Of all the beauty to be found in British Columbia, from the unreal blue waters along Highway 99, to the European feel of Victoria on San Juan Island, to the gondola ride to the top of Whistler, to the Emerald City of Vancouver, you will hardly find anything as mesmerizing as the mountain that resides next to the lovely town of Squamish called Stawamus Chief.
At the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park, you can enjoy a great picnic with your family and find yourself transfixed at the incredibly polished striations down the mountain’s face, the result of millions of years of erosion. Driving the Sea to Sky highway between Vancouver and Whistler you will find your eyes drawn to this monstrous entity as you twist along the highway–almost like Mt. Rainier towering over Seattle as you inch closer–until you find yourself in its shadow. Under the code name “Euclid” you could find the crew of the next Star Trek adventure, Star Trek Beyond, filming their next adventure there this past week.
Just like Vancouver is one of the most popular shooting locations in North America, it’s no wonder the topography draws studios back to this spot time and time again. While you’re waiting for Star Trek Beyond, try to spot the mighty Chief in any number of Canadian productions as you watch TV and movies every day. Once you’ve visited Squamish a few times, you’ll experience another level of enjoyment spotting the town and its landmarks in dozens of movies and TV series.
Here are some shows to check out:
The star-studded and nicely creepy A&E series The Returned is filmed in and around Squamish, and every episode features prominent buildings and easily recognizable natural landmarks. Catch The Returned season one OnDemand.
No surprise here. You know what you’re going to get with the show’s title: Lip Sync Battle. Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show lip sync contests where he faces off against everyone from Will Farrell to Emma Stone are the stuff of viral videos now. So it was a smart move for him to lead up a team of producers and Saturday Night Live’s Beth McCarthy-Miller as show director to feature a cable show that spun-off this segments into its own gig.
Spike TV started its new “reality competition” series off this week right, featuring the king of lip sync, the goofy, give-it-all-you-got Fallon against the larger than life charisma of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. LL Cool J serves as the host of the show, with co-host/Spike eye candy model Chrissy Teigen.
Both trash talked each other throughout the show with plenty of good humor. The prize for each episode is a giant boxing belt and midway through battle one Fallon offered up a pint-sized version for Johnson.
Johnson’s songs were Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” up against Fallon’s take on Harry Belafonte’s “Jump in the Line” song from Beetlejuice. Fallon upped the ante by taking the audience into a Conga line. But the second round was the big production, with Fallon first up, syncing Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” with a back-up choir. But you just can’t beat Johnson sporting John Travolta’s trademark duds from Saturday Night Fever, syncing the Bee Gee’s “Staying Alive.” Both the stars really seemed to give it their all.
We’ve just wound down another year of big movies–from Captain America: The Winter Soldier to X-Men: Days of Future Past to Guardians of the Galaxy to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. So what’s on the radar at borg.com for 2015? We think you’ll want to see several of these big sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and action flicks coming to a screen near you next year.
Vice – Jan. 16 – The next in a long line of Bruce Willis action flicks. This time it’s a sci-fi story about a future resort where humans freely pursue their vices–with artificial humans.
Wild Card – Jan. 30 – A story based on a novel by Academy Award winning writer William Goldman, starring Jason Statham as a gambler.
Kingsman: The Secret Service – Feb. 13 – This Colin Firth as spy action flick will tell us once and for all whether Firth would be a good choice to play James Bond. With an all-star cast including Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, Mark Strong, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Chappie– March 6 – Neill Blomkamp’s latest science fiction entry. A Pinocchio story where a robot learns to live among humans.
Not to quote Eddie Murphy or anything, but “Hercules! Hercules!”
Wait, wasn’t there just another Hercules movie in theaters? That one was directed by Renny Harlin and barely was in theaters (called The Legend of Hercules). This time around the umpteenth film version of Hercules stars Dwayne Johnson, who you have to love in pretty much everything he does, whether it’s the remake of Walking Tall to G.I. Joe: Retaliation to Get Smart or even back to the Tsunkatse episode of Star Trek Voyager or a brief presence in The Other Guys or a milk ad.
Beyond just The Rock, Dwayne Johnson is just plain awesome. And like Lou Ferrigno playing The Incredible Hulk, he’s built for the part. Could this be a faithful adaptation of the Greek mythology?
