Atomic Popcorn brings you yet another Top 10 list! This time we are bring you a list of some of the best on-screen duo’s there are! Below is a list of my top 10 on-screen duo’s of coarse you will have your own opinion. I promise to not use the word chemistry more than 4 times also!

If you all have any ideas for a top 10 list or want to see something specific send us an email at top10@atomicpopcorn.net and we will try and get it up here for you.

Without further ado, here is what I think are the top 10 on-screen duo’s of recent memory.

10. Ben Affleck & Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting- This unlikely duo of two kids from Boston making a movie based on something they wrote. Well the movie was a hit and the duo are still just that in Hollywood. Damon and Affleck both have a great career both behind and in front of them.

9. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys- who can see these guys without at least humming “Bad Boy Bad Boys, whatcha gonna do?” I know I can’t. A great on screen chemistry between these overly large men. The acting is on par with any action flick but these two bring to the table something special. I think they may be channeling a little something from another of our top 10 contenders for Top 10 Duo’s.

8. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction – These extremely violent yet stupid criminals made a movie and a career for a certain Director. While these two came onto the scene quietly, they left with a very large bang after this film. Such chemistry and great writing lead these guy’s onto our Top 10 list.

7. Sam and Frodo in LOTR Trilogy – This unlikely duo has melted ring’s around the world. All jokes aside about being gay lovers, this on-screen duo shares a lifetime of pain and love throughout these films. This duo was something that I don’t we had seen on screen in a while. A true chemistry between two guys in the midst of uncertain times.

6. Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the Ocean’s franchise – two of Hollywood’s leading men, leading the charge for some awesome bank robbing. What more can you want from two Joe Cool’s. Great acting, great suave, these two ooze cool.

5. Tyler and The Narrator in Fight Club – Didn’t we just mention Joe Cool above this, well he is back along side Edward Norton as number 5 on our list. These two really gave us a run for our money in Fight Club. Writing aside, the acting between these two made the movie what it is today.

4. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon franchise – oh my, two entirely different people trapped with one another made these two real men of the 80′s. The boys of Lethal Weapon brought to the screen an on-screen chemistry that not many have or will match. The laughs, the tears, the fights, true brothers ended up on screen with these two crazies!

3. Woody and Buzz from the Toy Story franchise – Yes I am well aware that they are artistically enhanced characters. Yes I am also aware I have a animated feature as my number 3. Without a doubt you have to include Tom Hanks and Tim Allen on this list. Starting as fierce rivals for Andy’s love, they have grown into a duo among the best. The interaction and delivery from this duo brings to life what we only know as animated history!

2. Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting – Suave and complete. The acting and everything that follows and it includes these guys had it and brought it to the screen. These movies are classics for two reason and the two reason are the men above and below this blurb. These guys we looked at the men of men and rightfully so.

1. Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles – the funny men of the 80′s paired together to bring to the screen one of the best on screen duo’s ever. With Candy gone we can only assume what could of been but this was and is still a great movie. Due in large, or in whole, to these two completely crazy comedians.

Finally! Actually I’m serious, though the puns won’t stop, as I believe in Intelligent Design it has seemed to me that the story of creation as told in the Book of Genesis would be perfect for adaptation to the big screen. Walden Media co-founder Cary Grant Granat is teaming up with Paramount Pictures and Reel Fx to create a 3D adaptation of the first book of the Bible. David Cunningham (The Seeker: The Dark is Rising) is set to direct a reported $30 million budget with a screenplay written by John Fusco (Young Guns).

This project should enjoy great success as it is both polarizing and just what the fans of such box office hits as The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are looking for in their local cinaplex. Here is the synopsis I found lying on my table. What do you think of this project?

Will you see it?

Atomic Popcorn brings you yet another Top 10 Tuesday! This time we are bring you a list of some of the best chase scenes around. While most of us think about chase scenes involving cars, I have added a few to my list of chases without cars. While this list begs for more attention, I think i have highlighted some of the best there is, and I ask for your additions to this list.

I am aiming to have this column be something in which we can talk about and struggle with coming up with the best of the best for that Tuesday’s topic.

If you all have ideas for a top 10 list or want to see something specific send us an email at top10@atomicpopcorn.net and we will try and get it up here for you!

