Howdy y’all,

I had a day off work a few days ago and decided to make it a day of new things.

In doing so, I went to two new movies and a new restaurant. I went to see both The Magnificent Seven and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, I also went to Wise Guys Sandwich Pub on Bagnell Dam Strip.

It was a good day.

I also bought a body pillow to feel like I am getting cuddled.

Don’t you judge me!

If you do not want spoilers for the movie, stop reading here.

The movie was directed by Antoine Fuqua who also directed hits such as Shooter (aka Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter), The Equalizer, Olympus has Fallen and Training Day. He apparently likes working with Denzel.

The movie was written by Akira Kurosawa, I did not know that. If you do not know him, he also wrote the 7 Samurai. Guy likes 7’s… it’s lucky, shut the fuck up about it already.

The cast of the movie was pretty awesome and consisted of:

Denzel Washington as Chisolm. Denzel is one of the biggest actors of our time and has been acting since the 70’s. The first thing I remember seeing him in was St. Elsewhere but you may also know him from things such as Glory, Malcom X, Fallen, The Bone Collector, Training Day, John Q, Out of Time, Man on Fire, The Manchurian Candidate (2004), Deja Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, The Book of Eli, 2 Guns, and The Equalizer.

Chris Pratt as Josh Faraday. Pratt has blown up recently, mostly for me due to starring in my favorite Marvel Universe Movie (besides Deadpool). You should know Pratt from Take Me Home Tonight, Parks and Recreation, Zero Dark Thirty, Delivery Man, Guardians of the Galaxy  and Jurrasic World. He is also married to Anna Faris so I hate him just a little.

Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux. Hawke was in one of my favorite movies when I was a kid and has remained someone I have always enjoyed seeing throughout the years because he usually does a pretty good job. You may know him from Explorers, Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Gattaca, The Newton Boys, Training Day,  Taking Lives (I forgot this one except for the Angelina Jolie nudity), Assault on Precinct 13, Lord of War, Daybreakers and The Purge

Vincent D’Onofrio as Jack Horne. D’onofrio is brand new to acting and you probably haven’t seen him in anything besides Full Metal Jacket, Adventures in Babysitting, Ed Wood, Men in Black, The Newton Boys, Law & Order, The Judge, Jurassic World and Daredevil (the series)

Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks. Lee did a great job in this movie as he has done in everything I have seen him in including G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, RED 2 and Terminator Genisys.

Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez. Manuel has not been in much but he was in an episode of Touch and in several episodes of From Dusk Till Dawn.

Martin Sensmeier as Red Harvest. Sensmeier looks to be fairly new to acting but you can see him in the TV Series Salem and may catch a glimpse of him in the HBO series WestWorld

Haley Bennett as Emma Cullen. You may also know her from The Equalizer and Hardcore Henry. She made this movie much better as the hot redhead who sadly lost her husband. I am definitely my father’s son… redheads… giggity.

Peter Sarsgaard as Bartholomew Bogue. Sarsgaard also played in The Man in The Iron Mask, K-19 The Widowmaker, The Skeleton Key, Flightplan, Jarhead, Knight and Day, Green Lantern, and Black Mass.

Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen, and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) for help. Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly

This movie starts out with the antagonist not only trying to run people off of their land but doing it during church services, booting everyone out, then burning down the church.

When some of the townsfolk complained, primarily Emma Cullen’s husband, Bogue kills him and several other townsfolk.

It then jumps to a different town sometime after the massacre at Rose Creek with Sam Chisolm serving a warrant at a bar that Josh Faraday is playing cards in.

Through the course of serving this warrant, Chisolm gets into a gunfight that Faraday helps out with.

Emma, also happening to be in this town, tries to enlist Chisholm into helping her fight Bogue for Rose Creek.

After some convincing Chisolm, who we find out has a history with Bartholomew Bogue, signs on and through a little bit of manipulation, involving a horse, he gets Faraday day to sign up.

Faraday and Chisolm then set themselves to the task of trying to find some other lunatics for their team.

Chisholm and Emma split from Faraday and Emma’s friend from Rose Creek  to go to find a Mexican that Chisholm has a warrant for. Chisolm figures he may be able to talk the bandito into joining up for the good cause if Chisolm will forget about him having a warrant.

