What If They Didn’t Get That Big Break?

Many of us aspire to live the lives of our favourite celebrities. We see actors in films and wish we lived the high life. We sometimes forget that these superstars were just average joes like the rest of us before they made it big in their careers. Before the money, before the personal trainers, before the plastic surgery, they were normal people and in another universe you could be having your fridge delivered by Brad Pitt.

Here’s a list of jobs famous actors had before they got their big break:

Brad Pitt:

Delivered refrigerators, drove strippers around in a limo and wore a chicken suit for El Pollo Loco (The Crazy Chicken).

Johnny Depp:

Worked in a call centre selling pens.

Gerard Butler:

A qualified lawyer, Butler worked as an assistant at a law firm.

George Clooney:

Was a shoe salesman and spent some time working on a tobacco farm.

Sandra Bullock:

Bartender and waitress.

Jim Carrey:

Just like Stephen King, he worked as a janitor before his career took off.

Hugh Grant:

Used his degree in English Literature to get him jobs doing book reviews and radio ad scripts.

Rachel McAdams:

Worked at McDonalds for 3 years.

Patrick Dempsey:

Professional Juggler

Hugh Jackman:

High school PE teacher.

Steve Buscemi:

In his early 20’s, he was a fireman for the New York Fire Department. He was called to active duty to help after the 9/11 attacks.

Quentin Tarantino:

We all know this one. The motor-mouthed writer/director worked in a video store before he became the filmmaker all aspiring filmmakers try to be like before they find their own style.

That is all.

Ramz

Did Entourage Predict The Future Of Hollywood?

Entourage, the tv show loosely based on the life of Mark Wahlberg, featuring a group of bros doing things that bros would do if one of those bros was rich and famous. It had some great cameos from A-list actors and other actors who weren’t famous enough to play themselves. If, like me, you loved this show, then you spent a good few conversations trying to defend the openly misogynistic male bravado of every storyline by saying it’s really about friendship. Love it or hate it, everyone agrees that it gave Jeremy Piven the opportunity to play one of TV’s best characters, Ari Gold.

That’s about all there is to this fun show…or is it?  (cue the dramatic music)

Could there be more to Entourage than meets the eye? Is there something deeper to all the sex, drugs and Ari-Gold-isms?

Allow me to break it down for you:

Season 1 starts with Vinnie Chase enjoying the success of his last film Queens Boulevard. This leads him to get the lead role in a new blockbuster film based on a comic book. The joke at the time was that no one would ever make a comic book film unless it was based on either Batman, Superman or Spiderman. Batman Begins was dominating the screens at this time but who did Vinnie Chase play in his comic book film? None other than AQUAMAN.

That was in 2005. Aquaman will be in his own film on our screens in 2018.

Then Vinnie Chase takes on a little pet project, the Pablo Escobar film, Medellin. Sure it fails in the end but again, Entourage took Pablo Escobar mainstream when nobody else was touching the source material in real life. 

That was in 2007. Narcos became a mainstream Netflix series 10 years later.

In season 5, Vinnie takes on a role in Smoke Jumpers, a film about firefighters battling a wildfire in a forest in Arizona.

In 2017, we will see Granite Mountain on our screens. IMDB says the film is, “A drama based on the elite crew of men who battled a wildfire in Prescott Arizona.”

In Entourage, Smoke Jumpers was cancelled during production because Vinnie had creative differences with his director. This led him to take the role of Nick Carraway in a re-envisioned version of The Great Gatsby. This season aired in 2008.  

In 2013, Tobey Maguire played Nick Carraway in a re-envisioned version of The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo Dicaprio.

In the Entourage movie (2015), Vinnie makes his directorial debut in Hyde, a film about EDM culture. This year Netflix released a film about EDM culture called XOXO. Sure, lots of films have been made about EDM culture but Entourage has been getting it right every time so far.

A little more? Ok. 

In season 6, Vinnie Chase gets to play Enzo Ferrari in a film about his life. Check IMDB and see for yourself. Enzo Ferrari film in production for release 2018.

