i want you to hit me as hard as you can
you're gonna be all right joan wilder
back in 1984 michael douglas and kathleen turner jumped onto the mega a list with romancing the
stone written by former waitress diane thomas the movie tracked the adventures of a plucky
romance novelist named joan wilder who sets off to colombia on an adventure when her sister is
kidnapped by some near-duels who are looking for a priceless emerald called el corazon
turns out they're not the only ones with sadistic head of the secret police also looking
she's saved by a soldier of fortune named jack colton who initially intends to fleece her of
the jewel but winds up falling in love with her at the end of the movie they get the jewel find
each other and sail off into the sunset aboard his boat the angelina perfectly capturing the indiana
jones high adventure zeitgeist the film was a major smash in march of 1984 grossing over 110
million dollars worldwide a big number for back then as that was 11 times the budget what made it
even bigger success was the fact that the film was widely expected to flop michael douglas's power
as a leading man at the time was fickle at best with his recent the star chamber being a huge flop
kathleen turner was arguably the bigger star thanks to body heat robert zemeckis who was the
director was actually fired off of cocoon which was supposed to be his follow-up movie after the
studio saw the dailies for this movie thus when it was a hit fox and producer michael douglas
knew a sequel was a given friendly aren't they drug runners just try to look at me when is this
however the movie had proven to be such a success that a lot of the cute creative team
already got other jobs robert zumachus went on to do a little movie called back to the future taking
composer alan silvestri with him diane thomas whose screenplay was so well regarded for the
first went on to write always for steven spielberg and also a draft of the third indiana jones movie
nevertheless everyone wanted a sequel so douglas hired screenwriters mark rosenthal
and lawrence connor to write the script while initially douglas was unhappy with the title
thinking that the jewel was just going to be another treasure hunt his interest was piqued
when they revealed the jewel was actually a holy man nevertheless turner was disappointed
thomas wasn't back to write and refused to do the sequel despite being contractually mandated to
the studio threatened her with a 25 million lawsuit but douglas intervened hiring thomas
to consult on rewrites the film was marked by tragedy however with an aircraft containing
the production designer and production manager crashing during location scouting killing all on
board diane thomas also tragically died in a car accident several weeks before the movie came out
the shoot in morocco was tense with many noting it was director louis teague's first time helming
a big budget adventure movie with him mostly known for lower budget genre stuff like alligator
cat's eye and cujo the movie when it was eventually released did very well financially
grossing almost as much as romancing the stone but critically it was very maligned and the
franchise didn't continue after this now while most people say that it's far inferior to the
first film i don't wholly disagree romancing the stone was special while this is obviously more
of a cash-in proposition that said i still really enjoy it for one thing the concept is interesting
what happens after happily ever after when we last saw colton and wilder they were sailing
away on his boat the angelina when the movie opens they've been traveling around the world
and jim while they're just kinda sick of their life together sure it's romantic but as she
says earlier on the film how much romance can a girl take in jack this is just becoming a blur
exotic ports and great parties and spectacular sunsets it's not enough it's not enough
i mean you sound like somebody who's got what they wanted and now they they don't want what
they got i want to do something serious serious uh ah jack how much romance can one woman take so
what happens is she gets convinced to go off and write the biography of a man named omar khalifa
who's kind of a charming arab ruler of the part of africa who wants her to write his memoirs
now of course it turns out that omar is evil and has actually kidnapped a holy man named the
jewel of the nile so what happens is joan goes off to write the book realizes how evil he is
takes the jewel and hightails into the desert only to run into jack colton who's come looking
for her after omar's men blew up his boat and he's got ralphie from the first movie played by danny
devito who was the bad guy in the first movie but is kind of a good guy here in tow he's a swindler
and he wants a cut of the jewel only he doesn't realize that the jewel indeed is a man and neither
does jack what follows is a lot of hijinks and a lot of adventure there's a great chase and an f-16
fighter jet which actually never takes off from the ground they're just using the machine guns
to kind of drive around the marketplace and it's pretty awesome there's a lot of good chases there
are a lot of fun sequences and there's a great part where they run into a tribe and jack colton
has to wrestle the tribe's toughest guy in order to win jones hand because the other guy basically
the the prince of the tribe wants to make her his betrothed and what happens is jack cheats
his way by having the jewel distract everybody and then jack kind of nails the guy with a back
ahead with some pottery and pretends that he's won the match i always thought that was pretty clever
of course there are a lot of misunderstandings along the way jack and joan kind of break up for
a little while then get back together then break up and get back together and so on and so forth
but you know it's all very entertaining and kind of the same way the first movie was there's a good
