My time for entertainment is to watch one English movie a year. (Only English- it is 33 years since I watched an Indian language film) that too sponsored by someone...
Shravan, (My Son) agreed to take me one movie a year from 2012. 2012 Reacher, 2016 Reacher II, 2017 Dunkirk, 2018 The Post. ( I stopped watching English movies too from 2005 or so). So 2019,20,21 and 22 so far none.
Rahda (My Daughter) is taking me to "TOP GUN-Maverick" this afternoon. (170Mn$ Budget) I plan to go more for the music, (Top Gun Anthem is legend). Harold Faltomeyer is one of my music favorites (Axel F-Beverly Hill Cops)! From what I have heard on Youtube, the music experience I look forward to in IMAX (PVR Cinemas near home) .....
I didn't watch Top GUN -1, when it was released in 1986, I was busy with initial career days so no time for movies. (6 days* 12 hrs a day on MFG Site!).....
I look forward to the afternoon. I am told Maverick and Jurassic park have brought 75% of Pre covid revenue collection. Interesting also is 50% cinema goers for Maverick are above age 40!! (Like me) They may want to relive the old days of 35 years back!! Tom Cruise has given them the opportunity just like ABBA did last year with their music after 40 years...! As is article below on Kate Bush's "Running up the hill" (1985)
I hope you too take time out to enjoy the fun with family /friends (Lalitha is uncomfortable with such war/fly scenes, so she opted out) ..... I read in many reviews that thankfully there is "NO WOKE"!!!
Regards
Karthik.
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The Maverick genius of Tom Cruise
June 11, 2022 by Jnews
Tom Cruise in ‘Maverick’
I went to see Tom Cruise save the cinema last weekend. It was an overly generous gesture from a man fast approaching 60 and surely so comfortably furnished in life he could better occupy his time than running around topless with a group of men less than half his age. But that’s Tom Cruise: a tiny splinter of granite, chiselled straight from the rock of L Ron Hubbard, he’s never stinted in his commitment to serve the multiplex.
Perhaps, even more remarkably, saving the cinema is exactly what he’s done. Top Gun: Maverick has smashed it at the box office. Its domestic take on opening weekend was $ 160mn: in its second weekend, it collected a further $ 86mn – the smallest second-weekend decline for a movie opening at $ 100mn or more. Globally, the film has made some $ 600mn, and audiences are remaining steady thanks to positive word of mouth.
Top Gun, Tony Scott’s original 1986 film about the Navy’s elite school for fighter pilots, was a homoerotic orgy of greasy machismo, gunned with adrenaline-filled action sequences, motorbikes and occasional heterosexual sex. I watched it on repeat at my best friend’s house, mostly because I had a huge crush on her brother, and it was the only film he let us watch. (Go figure.) The critical consensus was that this dogged eulogy to male leadership, muscle power and US military might was pretty rubbish: I loved it for the long tracking shots in which implausibly buff actors such as Val Kilmer wandered around in towels.
Top Gun: Maverick might be described as a “legacy sequel” in that it follows the current trend for taking former hits – such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Terminator – and refashioning them for a younger generation. Except that while a legacy sequel usually repopulates its movies with new actors, Top Gun: Maverick is unique in that its lead action hero remains Tom Cruise. Cruise has refused to acquiesce to the wisdom that the elder actor should hand over his star power. Like cinema’s own Rafael Nadal, he has defied every expectation to remain one of the most bankable actors in modern history, and done so at a pensionable age.
While a legacy sequel usually repopulates its movies with new actors, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ is unique in that its lead action hero remains Tom Cruise
Cruise remains a mysterious character in Hollywood, but arguably his otherworldly stamina and commitment are intrinsic to his appeal. If he wants to credit his mad intensity to the teachings of Scientology then fair enough: I’ve long accepted his odd religious leanings as part exchange in the Tom Cruise package deal. Such is his dedication to authenticity that, according to a GQ interview with the film’s stunt co-ordinator Kevin LaRosa II, Cruise required the Maverick cast to undertake a grueling training program in F-18s – loaned by the US Department of Defense for $ 11,000 an hour. “Our cast had to be in the aircraft for every shot. So when they’re delivering those epic performances, they’re really in there pulling those Gs. ”
In a world of green-screen Marvel and dino-driven entertainments, there’s something hugely gratifying about watching Miles Teller’s face melting in G-force. The fact that Cruise has held a pilot’s license since 1994 and flies a P-51 Mustang only helps maintain the delicious illusion that everything in Maverick is real.
But Cruise and cinematic verisimilitude are only two factors in Maverick‘s mighty ascension. The film also envelops us in a jet stream of nostalgia as seductive as any F-18 vapor trial. From the all-too-familiar gongs that chime in the film’s opening, to the Top Gun anthem, the film has allowed us a small but poignant opportunity to look back on lost youth. In that, Maverick is far from unique. This week has found us trapped in some sort of alternate reality as a rush of Eighties legends have taken the stage again. Thanks to the current series of Stranger Things on Netflix, Kate Bush is currently celebrating her first ever US top 10 hit with “Running Up That Hill”, first released in 1985, and the single is one of the most played songs globally on Spotify.
Unlike Cruise, Bush, who last performed in public at a series of residences in 2014, has not been required to recreate her stage persona. (Feminists might argue the 63-year-old delivered her pound of flesh a long time ago.) But even the reclusive singer was persuaded to come out of semi-retirement this week to release a rare statement on her website about her newfound fame.
