"KEEP BUSTIN'."

The State of Affairs in Badass Cinema, first week of April 2010

explosionsThere seems to be alot of trailers and announcements and shit related to the sorts of pictures we’re interested in around here, so I figured I’d round them up so we can discuss them. Also, it is always exciting to have a picture of a bunch of cars exploding.

Diesel-related Developments

According to a Collider interview with producer Neal H. Moritz about the upcoming fifth FAST AND FURIOUS movie (once again teaming Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and director Justin Lin) “the goal is to bring touchstone characters from each of the movies back.” I suspect this means I’ll get my wish of Lucas Black from TOKYO DRIFT at least making a cameo. After all, Han is dead, and Sonny Chiba doesn’t drive. And hell, I hope they throw in a Tyrese from 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS. Why not?

The same interview tells us that Lin is still set to direct a remake of HIGHLANDER after the FURIOUS movie. And they said there could only be one. So naive.

In other Dieselnews, it looks like he really is gonna complete the Furious/Riddick/xXx trifecta, returning for xXx 3: WE WILL EXPLAIN WHAT THE DEAL WAS WITH THAT DVD EXTRA WHERE IT SHOWED XANDER CAGE DYING which has moved to Paramount. Rob Cohen will be directing again which is a little disappointing because honestly I think the first one is pretty boring and I was hoping someone could inject some energy into it like Justin Lin did with TOKYO DRIFT. But Cohen has done some pretty funny crappy movies, and this one will be in (this is gonna fuckin blow your mind [you’ll never guess what I’m about to say {please nobody shit your pants}]) 3-D!

It’s also important to remember that before Diesel and Cohen decided to lend the series to Ice Cube for a while Cohen had claimed part 2 was gonna be an anti-Bush movie and part of it would have Vin Diesel riding a mountain bike up the capital dome. So hopefully he will come up with some equally ridiculous shit for this one. May I suggest some of those Yetis from TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR?

That Deadline article says of the plot, “Xander Cage (Diesel) is left for dead, but returns to execute a very difficult assignment that only he can pull off.” It also says that Sam Jackson will return as Augustus Gibbons, the burnt-faced guru of the xXx program, and one of the most beloved cinematic characters of all time, not counting all the other characters.

Real Good Martial Arts Movie Coming to U.S.

Kungfucinema.com reports  that Well Go USA purchased the rights to release IP MAN and IP MAN 2 in North America. So if you haven’t gotten ahold of an import yet they’ll be bringing it to you like they have a bunch of the Shaw Brothers movies. Part 2 hasn’t come out yet in Asia, but the first one won the Hong Kong equivalent of the best picture Oscar. I think it’s one of the best martial arts movies of recent years, and pretty much everyone I recommend it to ends up loving it.

A Watchable Movie Starring The Rock?

I mentioned this one before but to give everyone some hope for our man Dwayne Johnson, I wanted to spotlight the movie he’s working on now to be released in November. It’s called FASTER and it uses a classic straightahead action movie topic: ex-con out to avenge his brother’s death after they were doublecrossed in a heist. I’m not sure who the villains are, but they got Billy Bob Thornton and Carla Gugino as the cops chasing after him.

still_fasterIt’s written by the Gayton brothers (Joe Gayton wrote UNCOMMON VALOR and THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL) and the director is George Tillman Jr. He doesn’t have a history in action, but his last movie was the Biggie Smalls bio NOTORIOUS which was better than I expected and pretty gritty. The Rock told MTV “[‘Faster’ is] like a mix between ‘The Good, the Bad & the Ugly’ [and] ‘Bullitt.’ It has an old-school texture to it where no one has names. There’s the Driver, the Killer, the Cop, the Evangelist, the Woman,”

And now an alphabetical roundup of recent action related trailers.

A-TEAM trailer #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYvhqct2FMQ

I know Joe Carnahan is a mixed bag, and the TV show was stupid, but I still got a soft spot for these characters and this type of fugitive-super-team concept. I really like how much they made the characters look and act like the ones from the TV show. In fact, I’m pretty sure they grew Bradley Cooper out of Dirk Benedict’s DNA (hopefully before he got infected by the snake virus or whatever in SSSSSSSSS!!!)

