Fantasy Films Unlike science fiction films that base their content upon some degree of scientific truth, take the. An actor with over forty years of experience in theatre, film, and television, Michael Douglas branched out into independent feature production in. The Magical Native American trope as used in popular culture. A subtrope of Ethnic Magician. Native Americans or a race meant to be an expy of them who. Top 2. 5 Steven Seagal films We originally ran this countdown over the course of a week, in five parts. Heres the full countdown on one pageI love Steven Seagal films. I think thats an important thing to state here. This isnt a sarcastic, snarky piece. This is all high fives and hi yaLook, I kind of get it. Steven Seagals films do have common aspects that you can expect to see. He often plays very similar characters and, as someone who went from box office star to DTV hero, some of his later films have attempted to recreate elements of the more successful ones. He has also made some unwatchable toilet films Against the Dark, for example, is a vampire toilet film. Still, though, I love these films. I love that I can spot the same elements. I love that he always plays a tough guy with a secretive military background. Romance Films The Mystical Laws ' title='Romance Films The Mystical Laws ' />All episodes from Through the Wormhole series gathered in one place. Hosted by Morgan Freeman, Through the Wormhole will explore the deepest mysteries of. Literature A body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their. I love it when he goes an entire film without getting hit. I love it when he becomes ultraviolent. I love it when he goes to a strip club so, so often. Romance Films The Mystical Laws ' title='Romance Films The Mystical Laws ' />Matt counts down the best 25 films starring Steven Seagal. Warner Bros. Filmography. Join IMDb Pro for more details This is a list of genres of literature and entertainment, excluding genres in the visual arts. Genre is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art. The films listed below have been cited by a variety of notable critics in varying media sources as being among the worst films ever made. Examples of such sources. I love it when he wrecks a convenience store. His movies are fun to watch and I take legitimate pleasure from watching them. Regarding how the list was compiled, Ive included films with Steven Seagal as the star but not those in which he plays a supporting role. Theres an argument for doing it either way, but Ive chosen to do it this way. Thats why youll not see Machete, Executive Decision and the like. Ive ranked films here based on how much I like them. That might not sound very scientific, but if Steven Seagal films have taught me anything its to disregard science and smash some dudes in the groin. Ive tried to explain what happens in each film that makes me dig it or why its higher up or lower down the list than you might expect. Out for a Kill. Out for revenge. Out for payback.  Steven Seagal IS Professor Robert Burns, an archaeologist with a shady past. Hes a cool character who maintains his poise despite being falsely imprisoned and disrespected in front of his beloved wife in a nice restaurant. But gangs full of wanker mobsters, deviously battling over international drug distribution and foolishly using Seagal as a pawn, go too far when they explode his home and sleeping wife. Now, nothing will satisfy him but brutal, violent vengeance. Steven Seagal IS Out for a Kill. Now, youll absolutely have some fun with Out for a Kill, but its a mess. In fact, I think this is the most cynical inclusion on this list, because to really enjoy it youll have to do a fair amount of snickering. The special effects are dreadful bad ideas that look cheap and unconvincing. The story follows as though the script was tossed into the air and the pages put back together in the wrong order. Fortunately, the tone is light and the silliness passes as good fun. There are a couple of great fight scenes, too. My favourite part of the film sees Seagal fighting a guy who bizarrely develops the ability to crawl along walls, mid brawl. Obviously, Seagal smashes him to pieces regardless. We also get lots of scenes set in strip club, because of course, and plenty of Seagal shooting. Shadow Man. Either youre with him or youre dead Steven Seagal IS Jack Foster, a loving father and dangerous martial artist. When his beloved offspring is kidnapped upon arrival at their holiday destination, Foster is forced to fight to get her back. Who does he have to fightWell, it seems no one can be trusted. The police, the CIA, local drug dealers, gangsters, his own father in law. So he just fights the lot of them. Hes being used as a pawn by someone, although hes not sure who, in a scheme involving a dangerous chemical weapon. All these trout sniffing scumbags are out to get Foster, but while someone has his daughter, hes out to get them first. Theyd all do well to stay in the light when Steven Seagal is a. Shadow Man. Shadow Man has some problems. It has too many characters and no clearly defined big bad. The story doesnt really make sense. The script insists that every third line of dialogue Seagal speaks is I just want to find my daughter. Its too slow and we get a really clear look at Seagals doubles on