{"id":4065,"date":"2007-07-09T14:38:28","date_gmt":"2007-07-09T21:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/07\/09\/live-free-or-die-hard\/"},"modified":"2019-12-20T14:45:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T22:45:02","slug":"live-free-or-die-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/07\/09\/live-free-or-die-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Free or Die Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:5901,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com\\\/title\\\/tt0337978&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20090323215655\\\/http:\\\/\\\/us.imdb.com:80\\\/title\\\/tt0337978\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 15:50:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 15:50:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>In short: as far as summer blockbuster entertainment goes, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/title\/tt0337978\/\" title=\"IMDB: Live Free or Die Hard\">Live Free or Die Hard<\/a><\/em> was everything that <em><a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/07\/06\/transformers\/\" title=\"Eclecticism: Transformers\">Transformers<\/a><\/em> should have been. Big, loud, funny, and &#8212; and this is a key point &#8212; <em>believable<\/em> in its implausibility. I&#8217;m honestly not sure how exactly they do it (though I&#8217;ve got a few guesses, and right at the top of the list are three things: decent screenwriting, decent direction, and a reliance on good old-fashioned physical stuntwork instead of a constant barrage of CGI), but no matter how silly the stunts get&#8230;and they do get silly&#8230;<em>LFoDH<\/em> manages to sell them and keep them just believable enough to hold onto the audience.<\/p>\n<p>Prairie and I both came out of <em>LFoDH<\/em> with big grins, having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. This one&#8217;s worth seeing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In short: as far as summer blockbuster entertainment goes, _Live Free or Die Hard_ was everything that _Transformers_ should have been. Big, loud, funny, and &#8212; and this is a key point &#8212; _believable_ in its implausibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[2262,23,3293],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-die-hard","tag-film","tag-live-free-or-die-hard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}