Boy George has been jailed for 15 months for falsely imprisoning a male escort in his flat in east London.
The singer, whose real name is George O'Dowd, denied the charge and claimed the victim, Norwegian Audun Carlsen, 29, had stolen photos from his laptop.
O'Dowd, 47, admitted handcuffing him to a wall in April 2007 but said he did so in order to trace the missing property.
Judge David Radford told the former Culture Club singer he was guilty of "gratuitous violence".
O'Dowd's family and supporters reacted emotionally as the singer was handed the jail sentence at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
Gay website
Judge Radford said: "Whilst I accept that Mr Carlsen's physical injuries were not serious or permanent, in my view there can be no doubt that your premeditated callous and humiliating handcuffing and detention of Mr Carlsen shocked, degraded and traumatised him.
"He was deprived of his liberty and human dignity without warning or proper explanation to him of its purpose, length or purported justification."
The singer, best known for 1980s hit Karma Chameleon, was also told to pay £5,000 costs.
The two men first came into contact through a gay social-networking site and met up for a pornographic photo shoot at O'Dowd's Shoreditch flat, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
O'Dowd believed Mr Carlsen stole data, including personal photographs from his laptop, during the photo shoot.
The court was told that weeks later O'Dowd invited the Norwegian back to his flat and it was then that he, with the help of a second man, chained Mr Carlsen to his bed and beat him.
'Self-destructive behaviour'
Mr Carlsen testified that he was manacled to the bed, but managed to escape and ran from the flat wearing only his boxer shorts, trainers and a pair of handcuffs.
During the trial the court heard that the escort sold the story of his ordeal to a Norwegian magazine for £5,500, which he said he needed to flee the UK as he was "too scared".
The singer has previous convictions for theft as a juvenile in 1977 and a drugs offence 10 years later.
He was also given community service in New York in 2006 after admitting to falsely reporting a burglary at his flat there.
Boy George, who is now a DJ, was one of the most well-known stars and recognisable faces in the 1980s.
With Culture Club he notched up seven British and nine American Top 10 hits and sold more than 50 million records.
He has also struggled with drug addictions and he told the world about his personal battle in his autobiography Take It Like A Man.
Earlier his barrister Adrian Waterman told the court that O'Dowd was the "antithesis of the haughty bullying star".
He said: "At the heart of the matter was a descent into self-destructive behaviour at the hands of the drugs."
Following the sentencing, O'Dowd's solicitor, Steven Barker, said: "George is on the road to recovery, I sincerely hope this sentence does not knock him back."
The producers behind “The Spirit” obviously have a lot of faith in Frank Miller, because they have just handed him another directing gig. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Miller is in the final negotiations to direct “Buck Rogers” for Oddlot Entertainment and Millennium Films.
“Buck Rogers,” for those of you feeling lost, was one of the first major sci-fi stories. In fact, it was the very first sci-fi comic series, kicking off with its first strip in 1929, and it ran until 1967. The series followed an ordinary American and former Air Force pilot who was exposed to a gas that put him in a state of suspended animation for 500 years. He wakes up in the future, where he’s eventually recruited to help battle intergalatic menaces to Earth.
It had a brief revival in the ’80’s (E.T. gets the idea for his communicator from a Buck Rogers strip), and the character has been adapted numerous times for radio, television, and movies.
Miller has been rumored to have the directing job for months. He will be writing and sketching his own version of Buck Rogers and not surprisingly, it’s expected to be dark, with his usual focus on corruption, sex, and violence. As the original Buck Rogers was good, clean, all-American fun, you can expect a fair amount of controversy when his take is revealed.
It’s really quite surprising that Miller would get another directing job before “The Spirit” even hits theaters. Buzz on the comic legend’s debut has been mixed, and negative reviews are beginning to hit the press as we speak. Will Oddlot and Millennium regret they didn’t wait until the critical reviews and box office numbers were tallied?
Are you interested in seeing Miller’s take on Buck Rogers? Or should he just stick to comic books?