THE EXPENDABLES trailer

Speaking of super-teams, this is obviously the action movie event of next summer, even if it comes out in August. This is much better than the rough commercial reels that got out earlier – it seems more serious, it’s got the corny narrator, and it emphasizes the amazing cast list like it should. I wish they hadn’t shown the Bruce and Arnold cameo, but I guess that’s one way to sell the movie. Also I could use more Dolph.

From what I can see this movie has really evolved from the script that I read way back when, and that’s a good thing. It was fairly solid back then but could use some sprucing up, which they seem to have done. I’m starting to wonder if Mickey Rourke will be in it more than I expected.

KNIGHT AND DAY trailer #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMrN0DO3D4s

I don’t know about this one but it’s directed by James Mangold (WALK THE LINE) who seems like a pretty smart guy. And Tom Cruise is wise to go more comedic and play off his reputation as a nutball.

SALT trailer #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCgFi-Cvt50

Speaking of Tom Cruise, I think this was originally planned as a vehicle for him. It’s directed by Phillip Noyce (DEAD CALM, BLIND FURY) and written by Kurt Wimmer (ONE TOUGH BASTARD) and Brian Helgeland (PAYBACK) and as you can see it’s got Redbelt in there. I think they’re kind of selling this as a female BOURNE, but the first trailer looked more like a white U.S. MARSHALS. Anyway, could go either way, but I like the idea of Angelina Jolie as an asskicker on the run, and I still keep hoping Helgeland will be great again. I’ll give it a shot while I’m waiting for Soderbergh’s KNOCKOUT.

I wonder who plays Pepa, though.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 6:16 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

53 Responses to “The State of Affairs in Badass Cinema, first week of April 2010”

  1. The Knight and Day trailer leaves me mixed – the action looks well staged and Cruise playing up the crazy for laughs is great. But I hate Cameron Diaz and i’m not sure I can sit through another “oh it turns out my boyfriend/husband/male love interest is a spy/killer” so the woman spends most of the film screaming and looking confused and shit when all the violence starts, it’s not funny, it just makes me cringe, and comes across as a bit misogynistic.

    Salt could be a nice little thriller, it’s a shame that we have so few decent female action films and female action stars. Jolie and Jovovich are the only two that really seem commited to maintaining some badass female action, but I don’t think any of the action films they’ve been in have been particularly good, crap to mediocre mostly.

  2. “but the first trailer looked more like a white U.S. MARSHALS.”
    wasn’t U.S. MARSHALS a white U.S. MARSHALS? I mean, the title characters were played most notably by Tommy Lee Jones, Joey Pantoliano, and Robert Downey Jr. Is Wesley Snipes just somehow black enough to overwhelm all that or something?
    The disappointing thing for me about Salt is that when it was a Tom Cruise Movie, it was called EDWIN A. SALT. Now it’s just SALT with the name change, even though they could have just remove a space and period to make it…EDWINA SALT. But I guess the recession forced cutbacks in lettering, huh? Probably also explains FAST AND FURIOUS.
    Looking forward to Expendables a lot and A Team looks fun. Add The Expendables, and it looks like a good year for underdog mercenary team movies.

  3. Vern – the only thing that really makes me too cautious on SALT is that the last time Jolie worked with director Phillip Noyce was THE BONE COLLECTOR.

    Which was a vanilla waffer bland piece of shit.

  4. what about undisputed 3? that should show up sometime in 2010.

    or pretty much anything mjw does with the exception of anything to do with tyler perry.

  5. KNIGHT AND DAY: I’ll give that movie plenty of slack for two reasons (1) Peter Sarsgaard has a really good track record of picking movie and (2) James Mangold is a filmmaker of interest to me thanks to 3:10 to Yuma, one of my personal favorite action movies of the last couple years. So a goofy spy movie? Sure why not. Also, you gotta respect the ballsiness of a title that unabashedly cornball in this day and age.

    EXPENDABLES: I think it looks really cool, I’m looking forward to it, my one beef with the trailer: Why no Terry Crews name card? Dude’s all over the trailer, saying funny lines, doling out lead sandwiches, but he can’t get his name in the trailer? BS on that. Otherwise, I’m pumped.