Check out this trailer with Dwayne Johnson in Hercules:
Well it’s been one long year, with plenty to do and see, plenty of good and not-so-good to read and watch, and we’re certain we read more and reviewed more content this year than ever before. And that in no less way was true for TV watching. At the same time we waded through all that Hollywood had to offer and honed in on the genre films we thought were worth examining. We went back and looked at it all and pulled together our 25 picks for our annual Best of the Best list. Today we reveal the best content focusing on the moving image, and tomorrow we’ll run through our picks for the best in print and other media. We hope you agree with many of these great creations of the entertainment industries, and wish everyone a great 2014!
Year’s Best Fantasy Fix — The Wizard of Oz in Theaters. It’s a film that has been viewed on TV so many times you might take it for granted. It’s historically been on many movie reviewers’ Top 20 movies of all time. But when you watch The Wizard of Oz on the big screen in the middle of a year of modern blockbusters you realize how it can stand up against anything Hollywood has to offer today, even after 70 years. Remastering the print for a new generation to see it in theaters was a highlight for movie watchers this year.
Year’s Best Sci-Fi Fix — Almost Human, Fox. Like Continuum last year, the new series Almost Human created a future world that is believable and full of extraordinary technologies based in today’s science and touching on social issues of any day. And even putting aside its buddy cop and police procedural brilliance, every episode plunged us into future police grappling with incredible technologies–DNA bombs criminals use to contaminate a crime scene, identity masking technology to avoid facial recognition video monitors–it was the best dose of sci-fi in 2013.
Best TV Series — Orphan Black, BBC America. What rose above everything on TV or film this year was BBC America’s new series, the almost indescribable Orphan Black. From its initial trailers that piqued our interest, to the surprise series consisting of one actress playing multiple roles that dazzled from out of nowhere, magical special effects, and a unique story of clones and X-Files-inspired intrigue propelled Orphan Black to be our clear winner for Best TV Series of 2013.
Half animated film come to life, half martial arts movie, in G.I. Joe: Retaliation look for one of the best action sequences ever to hit the big screen. Darker and more grounded in the realities of today’s terrorism themed movies as opposed to the days of action war pictures centered on the Cold War, the sequel to G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is only slightly less fun than the first live-action look at the action figure-turned-animated show and comic book-turned-action figure again franchise. Whereas Rise of Cobra was steeped in toy references and faithful action figure costume re-creations, Retaliation has a plot that could have been pulled from the 1980s animated series.
After a disaster caused by a conspiracy between Zartan and the evil shadow organization called Cobra wipes out literally every active G.I. Joe but three, it’s up to new top ranking officer Roadblock, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to lead the charge to unravel the conspiracy and save the world. He’s joined in a superbly created, fast-thinking survival maneuver by Flint (D.J. Cotrona) and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), who must then find their way out of a deep water well. Despite being developed characters from G.I. Joe incarnations past, Flint comes off a bit like Hawkeye in The Avengers and Lady Jaye as the token female Joe in an era you’d think would be long past relying on jokes about women in the service. Still, they both make the best of it and the trio, along with Duke (Channing Tatum), the squad leader of the Joes in Rise of Cobra, they share some good chemistry and laugh out loud moments in the film. If there is any fault in Retaliation it is why the producers thought the plot required eliminating such a pantheon of other great Joe characters who were featured in Rise of Cobra, like Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Baroness (Sierra Miller), Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), or General Hawk (Dennis Quaid). It’s also a bit disappointing Bruce Willis’s General Joe Colton didn’t have a few more scenes. Willis, transitioning from action role to the wise general role, steals every scene and a partnership with Dwayne Johnson in another film, G.I. Joe or not, would be a fun thing to see.
Although this year the Super Bowl didn’t seem to net any ads as awesome as this great Star Wars themed ad or Ferris Bueller ad from last year’s Super Bowl, we did get to see the movie studios try to find the best way to cram a two-hour movie into the time it takes to forget what show you’ve been watching. All of the six previewed movies have already released full-length trailers. So did the studios succeed in convincing you to see their newest release? Did any ad get you to order advance tickets for any coming attractions? Here are the movie trailer commercials straight from the 2013 Super Bowl.
