Latest news with #TheMightyDucks
CBC
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Joshua Jackson had to make a tricky transition before Dawson's Creek
Before Joshua Jackson landed his breakout role as Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek, he had already been working for years as a child actor. Jackson's mom was a casting director who helped him get his first big gig on the 1991 film Crooked Hearts when he was just 11. In a Q interview with guest host Gill Deacon, the Vancouver-born actor says his mom was "completely uninterested in being a stage mom," but she supported his enthusiasm for the performing arts and taught him the importance of being a professional on set. "I certainly wasn't shoved into it, it was something that I was totally gung-ho for," he says. "[I remember] how important it was for me to be in a space with adults where they heard me, right? You show up, you do your job and these grown-ups will respect you…. That was the addictive part. Like, 'Oh, look, I can walk through the world as a quasi-grown-up in this space in a way that I cannot anywhere else.'" Roughly a year or so after that, Jackson played Charlie Conway in one of Disney's most iconic films, The Mighty Ducks, which went on to become a successful franchise. He says he thinks those movies were hits because they didn't talk down to kids. "I remember being so annoyed at that age … and I found so much of what was made 'for me' to be really insulting and annoying," Jackson says. "You're young, you're not dumb." Similar to The Mighty Ducks, the hit teen drama Dawson's Creek also became known for reflecting the maturity and intelligence of young people. But leading up to that role, Jackson experienced a long dry spell in his career as he made the tricky transition from child star to teen heartthrob. "I wasn't just going through a dry spell — I was dead in the water," he says. "I was preparing to no longer be an actor at 17 or 18 years old…. I was not a kid, so those roles were suddenly gone, but I wasn't anything close to a man yet, and I was kind of a gawky young adult. So, yeah, that transition was hard." Like most actors, Jackson says he's experienced several ups and downs in his career. "The ups are fabulous, but what you're really trying to do is survive the downs," he says. "And I don't know anybody, like literally anybody, who's had a linear up career. This is not part of the way the thing works." You can catch Jackson narrating the Canadian Audible Original series Oracle 3: Murder at the Grandview, which is a psychological thriller that combines crime investigations with supernatural elements.
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dean Cain says men shouldn't compete in women's sports; releases heartwarming film on girls' soccer team
Friday marks the nationwide release of family-friendly sports film "Little Angels", a triumphant story of a team of athletes and an unyielding coach, written, directed and produced by actor Dean Cain. "Little Angels" unfolds the story of Jake Rogers, a Division I college football coach, played by Cain, with $5 million and a take-it-or-leave-it chance for redemption on the line. A male-centric statement hurdles the lead into a reflective arc and, when writing the script, the red-card comment "soccer is for girls," was definitive, according to Cain. "It's always a joke I make," Cain told Fox News Digital. Dean Cain Says He Turned Down Being One Of The Highest-paid Actors On Tv To Raise His Son Alone "Soccer is the world's game and I make fun of soccer because I played as an American football player and that's just what we do. We make fun of soccer. We make fun of rugby." In 1988, after his collegiate football career at Princeton, Cain was signed to the Buffalo Bills as a rookie. His professional NFL career came to a halt when he injured his knee. Read On The Fox News App While the on-air declaration that soccer is for girls kicks off Rogers' journey to softening in "Little Angels", the topic of men in women's sports is not a cornerstone of the film. However, Cain is firm in his position that, after a certain age, boys and girls should not compete together. "I'm a huge, huge supporter of women's athletics," Cain told Fox News Digital. "I don't think men or boys have any business once they're past the age of 7 or 10 competing together." "When you get to those higher levels, I don't think that men should be competing with women, period, end of story," Cain said. "Many of my ex-girlfriends have been professional athletes, and I really have tremendous respect for women's sports. I think it's hugely important to have women be able to compete against women and do that." Dean Cain's New Christmas Movie Celebrates Faith: A 'Trip Back In Time To Bethlehem' The benchmark theme of "Little Angels" is purpose and perspective and reserves the plot for a heartwarming tale of teamwork and family. "There's a lot of me in that character," Cain said of Rogers. Despite public perception, Rogers cannot be defended from his offside remark about female athletes. "College football coaches get looked at sometimes like they're a deity of something, like they're a God of some kind," Cain said. Rogers is met with an ultimatum: coach a team of 12-year-old girls or lose $5 million. Films like "A League of Their Own," "The Mighty Ducks" and even the true underdog story of "Dodgeball" echo a similar sentiment and evoke childhood memories across generations. Dean