Is Hollywood copying Entourage? Is life imitating art? Who knows?

Maybe Mark Wahlberg has all the answers.

That is all.

Ramz

OH! IT'S THE PIZZA GUY!

WE ORDERED AN EXTRA LARGE

I wrote a post a while back about how creativity in the film industry is, for the most part, gone. Remakes, sequels, reboots and poor adaptations of novels that were, at best, average. Film fans lowering their standards so they can get excited about the art they so dearly love, but in the end celebrating the mediocrity Hollywood has forced us to swallow.

Thank God (or whatever name you shout out during your orgasm) for the little gems that have kept us from drowning slowly in our tears of disappointment and boredom. Too dramatic? Ok, this post is not about those little gems (I’ll talk about that in another piece), this is about the loss of creativity in the film industry and it can be seen in all aspects of it, even in the PORN INDUSTRY. Yes, that little bit about the orgasm was foreshadowing.

For a minute, just forget about the purpose of porn and why it makes money. Think about it from a creative standpoint. Porn stars used to have creative names that could be likened to the names of WWE wrestlers. Some porn stars even had their own finishing maneuvers, or so I’m told. The plot lines were terrible and the acting even worse. People made money off the sex, but still somehow used to find a way of bringing some kind of creativity into it. The porn movie title puns have made their mark on pop culture to the point where people still try to come up with creative names for pornos even though it hasn’t really been done in the actual porn industry since the 90’s.

Let’s celebrate creativity in all its forms. See below for the top 5 funniest porn titles I could find:

I thought I'd take a shot at creating porn pun titles for some films that were released in the past 3 years. Here goes:

BOYHOOD - BOY WOOD

BIG HERO 6 - BIG HERO SEX

HAIL, CAESAR! - NAIL, CAESAR!

JASON BOURNE - JASON'S PORN

WARCRAFT - WHORE CRAFT

BEN-HUR - BEND HER

THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR - THE URGE: ERECTION YEAR

Let me know in the comments if you thought of a few more funny titles or if there were any that you came across.

 (get it? "came" across! hahaha. Fuck you, that was funny.) 

That is all.

But who will save us from superhero movie fatigue?

SUPERMAN AIN'T SAVIN' SHIT!

I remember how excited I got when I went to the cinema to watch Batman Returns. I was finally old enough to see Batman on the big screen. I didn’t know who Tim Burton was at the time; I was just excited to see Beetlejuice dressed up as my favourite superhero. This excitement for comic book movies has died a slow death for me over the past few years. Sure, I rushed to book tickets when the Nolan Batman movies were released. Sure, I stared with childlike wonderment at the screen when I saw a teenage boy discover he had the powers of a spider. I watched the Iron Man trailer more times than I can count but now, after a plethora of caped heroes with perfect jawlines and spandex clad abs, I am bored. I find myself watching the films just to see what happens next in what can only be described as a soap opera with a billion dollar production company behind it. I’m not particularly excited, just curious…and I find out every day that I am not alone in my thinking.

The market is saturated. Fatigue has set in. There are too many of these films, just like there were too many horror movies in the 80’s, too many teen flicks in the 90’s and too many dance movies in the 2000’s. Those genres eventually got to a point where the production companies realised that the time had come to move on and a lot of those films went down as cult classics…no matter how terrible some of them were. I fear that the Marvel and DC money-printing machines have no idea that the end is in sight and will continue on this route until they have destroyed the memory of all the superheroes I love so dearly. Eventually, it will all become one huge joke and (hopefully not) the actual medium these comic books were intended for, will die out with the last die-hard fans who still stand in line at the comic book store for the latest graphic novel. The art is gone and all that remains is a price tag attached to a marketing tool to sell more merchandise.

