A mix of action and comedy that follows a boy with a magic ticket, who suddenly is transported through the big screen and into the latest movie of his favorite actor, Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), it’s filled with huge fight scenes, gun fights, explosions, and fun jabs at Schwarzenegger and the action movie genre.

But nobody went to see the movie.

With a 37% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a $137 million worldwide gross (which doesn’t even crack the top ten for that year), the movie was considered a colossal disappointment.

However, looking back on it now, Schwarzenegger believes there were a lot of forces against him around the time the movie came out.

“Don’t forget that the year that movie came out it was the year to beat on Arnold,” Schwarzenegger told Business Insider.

Before the movie opened the Hollywood trades had constant coverage of its shaky production, which finished just months before it opened in theaters, along with reports on the movie getting negative test scores.

But Schwarzenegger feels even the newly-elected president, Bill Clinton, had something to do with the movie’s poor performance.

“It was one of those things where President Clinton was elected and the press somehow made the whole thing kind of political where they thought, ‘Okay, the ‘80s action guys are gone here’s a perfect example,’ and they wrote this narrative before anyone saw the movie,” Schwarzenegger said, while promoting his new movie “Killing Gunther” (currently available on streaming and in theaters Friday).

Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican and former governor of California, felt that the combination of bad press surrounding the movie and the entrance of a Democrat into the White House led to a situation where he couldn’t win.

“The action hero era is over, Bill Clinton is in, the highbrow movies are the ‘in’ thing now, I couldn’t recuperate,” he said.

He did though — a year later. Teaming with his “Terminator” movies director James Cameron, they made the spy action movie “True Lies,” which earned over $378 million worldwide and was the third-highest-grossing domestic release of the year.

And as the years have passed, “Last Action Hero” has been rediscovered by new audiences.

“I think more people would have seen it if the press treated it differently, but now the good thing is that with streaming people can go and watch it,” Schwarzenegger said.

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Source: Business Insider

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The move is aimed at helping to restore security after more than a year of deadly ethnic and religious violence.

The ban comes after days of violent demonstrations in the capital, Bangui, and a mass text campaign calling for a general strike.

The protesters want the transitional government that came to power in January to resign.

The CAR conflict began last year as mainly Muslim Seleka rebels, led by Michel Djotodia, seized power in the majority Christian country.

Mr Djotodia resigned as president in January under diplomatic pressure, but a interim government and French and African peacekeepers have failed to stop the violence between Christian and Muslim militia groups.

Peacekeeper anger

Mobile phone users in CAR now get a message in French saying “SMS not allowed”.

“On the instruction of the prime minister… in order to contribute to the restoration of security in the country, the use of SMS by all mobile phone subscribers is suspended,” Reuters news agency quotes the telecommunications ministry statement as saying.

According to the French news website Jeune Afrique, a letter was sent to CAR’s four phone mobile operators ordering them to suspend their SMS texting service until further notice.

Orange, Moov, Telecel and Azur are the main mobile phone providers in CAR, Reuters reports.

A source in the government told the AFP news agency that the suspension of text messages might only last “for a few days”.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Andre Nzapayeke appealed for people to return to work in Bangui after several days of protests which paralysed the capital.

The protests were triggered by a deadly attack on a church last Wednesday by Seleka rebels.

The Burundian contingent of the African Union peacekeeping forces was also targeted in the subsequent demonstrations as many of the protesters have accused them of permitting attacks on Christians.

The African Union, France and the European Union have about 7,000 troops in the country where about 25% of the population has fled their homes.

Source: BBC

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