Johnny Marr, former guitarist with The Smiths, has quashed rumours that his old band are to reunite. The legendary 80s group, fronted by Morrissey, were rumoured to be reforming for American festival Coachella. “The stories circulating about a Smiths reunion are as usual untrue,” explained Marr in a statement. The guitarist is a member of Wakefield band The Cribs and is set to record an album with them in 2009. “I’m very excited about writing and recording with The Cribs for a new album, to be released next summer,” added Marr, “and we’re playing shows in February, so going back in time isn’t in my plans.” The Smiths split in 1987, just before the release of their fourth album Strangeways, Here We Come, and have so far resisted any offers to reform.
Victor Willis, original lead singer of the Village People, underwent surgery July 8 in San Diego to remove benign nodules from his vocal cords, according to a press release. Willis, who was scheduled to hit the road Aug. 9 as part of the 2008 Disco Dance Tour, is expected to fully recover and return to the stage by October.
According to the press release, Willis' voice originally became hoarse in 2007 after he played several concert dates. His doctors advised vocal rest, forcing the cancellation of European and Canadian tour dates scheduled for March and April of this year.
Willis began rehearsing again in June in preparation for his upcoming US tour but when his voice began to get horse again, surgery was recommended.
Boy George has just announced tour dates in South America
Boy George has cancelled his North American solo summer tour days before it was due to start because he has been denied a work visa by US officials.
The former Culture Club frontman had been scheduled to kick off his 24-date tour on 11 July in Las Vegas.
The singer said he has been banned because of a forthcoming false imprisonment trial in London.
Speaking to US news programme The Today Show, the 47-year-old said: "It's a disaster because of the fans."
'Kind people'
He was arrested last year after a 28-year-old male escort from Norway accused the singer/DJ of false imprisonment by chaining him to a wall and assaulting him, claims which the star denies.
The singer - whose real name is George O'Dowd - has promised fans he will return to the US early next year for the tour.
"If I have to wait it'll be even better," he said.
I love America and I am really sad that it appears that I am not allowed to visit a place I have called home at various times in my life
Boy George
In a message posted on his website, George said: "I am getting my life together and was really looking forward to performing in concert for all my loyal fans.
"I love America and I am really sad that it appears that I am not allowed to visit a place I have called home at various times in my life.
"But what has happened to me has nothing to do with the American people - they are kind people with big heart."
Tom Casey, a spokesman for the US State Department, told reporters immigration files are confidential.
He added: "There often are difficulties for individuals who either are currently subject to criminal charges or otherwise may have criminal records."
Meanwhile, George has announced six autumn tour dates in South America, starting in September in Brazil.
Since their heydey in the early ‘80s, Bucks Fizz has performed in a variety of mystifying incarnations. Jay Aston was the first of the classic line-up to leave (in 1985), to be replaced by Shelley Preston. Various other members came and went in the succeeding years and, for a while, David Van Day (formerly of Dollar) joined. later David left, teamed up with ex-Bucks Fizz singer, Mike Nolan - and suddenly there were two Bucks Fizzes! The current line up of ‘The Original Bucks Fizz’ http://www.myspace.com/originalbucksfizz is Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan and Shelly Preston. According to another Bucks Fizz site on MySpace‘Buck5Fizz recently starred in the Comic Relief video with Peter Kay & Matt Lucas..."It's the first time Cheryl & Jay had been in the same room for 20 years. We are all hoping to put all our differences aside and tour later this year as a five piece. We are all very excited at the prospect" ‘.... Interesting to see if that really happens. In the meantime, your next chance to see the ‘Original BF’ is on the Gay Pride Main stage on 24th May in Birmingham. The group will share a bill with Sonia, Brotherhood of Man and Scooch. Sounds good to me. And here, to get you in the mood, is the ever-popular Making Your Mind Up...