Remakes, reboots, comic book adaptations with sequel after sequel after sequel. Where are the writers? Where is the art of storytelling that I am obsessed with? Where has the creativity gone? Give us a Pulp Fiction. Give us a Forrest Gump. Give us a Back To The Future. Give us a Donnie Darko. Fuck, at this point I long for a Police Academy. I don’t want remakes or copies of those films, I just want the type of creativity that went into creating those stories that made me memorise every line and quote them with excitement.

Hopefully, we will get to a point where only one or two big blockbuster superhero films are released a year and the rest of Hollywood’s time and money will go into developing original ideas that finally give us value for the time and money we spend on supporting them.

That is all.

Ramz

Batman vs Superman Dawn Of Justice

Batman vs Superman Dawn Of Justice 

What I loved vs What I hated

Everything I dislike about this film is everything Superman related. (Yes, I also thought that Man Of Steel was a horrendous piece of garbage.)

Let’s start with Lois Lane

What Zack Snyder forgets is that Lois Lane doesn’t need Superman, Superman needs Lois Lane. Lois is the one who restores his faith in humanity when the world reveals its ugliness. Lois is the one who makes him feel human when everything tells him he is an alien. Lois is the one who shows him the strength of humans even though, to him, people are fragile creatures. She is the real source of Superman’s strength. The Lois Lane in this film is a weak female character. You’d think they would have written a much stronger character for this iconic female, especially since they are introducing another female icon, Wonder Woman, amidst Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill’s competing jawlines and ridiculous chin dimples.

Lex Luthor

This is not the Lex we came to see. Zack Snyder fucking us around, allowing Jesse Eisenberg to play our beloved Lex Luthor as an exaggerated Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network. I don’t care if this is the real Lex Luthor’s son. I want the calculated, cool genius that is feared by every superhero in The Justice League. Jesse Eisenberg’s character is comical and is never once believable as the main antagonist. You keep waiting for him to reveal that he was pretending to be a playful child while all along he was a great genius who played crazy to divert the attention away from himself, Hamlet style. This moment does not come.

Superman

Henry Cavill lacks the charisma to play a believable Superman. There’s more to this hero than just big muscles. People love this character and loved the Christopher Reeve portrayal because of how charismatic he was. Superman is the boyscout who makes the weak feel safe. The hero who saves people from burning buildings and smiles and waves as he flies away because his presence is supposed to make everyone feel that the danger can always be overcome. Henry Cavill’s Superman is more focused on the fact that he's getting some bad press. Like, dude, stop crying to your mommy about people calling you bad names. Either be a hero despite the critics or shut the fuck up and live your life as Clark Kent. Also, Henry Cavill is a terrible Clark Kent. Clark Kent is supposed to be such a dork, so clumsy and so cowardly that nobody will ever believe that he could be the man of steel. That’s why he can get away with using spectacles and a different hairstyle as a disguise.

Now, everything I loved about this film is everything Batman related!

Three years ago, they announced that Ben Affleck was going to play the caped crusader and fanboys around the world cried out in anger. I was a supporter of this casting choice from the beginning and let me tell you, Ben Affleck does not disappoint.

Some people might think that the first two thirds of the film is a bit slow but I loved it. It not only brings across the human element of ordinary people living in a world where an alien, who some consider the messiah, has the ability to wipe out the human race if he chose to but also shows the progressive disillusionment that Bruce Wayne has when it comes to people, crime, punishment and where he fits in as a hero or a necessary evil.

Ben Affleck plays the role to perfection. He not only looks the part physically as Batman but also portrays Bruce Wayne in a way that we’ve never seen onscreen before.

As Bruce Wayne he is the playful billionaire with a good heart but a dark seriousness that seems to be hiding personal tragedy. We also get to see him play detective; something that I’ve always criticised about previous Batman portrayals. This character shows Bruce Wayne the genius, Bruce Wayne the strategist.

Even when you watch the training montage that is reminiscent of Rocky Balboa preparing to fight Ivan Drago, you will see him training for specific moments in his fight against Superman ie. Dragging a truck tyre and then having to drag Superman in the same fashion. This shows that he planned every moment of that fight and planned for every contingency in case Superman should get the best of him at some point.

