Heaven Hi!!! 

Let’s have a cup of coffee. Make mine a red eye. Hold the O.J.! So what stays in Vegas must stay in Vegas 5-10 years, at least for O.J.

Our famous former football hall of famer just made another landmark moment in his career. If the glove doesn’t fit you must have quite, however, this time it was a baseball catcher’s mitt, and it did fit. Theft, with a gun in a Las Vegas hotel has been added to the list of O.J.’s accolades. There are two sides to being a hero and a celebrity, and one of the most crucial elements to that mix is influence. Attention can be a vise. Many fall to attention as many fall to a drug. Before O.J. underwent his trial, back in 1994, he was known to use his celebrity persona to give to charity. Now, his focus is to become a celebrity once again merely for attention. It has become his drug. We as the public are the enablers that feed his addiction; the dark side of celebritism. So we need to shift our focus back to our positive role models. What ever happened to our Heroes For Real; Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mohamed Ali, and Jesse Owens? Let’s really start focusing on positive role models. As opposed to feeding the dark addictive side to celebrity life. As actors for real, we have the need to model excellence; to find a hero for ourselves. So let’s shift our focus towards our positive role models, and maybe then we will see less celebrity mug shots, and more inspirational stars.  

Be Bop!!!

Thom

Heaven Hi!!!

Let’s have a cup of coffee. Make mine a Yuma Express, hold the revenge.

Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is an honest rancher — which is to say, poor. The ultimate humanities character. He’s crippled by debt, and crippled physically too, a souvenir from the War Between the States. Events change when Dan is offered $200 to escort the outlaw Ben Wade, played by our western “gladiator,” Russell Crowe, safely into custody on the 3:10 train with a makeshift posse comprising a veterinarian,a wounded Pinkerton operative, Peter Fonda, and a businessman Dallas Roberts. However, Dan does it for the money, for respect, and because he believes it’s the right thing to do.

Over the course of the journey, the articulate, genial Wade whittles away at each of these convictions, even as he looks for any opportunity to level off the odds. Wade struggle for control portrays him as the power character of the film.

This film was adapted from an early short story by Elmore Leonard that was previously filmed in 1957 with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, “3:10 to Yuma” strikes a fair balance between physical action and psychological warfare, but always at its core is the question of how we are to measure these two men?

Crowe plays Wade very gently. He’s a man utterly at ease with himself, commanding and confident no matter that he spends much of the picture in chains. Crowe’s performance makes him all the more attractive revealing his sexuality as his 50% of personality. The other 25% of Crowes personality was his passion and power directed towards being DRIVEN to dominate, and passionate about his mission.

It’s also clear that he’s utterly ruthless.

By contrast, Christian Bale’s Evans is still striving to prove something. He may occupy the moral high ground, but most often he’s the one picking himself out of the dust. Bales attempt of maintain the law and follow through with justice as well as survive as a poor civil war vet, tags this character as the prime definition of a character of humanities. His power balance tips in order to dominate Crowe, however maintaines his passion for justice which keeps him as a Balanced, Observent, and Present(BOP) character.

This well made movie lucidly depicts all the elements of the Acting For Real method. Rich, potent, passion, exuded from this film as well as action to keep you riveted. A so called “Lethal Weapon,” set in 1876. An Acting For Real success.

If you would like to know how to break down a movie using the creative triangle of human behavior, stop by before you go, and buy my book. This book will not only teach you the dynamics of movie structure, and character, but will help you understand what roles you are playing in your life. Whether it is onscreen or off screen, learn how you can be the star in your play in life.

Be BOP!!!

Thom

 Heaven Hi!!!Let’s have a cup of coffee. Do me a favor, and “Shoot ‘Em Up,” will ya? Thank you.

Some times you feel the need to get off the “Sleepless in Seattle,” movie treadmill, and watch something with a few explosions, a little sex, and a Friekin’ lotta shooting.

In the film “Shoot ‘Em Up,” Clive Owen plays a man named Smith who never, ever stops firing his guns. His character is a borderline villian/hero as his trigger happy nature doesn’t make everyone happy. However, he is still a humanities character, complimented by fair amount of power, and equally balanced with sexuality. You will probably find in this film that his film that his guns do most of the talking. Owen constantly fires them two at a time, leaping across rooms — bam! bam! bam! — in glorious slow motion, and even in the middle of the sky, after plunging out of a plane without a parachute. Not your typical day at the grocery store.

