2011: A Very Thrusty Year in Review

I thought for this final Thrusty Thursday post of the year, I'd take a look back at my favorite of the fifty-odd thrustees of the past twelve months. Do join me! In unbiased order of appearance, I give you my…

TOP TEN HE-FOXES OF 2011

1. The now tragically late Andy Whitfield, thrusted upon January 13:

2. Jamie Dornan, April 21:

3. Vincent Gallo, May 5:

4. David Gandy, June 9:

5. Romain Duris, July 14:

6. Sam Worthington, July 21:

7. Shirtless Jason Statham Rescuing a Baby Owl From a Fire, September 8:

8. Henrik Lundqvist (oh, Lundy), November 10:

9. Michael Fassbender, December 8:

10. Joe Manganiello, December 22:

Happy New Year, everyone! See you in 2012 with a fresh crop of man-flesh for your she-perving enjoyment. And hopefully by this time next year Gandy and Lundqvist will have finally settled the loin-burning question of who's more sickeningly handsome by naked-pudding-wrassling each other for the distinction. I will adjudicate, naturally.

Friday Night Fu Review: The One

The One ★★ ½

I was prepared to be wowed, but sadly I wasn't.

There was a lot of potential awesome going for The One (2001)—Jet Li, Jason Statham, several more Jet Li multiverse alternate reality clones… And yet it fell flat.

Let's back up, though. Here is what the movie's about, in a nutshell. It's a biggish budget sci-fi action flick, and Jet Li plays the bad guy, a dude who travels through worm holes to assassinate his many other iterations in alternate universes, thus gaining himself superhuman powers en route to becoming The One, a majorly evil unstoppable bad-ass. He also plays the good guy, a mild-mannered martial arts enthusiast cop version of himself, and the final guy the evil Jet Li has to kill to become The One. Jason Statham—never shirtless and with far too much hair on his head for my taste—plays an inter-universal agent, trying to help the good guy and stop the evil guy.

The unbilled star of this movie, for better or worse, was the year it was made—2001. It comes through in the pervasively nouveau cock-rockish post-Marilyn Manson soundtrack, the Matrix-wannabe effects (and affects), in the sheer colorization and cinematography of the thing. Heck, maybe it just wasn't meant to be seen by a viewer for the first time in 2011. But it's dated.

The major issue for me was that this movie lacked the charisma of a more over-the-top, pure martial arts romp (i.e., the original Drunken Master or Ong Bak). Its choreography was solid, stunts decent, star undoubtedly talented…but that magical, borderline wackiness of a true classic was missing, replaced with unconvincing slow-down/speed-up special effects. (In my snotty opinion, a good Kung Fu movie's wow-factor comes from the actors' physicality—the magic is in the "holy shit, did you see that dude flip?" moments, not the "holy shit, did you see that CGI?" moments.) It also could have used a lot more cheek and humor—Li and Statham both have it in them, but sadly, the writers apparently did not.

But I'm being mean, and asking it to be something it never promised it was. I mean, look at the cover—it's clearly at least 50% sci-fi. So here are some pluses to balance out the criticisms. Cool premise. Fast paced. Likable supporting heroine character. Quality stunt double action in the scenes where Li battles himself. Some innovative fight scenes and settings (in addition to some really tired ones). If you like nouveau cock-rock, the perfect soundtrack. An ending that's both sweet and utterly schlocky, utterly Hollywood. But I'm afraid that's about it. Tons of potential, but in the end, a limp-yet-noisy rehash.

Now behold the trailer:

Thrusty Thursday: Hijacked in the name of AWESOME!!!

Letting my evil twin Cara commandeer Thrusty Thursday, to celebrate her ten thousandth tweet by presenting you with the awesomest thing there is and ever could be…

SHIRTLESS JASON STATHAM RESCUING 

A BABY OWL FROM A FIRE!!!

No doubt my design professors will be relieved to know I'm not letting my Photoshop training go to seed.