    SALT: I think it looks pretty fun, but I feel like it’s one of those movies that, having seen the trailer, as soon as the movie starts going, the twists and plot will be figure-outable in minutes.

    A-TEAM: Never saw the show. Don’t really care. I actually really dig Smokin’ Aces, more then most people I guess, so I’m happy to see the dude put some of that crazy energy in a big movie with helicoptors and planes and more then one location. Carnahan is more choosy with his projects then most ‘serious’ directors, so when he finally nuts up and rolls film on something, I think it is worth paying attention. It’s usually at least interesting.

    Fuck this is a long post. I really like these once a month-or-so little Badass checkpoints. Good times.

  6. Brendan – Yeah I have a fondness for Mangold too. I suppose what I like most about him, besides his Peter Hyams-esque daringness to explore different genres pass or fail, is that he usually gets the best work out of his actors regardless if its a chick flick like KATE & LEOPOLD or a (silly) murder mystery like IDENTITY.

    Everybody acts like it’s an important Oscar movie or something. Hell Reese Witherspoon won one because of Mangold. Plus somebody in Hollywood has to give Robert Patrick some non-nerd genre dramatic jobs once in a while.

    Vern – what no thoughts on THE LOSERS?

  7. i still really think they dropped the ball big time by not calling the second xXx movie xxXXxx (SEXTUPLE X). i actually really enjoyed the first one. like another rob cohen movie, STEALTH, which i know you liked vern, it seemed to know exactly how retarded it was, and it rode the line between ridiculous and fun perfectly. and i think it was the most perfect showcase for vin diesel’s weird and sometimes goofy charisma (i love his delivery on the line “i really am a good dancer”). in fact, i actually saw the movie twice in the theater. the second movie i don’t care for so much, as it skewed a little bit too much on the ridiculous and retarded side. so, anyway, i am optimistic about the third one. though it is mildly (but only mildly) sad to see diesel sort of returning with his tail between his legs to the movie series’ that made him big and that he turned his back on because he failed to find much success in other pictures.

    i am trying hard these days to resist spoiling myself for movies i am looking forward to, so i have avoided all trailers for THE EXPENDABLES. i watched the A-TEAM trailer with the sound off just cuz i wanted to see what the characters looked like. but was that patrick wilson in the trailer, or were my eyes deceiving me? i didn’t realize he was in it.

  8. Jareth Cutestory

    April 3rd, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    I’m looking forward to KICK ASS, but for some reason I feel I need to have an excuse in case I get dirty looks from the ticket taker. I’ll have to say I’m with the media or something.

  9. Jareth – “Ma’am, I want to Kick Ass.”

    There, what’s so hard about that?

  10. buying tickets for john waters’ PECKER back in the day was fun. the ticket seller didn’t seem amused though (i’m sure he was sick of it).

  11. Jareth Cutestory

    April 3rd, 2010 at 11:34 pm

    Good advice, RRA. I’m still going to wear a hat and a fake beard though.

    Virgin Gary: Way back in the 1980s Stephen Frears did a film called SAMMY & ROSIE GET LAID. I think he titled that one just to make theater employees and patrons feel awkward.

  12. oh shit the A-Team looks more like True Lies 2

  13. Of course was the A-Team series stupid, but it was the good kind of stupidity, where the writers and actors knew it and had fun with it.
    (Too bad it came out in the 80’s, where you weren’t allowed to surprise the audiences and had to repeat a basic story structure in every episode. But apart from that it was fun!)

  14. Oh, and in my opinion Knight & Day looks more like True Lies 2.

  15. I’d love to see Lucas Black back in Fast & Furious movie, so I hope that happens.
    Also like the sound of badass Rock flick. I don’t know what he was thinking the last few years.
    GoodBadGroovy: No love for Mr. & Mrs. Smith? I really enjoyed Jolie in that, and thought it was better than crap to mediocre.
    And I don’t know what all this talk about A-Team being a stupid show is about, I thought it was brilliant when I was 10. I could never decide who I wanted to be more, B.A. Barracus Mad Dog Murdoch. Some of my happiest TV watching experiences of late have been seeing the Snickers ads with Mr. T in them.
    More or less looking forward to all the trailer films featured, with most hope and love for Expendables.

