Writer-director Joe Carnahan is proud of his latest film, a beyond tongue-in-cheek 2010 remounting of the 1980’s TV favorite, “The A-Team.” Available on a brand new, extras-laden DVD and Blu-Ray edition, the actioner stars Liam Neeson as A-Team leader Hannibal Smith, with backing by Bradley Cooper as the suave “Faceman” Peck, Sharlto Copley as the mildly insane H.M. Murdock and mixed martial artist Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as the Mohawk-wearing B.A. Baracus.

Never let it be said that Joe Carnahan is lacking in manly virtues and/or vices.

Premium Hollywood: Speaking of manliness, there’s a line in “The A-Team”: “Overkill is underrated.”

Joe Carnahan: Yes.

PH: This seems like a pretty good watchword for your career and your approach to making movies.

JC: Right. I think I’ve been perhaps unduly typecast as a guy who likes to hyper-edit and so on. I certainly have a style, but this kind of thing will always cancel out [other things]. There was a five minute tracking shot in “Narc” that was nothing but Ray Liotta talking, but nobody ever mentions that stuff. Listen, it was certainly the call to arms for this movie, “Overkill is underrated.” I did it as a thesis, as a joke. It’s the aside to the audience that says that we know it’s a lot, we know it’s overblown and overinflated, that’s the point of this little bon-mot here, this little movie.

PH: By the way, I was just catching up this morning, watching “Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane.”

JC: Wow. Good for you, man. Now that was designed to hide how bad we were as actors and to hide [our tiny budget]. We made that movie for eight grand. I mean it was like nothing, but at the same time it got us into Sundance. It was a great jumping off point but I also think that movies like “Blood, Guts,” “Smokin’ Aces,” even [“The A-Team”] to some extent, I’m gonna back-burn for a while and go for the stuff’s that been [left undone]. “The Grey,” which I’m going to do with Liam, which we start in a month, and then I’m going to do “White Jazz,” which is the “L.A. Confidential” sequel.

PH: You are going to do “White Jazz.”

JC: And I’m going to do “Killing Pablo” [based on the book about the hunt for the late Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar]. My focus is on getting those movies made because I think it’s always dangerous to color yourself as a certain kind of director and then people think “I know exactly what this guy’s all about.” It’s funny, the careers that I have admired the most are like [Steven] Soderbergh’s and Ang Lee’s — they don’t ever repeat themselves. I always use sports analogies, but a guy can bat clean-up, and he can hit lead-off, and he can play centerfield and catch and play third. That’s what you ultimately want to be: the five-tool guy. You want to be able to do everything. It’ll be an interesting process with “The Grey” because it’s an utter departure from any of this. It’s an R-rated drama about guys trying to survive a plane crash and getting hunted by wolves.

BE: It’s a man-versus-nature tale.

JC: Absolutely.

BE: That’s next, and then “White Jazz” after that?

JC: And then “White Jazz” after that, hopefully in the Fall.

BE: I have to ask because I am a pretty big James Ellroy fan. Now you say “sequel” — are you treating it as a sequel to “L.A. Confidential”?

[Note: “L.A. Confidential” and “White Jazz” are respectively the third and final books in a four-novel series by Ellroy. which begins with the previously filmed “The Black Dahlia”.]

JC: It’s interesting because it’s something with Ellroy with the rights. I can’t call the character Exley, even though I wanted Guy Pearce to play that role. Who knows, because people are realizing that that type of film is difficult to make. I’m actually excited that they’re making “Gangster Squad” at Warner Brothers. I’m hoping that that will re-introduce that type of film.

BE: Neo-noir?

JC: Yeah. And it’s not so forbidden to do period films because “White Jazz” is still an action movie. There’s still a lot of stuff going on in that film and it’s still very intriguing, very pulpy. It would lend itself to a bigger audience. Who knows?

BE: I personally would like to see the entire “L.A. Quartet” made.

JC: You and me both. If I can make “American Tabloid” [actually a part of Ellroy’s follow-up “Underworld USA” trilogy] and “The Big Nowhere”…

BE: “The Big Nowhere” is great. Anyhow, in “The A-Team” you have some very impressive people in the cast. Liam Neeson, of course. I was surprised, Brian Bloom [who plays the deadly but irritable assassin, Pike] really impressed me.

JC: He’s great.

BE: I was really surprised when I just found out this morning that he was also one of the writers.

JC: Yes, he and I wrote it. Brian and I are really good friends. Really close friends. He and I were writing this other thing together, we kind of hatched this. Alex Young, whose a good friend of mine, is a producer here on the lot. At the time, he was president of production with [current Fox president of production] Emma [Watts]. He said, we got “The A-Team.” Any interest in you doing “The A-Team”? I thought, well, that’s interesting. Brian and I were kind of in that work mode and I said, “What do you think of ‘The A-Team’?” It literally took us ten minutes going on the Internet to find the lynchpin, the plates. [i.e. stolen plates for making counterfeit U.S. currency that Hannibal Smith and company must recover to clear their names] and find the story about Saddam trying to rob the central bank of Iraq 24 hours before “Shock and Awe.” He literally had his son go in there with what amounted to a stick-up note saying “We want 600 million in Euros, 400 million in American dollars,” and then I think it was bills, T-bills, whatever the hell it was. I thought, “How fascinating, this guy tried to rob his own country on the way out the door.”