In 1982, long before Sex and the City, and before roles in films like Honeymoon in Vegas, Flight of the Navigator and Footloose, Sarah Jessica Parker first came to national attention in the short-lived CBS series Square Pegs. The show co-starred Amy Linker (D.A.R.Y.L.), and the cast also included Jami Gertz (Twister, ER, Still Standing), Tracy Nelson (Father Dowling Mysteries) and Merritt Butrick (Star Trek III: The Search For Spock). The show's theme song was by The Waitresses, who appeared in the first episode. Other guest stars in the program's 20-episode run included Don Novello (as "Father Guido Sarducci"), disc jockey Richard Blade, John Densmore (the drummer from The Doors), popular '80s music group DEVO, Tony Dow (Leave It To Beaver), Martin Mull (Mr. Mom, Roseanne, Sabrina the Teenage Witch), Bill Murray (Saturday Night Live, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters), Steve Sax...and the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers! With Sarah Jessica Parker back to theaters soon in Sex and the City: The Movie, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has finally decided that it's time to bring Square Pegs - The Complete Series to DVD! All 20 episodes are coming to a 3-disc set which includes an exclusive new interview with Parker, along with a couple of "minisodes" (3-6 minute super-short versions of regular Sony-owned television episodes from classic primetime shows). Cost will be $29.95 SRP, and the street date is May 20th (about a week and a half before Sex and the City: The Movie hits the box office). Video is full-frame, audio is English - Stereo, and Subtitles will be in French. Running time is approximately 460 minutes. It's still a few weeks before the folks at Sony formally announce this, so all info is taken from an early heads-up sent to retailers, and is subject to change.
If you feel that what music needs the most is sappy ballads, screeching guitars and more rock and roll, then Return of the Pride will fill that hole in your heart. In the everything old is new again category is the return of 80’s hair band White Lion. Yeah, that’s right. I said White Lion has a new album. It took seventeen years to get a new album released but the band is back…we’ll Mike Tramp, the lead singer, is back with a new group that carries the same name. The good news is they haven’t gone the pop country way of their contemporary Bon Jovi. White Lion is here to rock out with their…well you know…on Return of the Pride. Rock music has become neutered over the past decade thanks to bands like Nickelback and Fallout Boy. To hear an honest to God rock band these days seems like a cool drink of water in the desert. White Lion isn’t going to quench your thirst but they will wet your lips and make you remember what rock music sounds like. There has been some debate over the fact that Mike Tramp is dusting off the White Lion name and parading back out into the market place. After all, is a band really the same if only one of the original members is still performing…Alex Rose says yes. White Lion isn’t the first name that jumps to your mind when you think of hard rocking 80’s hair bands. The two songs (“Wait”, “When The Children Cry”) they’re most known for are more of the ‘anthem’ softer sound that was so popular in the late 80’s. Surprisingly, White Lion developed a harder sound and bring their A game to their return album. Does that mean you’re going to find the new White Lion trying to redo “Wait” or “When the Children Cry”? Not really, lead guitarist Jamie Low fills the boots of Vito Bratta with scorching guitar solos (and would hair metal be without guitar solos?). Return of the Pride opens with the intense “Sangre de Christo”. It’s an epic song that lasts and full 8-minutes. It kicks off the album and sets you up for the rest. “Live Your Life” is a kick in the ass wakeup call that hair metal fans will air guitar to. Then there is the obligatory ballad with “Never Let You Go”. Tramp waxes poetic about love, of course. Your enjoyment of Return of the Pride will largely depend up on your love of 80’s hair metal. If you think it’s crap, odds are you’re really not going to enjoy this CD at all. If you feel that what music needs the most is sappy ballads, screeching guitars and more rock and roll, then Return of the Pride will fill that hole in your heart.
Dennis Haskins played "Mr. Belding" on the TV shows "Good Morning Miss Bliss," "Saved By The Bell," and "Saved By The Bell: The New Class" between 1987 and 2000. Here's a picture of Dennis Haskins from his early days on Saved By The Bell: When Saved By The Bell went off the air in 2000 Haskins struggled to find acting work and he undoubtedly felt pigeon-holed in his role as Mr. Belding. In an attempt to change his image Haskins grew a mustache. Haskins eventually shaved his mustache and became a party animal trying to pick up college-age women at bars. He currently enjoys life and eats every piece of greasy and fatty food in sight as shown in the pictures below.
TMZ.com recently posted some pictures of Dennis Haskins partying in Las Vegas with women who appear to be strippers. Apparently Haskins is still a huge (literally) party animal!
Ronson, who recently revealed he was working on a potential Bond theme with Amy Winehouse, is currently in the studio crafting the remixes.
He said Duran Duran "were the only band I ever idolised" and admitted he "used to take a picture of [bassist] John Taylor with me to the barber shop".
