Top Gun – Gen X Playlist

Will We Ever See Another Action Star Like Tom Cruise in Modern Cinema? By Alexander Larman

Will We Ever See Another Action Star Like Tom Cruise in Modern Cinema? By Alexander Larman

Excerpts:

Long may his insane, generous individualism last
May 16, 2022
by Alexander Larman

The actor Tom Cruise has a new film coming out, his first in four years thanks to Covid-induced release delays. You may have heard of it, a low-budget arthouse picture called Top Gun: Maverick.

topGunMaverickPoster2 Ecstatic critics have fallen over themselves to praise Maverick not merely as superior to the original Top Gun (a mere thirty-six years old now) but as one of the greatest action films ever made. It currently has a hugely impressive 97 percent “Fresh” score on the reviews aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes …

I sometimes wonder what Scott Fitzgerald would have made of Tom Cruise. At a time when the idea of the actor-as-draw has disappeared from contemporary cinema, the weirdly ageless man remains the last remaining Movie Star working today.

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Kenny Loggins Re-Recorded ‘Danger Zone’ for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ — Why the Sequel Passed On It – How the Original Version Was Created

Kenny Loggins Re-Recorded ‘Danger Zone’ for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ — Why the Sequel Passed On It – How The Original Version Was Created

June 3, 2022

Don’t Worry About Him: After 50 Years Of Hitmaking, Kenny Loggins Is Still Alright

The artist shares the stories behind his career in new memoir, due June 14

May 27, 2022

Kenny Loggins may forever be associated with his era-defining contributions to the soundtracks for such ’80s classics as Caddyshack, Footloose and Top Gun, but they are just a few of the countless milestones in his eventful, 50-plus-year career in music.

Already a folk-rock superstar by his early 20s as part of the duo Loggins & Messina, the artist went on to inadvertently pioneer yacht rock thanks to his own late ‘70s solo work and a series of hit collaborations with Michael McDonald (“What a Fool Believes,” “This Is It”).

He spent the following decade as one of the most commercially successful artists in the world and has rarely stopped working since, dabbling in everything from country, children’s and holiday music and winning new fans at every step of the way thanks to his willingness to poke fun at his bearded, soft rock persona.

Kenny Loggins Talks “Danger Zone” Return For ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and Upcoming Memoir

May 26, 2022

The iconic Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated musician chats with The Hollywood Reporter about his massive hit being utilized again in the Tom Cruise sequel and why he enjoys sporadically appearing on ‘Family Guy,’ among more.

Kenny Loggins Recorded a ‘5.0 Version’ of ‘Danger Zone’ For ‘Top Gun’ Reboot, But Tom Cruise Had Other Ideas

“So in the long run it turned out to be the old track coming back,” the singer said about the opening sequence’s throwback vibe. kennyLogginsTopGun

Kenny Loggins recorded a new version of ‘Danger Zone’ that wasn’t used in Top Gun: Maverick

May 31, 2022
By Maureen Lee Lenker

If you’ve already seen Top Gun: Maverick, the opening sequence might’ve made you do a double take and check that you were in the right theater. That’s because the intro to the film is exactly the same as the original 1986 movie, including the use of hit song, Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone.”

But the song was almost a little different. Loggins tells EW he put a new spin on the famous track for the sequel. “I did re-record ‘Danger Zone’ to make a 5.0 version that would wrap around the audience,” he says. “But Tom Cruise really wanted to conjure up the original version, the original feeling. So in the long run, it turned out to be the old track coming back.”

… Loggins wasn’t even supposed to record “Danger Zone” in the first place. He’d written “Playing With the Boys” specifically for the film’s iconic volleyball sequence when he got the call to put his own spin on the track that has become something of a theme song for Top Gun.

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Top Gun Maverick Movie – Sequel to the 1980s Top Gun Movie (2022)

Top Gun Maverick Movie – Sequel to the 1980s Top Gun Movie (2022)

“Top Gun: Maverick” is a sequel to the 1980s Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun” and was released recently (as in, May 2022).

That first Top Gun movie was definitely an iconic ’80s film.

My family went on to buy a copy of it on VHS tape, so I watched it on the VCR as a teen in the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Here are links and commentary about the new movie:

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Blows CinemaCon Away: First Reactions Hail a ‘Perfect Blockbuster’

Excerpts:

April 28, 2022

“Top Gun: Maverick” blasted off at CinemaCon, where Paramount Pictures held the tentpole’s first public screening and generated rave first reactions.

