sculling and heeleeocopters

The Boy in Blue (1986)

Those are the opening credits for The Boy in Blue, which we watched on Sunday. As you can see, the movie is about the Riveting sport of SCULLING! (which, incidentally, was a word in a crossword I did on Saturday. The cosmos are aligning for Cage and me.) Also, as you can see, Nicolas Cage is Ripped in this movie. Sculling is hard, and you need muscles.

So this movie is about Ned Hanlan. What? You've never heard of him? Well, he was a great Canadian sculler, who against all odds won a bunch of championships and proved everyone wrong and got the girl and...yeah, it's that story. But, as far as formulaic biopics go, it was pretty harmless. Watchable. I'm not sure if it stays true to real events or not; I started to do some research and it seemed like the director had taken some artistic license but I stopped before I got too involved because I realized I didn't care that much. But I Did find out that there is a statue of him in Toronto, and it looks like this, which is pretty awesome.


Fire Birds (1986)
Fire Birds is Top Gun with Helicopters, and Goose doesn't die. In fact we kept hoping one of the characters would die so we could start to feel something, anything, for ANY of the characters. It made us long for the Nic Cage of the 80's. Here is the best scene and it is yawnsville compared to even the most boring scenes from VAMPIRE'S KISS!

There is also a pretty good air kick when he's pissed at his ex-fiance. And Tommy Lee Jones pronounces the word "helicopter" as "heeleeocopter." What's up with that?

But that's it. I think this one is definitely the worst so far. Cory thinks Moonstruck was worse, but that's probably because he's a boy and boys like action movies and girls like romantic comedies. Or something like that. But seriously, it is terrible. Bad plot, bad script, and bad acting...even by our hero. They barely take the time to identify the enemy for pete's sake ("leaders of drug cartels" who are being protected by ONE sharpshooter pilot, Eric Stoller), or even where the Important Mission to take down these cartel leaders is supposed to take place ("South America"; they don't even bother to specify which country).

Four thumbs down, wayyy down.

By the way, did anyone see Nic (rockin' the new blond locks) on Leno last night?! We didn't even know about it, but my good friend Matt Smith gave me a heads up. I watched it today, which was better anyway because I could skip over anything that wasn't interesting (i.e. not involving Nicolas Cage). I'm glad that Jay kept it light and stayed away from the foreclosure mess that's been all over the place lately. And the batman trivia with Adam West was great. Nic definitely gave him a run for his money. I'm not suprised at all.

I'm pretty stoked for Kick-Ass.