Action Pants

For those of you not able to keep up with my rapier wit; the title above refers to the old plot device of a butler being the culprit in a mystery.  Except I have adjusted it so that it is referring to a female servant instead of a male one.  I have done this because Cate Blanchett has been cast as Maid Marian in Ridley Scott’s ROBIN HOOD, which was previously titled NOTTINGHAM, back when I gave a damn.  She will star opposite Russell Crowe who will be fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham with “rock and roll” and a telephone receiver.

According to Variety, this version will be about Robin dealing with his abandonment issues and learning to love again.  I can never be sure, but I believe that is Variety-speak for “this movie will suck.”  It wasn’t to long ago that this movie was going to focus on the Sheriff and might have actually been an interesting take on this stale tale, but Scott had his own agenda.

I do like Scott and Crowe so I hope they make a worthwhile movie.  Maybe after Robin of Loxley learns to love Marian he can learn to love attacking rich people and stealing their wallets and jewelry.

Do you remember how awesome Paul Verhoeven’s TOTAL RECALL was with Arnold as a potentially delusional laborer/secret agent who fights mutants and corrupt politicians on Mars so that people can breathe on the cheap?  Remember Kuato, the x-ray wall thing and the chick with three boobs?  How about this…

According to basically every news outlet ever, Warner Bros. is gearing up for a motion picture based on the semi-popular-to-those-that-actually-know-it-exists comic book SUICIDE SQUAD.  For those of you who don’t know, and I figure that would be the majority of the free world and several of the former Soviet satellites, the SQUAD is basically like THE RUNNING MAN only with even more spandex and less light-bulb based villains.  The basic premise is that a bunch of super-villains are given a shot at redemption by “volunteering” to do really dangerous missions for the government that will probably get them killed, but it usually doesn’t get them killed so that the series can continue; thereby making the title a filthy liar.

Come to think of it, I guess it’s more like DIRTY DOZEN.  But the added spandex is still there.

There hasn’t been any word yet as to which villains will be used in the movie since over its several runs there have been a lot of additions to the cast.  A good bet would be the Batman villain Deadshot, who really hasn’t been a Batman villain in about twenty years.  He’s a cool character though so his addition would please me.  As for the rest…it really doesn’t matter because they were all pretty forgettable.  I apologize to all the Bronze Tiger fans for the previous sentence.

It would appear that GREEN HORNET will eventually be made starring Seth Rogan…ugh.  From what Variety is saying (in that silly way that they explain things), they have hired Michel Gondry to direct in place of Stephen Chow.  They don’t even mention Chow as being Kato anymore.  And with this new found enlightenment, I can officially stop reporting any news regarding this project.  It has abandoned the realm of actionstapolis and ventured into the much less interesting land of pratfallodania.  That didn’t really even make sense, but them’s the breaks sometimes.

At the pace all these various clips are coming out, I’ll soon be able to watch the entire WATCHMEN movie without my buttocks having to become divorced from it’s one true love, my chair.  The one that is beneath this block of text is the best one so far by a long-shot.  It’s not full of gimmicky Snyder shenanigans or dumb poses; it’s just Rorshach and atmosphere.

Just as an aside; I like to imagine Christian Bale’s Batman and Rorshach sitting around a table discussing the pro’s and con’s of the stimulus package.  It would probably sound like two old cars with rusted mufflers idling in a Wendy’s parking lot.

Now this is a pretty interesting story, if this kind of stuff interests you.  It would seem that Slash Film somehow received a link to a password protected webpage belonging to Legendary Pictures in a very legal and non-shady way. And thanks to the magic of “right-click, save” we can all enjoy it. Well, maybe not the people working at Legendary Pictures, but they’re in the minority anyway.

Superman Unleashed Top Secret Document

As you can tell from looking above where I am currently typing, Legendary is promising a sequel to Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS intimidatingly titled SUPERMAN UNLEASHED.  It also promises that it will have action out the super-wazoo.  Now, I am currently indifferent to the idea of a super-wazoo, but with the proper framing and context I could grow to love it.  But with more Superman related action, the wazoo can probably just be ignored.  So this is good news I feel.

Now, this seemingly innocent page brings up a whole slew of questions.  The first being, is it legit?  Well, the fine folks over at the Superman Homepage did some digging so that lazy people like me could just leach off them and they found that Production Weekly (which lists all the Hollywood projects that are in pre-production, preparation, and active development) lists SUPERMAN UNLEASHED as being in development.  It also says that Thomas Tull and William Fay are listed as Producers, with Bryan Singer as Director.  So it seems to be on the up-and-up, but I’ve been burned before so I’m a little gun-shy.

So…I have no idea what this means.  On the one hand, we have Warner Bros. telling us that they are going to reboot Superman after they were dissappointed with SUPERMAN RETURNS.  And now we have Legendary saying that they are already working on a sequel to RETURNS.

People who know me (HI MOM!) know that I have a rather unhealthy obsession with Superman.  I am completely predisposed to liking anything with the Man of Steel in it.  So you can probably guess that I like SUPERMAN RETURNS and was kinda bummed that they were rebooting again.  I do admit that the movie had some pacing problems (especially near the end) and the introduction of the superkid showed that Singer didn’t really have any longterm goals planned for the franchise, but there was also a lot that was good about it too.  Maybe I’ll write a review someday to articulate all this, but I will say that I still thought there was a lot of potential in the groundwork Singer laid down.  If this whole UNLEASHING thing is true, the best part is that Brandon Routh might be back as Superman.  I think we can all agree that he was very convincing as a man who wears tights underneath his bright red undies and can fly.

Collider has posted an interview with director Zack Snyder in which WATCHMEN was not mentioned; except to say that they wouldn’t ask about WATCHMEN.  But the interview was not just about what they wouldn’t talk about, but what is on the horizon for Mr. Snyder post-“movie that shall not be named.”  His next project will be SUCKER PUNCH from a script that he himself wrote with some help by Steve Shibuya…based on a short story.  He wants to start filming in the fall.

Apparently the movie is about a girl who is put into an Asylum and then fantasizes about escaping in very gory and violent ways.  I think this is a tale we can all relate too in a very real sense.

Other things that seemed to really make the Collider people happy was the fact that it will have an all-girl cast and that it will be rated R.  This is indeed excellent news!  Just sit back and think about all the great action movies you’ve seen over the years with all-girl casts…ok, nevermind that; how about you think about all the great action  movies you’ve seen that have female leads, but have the occasional sprinkling of “twig and berries.”  Alright, maybe that isn’t such a great thing.  But the R rated part is definitely good.  I’m totally on board with that.

He plans on unleashing his vision upon the public in March of 2011.  You know, I’m no psychic, but I’m gonna predict that his vision includes action scenes where people run forward in slo-mo, attack in fast-mo, pose, move again in slo-mo, pose, attack in slo-mo, move again in fast-mo and then pose all to rock/techno guitar.  My cards are on the table Zack Snyder, show me what you got.