We also get to see the dark side of Batman. He gives that grin just before he’s about to tear some criminal apart. That grin that we haven’t seen since the 90’s animated series version. Batman looks like he’s enjoying every broken bone he’s responsible for. At some point you are left wondering if he isn’t perhaps crazier than the criminals he fights. He even tells Alfred, “We’ve always been criminals.”

Ben Affleck adds just the right amount of crazy to this character. Let’s face it, if Bruce Wayne’s only mission was to fight crime, he could have done it using Wayne Enterprises’ money and pumping it into better crime prevention units and social upliftment programmes without dressing up like a giant bat. Clearly Alfred should have sent him for more extensive trauma counselling after the little boy saw his parents get murdered. Bruce Wayne is secretly a psychopath who uses crime fighting as a means to satiate his psychopathic tendencies. He is the superhero version of Dexter and Ben Affleck gives us just enough glimpses of that insanity to prove to us why the people of Gotham are just as afraid of him as the criminals are.

Batman made this film enjoyable and Ben Affleck could only have been a better Batman if he had Kevin Conroy’s voice.

That is all.

Top 5 Movie Opening Scenes

Ramzee says:

Good opening scenes are always overlooked. I don’t know why, though. Everyone is always talking about the “twist ending” but few give the opening scene the credit it deserves.

Opening scenes get you excited for the rest of the film, it’s the moment when your mind gets taken out of this reality and transported into the world of the movie you’re watching. It’s the appetiser, the overture, the hors d’oeuvre (yes, that’s how you spell it). It’s the first date that sets the tone for the relationship, it’s the CV that gets you called in for an interview and when a filmmaker does it well, it is nothing short of genius.

5. Scream

The master of nightmares, Wes Craven (RIP), starts the chilly scene with a ringing telephone. Drew Barrymore answers and the voice that speaks next instantly makes its mark on pop culture.

4. Mulan

Surprised by this one? Watch this movie again and pay careful attention to this scene. A grappling hook thrown up onto the Great Wall and slowly gets dragged to the edge. A patrolling soldier sees it and follows it. He looks over the edge and a hundred more come up at him as the Huns attack. Lord Of The Rings doesn’t have anything as slick as this. Then the big bad guy, Shan-Yu, steps into the frame and, boom, cool villain moment! Every action movie cliché in the book and you can’t help but love every second of it.

3. Memento

Fuck it, I’ll just say it! Interstellar was a very average sci-fi flick!

Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, if all you Christopher Nolan groupies are done cursing me and have wiped yourselves after masturbating to the Dark knight trilogy, please hear me out.

 Nolan is good, no doubt, but he still hasn’t been able to beat his only real masterpiece, MEMENTO.

There are only 2 kinds of Christopher Nolan fans, those who know that Memento is his best film and those who haven’t seen Memento yet.

The opening scene of this film cannot be described in any way other than genius. The scene is in reverse order. That’s right, it runs backwards and pretty much gives away the ending of the film but is directed so beautifully that Nolan manipulates the audience into trying to solve a mystery where there is none. It’s like that American game show, Jeopardy, where they give you the answer and you have to guess the question. The opening scene of Memento is the answer and the question you have to figure out is “Who is Sammy Jankis” and “Why is it so important to remember him?”

2. X-men

Here’s another one that seems out of place but this one still haunts me and sends chills down my spine every time I watch it on e-tv (They play it a lot).

A little boy is separated from his mother in a Nazi concentration camp and as they drag the screaming child away, you see his power revealed as he bends the steel gates with his mind. That’s when you realise the boy is Magneto and suddenly you have a villain who you identify with as the victim. 

I must also add that I don’t think this scene would have made the list had it not been for the excellent acting of that boy who I have not seen in anything else since.

His name is Brett Morris (thanks IMDB). 

1. Pulp Fiction

Just a normal conversation between two petty criminals in a diner.

Nothing about this scene or the conversation drives the plot in any way. Tarantino simply starts the film like this because it is so unbelievably fucking entertaining to listen to and sets up the characters as average Joes who just happen to be criminals.