The gig will take place at La Cigale in Paris on 2 July.
Ronson will also play a set with his own band, the Version Players, with Simon Le Bon taking a guest vocal slot.
In a statement, Le Bon called Ronson "one of the biggest talents to have emerged in recent years".
"He's taking popular music in a new, exciting and fresh direction," he said. "He also looks great in a well cut suit, and has the blood and voice of an Englishman."
Although the musicians did not reveal which tracks they would be collaborating on, Duran Duran's hits include Save A Prayer, Wild Boys and Rio.
The group, renowned for their trend-setting widescreen promo videos, picked up a lifetime achievement award at the 2004 Brit awards.
Ronson has also been the recipient of a Brit prize - taking home Best British Male at this year's ceremony.
Their collaborative concert is invite-only, but will be filmed and shown around the world, according to sponsor Smirnoff.
This clock looks awesome and it reminds you of the 80’s immediately and the fact that you couldn’t solve this thing to save your life. Have no fear, this one will be easy to solve since only the top row twists to switch between time, temperature, alarm and date modes.
It’s also very affordable at $24.98. Just think, now when you wake up, if you are out of it enough you might think it’s the 80’s again, just for a second or two. Just thank your lucky stars that it doesn’t require you to fully solve it in order to shut it off. If that were the case, it would have to hit the wall very hard one morning. What On Earth
A 33-year-old US woman must stand trial on charges of stalking actor John Cusack, a Los Angeles judge has ruled.
Emily Leatherman, who had previously been ordered to stay away from the Better Off Dead star, was recently arrested outside his Malibu house.
Ms Leatherman faces up to three years in prison if convicted of stalking. She is also charged with petty theft.
Cusack was granted a restraining order in 2006 that stated she must stay at least 500ft (152m) away from him.
In court papers, Cusack said Ms Leatherman was "showing unusual interest by stalking, throwing long letters of interest over my fence in bags with rocks and screwdrivers inside".
She was arrested at the beginning of April after a taxi driver alerted police that she did not have enough money to pay her fare.
According to police, Cusack approached officers and said Ms Leatherman had been following him.
Queen guitarist Brian May has revealed a sequel to the stage musical We Will Rock You will be bought to the stage.
"We are planning the sequel," he said. "It is a real challenge."
The 60-year-old said about two million people had seen We Will Rock You, written and directed by Ben Elton, since it opened in London in 2002.
May also said the band were preparing for their autumn tour and new album. "The long arm of Queen has pulled me back in at the moment. It is a beast."
He added: "We've pressed the button to go on tour this autumn so already the preparations are very consuming.
"We've chosen our set, we've chosen our environment on tour. It is very exciting, very exciting indeed. Very time consuming but Queen always was consuming."
Productions of We Will Rock You, based on the songs of Queen, have since opened in Australia, Spain, Russia, the US, Japan and Germany.
Rapper Vanilla Ice has been released from jail after being arrested for allegedly pushing his wife.
The 39-year-old - real name Robert Van Winkle - was held on Thursday night at the couple's home in Florida.
Police said his wife called emergency services, saying she had been kicked and hit during an argument. Later she told officers the star only pushed her.
The rapper denied pushing her, according to police, and he was charged with simple domestic battery.
He was freed on Friday after appearing in court. His agent, Tommy Quon, said he had not heard about the arrest and could not comment.
Mr Van Winkle, who sold 15 million copies of the single Ice Ice Baby in 1990, spent a night in jail in 2001 after being arrested following a domestic dispute. Hooked is the debut album by American rapper Vanilla Ice, released in 1989.
For many years the Mets were New York's underdog team, the scrappy poorer cousins of the wealthy Yankees. Now, it seems, they have unwittingly chosen an underdog of their own, a long-neglected 1980s English pop star, to represent them.
When the baseball team asked fans to vote online for a new eighth-inning sing-along tune, five million voters bypassed classic American hits like Jon Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer and Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, instead writing in ballots for a chart-topper from a 1980s Lancastrian pop star.