Journalists in attendance are hailing the long-awaited “Top Gun” sequel as “the perfect blockbuster” and “terrific in every conceivable way.” The film will screen at the Cannes Film Festival in May before Paramount releases it in theaters over Memorial Day weekend. Top Gun Maverick movie poster - 2022

‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Isn’t Just Nostalgia For The 80s, It’s Nostalgia For American Greatness

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by Elle Reynolds
June 1, 2022

‘Maverick’ celebrates greatness in a way that our modern, victimizing, equity-obsessed culture has largely forgotten how to do.

… “Maverick” doesn’t just inspire reminiscence of a world of Ray-Ban aviators, Kenny Loggins songs, F-14s, and bomber jackets, although it does that, both for those who lived it and those of us who learned to revere that world via the stories and movies of our parents. It inspires nostalgia for an America that’s all-too-rarely celebrated today.

… Not only is the film free of Chinese Communist Party propaganda, it’s free of token left-wing social and political propaganda. The only agenda being pushed is that America is the best country in the world and the men and women who risk their lives to defend her are heroes worthy of our respect, and that’s an agenda I’m more than fine with (and a fitting one for Memorial Day weekend).

TOP GUN: MAVERICK FIRST REVIEWS: THE MOST THRILLING BLOCKBUSTER WE’VE GOTTEN IN YEARS

Excerpts:

May 2022

Tom Cruise returns to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick, the long-awaited follow-up to the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun.

And if you’re not already feeling the need for speed — again — then you might want to reconsider, because the first reviews for this legacy sequel are clear of the danger zone.

In fact, many are even calling it a better movie than the original, and maybe even one of the best Tom Cruise movies of all time

Tom Cruise helicopters in for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ premiere

Excerpts:

May 5, 2022

The “Top Gun: Maverick” world premiere was a star-studded affair, with Tom Cruise arriving by helicopter at San Diego’s Naval Air Station North Island Lowry Theater.

The movie comes more than three decades after the original 1986 “Top Gun,” with Cruise excited to show the audience the new flick.

“Does anyone want to see a movie in a movie theater? Let’s do it!” he told the crowd. “Let’s light the fires and kick the tires.”

Cruise once again plays pilot Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the movie, set to open in theaters May 27.

Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick Praised as ‘Barrier-Breaking’ in Glowing First Reviews

Top Gun: Maverick opens in theaters May 27
By Jen Juneau
May 12, 2022

The first reviews for Top Gun: Maverick are in — and they’re overwhelmingly positive.

Tom Cruise makes a triumphant return as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the long-awaited follow-up to 1986’s Top Gun, and critics are praising his performance in the “barrier-breaking sequel,” as Variety’s Peter Debruge writes in his review.

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‘Make My Day’: J. Hoberman on Reagan, Rambo and ’80s Movies

‘Make My Day’: J. Hoberman on Reagan, Rambo and ’80s Movies

(Link): ‘Make My Day’: J. Hoberman on Reagan, Rambo and ’80s Movies

Excerpts:

July 2019

The film critic and author of a new book on 1980s cinema talks Spielberg, the Gipper and getting flak for writing about politics and pop culture

by David Fear

He was a former radio announcer who broke into movies in the late 1930s and served time as an actor in Warner Brothers’ B-movie unit and a TV host (and corporate pitchman) for General Electric Theater.

Then, after flirting with the growing post-Goldwater conservative side of the G.O.P., Ronald Reagan successfully ran for the governorship of California in 1966.

That was when Jim Hoberman, a Queens, New York, native who’d wound up in Berkeley right as things were coming to a sociopolitical boil in the Bay Area, first encountered the Gipper as something other than a stock player on the screen.

By the time Reagan began his second Presidential campaign — the one that would get him elected commander-in-chief in 1980 — Hoberman had been a second-string film critic at the Village Voice for a few years. But he’d been closely following the man’s career for a while.

And he was both fascinated and a little horrified by how the man who shared scenes with a chimp in Bedtime for Bonzo was using his “movie stardom” — and the movies themselves — to sell some seriously reactionary policies with a smile.

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