The celebrate/plug the release of Blu-Ray release of Robert Rodriguez’s complete “El Mariachi” trilogy (“El Mariachi,” “Desperado,” and “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”), Sony has put together this little red-band trailer. NSFW if you work with vegans. Enjoy.
Category: Action Movies (Page 10 of 165)
Healthy father and son relationships are certainly more the exception than the rule at the movies. Even so, the murderous biological and surrogate father and son pairings in the original film “The Mechanic” and its action-packed update with Jason Statham and Ben Foster, are unusually problematic. It’s a tale, after all, about a junior hit-man learning from an older paid killer who has, in turn, killed the younger killer’s dad.
That, of course has pretty much nothing to do with two of the new version’s real-life father and son producers, Irwin and David Winkler. For the remake of the 1971 actioner, the pair have teamed up with another parent-and-offspring team, Irwin Winkler’s long-time producing partner, Bill Chartoff and his son, Robert. (For the record, there are a total of ten producers and five executive producers credited on the film.) Both individually and with Bill Chartoff, the elder Winkler has been involved with a remarkable number of good movies and a few genuine classics, starting with Sydney Pollack’s pitch-black Oscar winner, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and also including two of Martin Scorsese‘s signature works, “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas.” Winkler and Chartoff also, of course, produced “The Mechanic,” the first time around when it was as much of a chilling look at sociopathy as it was an action flick.
Like any great producer, Irwin Winkler has had his share of interesting financial failures. There was the ultra-culty early John Boorman film, “Leo the Last” and Martin Scorsese’s big budget 1977 disappointment “New York, New York.” Fortunately, there was also the occasional modest but high quality success like Bertrand Tavernier’s great 1986 love letter to jazz and jazz fandom, “‘Round Midnight.” He and Bill Chartoff were also key players in one of the most enduring franchises in film history, the one that started with a low-budget boxing drama called “Rocky.” Since 1991’s “Guilty by Suspicion,” Winkler has also occasionally directed. His most recent films include the musical Cole Porter biopic, “De-Lovely,” and the Iraq war drama “Home of the Brave,” which received a speedy burial.
For his part, son David Winkler has worked on a number of television movies as well as with his father on 2006’s “Rocky Balboa.” He also directed the 1998 drama, “Finding Graceland” starring Harvey Keitel.
I was personally anxious to talk to Winklers during a recent L.A. press junket for “The Mechanic” because of an oddball “only in L.A.” family anecdote. I was nevertheless beaten to the punch by an Italian reporter with a rather distinctive interviewing style who tended to dominate the discussion.
As this year’s apparently rather upbeat and successful Sundance winds down, this is just a sampling of some of the movie news stories that have been making the rounds.
* There’s a constant stream of stories about indie films being acquired by studios — like, say, artist Miranda July’s “The Future” and the gentle Paul Rudd comedy, “My Idiot Brother.” Most of these sound like more or less traditional “Sundance” films (docs, small relationship-centric dramas and comedies). At the other extreme, there’s also been an undercurrent of transgression in Park City this year as three films are said to be pushing the envelope regarding extreme graphic violence and gore/blood.
“I Saw the Devil” doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time though it’s twisted revenge premise has a kind of sick cleverness to. If this movie really is as gory as people say, I don’t quite get the comparisons to “Oldboy,” which was often unpleasant and, I suppose, somewhat shocking and definitely brutal in places, but not really particularly gory — I don’t think I closed my eyes once and I’m, you know, me.
“The Woman,” is a film about a misogynist torturer who eventually gets his that has really divided viewers and caused one gentleman to completely flip out at a screening. Reading Drew McWeeney’s extremely positive review and description of the utterly insane showing, setting aside the issue of the treatment of women onscreen, I sort of fail to see the point of the exercise. Okay, he was traumatized by the movie. Why is that a good thing? Gore and violence aside, in my view, art and that kind trauma may actually be antithetical because it doesn’t allow you any room of your own in which to think. We could maybe use a little more of Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation effect” and a little bit less total immersion cinema these days.
On a somewhat less serious tack, the most popular Sundance premiere with the fanboy set by far is the long ballyhoed “Hobo With a Shotgun,” in which the gore and brutality is mostly, but perhaps not entirely, played for laughs in what I understand is deliberately cheesy grindhouse style. Even so, it sure sounds as if the envelope may be pushed too far for this extreme-gore-phobe, funny or not
Actually, there’s always the matter of festival hype to consider with all of these films. Something about the air in Park City sometimes makes people exaggerate how violent/gorey/scary/upsetting movies are. Remember when “Blair Witch” was the scariest movie of all time?
