This is a pretty cool essay, and dives surprisingly deep into the ginormous cheesebowl of one my fave genres of film. Which genre, you ask? Why the 90s Dad Thriller of course. A while back Max Read found himself at home on new born dad duty and hankering after some comfort food for the mind. He settled on a type of film he’d either seen, or felt like he’d seen, many, many times over.
As he explains:
If you're anywhere near me in age, you know the kind of movies I'm talking about: Movies set on submarines; movies set on aircraft carriers; movies where lawyers are good guys; movies where guys secure the perimeter and/or the package; movies where a guy has to yell to make himself heard over a helicopter; movies where guys with guns break the door into a room decorated with cut-out newspaper headlines. Movies starring guys like Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Costner, and Wesley Snipes and directed by guys like Martin Campbell, Wolfgang Petersen, Philip Noyce, and John McTiernan. Movies where men are men, Bravo Teams are Bravo Teams, and women are sexy but humorless ball-busters who are nonetheless ultimately susceptible to the roguish charm of state security-apparatus functionaries. Movies that dads like.
Certainly an excellent read, however as a genre I would now avoid like a plague, (just realised that phrase no longer means what it used to me before Covid-19).
I like the 'pull apart' analysis. Break open a loaf of action moofies, tear off a segment and it pretty much resembles the next bit. The risk is if you leave the next bit too long in the open it gets stale.
I’ve got to ask again .. what is going on in Australia with the “ quarantine camps” and other images we see here in the US? Being rounded up by the military? Seems like the beginning of a JB novel
Most quarantine facilities are hotels. They’re not great at it, to be honest. But it was a way to expand the number of places quickly and support a business sector that was getting smashed by the pando. There is one camp, the national quarantine facility. Howard Springs in the Northern Territory. But there’s nothing special about it, other than it being much better suited to its task than a hotel. For the last 18 months or so if you came into Oz you had to quarantine for two weeks, to clear the incubation period for the virus. It kept COVID out of the country until Delta had her way with us.
As for the military rounding people up, that’s just not a thing that happened. When Melbourne went into hard lockdown the cops didnt have the numbers to police the whole city so a couple of hundred unarmed troopers got sent out to walk the beat.
Certainly an excellent read, however as a genre I would now avoid like a plague, (just realised that phrase no longer means what it used to me before Covid-19).
I like the 'pull apart' analysis. Break open a loaf of action moofies, tear off a segment and it pretty much resembles the next bit. The risk is if you leave the next bit too long in the open it gets stale.
I’ve got to ask again .. what is going on in Australia with the “ quarantine camps” and other images we see here in the US? Being rounded up by the military? Seems like the beginning of a JB novel
Most quarantine facilities are hotels. They’re not great at it, to be honest. But it was a way to expand the number of places quickly and support a business sector that was getting smashed by the pando. There is one camp, the national quarantine facility. Howard Springs in the Northern Territory. But there’s nothing special about it, other than it being much better suited to its task than a hotel. For the last 18 months or so if you came into Oz you had to quarantine for two weeks, to clear the incubation period for the virus. It kept COVID out of the country until Delta had her way with us.
As for the military rounding people up, that’s just not a thing that happened. When Melbourne went into hard lockdown the cops didnt have the numbers to police the whole city so a couple of hundred unarmed troopers got sent out to walk the beat.
Right thanx . Hard to get any straight stories from the media anymore….. from any side…..