Your Tauntaun’ll freeze before you reach the first marker.

Suuuure, “DIE HARD” Director is sentenced to a year in prison. Because nobody weeps for the internment of the director of Medicine Man. Please, everyone reading this, do Schadenfreude.net one favor. JUST ONE favor, please bring up this topic with a loved one or a friend tonight over dinner, but asking if they’ve heard that the director of Medicine Man is going to jail? Thank you Bit Police. I know Joel’s in, I’m sure Connor’s in, and I know Fenster’s down.

We would like to thank our special guest contributor, Michael Ironside for giving Schadenfreude.net his insight into today’s events.

Allright you little pantywaist weaklings, I guess you’re not man enough to digest the days headlines yourself, so Michael Ironside’s been called in to tell you what’s what. Don’t click away to the next page you asshole, Michael Ironside’s not here to be a part of your modern media short-attention span, he’s here to whip some well-needed knowledge and ball-kicks to you dregs.

Listen up, would-be hostage takers, we all know that there’s nothing on cable. Cable is bullshit, just there to distract you while the corporate assholes get your to buy a Shake Wieght. SO YOU CAN JACK OFF IN YOUR OWN FACE WHILE THEY LAUGH AT YOU AND LAUGH AT YOU!! WELL NOT ON MY WATCH!!!

Just because Discovery Channel is full of shit 51 weeks a year…oh, so surprised, that, yes, Michael Ironside enjoys Shark Week? What’s not to enjoy from 7 days of nature’s most awesome fury, a KILLING MACHINE who’s existence is the essence of simplicity itself. TO KILL. JUST KILL!!!! That’s a celebration Michael Ironside can buy into. But the rest of this cable nonsense needs to be taken down in a COORDINATED ASSAULT. Why take over the people who brought us Jon and Kate Plus 8 and leave whoever the FUCK thought up this show with midgets and pitbulls to walk the earth BREATHING THE SAME AIR AS YOU AND MICHAEL IRONSIDE!?!?!?! Why would one man walk into Discovery with a handgun and a propane tank and a flare, when a whole army could be raised on the underground, eating nothing but Tuna, and preparing, for a full assault on FX, TNT, The Cooking Network, and AMC (Breaking Bad isn’t a MOVIE CLASSIC, CHANGE YOUR FUCKING NAME OR MICHAEL IRONSIDE WILL KICK YOU IN THE BALLS. THE BALLS!!!).

Until such a point when we are organized enough to take down these Satellite-pimping pukes. Michael Ironside will continue to sit and wait. and wait. and wait.

And that’s Ironside’s Side

Yes, it’s water and oatmeal without all that troublesome remembering of ingredients and mixing.

If anyone reading this has traveled through Ohio, then you’ve probably come across “Touchdown Jesus.” The nickname given to the Ohio highway eyesore landmark created by The Solid Rock Church in Monroe to show all Christians what Jesus was against, giant symbols to be prayed to. At least, knowing what I know of Jesus, that would have to have been their intent. In fact The Christ was so big that he had an exclamation point after his name in all the advertising brochures, making it a curseword. Well all Christians at the Solid Rock Church (formerly The Church Of Rock!) temporarily had to bury their immediate impulse to read symbolism into everything as a lighting bolt struck the giant symbol of excess in modern MegaChurch Christianity.

An Ancient Society would, hilariously, assume that the bolt came from Zeus to teach a lesson to the pagan masses, but of course, in modern society, we all now know that lighting bolts come from God. The Solid Rock Church will begin building the statues replacement – “Touchdown Golden Calf” next week.

A-Team is the greatest movie ever made. Okay, sometimes I get emotional after seeing a truly kickass movie and I have no shame about proclaiming various things the best thing ever, only to have that change upon the next awesome thing I see. However, as of this writing, A-Team is the best thing ever, and I think it has something to do with being based on the greatest show that was ever on TV.

A TV adaptation? Didn’t we have one of those last year?