score by jack nietzsche and uh you know it's just a fun movie overall michael douglas is really good
actually has definitely a much more prominent role in this one than he did in the predecessor which
i could also understand might be the thing that kind of teed turner off because she is kind of
the damsel in the stress in this movie where she was much more of a heroine and a row right in the
first film nevertheless it's very romantic and the two have such good chemistry that even though this
franchise didn't really continue they continued to work together they did the amazing war of the
roses with their co-star dan devito also showing up in it and directing it and then years later
actually did real recently the final season of the kaminsky method douglas and turner have always had
amazing chemistry and i'm glad that they kept working together even though you know they may
have had some some financial fallings out due to the fact that douglas is the producer on all
these movies jewel denial was definitely one of my favorite movies as a kid i remember it used to
air on the canadian version of hbo which was first choice all the time and i just loved it i remember
also it used to be frequently on the abc sunday night movie and man i would just look forward
to seeing it every time it showed up i thought it was a great movie and it's a movie i watched over
and over again as a kid again i realize that not everybody thinks it's a good movie and that most
people think it can't hold a candle to romancing and stone but to me this is a really fun flick and
well worth checking out if you want to see it it's pretty easy to find in canada it's on disney star
and in the us you can find a lot of other streaming services it's a lot of fun you
should definitely watch the first movie first though because part of what makes this movie fun
is just that it's the exploration of happily ever after and how happy actually is happily ever after
there were always some rumors that maybe they would do a third installment of the series with
jack and joan middle-aged and having children or something in tow which would have been fun
but alas it just never happened even still these two movies are great and war the roses actually
makes for an interesting kind of third part to the franchise even though it's completely different
and in fact made me cry as a kid because they were so mean to each other in the film i just didn't
understand it it's kind of a fascinating trilogy i definitely recommend it so check it out so why
don't we end things with a little michael douglas lightning round now of course most of you have
probably seen all of michael douglas's classic movies you know movies like fatal attraction
disclosure and of course basic instinct even black rain which we did a best movie you never saw on a
little while back but there are a lot of good michael douglas movies out there that i think
a lot of people have missed so let's count down a couple of them one of them of course is definitely
the star chamber which came out in 1983 in it michael douglas plays a superior court judge who
gets sick of seeing the guilty walk free after all of his trials so he joins up with an underground
secret society of vigilantes who all happen to be judges it's a pretty cool little movie
hal holbrook the great late hal holbrook is the co-star along with the late yaphet koto and it's
kind of a cool little flick by peter hyams which i think oddly enough could be remade as a really
cool movie nowadays another really good underrated michael douglas movie which was actually kind of a
classic when it came out in the 70s is the china syndrome this one's about a nuclear meltdown and
was actually pretty similar to something that actually happened at three mile island just a
few weeks after the movie came out michael douglas is in full-on scruff mode playing a cameraman he's
got a crazy beard and crazy hair gene fonda is really the star of the movie as the kind of tv
reporter taking apart the conspiracy well jack lemmon is absolutely amazing as the nuclear plant
manager a couple more really good michael douglas movies hardly anyone's ever seen include shining
through this is kind of a world war ii mystery movie with michael douglas as a secret agent in
the oss whose secretary played by melanie griffith goes behind enemy lines in germany there are a lot
of good gun fights in this movie some good romance a young liam neeson and it kind of plays almost
like a world war ii version of romancing the stone or jewel of the nile another really good michael
douglas movie that not a lot of people talk about these days is a perfect murder which is actually a
remake of a classic alfred hitchcock movie called dial m for murder and features douglas as kind of
this oily bad guy in fact one of the problems with michael douglas at this point was that he
was always playing these kinds of greasy wall street guys you know these greed is good types
and i think wall street kind of type cast him in a certain way but you know what a perfect murder
is actually a perfectly good murder mystery and of course there's also the game by david fincher but
i think that movie is kind of a classic at this point right if you want to see another michael
douglas movie that was also kind of underrated check out the sentinel it's kind of like 24
if michael douglas was jack bauer and in it he plays an aging secret service agent who falls in
love with the first lady played by kim basinger and i mean who could blame him i mean come on
and he has to fight a massive conspiracy it was one of the last action movies that he ever made
and i like michael douglas and this one a lot anyway those are a couple cool michael
douglas movies you may not have seen well you got your story i got a lot more than that
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i smell a war burning across an ocean and in my backyard i feel the hell rising
having fallen earth shaking removing my soul i've seen us swirling
we won't be here