  16. SDAL – You’re right, I really like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I guess if I’m going to be picky I wouldn’t count it in what I’m talking about as it’s not a “female action film”, the film doesn’t rest solely on Jolie’s shoulders. But it’s definitely the best action film she’s been in up to now.

  17. I thought xXx was pretty bland and find Rob Cohen in general to be a very bland director

    also, I can’t wait to say “one adult for Kick Ass!” at the theater

    btw if Lucas Black returns for the next fast and Furious he should have Karl Childers as his car mechanic

  18. Man, I hated Mr. and Mrs. Smith…I think that movie is way creepier and more morally depraved than anything the torture porn genre has ever produced; in fact, you could argue that the Hostel movies are a satire (or at least an examination) of precisely the kind homicidal narcissism that Mr. and Mrs. Smith is selling. I’m not saying anybody who enjoys this movie is evil or anything. I’m just saying that its lack of perspective on its two main characters – its failure to realize that Mr. and Mrs. Smith are both vile self-absorbed creeps – made me sick to my stomach.

    Identity – In its unpretentious B movie kind of way, Identity was, for me, way more successful at accomplishing what it set out to do than Scorsese’s Shutter Island (which I also liked).

    xXx – Whoever got the idea to cast Asia Argento opposite Vin Diesel is a genius. For some reason this movie reminds me a lot of those Dino De Laurentiis super-productions that used to come out during the 80’s. It’s kind of enjoyable and goofy in the same way. (Maybe they should have let Lorenzo Semple Junior do a draft of the script).

  19. I worked on Knight And Day (back when it was called Wichita) as a crew member. We trashed many, many SUVs, live on location, for real, old-school no CGI slam-bang stuntwork. It was awesome.

    I also read the shooting script and it’s got an interesting retro feel. It’s like an 80’s action comedy, really: it’s got a very strong “Midnight Run” vibe. In fact, it reminds me of the almost forgotten “Bird On A Wire”…

  20. WS – I understand where you’re coming from, the only mention of “do you have trouble killing people?” is pretty much just used for a joke, and they are really vague on who they kill, so we could perhaps imply that it’s ok they just kill “bad” people, but hell they could be assassins for hire with no morals. And for me that’s what I like, I like the idea that they are killers, and a bit fucked up, yet it’s presented in this fairly comic tone. By trying to avoid the whole issue to make it more “family friendly” they end up making me think about it more.

    As for Kick-Ass I saw it last week (I’m in the UK) and I’ll be interested to see what the rest of you guys think. It was very good, not the “holy shit best film evar” a lot of critics are throwing at it. It’s constantly trying to keep a balance between “this is awesome/funny/fucked up”. It’s a difficult tone to balance and they don’t always manage it, sometimes it feels like it misses out a chance highlight how fucked up the idea of big daddy training his daughter to kill people is. Though perhaps it depends on the audience you’re with, there were a bunch of 15 year old boys laughing their ass off at any moment of violence in the film, which made me feel kinda …weird. In many ways I think it tries to do what Watchmen did – the violence is meant to leave a bad taste in your mouth, yet at the same time it’s really fucking awesome and well choreographed. Watching an action film style finale but with an 11 year old girl as the protaganist is all kinds of awesome/bizarre/fucked up at the same time. But I get the feeling a lot of people watching it are just going to be polarised into “it was so violent and the 11 year old girl swore lots that’s awesome! OR depraved!”.

    The pacing is a bit off at the start, it feels like it’s missing an action sequence somewhere to break it up more, it takes a bit of time to set all the pieces in motion, there’s 4 central characters and 3 storylines to set up, but once it gets going it’s great. Though I would have liked more time spent with McLovin’s character, he’s suprisingly decent and probably has the most interesting story arc. Mark Strong cements himself as the new go to guy for villians, he’s fantastic, and also shows off some martial arts skills that make me think he needs to star in Ninj*2.

    Nic Cage plays it fairly low key, a part from a couple of moment of un-Caged mega acting – 1. Whilst dressed up as big daddy he puts on an Adam West Batman voice. Lots of awkward pauses and exageration of the wrong words, I loved it because it’s so distracting, so obviously un-film speak that it could have only been from Cage. 2. This ones a spoiler so I won’t reveal it, but it involves Hitgirl taking on a lot of guys, strobe lighting, fire and Cage shouting completely incoherently.

