Random Movie Trivia - Die Hard

Here is the next edition in our weekly Random Movie Trivia post.  Enjoy:

Die Hard

• This was Alan Rickman's feature film debut.  He was 42 years old at the time and had only done some British TV up to this point.  Not a bad way to start a film career considering Hans Gruber is easily one of the greatest movie villains of all-time.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Nick Nolte, and Tom Berenger all turned down the role of John McClane.  Out of all of those actors, not a one of them could have done a better job than Bruce Willis did with the character.
• Sam Neill turned down the role of Hans Gruber.
• The scene where Hans Gruber and John McClane meet up on the roof was inserted after the movie started filming because the director was impressed at how well Rickman could imitate an American accent and wrote the scene because of his talent.
• Believe it or not, this movie was based on the book 'Nothing Lasts Forever' and the movie was originally supposed to star Frank Sinatra.  But because Sinatra was 73 years old at the time, he passed on the role.
• Also, this movie was originally supposed to be the sequel to Commando, but Schwarzenegger turned down the role and it eventually was renamed Die Hard after many more re-writes.  And that is why the main character is named John instead of Joe like in the book because Arnold's character in Commando was named John Matrix.
• Director John McTiernan was forced to cut away from Alan Rickman every time he fired a gun in the movie because he had an uncontrollable problem of flinching every time a gun fired.  If you look closely during the scene where he shoots Takagi, you can see him flinch.
• The Nakatomi Building is actually the headquarters of 20th Century Fox and during filming, they charged themselves rent on the unfinished building.
• The reason the movie takes place entirely at night is because Bruce Willis was also shooting the TV show Moonlighting.  So, during the day, he would go do the filming for the TV show and would then show up at night for Die Hard.
• Only a couple of the actors playing German terrorists were actually German and at best could speak broken German.  All the actors were cast because of their size and scary-looking nature.
• Bruce Willis and Demi Moore got married during production of this movie and Little Richard presided over the ceremony.

"Yup, they wanted this guy to play John McClane.  Something tells me it would have been a completely different/terrible movie."

Movie and TV Ridiculousness

There are sometimes scenes or things that take place in a movie or TV show that just seem too damn convenient.  I'm here to point these out because that's just what I do, make fun of stuff I feel like should be made fun of.  Let's take a look at some of these way too convenient things:

• When a character knocks on someone's door, that person always seems to answer immediately no matter how large of home they live in.
• People seem to remember the little details a little too easily no matter how long ago an event happened.
• When a character walks across the street, a car always seems to pass by right after.
• The good guy is always able to follow the bad guy too easily when an elevator is involved and they always seem to figure out instantly which door the bad guy went into no matter how large the floor they followed them to is.
• The same can be said when it comes to tailing someone.  The good guy always seems to notice that they are being tailed too easily and are able to tail the bad guy unnoticed just as easily.
• Characters always seem to forget to use extremely useful technology more than once.
• Security guards always use their flashlights in a dark room and never seem to understand that turning on the lights would probably save their lives (security guards generally die quickly).
• Knocking someone unconscious seems way too easy and usually only takes one well placed hit.

Next time you are watching a movie or TV show, I guarantee one if not all of these things will happen.  It amazes me how lazy writers seem to be these days.  Then again, I write and I am lazy, so I guess that is like calling a prostitute a slut.

"Dude, the lights are already on, why do you even have the flashlight on?  Never mind, your ass is dead soon anyways."

Anastasia Date Commercial

If you are a night owl like myself, you find yourself staying up late enough to see the weird late-night commercials that are shown during Sportscenter or re-runs of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.  One of the commercials that they used to show a lot was for a website called Anastasiadate.com.  Here it is:

Yeah, how insanely hot is that chick, here she is again:

Crazy hot, right?  However, what exactly is Anastasiadate.com?  Without actually going to the site, I'm going to assume that it is either a mail order bride website or some sort of webcast sex site.  In either case, I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that that girl above has no affiliation with that website other than posing for the homepage and starring in their commercial.  Think about it, a woman that hot would NEVER need to go on a dating site in order to find love.  All she has to do is walk out of her home and any men nearby will be giving her their wallets just to be able to look at her, and she is bound to find one decent suitor out of those gawkers.  I'm just saying that I think it is ridiculous that Anastasiadate.com actually thinks that anyone could possibly believe that they could produce numerous women this incredibly gorgeous, let alone one.  If I had to guess, you are much more likely to find a thing that looks like this on that website:

"It looks like she actually drew in a unibrow.  Why?"

NOKW - The Book of Eli

Here comes the next chapter in our "I'm Okay With, I'm Not Okay With" series (if you don't know what this is, click here for all of the past posts):

Movie:  The Book of Eli

Basic Plot:  I'm not entirely sure, I think Denzel Washington is just randomly wandering around a dystopian future for some reason until he gets in a fight with Gary Oldman, that's all I can remember other than the ending.

I'm Okay With:  The fact that there should be absolutely no gasoline left at this point in that future timeline and in fact, all gas should have run out shortly after whatever caused everything to go to shit.  The fact that they make you believe that Denzel's character is blind because you finally see his eyes at the end, but I call bullshit because he was able to walk vast distances and even fought a whole gang single-handed.  The fact that I only half-watched this movie because it was so dumb, so we are just going to skip to the next part.

