This week on End Credits, we’re going to get high. No, we know that kind of high is still a few months away! Our definition of “high” here is the literal. We’re going up 200 storeys with The Rock for a rollicking adventure where he has to fight fire and bad guys. We’ll also talk about that other action movie in an office building, that movie about a cyborg cop, those TV awards, and more trouble from our friend Scarlett.
This Wednesday, July 18, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, and Candice Lepage will discuss:
The Scarlett Pressure. Scarlett Johansson’s casting in a film based on the life of Pittsburgh gangster “Tex” Gill was surprising, and not just because “Tex” Gill was a trans man. No, the surprising part was that ScarJo’s been here before, when she played the lead part in Ghost in the Shell, which was originally meant for an Asian woman. So was the actress at fault for wanting to play a complex role, or is the system that sees the trans lifestyle as an “acting challenge”?
Emmy for Your Thoughts? The Prime Time Emmy Award nominations were released last week, and many of the usual suspects were nominated including Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, This Is Us, Westworld, and The Handmaid’s Tale. But there were some surprises. Sandra Oh became the first woman of Asian descent to be nominated for Best Actress in a Drama, and despite the drama around Roseanne, Laurie Metcalf still got a nom. We’ll discuss those, and the other noms too.
For the Sequel. A few years ago, they tried to reboot RoboCop, and it was not as successful, either critically or commercially, as people would have liked. That’s okay. There really was no way that anyone could recapture Paul Verhoeven’s unique blend of satire and over-the-top violence. Or can they? A long since forgotten sequel written by the original screenwriters has been dusted off for Neill Blomkamp, but is there still some juice in this franchise?
With the McClane. So let’s talk about a movie where a man has to fight a group of terrorists that have taken over a high tech high rise in order to save his family… But enough about Die Hard! Yes, this past weekend, and 30 years ago, Die Hard was released in theatres everywhere and to this day is a cinematic and cultural touchstone to many. So why does Die Hard endure? What does it do so well that we keep coming back again and again?
REVIEW: Skyscraper (2018). Speaking of Die Hard, what we get with Skyscraper is a new movie that might easily be described as Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays a security consultant who has to save his family from a fire set 100 storeys above the ground and spreading. All that stands in his way is the Hong Kong police, a hand full of gangsters, a secretive CEO, and the urge to look down!
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.
End Credits 
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