occasion. Theres some fun stuff in there too, though. Seagal shoots a helicopter out of the sky, squashes a mans eyes and turns a room full of junk into a slaughter emporium. Youre most likely to remember this one for its botched eroticism, with a wonderfully gratuitous nude scene at the beginning and a couple of women just hanging out, having an uncomfortable smooch in a club toilet. Exit Wounds. What can two men do against a gang of crooked cops Whatever it takes. Steven Seagal IS Orin Boyd, a cop who gets results any way he can, much to the annoyance of the suits back at the precinct. Surrounded by cops who hes reluctant to trust and he may just be onto something here, Orin will have his work cut out for him if he wants to expose the villainous bogwads behind a high profile assassination attempt. But in finding out how wide this conspiracy spreads, Boyd may have found an unlikely ally in Latrell, a gangster to whom, much like a Transformer, there is more than meets the eye. Orin and Latrell must save the day and make the bad guys leak blood and regret through their newly inflicted. Exit Wounds yeah, I know, but you try using Exit Wounds as the end of one of these things and then get back to me with any complaints. Based on your having actually heard of it, you may have expected to see Exit Wounds further up the rankings than this. Problem is, Exit Wounds really isnt very good. It has a much bigger budget than most of the other films at this end of the list, but it pisses it away with clumsy set pieces, a terrible score I dont hate rap music but I strongly dislike shitty rap music and a plot thats not as clever as, a it thinks it is, or b a henchman that Steven Seagal has beaten for several days. Its just a very dull film. It demands inclusion in this list, though, due to it featuring the highest budget and best Seagal shooting a helicopter out of the sky. The Keeper. Steven Seagal IS Roland Sallinger, a former cop just recovered from a violent betrayal by his former partner who Roland was able to shoot to death from his hospital bed, because sometimes corrupt cops are also death courting dimwits. He takes a job watching over a rich friends daughter, only to find that her pro boxer boyfriend and his gangster friends have landed the girl in serious danger. He also cant help but feel that her father isnt telling him everything. Shes kidnapped by moronic masochistic mobsters, who get more than just a ransom delivered to them by. The Keeper. The Keeper is all right. A low budget straight to video action film, it keeps things simple. Structurally its a little wacky, with a dull first act that almost serves as a mini movie unrelated to the rest of the film. The Keeper benefits from having plenty of action, even if it is more a display of Seagals legendary skills as a marksman than a celebration of his face flattening fist fighting abilities. An unremarkable film that does the job, this ones worth checking out when you next stumble across it on TV. The Foreigner Black Dawn. Its always darkest before dawn. Steven Seagal IS Jonathan Cold. Again. The sequel to The Foreigner a film that you wont find placed on this list because of how good it isnt finds Cold up to his old tricks again. A former CIA operative now working as a private contractor, Cold breaks a weapons dealer out of jail, only to find himself in the midst of a battle for a plutonium infused bomb. Everyone seems to want the bloody thing and theyre all willing to kill to get it. Pricks. If Cold cant stop each different faction of villainous bum nuggets then all of California could be facing a. Black Dawn. Black Dawn is a significant improvement over The Foreigner. One of its strongest assets is its pace, which stops you asking questions, such as why is this happening and what. Britannica. com. Literature, a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter. For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical regions, see such articles as African literature African theatre Oceanic literature Western literature Central Asian arts South Asian arts and Southeast Asian arts. Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject e. Arabic literature, Celtic literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese literature, and biblical literature. Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 1. 1th edition of Merriam Websters Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest. The 1. Walter Pater referred to the matter of imaginative or artistic literature as a transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms. But such definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, a letter of the alphabet, literature is first and foremost humankinds entire body of writing after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people then it is individual pieces of writing. But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of oral literature or the literature of preliterate peoples. The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page they are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond mere pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values. The Editors of Encyclopdia Britannica. The scope of literature. Literature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed in wordseven when organized and written downis