BE: So is Brian primarily an actor or a writer?

JC: He’s doing both now. He’s writing “Remarkable Fellows” for Universal. He’s multitasking right now, but I think Brian is a lot more comfortable as a writer. He prefers that, but he’s so good in the movie.

[I get the “one more question” signal from the publicist.]

BE:I have to ask, the 3D movie gag [in which a Humvee crashes through the wall of a psychiatric ward while a 3D film featuring a Humvee is being projected], is that an homage to “Bachelor Party”?

JC: Oh, God, “Bachelor Party” — that’s right. I didn’t think of that. The 3D gag. We didn’t really realize how kind of prescient the whole thing was going to be — this was right after “Avatar” — that everything would be in 3D. In the looping, we actually had somebody saying in the background, “I hate 3D.” No. I just thought it would be a funny way to break Murdock out to have an actual 3D movie and have the thing come through the wall. But, you’re right, it reminds me of “Bachelor Party.”

BE: Just one quick follow-up. Are you trying to stay away from this whole 3D craze?

JC: Now that Scorsese’s making a 3D movie, it’s out there. I still feel like my favorite 3D film is “Dial M for Murder,” which I actually got to see in 3D, because I think Hitchcock took what at the time was a gimmick and made it work to his advantage. He created almost a proscenium for the audience. Then you felt like you were in that room. He really avoided [throwing things at the camera]. I think he just had Grace Kelly sort of [put her hands in front of her] when she’s getting strangled. He was so free of that stuff. He stayed away from it, which I love.

* As of tonight, corporate raider Carl Icahn appears to be a majority stockholder in Lionsgate.

* I’ve never been a fan of the seventies movie of the silly seventies film version of “Logan’s Run,” but with Carl Erik Rinsch directing, my interest in the new film perked up considerably. Now, Alex Garland — who wrote and produced the not-entirely-unrelated upcoming version of “Never Let Me Go” which I discussed yesterday — has jumped on board, making it even more interesting. Better, they’re approaching it as a new version of the book, not a remake of the film. In the 1976 film, by the way, no one in the futuristic society was permitted to live past 30. In the novel, it was 21.

* Sam Raimi has been confirmed as the director of “Oz: The Great and Powerful.” Apparently Robert Downey, Jr., who just formed a new company with his producer wife, Susan Downey, is the most likely Oz at this point.

* Be sure and check out Will Harris’s terrific interview with one of the best, Isabella Rossellini. Easily one of the most fascinating  actresses of the last thirty years or so, with quite a backstory behind her. Don’t miss it.

*Though Ms. Rossellini seems perfectly at home in a very humorous way with her fifty-something status, that is not really always the case for actresses. This month’s conversation between Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard at the House Next Door underlines that point as the cinephile thinkers discuss two of Hollywood’s greatest show-biz based films, “Sunset Boulevard” and “All About Eve,” both released in 1950 and both dealing with actresses who struggling with this whole passage of time thing.

* That film geek Ahab, Quint, manages to capture the elusive Ridley Scott and discusses “Alien” stuff, specifically the proposed 3-D prequels and Scott’s attitude towards the process, not to mention the brilliant advertising campaign for the original film.

* The White Elephant Blogathon has taken place. It’s a deeply sado-maschistic ritual in which film bloggers fob off films they wouldn’t inflict on their worst enemies to other film bloggers, and then have to review one such film themselves. Dennis Cozzalio caught the “Mannequin 2: On the Move,” and let’s just say the results border on the psychedelic.

*If Tom Tyker’s Wachowski-produced film version of the novel “Cloud Atlas” ever gets made, it’s likely going to be big.

* I’ve had some obvious mixed feelings about Nikki Finke since starting this here gig, but director Joe Carnahan’s idiotic attack on her confirms my initial unflattering hunches about him. I never understood why his film “Narc” got the praise it got. I found it merely irritating.

* One of several reasons I’m scaling back the blogging fairly radically for a couple of weeks is so that I actually would like time to catch some movies at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival. Karina Longworth and the gang at the L.A. Weekly are helping me to make some selections.

* RIP film scholar and freelance writer Peter Brunette, who died suddenly at a festival in Italy at age 66. Glenn Kenny has a nice remembrance up.

* The trailer for “Bagman,” retitled from “Casino Jack,” is anything but promising. Also, isn’t it time for an indefinite moratorium on the use of “Gimme Shelter” in trailers and even movies? I’m talking to you too, Mr. Scorsese!

Even though I had my quibbles, it seems pretty likely that “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” also about the Jack Abramoff affair, will prove to be the better film.

* I think Leo the Lion just digs torturing fanboys and fangals.

* OMG! OMG! It’s the dark Miley!

