5 Actors That Made Men Hit the Gym...Part 1

There are a lot of films out there with buff action heroes in them, and I think we can all agree that it’s tough out there for struggling actors who aren’t also professional level athletes with six-pack abs and a $15’000 smile. Sometimes these men have flaws that make us not envy them so much however, like Jason Statham’s baldness or Bruce Willis’ baldness or Nicolas Cage’s acting so when I set out to make this list I decided that the stars had to be something special with such divinely sculpted definition that the movies themselves are carried forward only by the intensity of the men in the audience staring longingly at the screen and fighting back the gay.  These stars of would have to make men feel so emasculated their only choices were to hit the gym or put a dress on. Although I’d also accept hunting down Taylor Lautner. 

We all know that most of these action hero actors are paid to spend 6 hours a day in a gym with a personal trainer working on that “authentic” old school warrior look.  

  “No caveman ever fought a sabretooth without shredded abs after all.”

It all might just be make believe and we’ve all been through the harsh experience of having our male idol fantasies ruined when the magic of film ended and the actor opened his mouth for an interview.

 "For me it was when Picard sang show tunes on the Enterprise."

But there are some actors out there where none of that matters. These men who are larger than life, whose muscles and attitude carry forward from the screen and into our hearts. So who are these modern day Adonis’ and when did they teabag us all with their sweet manliness all over our pathetic ‘girly man’ physiques.

5. Arnold ‘The Austrian Oak’ ‘Banged my Housekeeper’ Schwarzenegger

Arnie comes in at number 5 because it would be too obvious to put him in first place when you’d have to wait 4 more posts to get to him and he’s all you really want to read about. 

Arnie first made us feel small and worthless with his acting in the documentary ‘Pumping Iron’ where he played a larger than life version of himself. He routinely lied about his personal life and his dedication to the sport of bodybuilding just so he could psyche out his competition and foster his own legend. Being Arnie, everyone totally bought it and he ensured that he would go on to win the big bodybuilding Chilli cook-off or whatever for the 6^th time in a row.

  “Pumping Iron Chef”

 Do you remember when he sat down with Hulks family and basically told him he was going to lose and how they all laughed while thinking ‘Fuck you Arnold’ and when sitting on a bus with Hulk he said he was going to fuck his sister, all the time acting like his best friend. It was here that you learned something about the mindset of being a winner and that is that it’s ok to manipulate people with weak minds or no minds at all, “Hulk Smash” isn’t exactly Einstein level thinking. After all what’s the point of Boeing sized biceps if your brain is still an 8 year old prepubescent girl. The lesson truly is that movies about overcoming bullies and finding your confidence are just wish fulfilment fantasies for pussies.

As an honourable mention I think we can all agree that ‘Conan the Barbarian (1982)’ also made us want to pick up a dumbbell, if only to smash the writer in the face. Arnie however used it as an opportunity to enter his man chilli into competition again and took home his 7^th win.

 “I’ve heard the lamentations of your women...and your housekeepers”

Part 2....Soon.

Home Theatre Owners

Hi guys and welcome to my first post for Literally Geeking and I'd like to start if I may with a topic close to my heart. 

I am an avid film watcher, a buff some might say. I enjoy lying on the couch watching a movie with a bottle of beer in one hand and having my Android phone plugged into IMDb’s trivia in the other. Apart from my obvious need for a self help group, where I give myself over to the higher power of Morgan Freeman, I’ve noticed that perhaps it is the people who are not such dedicated film buffs who need the help. In fact I believe the definition of the film buff needs to be appropriated by people who not only watch films and can link the cinema of the Soviet Union to Kevin Bacon but who also know how to watch them. 