New Yorkers, it seemed, thought Rick Astley’s 1987 hit Never gonna give you up would best rally their team. It was only when chatrooms and blogs began buzzing with reports of the 42-year-old Lancastrian’s surprise success that organisers realised they had been “rickrolled”. The baseball team has become the latest victim of the online prank that aims to play the song, which topped UK charts for five weeks in 1987, as often as possible. Shortly after the Mets posted the poll on their website last week, online communities including fark.com and digg.com rallied their readers to vote for Astley’s song, swamping the team's website with votes for the 1980s hit.
Rather than commit to the results, however, the New York team will stage a run-off of the top six songs, including Livin’ on a Prayer, Sweet Caroline, The Monkees' I’m a Believer, Billy Joel's Movin’ Out, and Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations.
Rickrolling started as an online in-joke: community members posted links with enticing titles, luring readers in with offers of celebrities or sex, or both, but the link was, in fact, directed to YouTube clips of the camp pop star’s dated music video.
As the phenomenon has grown, the song has been revived as a widespread in-joke in the real world, too, and has been played at sporting events and protests alike in “live rickrolling” events. Last month four women's basketball games at Eastern Washington University were rickrolled, and anti-Scientology protesters blasted the song from boomboxes in London, Edinburgh, New York and Washington.
Rickrolling is only the latest, and perhaps most popular, example of the Internet “meme”, the repetitive transmission of ideas across the web, and follows the more rudimentary duckroll, in which readers were re-directed to an image of a duck on wheels.
The 42-year-old Englishman seems slightly bemused by the rickrolling phenomenon.
“If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something -- a Bruce Springsteen, 'God bless America' ... or an anti-something kind of song, I could kind of understand that,” Astley told the LA Times Web Scout blog.
“But for something as, and I don’t mean to belittle it, because I still think it’s a great pop song, but it’s a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn’t have any kind of weight behind it, as such. But maybe that’s the irony of it.”
Fans of pop star Rick Astley descended on London's Liverpool Street train station for a "flashmob" event.
The "flashmob" - where a group of people assemble in a public place for a brief period of time - happened just before 1800 BST.
Some of the fans donned Astley masks in honour of the 1980s hitmaker, before the crowd sang his trademark hit Never Gonna Give You Up.
Police said the incident passed peacefully - if not quietly.
'Really funny'
Witness Paras Barot, 22, from Golders Green in north London, said he heard about the event on social networking site Facebook and decided to head to the station.
"I got there with some friends just before 6pm, and there were lots of people there - the whole station was at a standstill."
He said he thought there were some 300 or 400 people taking part in the event.
"There was a countdown from 5.59 to 6pm. Some guys put their masks on, and a lot of them started singing the song.
"For those of us who knew what was going on it was really funny."
Mr Barot said he did not join in the singing. "I don't know the words."
A British Transport Police spokeswoman said: "We monitored the incident. There were no problems, no arrests. They did what they had to do and then left."
An estimated 13 million internet users have been tricked into watching the video for Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up in recent weeks.
US pop band Blondie are to embark on a tour to mark the 30th anniversary of their album Parallel Lines.
The group will play a string of US dates in June before moving on to the UK in July, performing in Glasgow, Liverpool and the Guilfest festival.
The album propelled Blondie, fronted by Deborah Harry, to stardom, spawning hit singles including Heart of Glass and Hangin' On The Telephone.
Parallel Lines topped the charts in the UK and reached number six in the US.
The tour will kick off in Baltimore on 5 June and the US leg will wind up at Milwaukee's Summerfest on 28 June.
The band enjoyed global success in the late 1970s and early '80s
The band will co-headline their concert in Liverpool on 22 July with The Stranglers and are also due to perform two gigs in Norway at the start of August. More shows are expected to be added.
After five UK number one singles and six studio albums, Blondie split in 1982.
They reformed in the late 1990s and returned to the charts after an absence of 17 years with a sixth UK chart-topper, Maria, in 1999.
The band were inducted into the US Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
Cage took action against Turner after she alleged he was arrested twice for drunk-driving while they were making the 1986 film Peggy Sue Got Married.
Turner also alleged he was arrested for stealing a Chihuahua.
Cage accused Turner of "defamation, libel and slander" by including the allegations in her recent book, Send Yourself Roses: My Life, Love and Leading Roles.
The action was brought in the UK because an extract of Turner's book was reprinted in the Daily Mail and on its website.