Without further ado – here is our Top 10 Chase Scenes. Enjoy!

10. Mad Max -What more can you say about this one, a true Gibson classic.

9. Matrix Reloaded – I can only find half of it online, but only half of it still garners a top 10 spot!

8. Gone in 60 seconds – This is the ORIGINAL baby!

7. Tranporter 3 Bike Chase – Yes I am well aware that this is on a bike and can’t possibly happen, but it’s fun as hell to watch.

6. Bullitt – Featuring Steve “badass” McQueen.

5. James Bond The Spy Who Loved Me – Skiing anyone? The Winter Olympics should be proud!

4. Enemy of the State – this still holds up as a great flick along with some great chase scenes. If you can find the full chase scene let me know -

3. Casino Royale – Madagascar in HD! Enjoy it.

2. Italian Job – chase scene -The Original !

1. Ronin – watch and have fun!

This is yet another Tuesday Top 10 List from Atomic Popcorn and today I have brought to you all what I think are the Top 10 Fight Scenes of recent memory. Below are the movie’s along with their videos of said fight.

PLEASE leave your comments with better video or even better yet, better fight scenes. I would love to see what you all have to say as what the Top 10 should be.

Without further interruptions I bring you the Atomic Popcorn Top 10 Fight Scenes.

10. The Way of the Dragon:
Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee – come on folks you CANNOT forget this fight scene!

9. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children:
Cloud and Sephiroth – this is an great fight scene along with awesome animation.

8. Raiders of the Lost Ark:
Indiana Jones doing what he does best – do a google search and read why this scene actually came about!

7. Lethal Weapon:
Mel Gibson against the ever crazy Gary Busey – great stuff all around.

6. Rocky IV:
Rocky kicking some Russian ass – this movie can make me cry in a matter of minutes. Great all around movie and a great great fight scene. Gloves and all!

5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:
Gorgeous ass kicking at it’s finest. What more can you want from a fight scene? Oh yeah Bamboo walking/flying!

4. The Karate Kid:
Crane Kick anyone? Enough said…

3. Snatch:
Mickey O’Neil vs. Gorgeous George – this just looks like it hurts.

2. Fight Club:
Come on you cannot leave out a movie with the word “fight” in it. And besides this is a classic scene in many ways.

1. The Matrix:
One bad actor versus many different agents? And kicking some serious agent ass..The Matrix is number 1 on my list!

PHILIP BARRETT: Let me get one thing out of the way; this is going to sound like I hate Edge of Darkness. I don’t, and truth be told it’s not a terrible film by any stretch. The true enemy of this movie is Warner Bros. marketing department which wants this movie to be Taken 2. The film itself acts like it wants to be, too, and without the success of Taken we wouldn’t have realized it, but it’s not an action film. Will that disappoint the audience going into it remains to be seen, but that’s the main reason this picture left me cold.

Plus1: Edge of Darkness reminded me of last year’s Clive Owen flick – The International, in that they both started slow and built toward a WOW factor with a “I can’t believe they did that” ending. Both movies used real-world drama as the backdrop to help shape the world the stories took place in. If anything, the Warner Brothers (and their sister Dot) are marketing the movie as a detective/action flick where in fact it is an intelligent suspense thriller.

PHILIP: Which it is, and for the first forty or so minutes that was fine. The movie never takes off like it promises and is really selling one particular scene completely wrong. The ending Alex mentions to me felt like it belonged in an different movie altogether. Without giving too much away, it’s the point where the film finally decides it wants to be what the ads promise. It’s out of place, complete with cheesy music to compliment it.

It is a suspense thriller, unquestionably, and maybe if I’d gone in there expecting that I’d have been more pleased with it. I like Martin Campbell, and the man is an artist in how he lends his films an exotic look while still being able to tell a story. He’s not really to blame, as the other culprit is the script by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell (adapted from the TV series by the same name, which was also helmed by Campbell.) It becomes too convoluted for its own good, when it would have worked better had things been kept simpler.