I’m not talking about suddenly toasting the joys of world cinema with a 2 year old sauvignon or being the hipster at the independent cinema’s bar who never seems to go into a screening, but the very simple idea of creating an environment appropriate to watching a film and enjoying it for what it is. There are times I know I have been suckered in by Hollywood into watching explosion after explosion and cliché melodrama but if we’re being honest it wouldn’t be so successful if it wasn’t a winning formula. After all, most of us choose a film for its escapism value and the ease with which we can understand and relate to what’s going on (Remember that time you saved the world from giant evil robots), not its real world merits or too make us aware of the plight of some people we didn’t know existed until we’d already cut too deep into the rainforest.  But whilst I could drone on about boring low budget movies making do with few-to-no lines of dialogue and a one instrument backing track, today I’m much more interested in exposing the one issue that affects the majority of home theatre owners. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

 How can something so special be treated so badly?

Too many times I have entered into another person’s living room, sometimes with their permission, and I’m treated to barbaric sightings of poor television placement and surround sound systems that couldn’t shake the dew from a leaf. 40”+ sized telly’s hung over fireplace mantelpieces at impossible viewing angles and shoved in corners to ensure both couches get an off centre view. The speakers aren’t mounted or placed at the optimal positions to enjoy the sound and more often than not they cheaped out and bought the system that has the flat sounding centre speaker ensuring the volume must go up and up and up until they can’t stand to use the damn thing. It’s a tragedy of modern times to rival Romeo & Juliet or that guy from Spaceballs who never managed to save his planet from the greedy air hoarding Druidians.

I’ve discovered that people in these truly horrific situations don’t tend to like the films they watch at home, and I’m sure most of you have passed on poor word of mouth about a film you saw in this manner, depriving poor film studios of a sale and passing the blame onto illegal downloader’s.

Perhaps this situation is unfair. You see for years movie makers have designed the talkies for how they were intended to be seen, in a nice big squareish room with everyone facing the front, not off at Feng Shui style viewing angles. We had stereo sound but with enough speakers that we were all bathed in the warmth that was proper entertainment. Today’s films however have upped the ante into creating that completely immersive experience and are designed with 5.1 or more surround sound (In fact if you go back and check that old DVD collection you’ll find many titles did have that option before they became so darn affordable). Dialogue comes from where the people are, music comes out separate speakers to the dialogue so as not to affect speech and the inclusion of rear speakers allows for encompassing sound and a nice place to put in some special effects and bullet ricochets. All this is of course if you’ve set it up right.

Now ask yourself how closely your home theatre resembles that experience.  Are your couches aligned in rows? Are your floors sticky? Is your seat suitably broken? and just where is your ice cream lady? Maybe that’s too far for a home theatre, even if it does offer some clue as to the appeal of having one at home, but what isn’t too far is knowing that in a perfectly aligned room where the TV is at a good eye line in the middle of a wall with the centre speaker beneath it and a surround sound speaker in every corner, that the people in the middle of that room in seats facing the TV are getting the experience you normally have to pay 2 or more times the cost of the Blu-Ray for along with the added bonus of not needing your shoes resoled or years of Osteopathy afterwards.

My advice to you all is to reshape your living space and build that home theatre. Experience films the way they were intended. Even Michael Bay’s explosive tendencies are much more appropriate when the explosion comes from somewhere your ears can place and when it adds to the atmosphere of the situation rather than distracts or annoys by making it impossible to hear what that car Bumblebee was saying. You may find your old DVD collection is deserving of a dust off, you could be the place for people to go on Saturdays, and recoup the cost with admission prices, but more than anything you might just start enjoying something you’ve spent a small fortune on already.

The Cruiser's Back!

Riding In Cars With Boys: emotional detachment in David Cronenberg's Crash

Crash, released in 1996, is a film that you will either love or hate. It stars James Spader as a TV director who after being a victim in a car crash, discovers an underworld of car crash victims who find pleasure in recreating famous car crashes which in turn gives them sexual satisfaction. The film consists of really no other scenes other than car crashes and the sex that follows. However this is not an erotic or emotional film.

The victims are all detached from life, indifferent and their encounters with one another seem unemotional and slightly violent. Their love is more for the cars than each other. I think the emptiness the characters feel is what Cronenberg wants the viewer to feel while watching this. We are meant to feel nothing for these characters because they feel nothing for themselves.

I am still unsure if I enjoyed this or not, but did powerfully invoke ideas of the human condition, something which I look forward to seeing more of in next year's A Dangerous Method.