    The music seems to take a cue from Tarintino – it’s all borrowed music, either pieces of other film’s scores, or songs.

  21. SDAL – The Rock was thinking of preserving his Hollywood career without prematurely going to DTV. Because how many stars been kicked out of theatres for DTV, to come back? Only one off my mind is Wesley Snipes in that BROOKLYN’S FINEST, but that isn’t necessarily a return for good for Mr. Blade.

  22. I enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Smith because it had some good action, I didn’t really think too deeply about the implications of them being assassins, guess I’m just a simpleton

  23. Griff – heh, I enjoyed M&MS for the same reasons, I think Doug Liman is a decent action director, the film is well paced, has some laughs and has two good central performances. It’s just also kinda interesting and weird that it’s fairly sanitised, even though dealing with morally ambiguous characters.

  24. “They’re the best, and they specialize in the ridiculous” should be on the poster.

  25. GBG – JUMPER was a piece of shit though.

  26. Griff:

    Do you think that you’re more content than non-simpleton types who worry about morality and subtext and laws of physics and story and shit like that?

    I ask in all seriousness, without rancor. It’s gotta be a nice way to live.

    I had an endoscopy once, and they gave me Demerol. It was such a warm, fuzzy, “all-is-well” feeling…is it like that?

  27. Sadly, I rarely get around to being excited about upcoming movies anymore. They’re announced, time flies, I watch’em, they’re mediocre. It happens too often now and it pretty much blows. The last time I cheered at a movie was during ANVIL! – THE STORY OF ANVIL.

    But somehow THE EXPENDABLES trailer really, really works for me. I’m actually happy here, guys! Have to curb the ol’ enthusiasm a bit, just to be safe, but I think it’s genuinely badass (if you know what I mean). I have to agree on wanting more Dolph, after his fantastic turn in UNIVERSAL SOLDIER 3 (aka REGENERATION), but I think everybody seems pretty well utilized and the scene with Willis Stallone-Schwarzenegger is like a dream come true. THE dream, actually. The one we’ve been talking about for almost 20 years.
    Sure, we’ve probably seen all of the screen time they have together in the trailer already, but for me, it fuckin’ WORKS. Just listen to their voices! After so many soulless, glossy, interchangeable action movies, after so many years, somehow these guys’ personas are still intact! Somehow, it’s not just a selfconscious parody! AND it’s gonna be R-rated! PLUS we get Lundgren, Rourke, Li, Roberts, etc…? I…I think I’m genuinely excited…Krom bless you, Mr. Stallone, Krom bless you.

  28. Yeah we all know more Fast & Furious movies are coming and that makes me incredibly happy.

    But the best fucking news in action cinema is that they found the one thing to actually make me care about a Danny Craig Bond movie (other than just fucking bringing back Pierce Brosnan already). If they actually get Rachel Weisz as the villain like the tabloids are speculating this has serious potential as long as the two get a good brutal fight at the end. None of this pussyfooting shit where you leave the villain to die in a building as it explodes. Craig has to kill Weisz himself with his hands.

  29. Hey WS, you can call me evil, I don’t mind.
    A question, did you think they were vile because they were self-absorbed, or because they were assassins? I’m assuming it’s because they were self-absorbed, not because they were assassins, otherwise what the hang are you watching that film for?
    I see your point, but I think they went on enough of a superficial character journey to hang an action film on, and Jolie is smokin’ hot, so I really have no complaints about it.
    RRA-Maybe so, but I guess I think he could’ve tried to take control of his career a bit more, and if he wasn’t getting the scripts, he could’ve tried to produce a quality action film befitting someone of his potential. I guess the realities of financing and distribution seem to make this difficult though, but hopefully this Faster movie will be the turnaround he needs.

  30. Wow. The Expendables trailer blew me away. I’m a big Stat fan and I look at him as one of the main reasons that action films are getting finance and mainstream again. You know after Rambo 4 Stallone is going to go hardcore so this should be a real treat. Crewe should have got a billing so I’m agreed on that. It’s to bad Seagal fell out with (one of) the producers as that really would have made it all complete. Perhaps they shouldn’t have showen the cameos but I sure got the goosebumps!!

