Machete! He knows the score! He gets the women! And he kills the bad guys!
Possibly the best thing about the slightly misguided Grindhouse movie was the fantastically over-the-top trailer for the then fictional movie Machete. Fictional no more, as of today, as it has been greenlit and should start production at director Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker studios in five weeks. The movie is to star go-to Mexican badass Danny Trejo as the titular Machete.
With any luck Rodreguez will film this exploitation throwback quick ‘n’ dirty with as much gratuitous-ness as it is possible to throw at the screen. I can’t see it going any other way, considering the plot was summed up by the fist line of this post…
Unconfirmed news reports, but from a notoriously reliable source suggest that Christopher Nolan, the man who changed Batman from an embarrassment to the comic-book-to-movie sub-genre to a truly kick-ass franchise may not return for the third installment.
According to the source, the death of Heath Ledger hit Nolan hard, not only on a personal level, but professional too, as the third Bat-Flick was to have a strong focus on The Joker. The insider knowledge goes on to state that the first we an expect to see the third movie will be in 2012.
The only good point about this may be that the window can give studios a chance to develop other DC Comics properties.
Like a drunken friend asleep on your kitchen floor, The Hangover manages to be both a messy, rude shambles and curiously endearing.
The stag-do-gone-wrong premise isn’t particularly original, but The Hangover works hard within narrow confines, dishing out big laughs thanks to ingenious set pieces and some hilarious verbal sparring throughout. Thanks to roofies being mistaken for E, the stock characters (the wimp, the instigator, the nice guy, the weirdo) have even less of a clue as to what’s going on than the audience, and as they embark on a wild hunt for The Groom (not to mention a missing tooth and the owners of both a baby and a tiger found in their hotel room). Gags come thick and fast.
It has been reported that the proposed remake of Katsuhiro Otomo’s seminal 1988 anime Akira hs been put on indefinite hold. According to rumor Akira would be moved to the US and star Leonardo DiCaprio, which in this bloggers humble opinion would have been akin to pissing on an entire form of film making.
And further to that, late breaking news suggest that Darren Aronofsky’s Robocop remake has been shoved back into development hell as he is off to direct Black Swan – a supernatural ballerina story, starring Natalie Portman. While Aronofsky is a talented director – I see no point in remaking a movie only 22 years old, which still looks excellent today.
More original films in production than unnecessary remakes can only be a good thing.
Like its titular body, “Moon” is designed to play with viewers’ emotions, using its near-future setting to serve up some timeless awe and a little, very contemporary worry. The whole thing hangs around at the more cerebral end of the Sci-Fi mothership, being particularly close to the mannered tone of “Solaris”, while it’s real-world style technology pokes around in your memories of “2001”.