Smith, in other words, does exactly what you’d expect the hero of a bloody, trashy, volcanically depraved action movie to do. He just does it a little bit … more so, and that’s the rollicking good joke of “Shoot ‘Em Up,” which has the inspiration to send up over-the-top action movies from” Tango & Cash” to “Die Hard” by nudging their slam-bang kinetic overkill right to the breaking point — but not past it.

Michael Davis, the writer-director of “Shoot ‘Em Up,” recognizes that the action genre long ago devolved into knowing self-parody. The signature taglines, the nonchalant perfection of the heroes’ bullet-blasting moxie — all of this is so stylized it’s already a joke. Clive Owen plays Smith as the classic megaplex loner-nihilist, a Bogart-meets-Bruce Willis with a heart of gold, and he does it absolutely straight, which is really the ultimate wink. Smith’s “lovable” trademark is chewing on carrots, like a film-noir Bugs Bunny. (He also uses them as weapons.) He teams up with a hooker, Monica Bellucci, otherwise known as, the godess of sexuality, who helps him to save an orphaned infant. Belluci’s steamy interaction with Owen creates a chemistry which elevates both of their sexuality that comprises 25% of this film.

Paul Giamatti, as the villain, is funny as he is psychotic. The ultimate power character who uses his negative disposition in an attempt to dominate is arch rival, Clive Owen. A movie hard to fall asleep to, Shoot ‘Em Up is an electrifying, pulse pumping, action movie that is easily predicted to go into your dvd collection. Using the Acting For Real book you will start to understand the cheif components that these characters are based off of, and understand the triangle that make up human behavior.

If you would like to know how to break down a movie using the creative triangle of human behavior, stop by before you go, and buy my book. This book will not only teach you the dynamics of movie structure, and character, but will help you understand what roles you are playing in your life. Whether it is onscreen or off screen, learn how you can be the star in your play in life.

Be BOP!!!

Thom

Heaven Hi!!!

Let’s have a cup of coffee. Make mine an EMMeee. Hold the editing. Well the 59th annual Emmy Awards were not shy, nice they sent the initial taping of the show to the editing room. This year notable cuts were made to the shows content due to some controversial comments by some of the stars award winners. Kathy Griffin proudly walked the stage and accepted her award for her reality TV show. However, if you are wondering why you didn’t see it, that was because her comment on “Jesus,” struck a nerve with many viewers who didn’t find her joke as funny as the laughs it got from the audience. Maybe next time, a smile and thank you will suffice. …..And Sally Field’s excitement for her third Emmy win was not cut completely, but definitely cut before the exiting music started to play. Fields comments about the war in Iraq and mothers to children maybe would not have been that bad, except that the Fox network saw it differently. The minute Field started to give her flying Nuns about the war and her God**** word, she was cut off and the show continued on. The editing for Sally Fields comment was so completely obvious that the network did not feel the need for anybody to view it. While Fields and Griffin got the snip, FOX allowed Brad Garrett’s jokes that would only be funny to a drunken sailor, go over for everyone to laugh at, quiver over, or hold their stomachs while being nauscious. His jokes received waves of commentary on Fox’s website with infuriated viewers, saying, and “FOX has the worst censorship ever,” to quote one disgruntled viewer. If it wasn’t the spontaneous planned speeches that caught people off guard it was how and where to stand while delivering your speech…………….Stage left. No, wait stage right. Theater in the Round , This is TV is it not ? For seating purposes, the award show was placed on a circular stage, forcing half of the audience to have to look at all the stars backsides for the event. I guess, the reason this show was not kept up to high standards was that nobody was in BOP. The show was out of Balance, Furthermore, the circled stage left some people out of the loop. The staging didn’t accommodate the audience, or the presenters, As we are all actors on our very own Theater in the Round in life we can apply these Acting For Real principles to how we interact in life. So start by taking action and being in BOP, and enjoy the role.

Be BOP!!!

Thom McFadden