* If you haven’t absolutely nothing better to do, you can watch the new Smurf  movie’s teaser trailer. It’s looking like a real clustersmurf to me.

* Michael Winterbottom’s “The Killer Inside Me,” based on a the ultra-ultra-dark novel by Jim Thompson, has been the talk of the festival circuit for some time because of some scenes of extreme violence (just how graphic they actually are remains slightly unclear, though their emotional impact is clearly extremely strong) that have raised some hackles. Over at the the Daily Beast, Allen Barra marks its release by taking a look at Thompson’s works and wondering if they’re ever truly been filmable.

* Speaking of films that made their names with a single scene of violence against a woman, Wednesday was the 50th anniversary of “Psycho.” While there is no doubting that Hitchcock’s film is a hugely important milestone and its first forty minutes or so are a kind of perfection. Louis Vertel at Movieline is absolutely correct that it’s not his best — I’m not sure who thinks it is, except for people who haven’t seen many other Hitchcock movies. In fact, I’d rank it significantly lower than Vertel does. For me, it’s not even in Hitchcock’s top 10, though that less a knock on it than praise for a number of truly great films by of one of the real geniuses of the movies. It is, however, one of Bernard Herrmann’s very best scores.

On a separate note, if you’re a real movie geek, make sure you don’t miss another chapter in the long running Glenn Kenny v. Jeffrey Welles moviegeek smackdown, this time over “Psycho” and, wait for it, aspect ratios. Both enlightening and entertaining if a bit more polite than usual.

And, okay, “Psycho” is kind of amazing.

I’m severely limited for time — and more than a bit tired after a busy and reasonably productive day — so this may be one of my shortest box office preview posts.

This week’s two major new releases are reboots of properties remembered fondly by many children of the 1980s, “The A-Team” and “The Karate Kid.” Both movies have been supplied with some well known names, Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan for the former and Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, and Jessica Biel for the latter.

Jolly Carl DiOrio doesn’t go so far as to predict which film will emerge on top, with both having some fairly obvious broad appeal. I’ll say that my personal hunch is that Sony’s “Kid” will take the lead because, with a PG rating, it’s definitely more of a family film than the more violent and adult-oriented PG-13 “A-Team” from Fox. The martial arts flick also would seem to have more appeal for female audience members for similar reasons. It certainly seems extremely likely, in any case, that “Kid” will be the more profitable film by far, as we’re led to believe it cost $40 million, while the Joe Carnahan directed “Team” cost something more like $95 million. Both movies got mixed-to-meh reviews at “Rotten Tomatoes.”

Will these action flicks rescue Hollywood from the box office blahs? All I know is that I have no strong desire to see either of them and I’m not sure Hollywood deserves any better than its getting. In fact, without having seen these new movies, I feel safe in assuring anyone reading this that, if you’re at all open to them, you’ll be vastly more entertained by renting almost any of Jackie Chan’s amazing eighties and nineties Hong Kong films. I know I’d really like to see “Project A, Part II” — an ingenious slapstick comedy adventure — or any of the “Supercop” movies again soon. Like, right now.

* Roman Polanski, who has been in jail for two months since he found himself accepting one too many award invites in Switzerland, has been granted bail to the tune of about 3 million Euros and it appears there will be no appeal of that particular decision. He’ll be under house arrest and constantly monitored, however. There is no need for panic at this time.

* Dirk Benedict apparently had some politically/sexually driven issues with the re-imagining of “Battlestar Galactica.” As per Wikipedia, the macrobiotic follower said:

One thing is certain. In the new un-imagined, re-imagined world of Battlestar Galactica everything is female driven. The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak, and wracked with indecision while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing cigars (gasp) and not about to take it any more.

He says that like it’s a bad thing. Anyhow, he’s apparently fine with Joe Carnahan’s new film version of “The A-Team” and will be joining the cast. Yay.

* Speaking of stars with possibly very rightwing political views, is UN representative Angelina Jolie, who admittedly has enjoyed a hair more success than Dirk Benedict, really saying things about President Obama that wouldn’t sound odd coming out of the mouth of her possibly no longer estranged movement conservative father, Jon Voight?  US Magazine reports, I can’t possibly decide if any of this has one whit of truth to it.

*/film has some early critical buzz on Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog.” Mostly fairly positive. Good, maybe 2-D animation won’t die after all.

* An assignment for the long weekend, cinegeeks. Are you ready for Professor Russell Johnson’s “My Ancestors Came over on the Minnow” Thanksgiving/Christmas Movie Quiz”? T.A. Dennis Cozzalio awaits your response.

* Sometimes my usual sources for the box office previews I do, like the one just below this post, don’t catch all the new opening movies. For example, the reported return-to-form for Hong Kong master director John Woo, “Red Cliff,” is opening in 15 theaters this weekend. Anne Thompson has the fascinating details on the latest from one of the greatest action directors of all time. With the exception of 1997’s “Face/Off,” his Hollywood career hasn’t quite gone exactly as hoped, but take a look at this trailer.

Yep. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!