counted as literature. Those writings that are primarily informativetechnical, scholarly, journalisticwould be excluded from the rank of literature by most, though not all, critics. Certain forms of writing, however, are universally regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Individual attempts within these forms are said to succeed if they possess something called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The nature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific exposition might be of great literary value and a pedestrian poem of none at all. The purest or, at least, the most intense literary form is the lyric poem, and after it comes elegiac, epic, dramatic, narrative, and expository verse. Most theories of literary criticism base themselves on an analysis of poetry, because the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not called poetry at all but verse. Many novelscertainly all the worlds great novelsare literature, but there are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered literature although the Chinese, possessors of one of the worlds greatest dramatic traditions, consider their plays, with few exceptions, to possess no literary merit whatsoever. Test Your Knowledge. Another Hip Hop Quiz. The Greeks thought of history as one of the seven arts, inspired by a goddess, the muse Clio. All of the worlds classic surveys of history can stand as noble examples of the art of literature, but most historical works and studies today are not written primarily with literary excellence in mind, though they may possess it, as it were, by accident. The essay was once written deliberately as a piece of literature its subject matter was of comparatively minor importance. Today most essays are written as expository, informative journalism, although there are still essayists in the great tradition who think of themselves as artists. Now, as in the past, some of the greatest essayists are critics of literature, drama, and the arts. Some personal documents autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and letters rank among the worlds greatest literature. Some examples of this biographical literature were written with posterity in mind, others with no thought of their being read by anyone but the writer. Some are in a highly polished literary style others, couched in a privately evolved language, win their standing as literature because of their cogency, insight, depth, and scope. Many works of philosophy are classed as literature. The Dialogues of Plato 4th century bc are written with great narrative skill and in the finest prose the Meditations of the 2nd century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are a collection of apparently random thoughts, and the Greek in which they are written is eccentric. Yet both are classed as literature, while the speculations of other philosophers, ancient and modern, are not. Certain scientific works endure as literature long after their scientific content has become outdated. This is particularly true of books of natural history, where the element of personal observation is of special importance. An excellent example is Gilbert Whites. Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne 1. Oratory, the art of persuasion, was long considered a great literary art. The oratory of the American Indian, for instance, is famous, while in Classical Greece, Polymnia was the muse sacred to poetry and oratory. Waste Wood And Powder Sausage Movie Dvd Quality. Romes great orator Cicero was to have a decisive influence on the development of English prose style. Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address is known to every American schoolchild. Today, however, oratory is more usually thought of as a craft than as an art. Most critics would not admit advertising copywriting, purely commercial fiction, or cinema and television scripts as accepted forms of literary expression, although others would hotly dispute their exclusion. The test in individual cases would seem to be one of enduring satisfaction and, of course, truth. Indeed, it becomes more and more difficult to categorize literature, for in modern civilization words are everywhere. Man is subject to a continuous flood of communication. Most of it is fugitive, but here and therein high level journalism, in television, in the cinema, in commercial fiction, in westerns and detective stories, and in plain, expository prosesome writing, almost by accident, achieves an aesthetic satisfaction, a depth and relevance that entitle it to stand with other examples of the art of literature. Literary composition. Britannica Lists Quizzes. Critical theories. Western. If the early Egyptians or Sumerians had critical theories about the writing of literature, these have not survived. From the time of Classical Greece until the present day, however, Western criticism has been dominated by two opposing theories of the literary art, which might conveniently be called the expressive and constructive theories of composition. The Greek philosopher and scholar Aristotle is the first great representative of the constructive school of thought. His Poetics the surviving fragment of which is limited to an analysis of tragedy and epic poetry has sometimes been dismissed as a recipe book for the writing of potboilers.