'Gratified'
Cage's UK solicitor Simon Smith said the Oscar-winning actor was "extremely pleased" with the outcome of the case "since he has never been arrested for drink driving, dog theft or anything else".
"As an actor who stars in many family-friendly films and who has a young child and teenager of his own, Mr Cage was understandably upset at having been wrongly depicted as condoning that sort of reckless, dangerous and criminal behaviour."
The actor, he continued, was "gratified that the defendants have done the right thing by acknowledging their errors and making amends".
The donation will be made to the National Adult Protective Services Foundation, a US charity which benefits vulnerable adults.
The Daily Mail has agreed to publish an apology and remove the article from its website.
Headline has also agreed to insert a correction and apology into copies of Turner's book.
As one of the most iconic television shows of the 1980's, I'm glad that I was there to see it first time around. Tom Selleck was the definitive Thomas Magnum, He was Magnum! To show how much of a fan I am... I have a Tom Selleck section in my DVD collection!
For the past decade or so Universal Pictures have been trying to bring Magnum P.I. to the big screen, as usual names such as George Clooney and Ben Affleck had been mooted for the part, but now Entertainment Weekly state that the script for the Magnum film has been passed to the world's most famous bongo player Matthew McConaughey.
My thoughts on this as a Magnum fan?
Frickin' awesome!!!
Why?
Read on.
There was once a time when I hated Matthew McConaughey. The guy was seen as the next big thing, and there is nothing that I hate more than being told that you should like somebody because the press tells you to. It makes me want to turn and run in the opposite direction.
A few years and a couple of bombs later, McConaughey was almost Hollywood's next has-been. Then he was arrested for playing the bongos too loud in his own home. Not only was he arrested for playing bongos too loud, but when they arrived at his house he was prancing around his living room. Check the photograph with this article for his mugshot.
I play like to play the bongos, I will be honest... I've never conducted any naked dancing that was bongo related, but one can get carried away with the rhythm!
Anyway, before I get side tracked, that was the moment that I thought that McConaughey might be cool. He followed this arrest up with Ed TV, U571, Frailty and Reign of Fire (the best ever post-apocalyptic dragon film). I also really like Sahara, and I'm furious that it never made enough money to warrant a sequel. Shame on you movie goers!!
As much as I like Clooney and Affleck I feel that McConaughey is the best fit for the role.
In fact a couple of years ago I once said that he was my dream casting for Magnum. So I'm over the moon with this news. It's pure McConaughey material. He's a man of action, laid back, he hangs on the beach and the chicks love him. If it wasn't based on a television show I'd swear that it was McConaughey's autobiography.
There is no word yet on whether or not "Bongos" McConaughey will accept the role, or even if he will grow Tom Selleck's trademark mustache. I just hope that he does both.
The script has been written by Dodgeball writer/director Rawson Thurber.
I will keep you posted on any future developments. However, in the meantime I think I'll just watch some of my Magnum series box sets.
I not-so-fondly remember watching the John Cena film "The Marine" a while ago and detested the picture for its mindless screenplay and unimaginative action sequences. I wondered to myself, "Who watches this garbage?" Then, I found myself watching "Commando," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. A realization swept across my conscious that the answer to my question was "I do." "Commando" is a nearly quarter-century old film where the governor of California goes on a seemingly impossible raid to save the life of his daughter. When I compare the script and the action of "Commando" to that from "The Marine," this film really doesn´t improve much over that horrid Cena picture. However, there is something that makes "Commando" infinitely more likable. The answer to that puzzle is simple. "Commando" features Arnold Schwarzenegger, a far more likable and entertaining action hero. Arnold (bad style, but we´ll use first name instead of retying Schwarzenegger a large number of times) and his heavy Austrian accent made cheesy one-liners cool. He made poorly-scripted dialogue fun. And! We didn´t care about how many rounds of ammunition were left in his clip and how many bullets amazingly didn´t hit the very large man when a dozen enemy soldiers were firing at him in full auto. We didn´t care because watching Arnold kick some serious ass was something that made the Eighties cinema truly remarkable. He is an action hero. Cena is a wrestler. There is a world of difference. "The Marine" had