Plus1: : To me, the ending that was used fit and I’m not sure if that was the same ending from the BBC mini-series. However, I’ve watched enough BBC programming to recognize that the ending used was a BBC series-style ending. If anything, I felt that there should have been one more scene after that last scene with a news story detailing the fallout from the events that unfolded and giving some closure to the political thriller that we had just witnessed. I think American audiences are going to feel the same way… a bit let down on the overall closure of the story and not the main character of Tom Craven (played by Mel Gibson).

As for the style and direction of the movie, I thought Martin Campbell did a good job in Americanizing the story while still keeping the BBC feel to the overall product. If I had to complain about the script it would be that they tried to cram too much into a two-hour film. There were a few scenes that seemed out of context early on but made sense later in the movie. The same with Craven’s remorse and sadness over the death of his child…his inner monologue wasn’t able to really be expressed in the short time frame given.

PHILIP: They did, and it over-complicated things that didn’t need to be over-complicated. It’s ok if it’s not Taken 2, but the direction the screenplay went made it seem like it was the “most serious film in the history of everness” when we didn’t need so many twists and turns along the way.

I will say though, Mel Gibson was perfectly cast as Tom Craven. It’s hard to tell whether they cast Gibson just because or if they molded Craven like him, but only crazy Mel (the best kind of Mel, by the way) could be able to pull this one off. He’s enjoyable even when the film drags or also gets too goofy. His demeanor is priceless, surpassed only by his just as goofy Boston accent.

Plus1: Casting a movie like this is just as important as the story itself. Get the wrong actors and no matter how good or great the story is, the acting will take away from the words. Casting Mel Gibson was a stroke of genius. He brought an aged toughness to Tom Craven that gave realism to the character. I’m not sure what was worse…Mel’s mush-mouth Boston accent or the hard to understand Boston/British accent Ray Winstone used as Jedburgh. With that being said, Jedburgh was a character straight out of any BBC drama or American political thriller – the fixer brought in to clean up the mistakes of others. I liked how Craven and Jedburgh shared an unspoken admiration for each other, knowing what each did and looking the other way.

I don’t know if Campbell tried to make this the “most serious film in the history of everness” but he did manage to make a thriller that had me captivated the entire time. Not once was I taken out of the story because of some sappy piece of music or ill-timed musical crescendo, an unneeded action piece or larger then-life-explosion, or worse…the cute kid that ruins all movies.  Everything he did made Edge of Darkness come across as a “this could happen in real life” movie just as he did with 2006′s Casino Royale and from what I could tell from online research, kept true to the original source material.

PHILIP: Winstone was pretty much perfectly cast as Jedburgh, and he’s having a pretty fun time, even if his character is one of the over-complicated matters at hand. Winstone doesn’t try to play one or other, and only a veteran could handle it as well as he does here. The rest of the cast fills in decently, with Bojana Novakovic doing a solid job as Gibson’s daughter. There’s really no problem with the rest of the cast, even rent-a-bad-guy Danny Huston does good, although it appears he’s trying to set a record for how many unintentionally homosexual villains he can play (between this and X-Men Origins.)

Plus1: I liked Edge of Darkness and thought it was a very intelligent movie that didn’t talk down to me. It had a wonderfully executed story that built from a slow beginning to an amazing ending and not once during the movie did the subject take itself too seriously. My only concern is that the moving going public is going to go in, like Philip did, and expect more then what they are given. This isn’t Lethal Weapon and that isn’t an older Martin Riggs. You’re not getting a fast-paced action flick with car chases, gun fights, and loud explosions. You’re getting a stylized political thriller that will make you think and I think that is what many people don’t want when going to the movies. They want to check their brain at the door and relax in a fantasy world for a few hours to escape reality. And as much as I liked Edge of Darkness I don’t see this being on heavy rotation in my DVD collection in a few months.

PHILIP: Pretty much that. It’s not a discredit to the movie that I misplaced my expectations in wanting an action/revenge tale and instead received a mystery. I liked the film enough that I will give it another try on Blu-Ray with this in mind. That said, I think I did enjoy the goofy parts more than the more serious stuff with said expectations. This isn’t a terribly made picture nor is it even a bad picture. It just left me cold because I wanted something else, and what was given wasn’t working for me. It’s a fairly decent little thriller in its own right, and maybe audiences will get more out of it than I did. I’d be more inclined to recommend “checking the brain in” if the movie didn’t fire off such mumbo-jumbo of who’s turning on who. In the end, Edge of Darkness is just a middle-of-the-road thriller that has a nice return for Mel Gibson.

