We’ve been having a good time with the shelves on the Wall O’ Cool lately, devoting space to Steve Martin,  Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Tim Burton (which morphed into a Johnny Depp shelf), Bruce Willis and John Cusack, to name just a handful. It’s always interesting to sort through the various titles we have on hand to try to put one of these shelves together as sometimes there’s only about enough to fill the shelf (like in the case of Tim Burton) and other times there’s way too much to choose from (in the case of Woody Allen).

Today’s featured artist on the Wall O’ Cool falls somewhere in the middle, with several choices to be made without being completely overwhelming. Of course, there are always titles we want to use but are currently out of stock, but that’s a different story. Anyhow, enough of my yakkin’, let’s boogie.

Ladies and gentlemen, Jackie Chan. Martial arts, slapstick comedy and at well over 3000 years old, he does his own stunts! He’s like a cross between Bruce Lee and Harold Lloyd!

First Strike is the fourth installment in Jackie Chan’s Police Story series, in which Jackie is a cop hot on the trail of stolen nukes!

In Mr. Nice Guy, Chan is a well-known TV chef who also happens to be a martial arts expert (weird, right?). He becomes involved with a news reporter who has a video tape of a shady deal involving a local drug lord and now the two of them are on the run.  This is not Iron Chef!

In Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2 and Rush Hour 3, Chan teams up with the ever-annoying Chris Tucker (maybe it’s just me, but as funny as he is, I just can’t take his voice) in this trilogy of buddy cop films. The first is clearly the best of the bunch, but they are all pretty enjoyable for the action and comedy, both of which are served up in heaping helpings.

In The Tuxedo, Chan is a hapless chauffeur for a suave millionaire who has suffered and accident and lays in a hospital bed. Sent to retrieve some items from his bosses home, Chan tries on a special tuxedo that gives him super-spy powers, sending him into a world of intrigue and danger. Go go gadget tuxedo!

The Forbidden Kingdom pairs Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the first time. A young man in Boston, obsessed with kung-fu movies and Chinese culture, discovers an ancient staff in a pawn shop. After local thugs attempt to rob the pawn shop, our young hero finds himself in possession of the staff and mysteriously transported to ancient China where he embarks on a mythical quest to save the Monkey King. Not as ridiculous as it sounds, actually.

Shanghai Knights is the sequel to Shanghai Noon, which we sadly do not currently have in stock. Chan teams up with Owen Wilson in these East-meets-Old-West action comedies. In this sequel, they find themselves in England chasing after the man who murdered Chan’s father. Hilarity and wild martial arts stunts ensue!

Whatever you’re after, whether it’s laughs or martial arts wizardry, Jackie Chan delivers. And so do we! Come check us out.

…”Do I feel lucky?”

We do, that’s a fact. We’ve got so many Clint Eastwood films here in the store we’ve  given the man his own shelf on the Wall O’ Cool.  Whether he’s The Man With No Name or he’s the .44-Magnum-toting, authority-bucking Harry Callahan, you gotta love Clint.

Dirty Harry is one of my all-time favorite films. Loosely inspired by the Zodiac Killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late ’60s and into the ’70s, this film introduced us to the the ultimate take-no-crap cop: Harry Callahan. The only thing Harry hates more than criminals is, well, everyone else. You definitely do not want to get on the wrong side of Harry’s code of honor.

And then there’s the followup, Magnum Force, in which Harry goes after a rogue group of vigilante cops who are taking the law into their own hands and picking off the bad guys that slip through the system’s cracks. Of course, Harry hates rogue vigilante cops maybe even more than criminals and, well, everyone else. Plus, this is the film that contains one of my favorite quotes ever: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

One thing I was surprised to discover was just how many Clint Eastwood films he’s directed as well. The Outlaw Josey Wales is just one of those. Josey Wales is essentially The Man With No Name (from his old Spaghetti Western days), only this time around he has a name. After his avenging his family’s murder, Josey Wales is on run as a pack of killers hunts him down. Along the way he picks up a rag-tag group of hangers-on (including long-time girlfriend Sondra Locke, who ended up costarring with him several more times in the ’70s and ’80s) that he feels compelled to protect.

Clint didn’t do another western for 9 years after Josey Wales, not until 1986’s Pale Rider (again directed by himself). As a man known only as “Preacher”, he  goes up against an evil mining boss bent on driving the local independent miners out of the area. The boss hires some killers who work for whomever pays, and he pays in gold. On the other hand, Preacher pays in lead.