Stuff that's good…

I spent so much of May in a rough mood, I wanted to write a post about stuff that's good. So without further ado, here are some awesome things.

1. A new season of The Bachelorette. My favorite guilty TV pleasure…until Instant Watcher posts another season of Celebrity Rehab, anyhow. I'm saving yesterday's episode for tomorrow afternoon, once I've hit my word count goal and tackled a bit of design freelance and wine o'clock rolls around. And whenever possible, I like to complement a new-sale bottle of champagne with an episode of The Bachelor or Bachelorette. I figure if I poison both my mind and body at once, they'll cancel each other out. So far this season I'm rooting for two of the dudes—West and JP. Not sure they've got the best chemistry with Ashley out of the whole group, but I hereby declare them my top-pick foxy front runners.

2. Neko Case. I've been listening to her 2006 album Fox Confessor Brings the Flood practically non-stop for the past month. Love love love. It's already right up there in my moody-folky-chick-rock favorites list beside Patty Griffin's Flaming Red and Tori Amos' Boys for Pélé.

3. Weekly writing goals. In just the past three weeks I've switched from daily word count goals to a weekly one. It's tough to predict whether I'll be able to churn out 4,000 words before lunch, or struggle all day to type a measly 500, so instead of saying, "I'm going to write 2,000 words every day this week," I'm saying, "I'm going to write 10,000 words this week." It's an ambitious number for me, but I try to take weekends off from writing and editing (work-life-balance and all that) so if I'm still a thousand words short on Saturday morning, I can play a little catch up. I think the key has been not capping myself at 2K for any given day, as I used to, as once I'd hit that number, I was off the hook, mentally clocked out for the rest of the day. Now I think, "I hit 2,000 easily. Better push for 3,000 in case tomorrow brings a word drought." It's working great so far, and I recommend it to other writers with fluctuating daily counts. A good month for me used to 30,000 words, and now I'm looking poised to bank about 45K.

4. Dog the Bounty Hunter's autobiography. Well, his second autobiography, anyhow. I'm just about done with Where Mercy is Shown, Mercy is Given. I grabbed it randomly from the library and checked it out without shame. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's endlessly entertaining and surprisingly heartfelt.

5. No sugar = I lost three pounds. Actually, I couldn't tell you if it's absence of sugar or my getting back into yoga and calisthenics in the past couple weeks, but I've lost weight. It's likely both, of course. But ditching the sugar has definitely reduced the random carb cravings. As with meat last month, I'm really not missing it—the odd wistful twinge as the manfriend enjoys a block of chocolate or an ice cream sandwich, but nothing I could classify as true temptation.

6. Klondike. I've absolutely re-addicted myself to Klondike. Found the nifty free Real Solitaire app for my iPad and both the manfriend and I can't quit. Every morning over coffee, over lunch, over beers while dinner's cooking, before bed… In fact, new Angry Birds Rio levels came out yesterday and we haven't even opened them yet—the deck's got us by the throats.

6. Crank 2. We watched this movie randomly because for whatever reason, Revolver (another Jason Statham movie) decided not to play on Instant Watcher. I can't remember the last time the manfriend was so delighted by a movie. We'd never seen the original Crank, but that didn't matter. This action movie was spastic, incessant, ridiculous, nearly seizure-inducing…but really fun. Plus it's got Statham in a fitted hoodie, running really fast, all throughout the movie. And you know what a fast-running, desperate man does to me. He also electrocutes himself with jumper cables every ten minutes or so, which I found oddly stirring.

Hope everyone's enjoying their Junes so far!

A Doubly Thrusty Friday Fu Review

So just last week I "discovered" Jason Statham for myself and promptly dedicated Thrusty Thursday to him and his extraordinary foxxitude. Then I asked my Twitter cohorts—who know everything—which of his movies I ought to gorge myself upon first. The unanimous and resounding response was "TRANSPORTER!" And off I scampered to add it to my Netflix queue.