There’s a common bullshit, poorly conceived opinion that adapting a tv show is a lowbrow indication that Hollywood had run out of ideas. People are excited to appear important by decrying the idea as if they’ve somehow espoused a deep mediation on the state of entertainment by saying the same thing everyone else says. Unless you can really explain how Hollywood has ruined the purity of a cartoon created to sell a toy without laughing then sit down Comicon Q&A denizen. Your argument is predicated upon a fact that doesn’t exist: that all movies without a 2 in the title are super original, Avatar anyone? It’s not an adapation or a sequel, but would it really matter if it had been?

Movies based on a different medium are a GREAT idea! It presents a certain set of challenges to the creators. Does anyone really think because Family Ties was already a TV show that adapting it to a two hour movie with a satisfying three-act structure is easy? The GREAT thing about reboots, origin stories, and adaptations of pop cultural entities is that the audience comes into the movie with a pre-existing list of tropes that they’re excited to see. In Casino Royale, we wait in anticipation to hear “Bond, James Bond”, in Batman Begins, we wait for the cave, the gadgets, the Batmobile, and those two movies know where their audiences want their bread buttered.

When we think of the A-Team we think of pitied fools, crazy Murdock, and Hannibal’s love of plans coming together. It’s all there and more because the writers, Director Joe Carnahan (Narc), and Producers Ridley and Tony Scott (?!?!) have delivered a movie that hones in on an essence of the A-Team that a lot of us may have forgotten. They are an impossible missions team, and the “plans” so haphazardly thrown out in the show’s catchphrase are what the movie zeroes in on as it’s entire concept, the script constantly creates impossible situations that require a masterful plan to get out of, and a montage that includes a blowtorch being lit to put that plan into action. In this way The A-Team is an incredibly successful adaptation. It’s as if the creators saw the thrilling and elaborate Hong Kong kidnap sequence from Batman: Dark Knight and said: “let’s try and pull that off 7 or 8 times.”

On the story level, the film is actually an adaptation of the opening title monologue of the 80′s television show. The team is wrongfully accused of a crime they didn’t commit and they spend the movie trying to clear their name. The actual plot, divorced of these characters and this television property could actually play best on the Who Gives A Shit Channel. There’s a thingy and they have to get it, but somebody else wants to get the thingy, but if that person gets the thingy, then our heroes will lose, and who wants a hero to lose? Not this American, that’s for sure.

Sidenote:  I always admired Ronin because it called out it’s Thingy plot by not even stating what it was. Because who cares? That’s not the point of Ronin, that’s not the point here either.

Aside from nailing the various physical action tropes of The A-Team, the movie also hits all the trademarks of the four 80′s tv icon characters. Hannibal and Face are much more alive than they were in the TV show as the basis of their characters (Mr. In Charge and Mr. Smooth) intersect more with the plot than B.A. and Murdock (Mr. Mean and Mr. Unpredictable) who play support and don’t get much quality interaction, but all four are a dream cast for the big big big childhood A-Team fan that’s writing this. Oh, and Bradley Cooper is probably a legitimate movie star, and Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, Hard Candy), who plays a slimeball intermediary, should be in everything.

The really impressive thing about The A-Team is the action sequences.

In Michael Bay’s The Island, there’s a climactic highway chase where Train Axles and Wheels are thrown off of a truck into oncoming traffic. I remember watching at the time and thinking “oh, okay, so we’ve run out of action sequences.” Because Train Axles are different than everything else that’s been thrown out of a van or off a car hauler into traffic, you see?

I say that because, like you, I thought I’d seen every possible iteration of action sequence since the invention of the genre,  and yet, the plans, and impossible missions, and the constant success of the A-Team at nailing those missions happens in 7 or 8 action sequences that I’ve never seen, including a fantastic action setpiece ending that I won’t ever forget, and probably have to go back and see tomorrow.

If only any of the Mission Impossible movies had been half as entertaining with their impossible missions, or had half the inventiveness of A-Team then…then… well, then I guess I wouldn’t be writing this sentence. But what do you expect, Mission Impossible is an adaptation of a TV show. A TV show that I can only presume is about a lone Agent of an Impossible Missions Force that are all killed in the first episode.