Tag: Eric Roberts (Page 1 of 2)

A movie for manly men who are male: “The Expendables”

March 31, 2010 /

Rob Bricken of Topless Robot (over)shares that this gave him an “action movie boner.” Not one to be outdone, AICN’s Merrick promises a “Mangasm.”

Whats making geek bloggers make with the Freudian/homoerotic badinage?

Well, apparently working on the logic that big male stars, including action stars, aren’t necessarily driving huge numbers into the movie theaters, Lionsgate is taking a safety-in-numbers approach. Which established and once-established super macho-stars, both super- and not-so-super, appear in “The Expendables”? It might be easier to list who doesn’t — though the bald guy and the wildly unpopular governor are cameos, I think. What weapons and forms of fighting, do they use and how many people will they kill? I didn’t see any boomerangs or gymkata in the trailer, and I’m still alive, but other than that, it’s hard to be sure. Just take a look.

I’m thinking Detective Batista from “Dexter” is going to learn he chose the wrong day to go into the power-mad Latin American dictator business.

Action Movies, Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News

TCA Tour – You Asked For It: Ira Steven Behr’s opening remarks

August 3, 2009 /

I guess one person’s request doesn’t necessarily qualify as “clamoring,” but since it’s been requested, I thought I’d go ahead and offer up Mr. Behr’s opening remarks from the TCA Press Tour panel for Season 2 of “Crash.” Truth be told, it’s as educational a lesson about what to expect from the show’s sophomore season as one could possibly have hoped for…and if he’d just sent this off in an E-mail or letter to all of the writers in attendance rather than delivered it orally, he probably would’ve found a lot more people saying, “Say, I am curious to check out this show!”

Okay, here we go…

“Crash,” Season 2.

L.A.

Los Angeles.

Okay, we’re in Pasadena, but pretend.

Los Angeles is paradise, but paradise comes at a price and everybody pays, and that’s the new season of “Crash.” So I’d like to introduce some of the new characters who will be paying that price this year along with the wonderful Dennis Hopper as Ben Cendars, Ross McCall as Kenny Battaglia, and Jocko Sims as Anthony.

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External Entertainment, External TV, News, TCA Blog 2009, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Dramas

TCA Tour, Day 2: “Crash”

August 1, 2009 /

Hey, wanna see a panel come to a screeching halt before it even gets rolling? Just ask Ira Steven Behr to step up to the mike.

I’m a big fan of Behr’s work, particularly on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “The 4400,” but, holy cow, Starz main man Bill Hamm has got to still be kicking himself over his decision to say, “Before we open it up for questions, I want to ask Ira to give us some details about the direction of the second season and some of our exciting additions to the cast.” There’s no way I’m going to offer up everything Behr had to say, but I’ll tell you that, having copied and pasted the text of his comments into a Word document, it totals out at over 600 words, and his halting delivery made it seem as though it lasted forever. I’d actually been excited about the panel, which was to provide details about the upcoming second season of “Crash,” but I quickly found myself within an inch of standing up and yelling, “Geez louise, Ira, wrap it up, wouldja?”

Eventually, of course, Ira did wrap it up, and things moved onto the most obvious new development about the new season of “Crash”: the addition of Eric Roberts to the cast.

This isn’t the first time that Eric Roberts and Dennis Hopper have worked together, but it’s the only time that Roberts is interested in talking about, even if Hopper seemed to enjoy needling his new co-star about it.

Dennis Hopper: We did a movie together, too.
Eric Roberts: We don’t want to talk about that, Dennis.
Dennis Hopper: Okay. It was the first…
Eric Roberts: We don’t talk about that, Dennis. Terrible movie. (Shrugs) I made a couple.
Dennis Hopper: I made more than a couple!

Actually, Roberts tried his best not to say anything at all during the panel, as was further evidenced when a writer asked him and Hopper about the differences between working on television versus working in motion pictures.

Dennis Hopper: Well, you don’t have as much time, but I’ve worked in a lot of independent films through the years, so it doesn’t get that much different. I’ve had a lot of dialogue in this series, so that’s been the most difficult part for me. Beyond that, we work 15, sometimes 17 hours, but we have a great crew. Never heard anyone complain, except me. But nobody listens to me, so it’s okay. But the crew and the cast are just wonderful. Yeah, I’m having a joyous time, even though it’s difficult. But since we’re shooting other episodes, we have our three days off and four days off, you know, every two weeks, whatever. So it’s a nice schedule.
Eric Roberts: What he said.

Now, here’s the big question: how many of you even watched “Crash”?

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External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, TV, TV Dramas, Video

My Most Memorable Interviews of 2008

December 30, 2008 /

I recently went back and counted up how many interviews I’ve done for Bullz-Eye since I first came aboard the site, and I was astounded to find that – counting both one-on-one conversations as well as teleconferences – the number tops 200. Wow. Anyone who thinks that I don’t work hard for my money, I say to you that the figures speak for themselves. Looking back at the list of folks with whom I’ve chatted during the course of the past year, I find myself thinking the same thing I think every day of every year: it might’ve sucked to do all of that unpaid freelance writing for all those years, but it was totally fucking worth it. And with that bold statement, allow me to present a list of the interviews from 2008 that still remain fresh in my mind…for a variety of reasons.