First up, Universal Studios shelled out some big bucks for a full 60-second spot for the May 24, 2013 release of the sixth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise. If none of the past versions of the road race series interested you then maybe a team-up of Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel will.
It all looks like… a lot of car chasing, but it doesn’t look like it is promising audiences to be anything else so we’re betting “what you see is what you get” with Fast & Furious 6.
Director Michael Bay would have to work really hard to screw up this new comedy/action flick. Mix two fitness addicts played by Mark Walhberg and Dwayne Johnson, and add in Monk’s Tony Shalhoub, and this looks like it could be a very funny movie.
Both Wahlberg and Johnson are at their best when they make fun of themselves. And we haven’t seen Shalhoub since Monk went off the air. Shalhoub is a versatile actor, so he should do nicely as a kidnapped villain.
Dwayne Johnson is a pretty versatile actor. He can do the straight-up action flick and add some real drama to even the most throwaway movie. In February’s release Snitch, Johnson stars as a father trying to help get his son out of jail by helping those that put him away get the real guy, based on true events. Susan Sarandon seems to play the other side of the role she won great critical acclaim for opposite Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking.
I really like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor. He’s in a rare group of current actors like Tom Cruise, who, no matter what he does outside acting, so long as he keeps making good movies I’ll keep showing up to watch him.
In many ways Arnold is like his Expendables and now Expendables 2 brethren, especially Sylvester Stallone, whose self-made rise to fame was a lot like Arnold’s, and Bruce Willis, who seems to churn out movies of all types like nobody else. But Arnold is also one of those bigger-than-life/megastar/film legend/superstars who could arguably be lumped in with John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. These three have a more distinctive, almost superhuman aura. And just as Wayne and Eastwood did, it looks like Arnold is entering a distinct “third act” of his career. You can look back and see Wayne in his B-movie days before Stagecoach, where Clint was making TV shows like Maverick and Rawhide, and Arnie was getting his sea-legs as Conan the Barbarian. Then with their second acts they all made it to the bigtime, Wayne with John Ford Westerns and war movies, Clint with spaghetti Westerns and then Dirty Harry, and Arnold with his blockbuster action films: Predator, Terminator 1&2, and True Lies.
So what’s next? Wayne got gruff in his elder years as highlighted in his Rooster Cogburn role. As did Clint, even going back ten years he began this new life persona as old man, but always a modern take on what it means to be an old man. His character as a geezer in Gran Torino is nothing like Dirty Harry or The Man with No Name, but it’s still one of his best performances.
So what about Arnold? After his hiatus as California’s Governator, he slips back into movies this month with his bit part in Expendables 2. But his first film returning in a leading role is due out after the holidays: The Last Stand. Arnie’s stilted acting shown in the first trailer for the film put aside, I see some things I may like in this new action flick.
First, I loved The Rock/Dwayne Johnson in his remake of Walking Tall, co-starring Johnny Knoxville. I didn’t think that film could be remade and I loved the result. The plot of this film seems strangely similar. And that’s Johnny Knoxville again… in apparently the same role! Although–Knoxville looks a bit more psychotic than normal here. And that’s saying a lot for the guy from Jackass and MIB 2.
Next, I really liked Sylvester Stallone’s performance as a worn down police officer caught in the middle of a culture of bad cops in the universally praised film Cop Land. This movie, from the preview, feels like it could be a similar work for Arnold–a grizzled lawman needing to step up and take a stand, maybe the last stand, as the movie’s title would indicate.
It also reminds me a bit of Chris Cooper in Lone Star.
They are certainly not standout roles for John Wayne, but he played a cop twice toward the end of his career, in McQ and Brannigan. And despite the dated look, both are darned good movies. This type of role may be a good way for everyone to get back liking–and cheering for–our returning megastar.
And finally there is that Clint Eastwood gruff, cracked speech thing. Call it tough as nails, call it dry, it is partly why we see Clint as the tough guy we see him as today. Is this the future of the once young and pumped-up Arnold on the big screen, moving from his classic “Ah-nold” accent to a raspy smoker-like delivery?
Check out the trailer:
The Last Stand, directed by South Korean director Jee-woon Kim, hits theaters January 18, 2013.