Cain Says He 'Had To Get Out Of California': 'Land Of Ridiculousness' The timeless tale in each of these movies follows a team of misfits bonded together by both their love of the game and a defeated coach who finds inspiration through group aspirations. This narrative conjures wistful affection in a way that other genres outside sports dramas cannot. "Take a guy who is flawed in a situation where he doesn't want to be," Cain said. "Through human experience and being with these young ladies and other people, he teaches them teamwork and the value of team and family." The movie, starring Lou Ferrigno, Bryan Callen and Swedish actress Helena Mattson, began casting during the COVID-19 pandemic. "You hope that you get them together and they have chemistry," he said of the athletes. "They are the heart of the story." "The young actresses were phenomenal," Cain said of a cast including Alex Jayne Go and "Role Models" actress Alexandra Stamler. Cain's niece and goddaughter also star in the film as athletes. "I've been called Superman forever and that's great. I love it," Cain said. "If people call me Coach Jake after this, 'Hey Coach Jake,' that's a warm fuzzy for me. It's a big-time warm and fuzzy." Cain is working on four films this year, including a golf-centered movie that he is co-directing with his son. The world premiere of "Little Angels" was featured at the International Christian Film Festival (ICFF) in May. There, Cain was awarded with the ICFF Lifetime Achievement Award. "I've been producing for a long time and directing," Cain said. "Man, I don't feel like I'm anywhere near getting a Lifetime Achievement Award, so, I think they were just being nice to me." "Little Angels" hits theaters nationwide on Friday, June 6, article source: Dean Cain says men shouldn't compete in women's sports; releases heartwarming film on girls' soccer team
Los Angeles Times
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In the overstuffed ‘Karate Kid: Legends,' too many storylines compete for dominance
The problem with 'Karate Kid: Legends' is right there in the title: 'legends,' as in multiple. Many beloved 'Karate Kid' characters and icons of millennial sports movies enter the ring, but in the ensuing melee, no one emerges victorious. Written by Rob Lieber and directed by Jonathan Entwistle, 'Karate Kid: Legends' is another revamp of the franchise, which now boasts four movies from the 1980s and '90s, an animated series, a 2010 remake starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan and a long-running Netflix spinoff series, 'Cobra Kai,' following the original characters, now as adults. This new film is a 'lega-sequel,' if you will, combining characters from both the original film and the recent remake with a new setting: the Big Apple. The saying 'two branches, one tree' is oft-repeated throughout the film to explain the two different kinds of martial-arts training (karate and kung fu) that come together to shape our new young fighter, Li Fong (Ben Wang). But 'Karate Kid: Legends' doesn't have a strong, steady trunk to support these separate offshoots. Instead, it's two movies at war with each other, fists and feet flying in a whirlwind. In one corner and comprising the first half of the film, you have a surprisingly fun and refreshing twist on 'Karate Kid,' in which the martial-arts student becomes the teacher. Young Li, grieving the death of his kung fu champ older brother, is yanked out of kung fu school in Beijing (where he's being trained by Chan's Shifu) by his mother (Ming-Na Wen) and uprooted to New York City. There, Li befriends Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her father, Victor (Joshua Jackson), who run a pizza joint and have run afoul of a loan shark, O'Shea (Tim Rozon), who also happens to run a mixed martial-arts gym. Victor, a former boxer, has entered into a prize fight hoping to win the purse, and enlists Li as his new trainer, who agrees because he believes training Victor won't break his 'no fighting' promise to his mother. Now, a 'The Fighter'-style comeback movie starring '90s kids sports movie icon Jackson ('The Mighty Ducks') would be a great film on its own. Alas, this is a 'Karate Kid' movie that promises 'legends,' so the pizza shop boxing-training movie is quickly dispatched in favor of Shifu and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) descending on New York from Beijing and Los Angeles, respectively, to train Li to fight in the 5 Boroughs tournament against sadistic MMA fighter Connor (Aramis Knight). The movie is so divided in its storytelling aims that there's a sequence where Li's tournament rounds and training are spliced in with moments of character and story development, connected by frantically fast drone shots that zip over the city. The pacing of this film is breakneck on speed; it feels like watching a movie on fast-forward at times. Much of the story work is executed during rapid-fire montages, using familiar archetypes and stereotypes to sketch out the basic narrative. The frenetic fight sequences are so fast and fluid, ramping between slow-motion and fast-motion, that your eye can hardly land anywhere or even appreciate the choreography. Despite being two movies smashed together, torturously twisted in order to get all these legends at one tournament, 'Karate Kid: Legends' isn't a wholly unpleasant experience, largely due to the charms of star Wang, who has a bashfully appealing presence that belies his seriously lethal skills. He has a sparkling chemistry with Stanley and Jackson, further emphasizing that the filmmakers should have stuck with that one story, rather than falling back on the old karate kid tropes we know so well. Alas, it seems originality was not the goal with 'Karate Kids: Legends,' even if those hints of newness are the most interesting part of the movie. Legends never die, as they say, for better or worse, and in the case of this film, it's for worse. Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Emilio Estevez Says He Wrote ‘Mighty Ducks 4' To Make Up For 'Disasters' From Disney+ Series & Recalls ‘St. Elmo's Fire' Director Was A 'Nightmare On Set'