The Transporter ★★★ ½ 

Fun and foxy, if not strictly a
true martial arts flick.

I watched it on Wednesday night with the manfriend and enjoyed it a lot. Strictly speaking, The Transporter (2002) is not a Kung Fu movie, but the scenes that do feature martial arts-style combat are exceptional, so I'm rounding it up. It's fast-paced, well choreographed, and the action sequences are very clever and original. Statham plays the protagonist, a man whose job is to deliver anything to anyone, no questions asked. Matt Schulze plays the lead baddie, who's involved in human trafficking and attempts to blow Statham up, after using his services. Vengeance ensues!

As an aside, I didn't know until he popped up on screen that Matt Schulze was in this film. I owe Schulze more than a few solids, as his Thrusty Thursday post attracts (no exaggeration, I busted out the calculator) nearly twenty percent of all the traffic for this blog. And "Matt Schulze" is the most popular keywording used to find the Super Lucky #1 Fun Blog by light years.

Back to the review. I liked this movie, let me say that right now. But there were a few things that ding it some points. For one, Matt Schulze was issued a haircut that did not best exhibit his foxiness. The dialogue was not nearly as clever as the action. The chemistry between Statham and the female lead was a bit unconvincing, and worse still, we don't get to see anything in the way of NC-17 bedroom shenanigans. However, perverts like me will be vindicated, because later in the movie Statham uses his shirt to incapacitate some baddies and spends a bunch of time fighting topless. Schulze, in my opinion, is a good actor for playing bad guys…he has a Stephen Dorff-esque charisma. However, I think he plays a better asshole than a true villain, and I enjoyed his smaller part in The Fast and the Furious more than this role.

Of course I couldn't post this without sourcing a clip (and a long one, as it turns out) that features Jason Statham fighting Matt Schulze…at least at the start. Then to make up for the lack of Schulze, Statham gets his shirt off and rolls about in a puddle of oil. No, really! Watch and see.

Thrusty Thursday: Jason Statham

I have been in the dark on this one! I haven't seen Jason Statham in a film since around 2003, which is when I watched both Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch in a single weekend. And even then I didn't really register who he was.

Then the other week I was working on a blog post for my erotica-writing alter ego, celebrating a new sale in my favorite, narcissistic author way—playing Fantasy Casting Couch. It's the shameless outside-of-your-head version of a game many authors and readers play, which consists of casting the books we write and read with familiar (usually celebrity) faces. For me, it makes animating the movie that plays in my head while I write easier. The celebrities usually fade away once I get to know my characters inside-out, but I love hearing what familiar faces other authors picked to envision their heroes and heroines, to see if their vision was anything like mine. It usually isn't. I also love hearing who readers cast as my own characters. Matt Damon as Flynn? Really?

Anyway, I was Googling "action movie star" in a frantic attempt to cast one of the book's male leads, and wouldn't you know it, Jason Statham popped right up! I knew his name from panting tweets bandied about by my contemporaries, but I didn't really know what he looked like. Lo and behold, he is three kinds of nonstandard sextasticalz—balding, hairy-chested, and over forty. I have no issue with any of those things, and bundle them all together and slap a British accent and a six-pack on that shit…for swoon! And he used to be a commercial diver? And he was in a movie set in a prison?! Where have you been all my life? The anti-hero I was attempting to cast (who, serendipitously enough, is a commercial diver) isn't balding or British, but Statham's face alone, with that charmingly, gruffly smug expression, was enough for me to shout, "You're hired! Here's your trailer. Would you like a relaxing massage? Go ahead, take off your shirt."

While doing the half-assed research I always dedicate to this feature, I noticed he's in a movie with Jet Li, called War. I'm hoping this means it involves a modicum of Kung Fu, as I plan to watch it tonight while drinking too much wine then run an overdue Friday Night Fu Review for it tomorrow. For now, I will leave you with this, a quick clip I picked simply because when I see the word "training" my brain goes blank. Enjoy: