Movies

Everyone knows The Wire was pretty much the greatest television show ever, right? If you haven’t seen it you should really stop reading this and go watch it. All five seasons worth.

Finished? Good. Now we can discuss. So now you know the first couple of seasons revolved around a drug kingpin named Avon Barksdale. Series creator David Simon loosely based that character (as well as his foot soldier Bodie) on a real Baltimore kingpin of the same name. Now there’s a documentary coming out about the real Avon Barksdale. It features the man himself, being interviewed by Wood Harris, who played him on TV. Check out the trailer:

Honestly, the trailer makes this look like it’s part bad documentary and part bad America’s Most Wanted recreations. But being a big fan of The Wire I think I have to check it out.

For more info head to Nah Right.

I would go on a long rant about how Hollywood needs to stop churning out craptastic adaptations of beloved old TV shows, but it’s late, I have a cold, and the NyQuil’s kicking in. So let’s just watch the ridiculous trailer for The A-Team and ponder how the hell anyone thought the guy that made the absolute disaster of a movie that was Smoking Aces could possibly be qualified to make a movie based on such a classic show:

BTW, I can’t decide if this is a trailer for The A-Team or a promo for the next batch of ridiculous movie myths they’ll try out on Mythbusters. “Hey Jaime, do you think it’s possible to survive a plane explosion by riding it out in a parachuting tank, then be able to shoot down planes with that tank?” “No Adam, that’s just fucking stupid. But we get to blow something up, so let’s try it!”

The A-Team smears poo all over a movie screen near you June 11th.

It seemed like Spider-Man 4 was on track for its scheduled May, 2011 release. Director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire were on board, and filming was set to start this month. Then there were script problems. Big ones. Like “director and studio can’t agree on a villain” big. So the filming date slipped back a bit. Then a bit more. Now Sony has decided to start over, scrapping the script, the director, and the entire cast. Ouch.

So instead of getting something that builds on the mediocre Spider-Man 3 apparently we’re going to get a complete reboot of the franchise. The script will be based on a script by James Vanderbuilt that, according to Sony’s press release, “focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.” They’ve also pushed back the release to 2012, so no new webs next year, spider fans.

Read more at SlashFilm.

So far, with what I’ve seen from Kick-Ass, I’d have to say it’s appropriately titled. The tale of a normal schlub turned would-be superhero, without any powers, looks quirky, exciting, and fun. There are two new trailers out for it. The first is fairly normal. The second is a red band, and it is FAR from normal. Check them out:

Red Band “Hit-Girl” trailer

Kick-Ass comes to theaters April 16th.

Sometimes an idea comes along and the only word you can use to describe it is “inspired”. Nic Cage as Everyone is a blog devoted to a very simple, but equally brilliant idea: photoshop Nic Cage into every role imaginable. Users contribute their unique visions of how the inimitable Mr. Cage would fit into movies, posters, photos, or whatever strikes their fancy. The skill involved varies widely, but that doesn’t much matter to the results. There are some absolute gems, like Ace Ventura, Borat, Gandalf, The Boss, Paula Deen, and of course, Han Solo. Pure, unadulterated, genius.

I first saw this over Christmas, but since that’s the season of love and goodwill towards men, and this made me want to punch someone, I put it out of my mind. You may recall that there’s a remake in of The Karate Kid in the works, with Will Smith’s kid as the Daniel-san character and Jackie Chan as Mr Miyagi. At one point it was rumored to be renamed The Kung-Fu Kid, due to the inevitable Gen X backlash, but it appears they are sticking with the original title.

Now, I’m on the record being completely, 100%, totally against this. My reasons aren’t completely nostalgic either. I think the original completely holds up, so there’s absolutely no reason to update it. So it was with great trepidation that I watched this, the first trailer for the unholy debacle film:

OMFG, it’s worse than I thought. Instead of Pat Morita beating up high school kids we get Jackie Chan beating up 12-year-olds. The original seemed noble. This just seems like child abuse. Instead of Daniel-san practicing crane kicks on a pier we get Jaden Smith practicing on the great wall of China. Subtlety? Naaaaah. And instead of Mr Miyagi teaching karate by NOT teaching karate, we get Jackie Chan teaching karate by simply teaching karate. Where’s the fun in that? Paint the fence Daniel-san.

The most unbelievable part? He’s wearing a DETROIT LIONS SHIRT! Really? Seriously? How many of those did the Lions sell last year? What was higher, their wins in the last 2 years or the number of shirts sold?

The Karate Kid shits all over theaters June 11, 2010, but I promise, this is the last you’ll hear about it on this site.

We’ve seen the MacGuyver theme recreated with clips from Star Wars, but that doesn’t seem to be the end of the genre. Talented folks are pouring over other classic TV intros and pairing them with clips from the classic Lucas series. Here’s the best example, an homage to The A-Team:

Tonight another year silently slips into the past like mime into quicksand. And to celebrate, here’s what those of us a PCWEI think are the best things to remember about 2009:
Read the rest of this entry »

Now this is just freaking cool. A group of audio/visual mashup artists called Eclectic Method have put together a sort of career retrospective of Quentin Tarantino. It blends scenes and music from all of his films, up to but not including Inglourious Basterds, into a collage of profanity and violence. Along the way it shows some the standard features of Tarantino films: dancing, bare feet, slamming trunks, and plenty of guns. All in all it’s pretty damn cool:

Most of me wants to hate the remake of Clash of the Titans, if only because it seems like a continuation of Hollywood’s rape of my childhood. But a small part of me actually wants to like it. After the first trailer came out I was cautiously optimistic. Now there’s a second trailer out. Check it out, then we’ll discuss:

Release the Kraken. Awesome. But doesn’t it feel like they’re showing too much? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Clash of the Titans hits theaters March 26th, 2010.