the Camaro of Doom. That car was nearly indestructible. It´s resilience bordered on absurdity. I know. I have always owned Camaros and I know they have not-so-bullet-friendly bodies. The car was hurt, but it kept going. I felt the entire chase that revolved around that car and its amazing re-inflating (they were not Goodyear Runflats) tires was simply ludicrous. However, I find myself loving and rooting for the Austrian of Doom in this film. He has amazingly re-inflating biceps, but I never once found myself stopping to question how he could handle a very physical encounter after being shot in the arm. Arnold isn´t a car, but his resilience in this film is just as absurd as the Camaro. Again, I didn´t care because Arnold is a prototypical action hero. In this film he portrayed retired Special Forces commander Colonel John Matrix. Matrix lives an overly happy and peaceful life with his daughter Jenny (Alyssa Milano in her second role). One day that peace is compromised when his former boss General Franklin Kirby (James Olsen) shows up and tells Matrix that his entire former unit has been killed. Of course, the bad guys have impeccable timing and show up as soon as Kirby is safely away. Jenny is kidnapped and Matrix is told that he must help Arius (Dan Hedaya) attain a presidency by assassinating the current president. Matrix learns that his former war buddy Bennett (Vernon Wells) is not only wearing the worst shirt in Hollywood history, but also helping Arius attain his goals. Arius and Bennett are aided by Sully (David Patrick Kelly) and Cooke (Bill Duke). With Arnold now running the state of California and nobody stepping up to replace Schwarzenegger, Stallone or Willis, box office heroes have been in short supply in recent years. I enjoy Brendan Frasier and think the "Mummy" films are homage to the action films of the Eighties. Somebody along the line seems to have misplaced Vin Diesel. There simply is nobody with the same action charisma and physical presence as the Governator and this is a big chunk of why a film like "Commando" can succeed and the far more recent "The Marine" fails to entertain. There was a time when Hollywood had a good grasp on how to make silly action films entertain and they are trying hard to recapture that magic, but it is Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Bruce Willis that are forgoing the retirement home and still doing their own stunts. Bullets fly. Bad guys die. Arnold survives. And I never care to ask any questions regarding the feasibility of anything contained in this film. I could care less that the character portrayed by Rae Dawn Chong is about as convenient a plot device as you could ever find. Matrix needed a pilot and he found one in a sexy flight attendant. Sure, it seemed like he was just as capable of flying the seaplane as Cindy was, but that would have limited the testosterone producing abilities of the film and not provided the pre-requisite love interest for our favorite action hero. Nobody could possibly remain as unscathed as Matrix during the assault on Arius´ compound. It is just impossible. But, it just doesn´t matter. "Commando" is escapist fun. It is a film about Arnold kicking ass and flexing his big muscles. It is about over-the-top thrills and bad dialogue sounding good. "Commando" could be called a dumb film with a paper-thin plot and silly action. Those deriding the film with such harsh words are not sitting back and enjoying the film as it was meant to be. It isn´t intended to tell a provocative and award-winning story. It is not meant to deliver realistic warfare. That would hardly fill nine minutes, let alone ninety minutes if one man took on an entire terrorist camp. "Commando" was a film solely created to showcase the humor and muscles of its star, which was slowly rising through the box office stratosphere when "Commando" hit theaters. Arnold Schwarzenegger embodies the muscle-bound action hero of the Eighties and Nineties and this film was created to showcase his physique and talents. It is meant to be enjoyed as something to laugh at and enjoy the heroics of a superhero-type protagonist. It was never meant to be taken seriously.
I love America and I am really sad that it appears that I am not allowed to visit a place I have called home at various times in my life
In 1982, long before Sex and the City, and before roles in films like Honeymoon in Vegas, Flight of the Navigator and Footloose, Sarah Jessica Parker first came to national attention in the short-lived CBS series Square Pegs. The show co-starred Amy Linker (D.A.R.Y.L.), and the cast also included Jami Gertz (Twister, ER, Still Standing), Tracy Nelson (Father Dowling Mysteries) and Merritt Butrick (Star Trek III: The Search For Spock). The show's theme song was by The Waitresses, who appeared in the first episode. 
Ronson, who recently revealed he was working on a potential Bond theme with Amy Winehouse, is currently in the studio crafting the remixes. 