I'm Not Okay With:  The fact that Denzel's character memorized the entire Bible.  No. Effing. Way.  Have you ever read the Bible?  I have.  Not only is it super long but it is full of pointless information that no person in their right mind should ever need to remember.  There are literally a hundred pages of genealogy and entire books of pointless psalms and proverbs and they are trying to tell me that he not only remembers every word of the important stuff but can also recite every direct descendant of Noah?  No. Effing. Way.  First off, there is no such thing as 'photographic memory' meaning that there is absolutely no way he would be able to memorize the entire Bible, let alone one entire book of the Bible.  I want you to try and memorize this entire paragraph.  How long did that take?  I would say about an hour if anyone actually bothered (which I doubt anyone did).  Now, do that 100,000 times over and at the same time, remember all of it at once.  No. Effing. Way.  And let's not forget that it is in Braille which makes it that much tougher for someone to recall because almost everyone in the world is either an auditory or visual learner.  How are you supposed to visualize something like Braille?  It's just a bunch of raised bumps on a page, that isn't something you can just recall off the top of your head.  Sure, he could have read it aloud to himself, but come on, that is still almost 1,300 pages to memorize.  I am not okay with that.

"Reading the Bible is one thing, but memorizing it just absurd."

Stupid State Laws - New York 2

Here comes another post about a state law that still exists on the books and why it is ridiculous (to see them all, click here):

New York

"It is against the law to throw a ball at someone's head for fun."

Interesting.  However, I feel like they should probably specify which kind of 'ball' the law applies to.  For example, someone throwing a ping pong ball at someone's head won't do anything but harmlessly bounce of that person's noggin and would actually be considered 'fun'.  However, if someone were to throw a bowling ball at someone's head for fun, then that would definitely be considered psychopathic.  And for that matter, why is this even a law to begin with?  I can only assume the parents of the neighborhood nerd decided to talk to their local lawmaker after their nerdy kid was getting picked on by some bullies who threw 'balls' (hehe) at the kid's head and claimed they only did it for 'fun'.  If that is the case, then they should have told their kid to grow some balls instead of getting a law passed.

"I don't care if you said you were just having fun, you are under arrest, punk."

Best Customer Service Ever

Sometime last weekend, my iPod's on/off button stopped working.  Considering that that button is quite possibly the most important button on the iPod, this was a disaster.  Then again, there are only three buttons on my iPod and the on/off switch is the only that truly does anything.  Anyways, the button is broken and once the screen goes to sleep mode, I can no longer make my iPod work and have to figure out how to get it fixed.  And considering I am kind of a podcast junkie, losing my iPod is kind of sucks balls.  Here comes the good news, my iPod was still under warranty.  The bad news was that I couldn't find the receipt to prove that it was still under warranty.  My first guess as to how to go about getting it fixed was to go up to Target and hope they will just switch it out and magically not ask me for the receipt (I forgot to mention, I paid in cash, so they couldn't look up purchase by checking my credit card).  They of course tell me that they can't do anything about it because it is past their 45-day store warranty period and I should just contact Apple directly.  Crap, I just knew this was going to be a pain in the ass.

I couldn't have been more wrong.  I finally get around to calling Apple Support on Tuesday and all they ask for is the iPod's serial number which I happen to have.  The representative magically knows that my iPod is still under warranty and that I can go up to any local UPS Store and send in the faulty iPod for free by giving them a Repair ID Number which he provides me.  I don't send in the iPod until Wednesday morning because I didn't know UPS Store's close at 6pm.  I get an email notice that UPS shipped out my old iPod on Thursday and it will arrive at Apple by next week or something.  On Friday, my new iPod is waiting for me on the front porch when I wake up.  Four Days.  That's all it took.  I had a five minute phone conversation with Apple Support and I had a functioning iPod in FOUR days!  That is unheard of.  When was the last time you were able to get something fixed that easily through a company's customer service department?  Never.  I'm pretty sure that Apple sent me the new iPod before the old one even left the UPS Store and when this whole thing started, I half expected the new one to be sent out a week after the old one arrived at the least.  All I'm really trying to say is that I am shocked at how awesomely helpful and convenient Apple Customer Service was.  Because most people only write about how shitty.customer service generally is, I decided to turn the tables and compliment it instead.  Congratulations Apple Customer Service, you truly impressed me.  Too bad I will never buy one of your stupid computers though.

"Close enough to what I was talking about."

Random Musings from the Bible

When I used go to church as a youngster, I would usually just sit there and read the Bible to pass the time between all the singing and/or preaching.  Well, a couple of months ago I saw that a version of the Bible was free for the Kindle and out of curiosity, I downloaded it and read it from cover to cover.  I did skip a couple of books because they were either really really boring or nothing but hymns, but for the most part I would say that I read about 80% of the thing.  Here are a couple of things I did not know before reading it that I thought I would share:

• Satan is depicted as a man at one point in the Old Testament and a dragon at one point in the New Testament and not once is he described as a red-skinned, horned, goat-legged devil.
• There is an entire book listing the family trees of people and nothing else.
• The entire story of the Tower of Babel is one paragraph long.
• Goliath would have been considered of average height compared to most NBA players.
• The death penalty was received if you got caught boning a goat and was one of the laws handed down by Moses.  Also, it was literally on the same page as 'Don't curse your parent's name'.
• King Solomon was said to have 700 wives and 300 concubines.  That couldn't have been worth it.
• The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are virtually the same thing and if you do read the Bible one day, just read either Matthew or Luke, the other two are terrible.
• Armageddon is actually the location of battle and not an event.

"Yup, this guy never shows up in the Bible.  The good news is that he does show up as a giant dragon which was kind of neat."