Philip’s Rating –

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

Mel Gibson has signed on to direct an as-yet-untitled Viking epic, to be scripted by The Departed/Kingdom of Heaven/Body of Lies scribe William Monahan.  Leonardo DiCaprio has signed on to star. Graham King, producer of Gibson’s upcoming films, Edge of Darkness and The Departed, is financing the film through his production shingle, GK Films, partnered with Gibson’s own Icon Productions.  All that is known about the story of the film is that is is a drama set in the Viking world, and that Leo will most assuredly play a Viking in the piece.

From Graham King’s lips to God’s ears:

“This will be an awe-inspiring story, created with some of the industry’s finest cinematic talent and I am just over the moon to be making this film with Mel, Leo and Bill.”

Hop to the source for a nice shot of Mel Gibson on some sort of stage garbed in Viking finery.

This continues Mel’s comeback trail, a road upon which we will join him in January in Martin Campbell’s Edge of Darkness, and which will continue late next year with his recently-wrapped role in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver.

Update 10/29/09:

According to Variety, Charlize Theron has been officially confirmed for Mad Max: Fury Road, as has Tom Hardy (Bronson). What’s more, filming is imminent: George Miller will begin production next August in Australia. Here’s his quote on the possibility of Mel Gibson’s return: “it could be Mel, it could be anyone.”

So there it is. Mad Max 4 is a go.

Here’s the deal: The Road Warrior is an utterly fantastic film, and as a character, Mad Max Rockatansky is inseparable from Mel Gibson. No matter how crazy he might have become in the past few years, no matter how his image has been tarnished, the image of Mad Max lives on and will certainly be the character I remember him by.

And while it’s great that director George Miller is stepping away from Happy Feet and back toward the series that made him famous, I can’t help but cringe every time there’s talk of him replacing Gibson in Mad Max 4 (or Mad Max 4: Fury Road). Whether he intends to make a sequel or a reboot, I say slap another title on it and move forward. Please.

The latest scoop is that Oscar-winner Charlize Theron might be Miller’s choice to put on the leather gear for Mad Max 4. Which is interesting, I guess, but she’s neither an Aussie nor does she carry herself with the same presence as Gibson. He’s also looking at Black Hawk Down‘s Tom Hardy to play alongside Theron.

So far, this is all just talk — no deal has been signed, and Miller is being highly secretive about the plot of the film. I find it interesting, though, when I read quotes of Miller’s such as this one, asserting that Gibson is too old for a return: “I don’t think he would be interested in being involved at all.”

Doesn’t this sound like he hasn’t even bothered to ask? Gibson seemed plenty fit to me in the Edge of Darkness trailer we posted a while back.

In 2000, Mel Gibson starred in Paramount Pictures romantic comedy What Women Want. After a freak accident, Gibson’s character becomes able to hear every thought of any woman. The film was run with the tagline of “Finally…a man is listening,”and did decently at the theater.

Well, apparently New Line Cinema thought the idea of a character being able to hear the thoughts of the opposite sex was a pretty good plot line, as they’re taking on a comedy flick titled — ever so cleverly — What Boys Want. Aside from the obvious similarity in title, the movie revolves around a girl who can, you guessed it, hear what men are thinking.

There’s no question that Hollywood doesn’t always have the freshest ideas come out for movies, and that plots have a tendency to get recycled with one or two details being tweaked to make the new story just different enough from others before it.

But really, New Line? You agree to take on a movie that has been done before, and can’t even change the title of Gibson’s movie beyond one word? That’s just lazy.

New Line has already starting casting for the movie, placing Disney up-and-comer Selena Gomez as the film’s lead. Gomez began her acting career on Barney and Friends, but is best known for her role on Disney Channel’s Wizards of Waverly Place. While Gomez shines on Wizards, it will be interesting to see if her acting chops are ready for the big screen.

What Boys Want was written by Amy Andelson and Emily Meyer and will be produced by Kevin Misher. Allen Fisher and Gomez’s mother will serve as executive producers.