* Speaking of “Oldboy” director, Chan-wook Park, Mia Wasikowska is in talks to star in his first U.S. film, “Stoker.”
* Yes, the concept that men and women think somewhat differently will be entirely fresh concept for a romantic comedy, I can hardly wait.
* Mel Gibson’s DVD of his new film, “The Beaver” was stolen. Sometimes, the jokes really do all but write themselves.
* A.J. Schnack has some very solid explanations of why “Waiting for Superman” wasn’t nominated and also wasn’t “snubbed” by Oscar.
* Seth Rogen’s going to make a comedy road movie with Barbara Streisand as his mom? It really seems to be happening.
* Another “Hobbit” delay, but a short one caused by a nasty perforated ulcer for Peter Jackson, who surely has had one hell of a year.
I’m going to be brief tonight, but don’t confuse my brevity with lack of interest. The results this weekend will be modest but may be surprising.
What’s intriguing this time around is that, at least according to Ben Fritz, there’s a small chance that the chart topper will be that top-nomination gathering Oscar contender from award-meister Harvey Weinstein’s house, “The King’s Speech.” Along with fellow awards contender “127 Hours,” it is expanding into hundreds of new theaters and will be in enough locations for a box office coup. However, the more likely cash champion is the very non-acclaimed new supernatural horror thriller from Warner Brothers and starring Mr. Scary Face Anthony Hopkins, “The Rite.” The religious themed, PG-13 thriller is expected to earn something in between the “mid-teens” to $20 million according to both Fritz and THR’s Pamela McClintock, with Fritz being slightly more bullish.
The other major new release, “The Mechanic” from CBS Films, is expected to do less well despite actually getting significantly better reviews than “The Rite.” I’ve been covering it here and had fun at its junket, but I have to say I find the R-rated action-heavy hitman thriller a pale reflection of the 1971 original. It wasn’t precisely a great film, exactly, but its honesty about the evil of its protagonists makes for oddly hypnotic viewing. The new version, however, has got two strong leads in Jason Statham and Ben Foster and that, plus some heavy-duty action, will apparently be enough to earn it as much as $10 million, say the gurus. It really looks like this is one weekend where blockbusters really aren’t dominating at the box office.
In the midst of chatting with Bullz-Eye.com about his new Hallmark Movie Channel flick, “Goodnight for Justice,” which premieres on January 29th, Luke Perry was willing to take a moment to weigh in on the idea of a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie without Joss Whedon at the helm.
“No Joss, no go,” said Perry, who played the character of Oliver Pike in the 1992 film version of “Buffy. “They’d be fools to try to do it without him. They were fools to not include him as the director the first time. I hope he doesn’t feel bad about what they’re doing to his franchise, but clearly it’s not going to be the same thing without him.”
Whedon wrote the screenplay for the 1992 film. The television series based on the film premiered on The WB in 1997, then shifted to UPN in 2001, where it remained until its conclusion at the end of its seventh season.
Although the character of Pike survived the end of the film and has since reared his head in various “Buffy” comic books and novels, he never appeared in the television series. Nor – at least as far as Perry knows – was such an appearance ever considered. Perry does, however, have a theory as to why he was never invited to reprise his role.
BE: Had there ever been any talk of bringing your character, Pike, onto the series?
LP: No, I think he’s pissed at me…and I’m not sure why. But I think he’s pissed off at me.
BE: Well, hopefully, these words you’ve just said will help your cause.
LP: I hope so! I’d prefer that he not be pissed off at me.
BE: Plus, you know, he’s directing “The Avengers.” You don’t want a guy with that kind of power mad at you.
LP: Oh, I don’t give a shit about that. It’s not like he’s going to call me up and say, “Hey, Luke, you want to be one of the Avengers?”
BE: Oh, I didn’t mean that.
LP: Yeah, I just…I’d just like to think that everybody I’ve worked with had a good time. Potentially, Joss did not, and I don’t know if they treated him that well on that movie.
Check out the rest of the interview here…and don’t forget to catch “Goodnight for Justice” on January 29th!
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