We’re starting to hear some positive buzz about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Apparently it doesn’t rape or ruin your childhood; rather, it may make you feel like a kid again. This is what a toy/cartoon adaptation should do, we guess, but we still wish they’d made a Reagan-era-style war movie instead of a CG-heavy action blockbuster with too much comic relief. Because even when we were little we knew the property was a young person’s version of the conservative, Cold War-informed military pictures of the 1980s. And if Rambo could get his own Saturday morning animated series, why couldn’t we get a hard-R-rated G.I. Joe after all these years?
We know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re disappointed. See, while others might feel GIJTROC has ruined their childhood by being too unfaithful to the action figures and show, we feel it’s ruined our childhood because it isn’t the movie we dreamed of. So that’s how the following list of films was selected. Instead of going for all the obvious remakes and video game adaptations (we’ve never cared about games), we’re focusing on movies that really turned our beloved films, comics and cartoons of our youth into something we’re now almost embarrassed to ever admit we enjoyed.
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Thank God scientists finally found the missing link (aka Darwinius masillae, aka “Ida”). Now we can at last prove Charles Darwin right and be done with films like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, as well as all the seemingly pro-science movies that inadvertently ruined the theory of evolution. We now look forward to the “Ida” biopic, or at least a movie detailing the 26 years (give or take 47 million) it took for the discovery of her fossil to become a mainstream media sensation. Never mind that this is hardly the missing link between apes and humans. With almost 50 years passed since the release of Inherit the Wind, film-loving Darwinists need some kind of missing link story to grab onto.
It is true that cinema has not been so kind to Darwinism, giving us such mockeries as Evolution, Howard the Duck and Creature from the Black Lagoon. But filmmakers have consistently shown a special love for the concept of the missing link, at least. Although many movies depict the idea with little seriousness, and some feature negative portrayals of primitive monsters, there are a number of truly lovable creatures that represent the concept of the missing link on film. Check them out after the jump.
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The American Medical Association Alliance is unhappy with the appearance of a specific cigarette brand (American Spirit Lights) in He’s Just Not That Into You and is filing an official complaint to Warner Bros. and Time Warner over the issue. Brooks Barnes reports in today’s New York Times that the advocacy group doesn’t care that smoking is shown in a bad light in the romantic comedy (a character gets dumped for lying about quitting smoking, an offense seen as even worse than cheating); they think any acknowledgment of the act of smoking cigarettes — even if nobody is actually seen smoking onscreen, a la HJNTIY — could influence young people to start smoking.
The smoking in movies issue has brought about much debate regarding censorship in the last few years, but I say bring on the smoking ban. And then Hollywood can get creative with hints at smoking the way it used to use innuendo and other fun tricks to imply sex. The irony would be that in the past, cigarettes were used as such implicit hints (see Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Chinatown and just about any Hays Code-era film). I also say that this AMA organization should be happy that Hollywood is at least promoting a healthier brand of cigs, such as the all-natural American Spirits. Last year’s underrated male fantasy rom-com Definitely, Maybe went so far as to devote an entire flirting scene to why people should smoke the longer-lasting American Spirits than other brands. Funny, I don’t recall any complaints from the AMA regarding that movie (though here’s an interesting complaint from the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, at least).
Although this complaint wasn’t the biggest film blog topic of the day (that might be whining about Leo DiCaprio’s Neverending Story remake), here are the few other responses I found around the net:
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