They’re just a normal couple with pet names for each other, unique views on life and trying to make it in the big bad world, just like everyone else…until they jumped onto that table, pulled their guns and made Tarantino fans of us all.

“I love you, Pumpkin.”

“I love you, Honey Bunny.”

“Everybody cool, this is a robbery.”

“Any of you fucking pricks move and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of you!”

The Jillybean says:

5. Matrix

I mean, who could ever forget the 1^st time we saw Trinity… The first few minutes you were thinking to yourself, “okay! This chick is quite bad ass”, but then she did that jump-in-the-air-and-pause-in-a-kung-fu-pose thing before kicking that guy all the way across the room. I knew right there and then that this movie was going to be legendary.

4. Godfather

“Now you come to me and you say -- "Don Corleone give me justice." -- But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you uh ask me to do murder, for money. “

Need I say more about this brilliant movie and portrayal by Marlon Brando

3. Bad Boys

“You damn right it’s limited! No cup holder, no backseat, just a shiny dick with two chairs in it. I guess we the balls just dragging the f*ck along.”

From the music to that first shot of the Porsche 911’s wheel rolling at a fast speed and of course, Jerry Bruckheimer’s name appearing on the credits, you know you are in for a hell of a ride. 

The part that really made this opening scene one of my favourites is the constant banter and the back & forth between Martin Lawrence and Will Smith.

2. Dark Knight Rises

Bane: “Or perhaps he’s wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane”

CIA Agent: “At least you can talk. Who are you?”

Bane: “It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask.”

Although this opening scene starts with a snippet of Jim Gordon’s speech, it does not really get interesting until we get a glimpse of the masked mercenary. There is no doubt in my mind that Tom Hardy delivered a 10/10 performance as Bane and it was his intensity that made me sit up and  realise that The Dark Knight Rises was not going to be a disappointment.

1. Desparado

“And in walks the biggest Mexican I have ever seen, Big as shit”

Who could ever forget the opening scene to this movie that touched all action movie fans in a very special place.  Steve Buscemi delivers the story of the Grimm Reaper like el mariachi like no one could have possibly done. Although it is action galore and gore everywhere (thank you Quentin Tarantino), this story is quite riveting and it keeps the audience, both in TV land and at the bar, hanging on Steve’s every word. This was a brilliant way to introduce the main character and the villain that is being hunted.

The song that followed simply just sweetened the deal.

That is all.

Special thanks to our guest Jillybean Olwam Magona.

Follow him on twitter  @olwam_

Girl, celebrated.

Sugar and spice and all things nice, that’s what little girls are made of. They’re also made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails. Yes, ladies are a lot more complex than just sugar and spice.

Beautiful and sometimes ugly, strong and sometimes weak, soft and sometimes hard, nice and sometimes nasty, Bruce and sometimes Caitlyn. Mothers, daughters, sisters, heroes, villains. We love ladies for all they are and what they represent and today we celebrate the strong female characters in film.

A couple of weeks ago I approached a few Jillybeans and asked them to create an artwork that represents their favourite female character from the movies.

Check out their art below. We would like to share this art with you. All you have to do is leave a comment telling us your favourite female character from the movies and include your twitter handle. We’ll randomly select a few people and send you the original artworks.

I hope you like the art and celebrate your favourite female characters with us.

 Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)

Artist: K.Kemp

Mulan (Disney's Mulan)

Artist: Denver Petersen

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)

Artist: Danny W

Mary Poppins (Disney's Mary Poppins)

Artist: Majda

Velma (Scooby Doo)

Artist: Hylton Arendse

Jean Grey (X-men)

Artist: Bramwell Alexander

Beatrix Kiddo (Kill Bill)

Artist: Ramz

 Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)

Artist: Zuby

 Queen Ravenna (Snow White and the huntsman)

Artist: Zuby

Lisbeth Salander (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)

Artist: Ramz

That is all.