Emilio Estevez is making some big revelations in his latest interview, where he discusses writing a new Mighty Ducks sequel and shares his experience on the set of St. Elmo's Fire. One of Estevez's most memorable roles was playing Coach Bombay in the 1992 film The Mighty Ducks. The actor reprised his role in the Disney+ series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, but left the show after the first season as a result of 'nothing more than a good old-fashioned contract dispute' as well as 'a myriad of creative differences.' More from Deadline Emilio Estevez Not Returning To 'The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers' For Season 2 Rob Lowe Says 'St. Elmo's Fire' Sequel Is In 'Very, Very Early Stages' 'The Breakfast Club' Stars Reunite For The First Time Since Film's Release: "Moved To Have Us All Together" In a new interview with Josh Horowitz for the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Estevez said he 'wrote Mighty Ducks 4.' 'I wanted to make up for all of the disasters that happened on the Game Changers series,' he said. Estevez said the 'feature script' would have 'Coach Bombay coming back [and] being pulled back in by Josh Jackson's character and Kenan Thompson's character to coach a new team: an expansion team for the professional women's hockey league. So it would be an all-girl team.' The actor goes into detail that 'when we discover Bombay, he's coaching roller derby, and so he says, 'My girls are going with me. They have to have a shot.' And it was charming, and contemporary, and cool.' Despite his enthusiasm for a Mighty Ducks sequel, Estevez said that Disney told him that they didn't want to pursue that idea. During the same interview, Horowitz asked Estevez for 'the worst note a director has ever given' him, which made him recall his time on the set of 1985's St. Elmo's Fire. 'Have a good f***ing time,' Estevez said, director Joel Schumacher told him as the filmmaker was 'screaming at the top of his lungs.' 'To go from John Hughes [director of The Breakfast Club], who was collaborative, who was a mentor in many ways, who was calm, listened, to Joel, who was wildly insecure and was a nightmare on set and was a bully… And to have that happen in the same year was, and I vowed never to speak to my actors that way if I ever got a chance to direct. In 1984, I thought this was the best lesson a young actor who wants to direct could ever get. Thank you Joel,' Estevez said. Watch the full interview with Estevez in the video below. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Netflix's 'Ransom Canyon' So Far 'Ransom Canyon' Soundtrack: All The Songs You'll Hear In The New Netflix Western Romance Series Everything We Know About 'Emily In Paris' Season 5 So Far
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Emilio Estevez Feared He'd Be Fired From ‘The Breakfast Club'
Emilio Estevez once feared that he blew it during table read for The Breakfast Club. The actor, who played high school jock Andrew Clark in the 1985 John Hughes coming-of-age film, spoke out about the film's 40th anniversary reunion at the C2E2 pop culture convention on April 12. 'The first time that we all got together, [Hughes] had organized a read-through of the script at a hotel in Century City,' Estevez, 62, recalled, per Entertainment Weekly. 'I had, the night before, just had all four wisdom teeth pulled — impacted wisdom teeth. I was on pain pills.' Estevez explained that his agent called him and told him he had to show up for the read-through, despite the fact that he had a swollen face and was on painkillers. The actor noted that after the table read, Hughes proudly played the first cut of his movie Sixteen Candles for The Breakfast Club cast, which included two Sixteen Candles stars—Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall—as well as Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. 'We're sitting there, I don't think I made it through the opening credits,' Estevez revealed, adding that he didn't wake up until the very end of the movie screening. 'I passed out from the pain pills, and just from the ordeal of having my teeth extracted," he explained. "I believed [I would be fired]. I thought, 'Oh gosh, I just failed the final test.' Estevez went on to star in The Breakfast Club, which became one of the biggest teen films of the 1980s. But years later, he did part ways with a spinoff of one of his other big movies. After starring in three films for The Mighty Ducks franchise, in 2021, he got into a dispute over the Disney+ series The Mighty Ducks Game Changers. Deadline reported that the actor exited the franchise amid a 'contract dispute' and 'a myriad of creative differences.' Estevez was also dealing with the effects of long COVID at the time.
