-house kick (that's all that Van Damme does, round-house kicks everything). A drink for anything exploding. You get the picture.
Pick these ones up, they're so damn good.
Other than that, not much else is new. Made some fresh scallops I picked up from the International District, they're pan-seared with bacon. Wish you guys could be here to share them, here's a pic of them:
2 comments:
do you guys remember when van damme roundhouse kicked someone in real life, and then when he went to court he chose to represent himself instead of getting a lawyer? what a tool. Bloodsport pretty much rules though.
This kind of trumps the review I was planning on doing of all the goodmovies I've been watching lately... I'd honestly forgotten van Damme even existed.
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