* Best-received interview of the year:

Tom Smothers. I’m used to hearing from my friends when I do an interview that they enjoy, but I heard from several complete strangers that really loved the conversation Tom and I had about everything from the censorship of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” to the night John Lennon and Harry Nilsson were thrown out of the Brothers’ show at the Troubadour.

“Harry comes in with John Lennon. Well, he told John Lennon, ‘Tom likes hecklers. It helps him. It gets him through his show.’ And every time there was a silence, they were hollering out things like, ‘God fucks pigs!’ I mean, it was really filthy! Blows were thrown, and it just got wild. The next day, I got flowers and all kinds of apologies from Lennon and from Harry Nilsson.”

* Most politically-incorrect interview of the year:

Tony Clifton, the former alter ego of Andy Kaufman that’s now being performed by Bob Zmuda. To say that Clifton works a little blue is the understatement of the century, but it’s more than just dirty jokes; his whole act is one where he unabashedly says things that he knows will piss people off…and if you don’t know it’s an act, then it’s really gonna piss you off.

“Some people say that, with the repertoire I’ve got and with the rapport between the band and me, a few people have quoted it as being like Buddy Rich. I call ‘em like I see ‘em, just like Buddy. But Buddy was coked up most of the time, and I don’t do that. I prefer the Jack Daniel’s. I’m fucked up most of the time during the show. I have fun with the band. I call ‘em niggers. And I got a few Japs in there, I call ‘em Nips. I got everything mixed up in that band, like I say. I call ‘em the way I see ‘em. Listen, lemme tell ya this: you know why I get away with it? ‘Cause I got black people in my family. Yeah. And I’ve got the rope to prove it. Look, the blackies are good. They’re good for the sports and for the music. See, the Jews are good at making the money…or at taking the money from you.”

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Interviews, Movies, TV, Year in Review

Heroes 3.8 – Another Villain on the Cover of Every Major Magazine

November 10, 2008 /

Even with the major media outlets gleefully listing off the reasons to be less than enthusiastic about a new episode of “Heroes,” it’s hard not to excited about any show which offers up an episode with a cast that features Robert Forster, Malcolm McDowell, and Eric Roberts.

Fortunately, the series did not disappoint.

Oh, sure, when one looks back at this episode in the grand scheme of the season, it will be one that can be easily skipped, since all it really does is fill in a few blanks that didn’t really need to be filled in. But this was an episode for the longtime fans, those folks who have watched the evolution of the characters over the course of the show’s run and have had various little plot details gnawing at them.

Given my past praise of Robert Forster, it will come as no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him get the opportunity to dive into the role of Papa Petrelli during all of the key moments from the past that we’d heard about but never seen. He’s clearly having fun playing the villain, as seen during his scenes with McDowell and his declaration that having his own son knocked off would be just another day at the office. Then again, it seemed like Cristine Rose was having a ball herself, particularly during the sequence where we got the skinny on how Papa Petrelli came to be paralyzed in the first place. (It’s not nice to fool Mama Petrelli…)

It was also a lot of fun to see Eric Roberts return to his role as Thompson, watching him smirk as he treated Meredith and Flint – hey, who knew they were siblings? – like his playthings, trying to train Meredith while keeping Flint under lock and key with assurances that he, too, would become a field agent one day. Roberts has been known to have a little too much fun with his roles, but he plays Thompson perfectly, with the moment when he gave Meredith the opportunity to reconnect with Claire a particular highlight of his performance.

There was, however, at least one real bummer to the episode, and that was the storyline where Sylar and Elle became best buds. It felt like someone said, “Hey, the good news is that we’ve got Kristen Bell for another week, but the bad news is that it’s for the week that we’re filming the flashback episode. Heads we shoehorn her into the Sylar story, tails she’s working with Thompson.” The Elle / HRG scenes were fun, but the show died a slow death every time it went back to Sylar and Elle. Maybe it’s because there was no suspense whatsoever, since we knew that every word that came out of Elle’s mouth was a lie and that Sylar was going to snap eventually.

There were some great one-liners scattered throughout the episode, such as Peter’s bemusement that his father couldn’t bring himself to describe his son as a nurse, or Meredith’s comment to Flint that “God didn’t give you a brain, he gave you an older sister.” As far as flashback episodes go, it certainly didn’t live up to the standards of Season 1’s “Company Man,” which delved into HRG’s back history, but it was nonetheless enjoyable to finally have Papa Petrelli’s role in the recent pasts of Nathan and Peter fleshed out. Those guys have an evil, evil father…and if you didn’t feel that way during the course of the flashbacks, then you sure as hell felt that way in the last two minutes of the proceedings.

Yikes.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

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