    Look forward to another Furious film although I actually thought the last one was the weakest despite getting all the cast back. Tokoyo Drift perhaps over achieved because I didn’t expect it to be that good a movie and well, it was cracking entertainment!

  31. Oh and I’m looking forward to the new Rock movie. I’m I the only one who thinks that The Scorpion King was better than the actual Mummy films?

  32. As a religious watcher of The A Team, I’m really excited about the movie. They clearly kept the right amount of ridiculousness while being serious enough to be an entertaining action picture. Personally its the one I’m most excited about this summer. However, this definitely does feel like the year of the Action Film though. All of those films mentioned all look to have good action sequences and none of it looks really all that Greengrassed.

  33. “Also I could use more Dolph.”

    OLEG LIVES!

  34. Maybe I’m just wildly creative and inventive, but I actually thought _Mr. & Mrs. Smith_ rang pretty hard on the idea that these are two horribly self-absorbed people whose marriage is failing because of their horrible self-absorption. Oh and they happen to be (two different kinds of) world-class assassins. Once they get past telling each other the truth about themselves (wait–maybe THIS was True Lies 2??) they have to make a choice about whether to continue being so self-absorbed or whether to start really being for each other. (Doubtless the make-up sex helped a lot with that, but still… {wry g})

    Thus the visual/thematic joke about the nice evangelical Christian couple next door, and how their marriage is so great. The joke isn’t that this couple is faking it or whatever (which would be the cynical route to go); the joke is that Mr. and Mrs. Smith start putting that cooperation together in their own marriage (despite the lack of theological grounding), and don’t realize that they’re doing just what they secretly and cynically despised (and maybe envied) the other couple for being: a married couple who truly do love each other.

    (The joke may also be that God approves of this even though the Smiths never think of it in those terms. The little cross cheerfully waving around in the foreground while they escape from assailants in the Christian couple’s minivan is too obvious not to be intentional, and more than once they comment on how they really shouldn’t be surviving all this. It isn’t only because they’re now cooperating and so much unexpectedly stronger than they once were apart; it’s also because the Director is intervening in their favor. {s!})

  35. Yup, get Tyrese back please. And also, blend Highlander and Fast and Furious into some sort of time travel drag race film, preferably directed by David Cronenberg.

  36. Stuntcock
    from the zone,
    http://i42.tinypic.com/2dqub8g.jpg
    http://i43.tinypic.com/24opszk.jpg
    and finally, http://tinyurl.com/yfchspl fast and furry: pangea drift.
    vin riding a sabretooth tiger.

  37. I think it was Roger Ebert who said that “it’s not so much what a movie is about, but how it’s about it”. So, there probably is a really good dark comedy to be made from the plot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, maybe something like a modern version of John Huston’s Prizzi’s Honor.

    I guess my problem with it is…

    Movies about assassins have typically portrayed them as professionally-detached individuals who focus on doing “the job”; as kind of modern day samurais. To me, John and Jane Smith are not that. They’re two yuppie mutherfuckers who get off on killing people; killing gives them a boner. To steal another line from Ebert (in his review of Bad Boys 2) they’re egotistical monsters, concerned only with their power, their one-liners, their weapons, their cars, their desires”. Now, if you’re going to make a movie about those characters and not only fail to have some perspective on who they are, but actually glamorize them? I have to say “No thanks.” To me, it’s almost like if “American Psycho” had tried to portray Patrick Bateman as cool and awesome.

    So, that was my problem with it. I think the people who like it probably see it as an entertaining comic book type movie, and that’s fine. (It doesn’t make anybody a “simpleton” or anything). It’s just that, after having to deal in my own life with so many conceited, spoiled self-entitled narcissistic assholes, to see that shit celebrated in movie form made me want to puke.

  38. Sabre, that’s an interesting read…

    But, to me, it was more like, “Oh, you’re an asshole to? Great, let’s be assholes together!”

    I didn’t think the fact that they’d learned to cooperate and to have good marriage made them any less monstrous.

    Ahhhh, Fuck it…some movies are just not for me.