Up next we’ve got a couple of political thrillers featuring Clint on both sides of the law. In Absolute Power, he plays a career thief named Luther Whitney who witnesses a murder which could spell scandal for the President of the United States and finds himself in a game of cat-and-mouse with local cops and the Secret Service. Also stars Gene Hackman and Ed Harris and is once again directed by Mr. Eastwood.

Speaking of the Secret Service, In The Line Of Fire has our man playing veteran agent Frank Horrigan who has the unfortunate distinction of having been unable to protect JFK on that fateful day in November 1963. Now, many years later, that failure still haunts him as he’s drawn into a plot to kill the current President. The would-be assassin, a former-CIA agent played with creepy brilliance by John Malkovich, taunts him by phone and teases him with clues, giving Horrigan the chance at redemption he so desperately craves.

In True Crime, Clint is Steve Everett, a boozing, skirt-chasing reporter whose job is on the line when he’s assigned to interview a death row inmate in the hours before his scheduled execution. After just a little research, Everett is convinced that an innocent man is about to die and it becomes a race against time. Of course, when you’re a drunk, a bad dad and you’ve slept with the wife of your boss, who’s gonna listen to you? Costars Denis Leary and James Woods.

And to round things out we have Million Dollar Baby, another film directed by Clint, in which he plays trainer Frankie Dunn who is quick to growl “I don’t train girls!” Of course, when the girl is Hilary Swank and won’t quit showing up at the gym, what’s a cranky old guy to do but take her in? Costarring Morgan Freeman as the gym caretaker and non-cranky old guy. Clint Eastwood also composed music for this one. Is there anything he can’t do?

So that wraps up the Clint Eastwood shrine on our Wall O’ Cool. There were some also-rans that didn’t make the cut, like The Bridges Of Madison County, Blood Work, Flags Of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima and Space Cowboys, not to mention titles we’re out of right now, like Gran Torino, Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter…. the list really truly goes on and on. Come on in and check it out. We might just make your day.

We’ve got a lot of cool stuff on display right now on the Wall O’ Cool, check it out: campy sci-fi in the classic Donovan’s Brain, in which, and I quote:

“Dr. Patrick Cory has a hideous hobby–he keeps brains alive! So when the brain of W. H. Donovan falls into his possession, bringing him back becomes his obsession. But the cunning cranium has its own agenda–to control the doctor’s mind through telepathic messages…”

I just wanna give a shout-out to the marketing guy who came up with the “cunning cranium” bit. Awesomecakes. Trivia: This film also stars Nancy Davis, who would later be First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Other cool stuff on our sci-fi-themed shelf are a couple of Star Trek spoofs. First up is Free Enterprise, in a 2 disc “Five Year Mission Extended Edition”. Starring Eirc McCormack (Will & Grace) and Rafer Weigel (I Am Sam) as two young filmmakers trying to hawk a movie called “Bradykillers” about a serial killer who goes after victims Marcia, Jan, and Cindy. In the course of events, they meet their screen idol, William Shatner (playing himself, and poking fun at his own image). The two young men revere him in their fantasies as a shadowy fairy godfather figure, and are alarmed at the reality of man that they meet. Here’s a taste:

The other Star Trek spoof is Star Wreck, a Finnish film made by a group of friends and Star Trek fans. Seven years in the making, and apparently the seventh in a series, this full-length movie finds the crew of the starship C.P.P. Kickstart stranded on 21st century Earth after saving the world from an alien race. Captain Pirk, Commander Dwarf and Commander Info must wait until the technology is invented for them to make their escape back to the future without screwing up the past. Good times. Here’s a trailer for the Imperial Edition DVD, which is what we have:

If campy sci-fi isn’t your bag, there’s a quartet of Clint Eastwood films: Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Dirty Harry and Magnum Force. For you fans of more thought-inspiring films we have Life Is Beautiful, Joyeux Noel, The Story Of The Weeping Camel, My Beautiful Laundrette and a fascinating-looking documentary about a Hollywood scandal hidden for over 70 years called Girl 27. Other titles worth mentioning are The Hotel New Hampshire, which any Wes Anderson fan should enjoy (it’s the first thing I thought of when I saw The Royal Tennenbaums), Key Largo, Auntie Mame, a Pam Grier one-two punch of Foxy Brown and Sheba Baby and Robert Altman’s incredible Nashville.

So come on in and check it out, folks. We really do have something for everyone.