Faraday and the other guy go to find one of Chisolm’s friends named Goodnight Robicheaux.

Faraday enlists the help of Goodnight Robicheaux and his friend Billy Rocks by telling them that he was sent by Chisolm.

Robicheaux was a sharpshooter in the Civil War on the side of the South and Billy Rocks is an Asian who is indebted to Robicheaux.

Robicheaux and Rocks formed a mutually beneficial partnership in that Robicheaux makes a living off the mastery Rocks has with both knives and guns and Rocks gets the benefit of having a legend as his friend who can help him navigate in a world that is not exceptionally friendly to people of Asian descent.

When everybody meets back up a few days later, they go try to enlist the help of Jack Horne who is famous for killing natives but he seems barely human when are the team meets up with him.

Horne mumbles in a high pitched voice when he does talk and Faraday even comments that he seems to be a bear in a person suit.

The final member of the group is a Comanche native who is following the group for whatever reason and through talking and eating raw deer meat with Chisolm he becomes the 7th member of this magnificent group.

With the team together they head back to Rose Creek.

Upon entering town a battle ends up breaking out due to the treatment of the 7 by Bogue’s grunts.  that they know will lead to a war but it had to be done

The 7 know that this battle will lead to the war but that was the plan all along.

They send one of the last guys standing with a message to Bogue offering terms and that he needs to be in town in person either way.

After the team wins that battle they start getting the town’s folk ready for the war that they know will be coming.

They know Bogue will hire an army of mercenaries to come to Rose Creek and take back the town he claimed as his own.

It’s a western so there’s not a lot of depth to it you get to know the characters just enough that you get to like them.

Unfortunately, some of the characters you end up liking, die but it would be insane to think that they would all make it, a farming community and 7 mercs against an army.

My buddy Gary watched the showing before me and told me about the  characters dying, he didn’t tell me which ones but at least I expected it going in.

This was a pretty good movie and was worth seeing in the theater.

As a Western, it was serious but there were some good comedic bits in there too that made it far more enjoyable.

I give The Magnificent Seven a Chop’s Guide score of 3.5 out of 5

This Day in History:

• 1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.
• 1764 – Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
• 1783 – The Montgolfier brothers‘ hot air balloon (tethered) makes the first human ascent, piloted by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier.
• 1793 – Queen Marie Antoinette of France is tried and convicted in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.
• 1815 – Napoleon I of France begins his exile on Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.
• 1864 – American Civil War: The Battle of Glasgow is fought, resulting in the surrender of Glasgow, Missouri and its Union garrison, to the Confederacy
• 1888 – The “From Hell” letter allegedly sent by Jack the Ripper is received by investigators.
• 1910 – Airship America is launched from New Jersey in the first attempt to cross the Atlantic by a powered aircraft.
• 1917 – World War I: At Vincennes outside Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for the German Empire.
• 1928 – The airship, Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States
• 1932 – Tata Airlines (later to become Air India) makes its first flight.
• 1939 – The New York Municipal Airport (later renamed LaGuardia Airport) is dedicated.
• 1951 – The first episode of I Love Lucy, an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley, airs on the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).
• 1966 – The Black Panther Party is created by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
• 1971 – The start of the 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire in Iran.
• 1990 – Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.
• 1990 – Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.
• 1997 – The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn
• 2001 – NASA‘s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter‘s moon Io.
• 2013 – A 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes the Philippines, resulting in more than 215 deaths.

Births:

• 1844 – Friedrich Nietzsche, German composer, poet, and philosopher (d. 1900)
• 1858 – John L. Sullivan, American boxer, actor, and journalist (d. 1918)
• 1881 – P. G. Wodehouse, English-American author and playwright (d. 1975)
• 1924 – Lee Iacocca, American businessman and author
• 1968 – Vanessa Marcil, American actress

Deaths:

• 1819 – Sergey Vyazmitinov, Russian general and politician, War Governor of Saint Petersburg (b. 1744)
• 1946 – Hermann Göring, German general and politician (b. 1893)
• 1964 – Cole Porter, American composer and songwriter (b. 1891)

Holidays and Observances

• National Latino AIDS Awareness Day (United States)… Seriously?!