  39. Anyone seen Kick Ass yet? Thoughts? I loved the first hour, but it lost me towards the end. (Keeping things vague here to avoid any accidental spoilers)

  40. Really looking forward to The Losers. That was one fun comic series from Vertigo that was designed from the ground up to be filmed, or so it seemed.

  41. Pike Bishop – Yeah WB, if Hollywood Deadline is right, really think they have a sleeper hit with THE LOSERS. Hell they briefly had planned to open it in June, in a (failed) attempt to force Fox to move A-TEAM to another weekend.

  42. If they can pull off the comic, they’ve got a franchise on their hands. IF. I’m optimistic from the trailers – the tone seems right, the casting is pretty damn straight on, and there are several visuals lifted directly from the book – but things can always go horribly wrong. It looks like the movie is the first trade paperback, Ante Up, with a few details from the later collections. They could get three to four movies out of this story easily.

  43. Pike Bishop – Oh very much, though this begs another question: How many franchises, with the same leads in tow, have gone on to 4 movies at the least? Now I don’t mean some leads stay but others get dropped or recasted. I mean the line-up stayed consistent film to film.

    STAR TREK comes to mind, but what else?

    BTW, just imagine if we had indeed gotten that Eddie Murphy STAR TREK IV in the mid 1980s. That came very close to happening.

  44. Sure, and that’s even tougher now that Chris Evans is playing the guy who points to the A on his forehead and says, “Quit? This don’t stand for France, Boy.” Paraphrasing of course.

    There are points that I’m sure will be condensed to go for three movies if it really takes off, and that’s cool.

    As to the question, none that I can think of. You could make a point for Lethal Weapon, but by part four they’d added so many characters it was like Circus of the Stars without the intrigue of “what if someone gets eaten by a lion” or the laughs. So I’m not sure if you can count that.

    Eddie could have just done Gumby. It would have been perfection.

  45. Pike buddy, I don’t think you have to worry much about CAPTAIN AMERICA. I smell a trainwreck right there this side of the surprisingly dull WOLVERINE.

  46. Yeah, I’m pretty much expecting that as well. But it does include Avengers and a buttload of spinoffs contractually. So unless it truly tanks and they recast (at a bit of a buyout, I’m sure), he’s on the hook for awhile.

  47. Yeah, I’ll watch THE LOSERS because I love that type of premise, but I’m not so sure about it. To me the trailer is not quite there. Looks like the kind of thing I like but isn’t blowing me away. I don’t really follow the conventional nerd wisdom on that one and that’s because I’ve seen the director’s previous work, which is I WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It actually is kind of enjoyable for what it is but didn’t give me the impression that the guy is the visionary and master craftsman that Chud and others seem to assume he is.

    I’m also heretical on the AVENGERS business. Moriarty and others seem to assume it’s a sure thing based on Iron Man being good. They seem to not care that Incredible Hulk was only okay, Captain America has an only passable director, nobody knows what the fuck is gonna happen with the magic fantasy hammer guy, they have not chosen a director, the screenwriter’s previous work is hit or miss, it’s not clear if there will be any chemistry between the cast or not, or if Edward Norton will want to do it (or if they’ll want him to do it, or which of the fans will want him to do it) and who knows how the fuck they’re gonna combine Iron Man with all that magic and what not.

    I mean it would be great if it worked out but the notoriously fickle nerds of the internet are foolish to be counting their eggs already. There are just way too many things waiting to step on those eggs.

    Also I still wish George Miller had done that Justice Team movie. And speaking of him, when is he gonna confirm if Bronson is playing Max or what the hell’s up with all that?

  48. Hell, I’m just hoping for a fun time at the movies. If it doesn’t live up, check out the books. They’re a lot of fun.

    Now if I can just find redneck-shutter-upper, I can go to the movies again.

  49. Is there a new trailer or something?

  50. HOLY FUCKING SHIT am I ever on biard fir Ip Man 2!

  51. Yeah, wait a second, wasn’t MACHETE supposed to come out this April? How come I haven’t seen any posters or trailers?

  52. I wouldn’t say THE BONE COLLECTOR is a piece of shit, but it is a banal vanilla version of SEVEN.

    The way i see it, there’s too few action movies where the protagonists are female. For some reason, it seems europeans are far more open about that kind of movies then the american cousins. Give the girls a chance!

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