Warm Bodies — a self-described "zom-rom-com" (zombie romantic comedy), a term heretofore, one hopes, forever excised from this earth — took the top spot at this weekend's box office, with a respectable $20 million. How did a flick starring relatively anonymous British person Nicholas Hoult just pull that off? (Don't get me wrong — About a Boy? Skins? Nicholas Hoult is my dude. It's just that, around here, he's best known, if at all, for bedding Jennifer Lawrence.) The answer lies in Tween Nation's unquenchable thirst for movies where vampires fall in love with humans.
You could empty a bottle of Zoloft being sad about Bullet to the Head. It was directed and cowritten by the man who made The Driver, The Warriors, 48 Hours, and Trespass, and who either cowrote or coproduced the entire Alien series — Walter Hill. It misses being John Woo's Bullet in the Head by both a preposition and about a million miles. It stars Sylvester Stallone. I don't know what the movie's about. Men go crashing through cabinets at a tattoo parlor and appear to bleed tomato paste. The finale is set in a vacant warehouse, which at this point in action-movie history is like giving your wife a vacuum cleaner on her birthday.
Stallone is Jimmy Bobo, a Hit Man Who Reluctantly Teams Up With a Renegade Detective (Who's Also Reluctant About the Team-Up). They're trying to bring down a New Orleans crime syndicate that's composed of a crippled African, the guy who played Conan the Barbarian (Jason Momoa) in that remake two summers ago, and Christian Slater. The money spared for exciting locations was spent to hire extras to fall down the stairs in generic ones.
Silver: As a husband and a father, the events of The Impossible are my greatest fear. So it should come as no surprise that this trailer wrecked me (I’m talking real tears). It’s a weird feeling to be both eager and terrified to see a film. Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage) seems to have crafted the epic disaster film Roland Emmerich has only dreamed of — one displaying sincere human emotion. And the casting of the immensely talented and always endearing Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor will help guarantee that the enormity of the horrors from the unfolding action be grounded and truthful. From what we can see in the trailer, the tsunami doesn’t appear overdone or gratuitous, but only slightly exaggerated (mostly through camera angles) from the shocking images we all witnessed on the news. I’m hoping that with heartbreaking/warming moments like the one of the brothers darting through the miles of devastation and into each other's arms, The Impossible is going to appeal to a much broader audience than just us terrified parents.
Sylvester Stallone gives and gives, and then he gives some more. He gives us his heart (Rocky). He gives us his body (Rambo). He gives us his mind (Tango & Cash), his spirit (Over the Top), his very manhood (The Party at Kitty and Stud's). And in August of 2010, so drained by more than three decades of selfless, soul-depleting creation that he recognized that he might need to enlist the help of his friends to sustain his artistic output, he presented us with perhaps his greatest gift: The Expendables. You know the logline by now: STALLONE! STATHAM! LI! LUNDGREN! COUTURE! AUSTIN! CREWS! ROURKE! WILLIS! Guns were fired, asses kicked, face-paralyzing botulinum toxins injected in quantities that could smooth an elephant. Sly gave, and we received. Today, almost exactly two years later — an almost miraculous refractory period for a battalion of action stars approaching or surpassing Social Security eligibility — Stallone gives again. The Expendables 2. But should you open your arms — and, more important, your wallet — to receive his explosive largesse? We're here to ask the hard questions in an effort to help determine if an Expendables ticket purchase is the right decision for you.
In a logical move, Lionsgate, the studio behind tomorrow's presumptively weekend-exploding Expendables 2, has just released the trailer for Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger's post-Governatorial, solo comeback vehicle. (A vehicle, it seems, that's got a giant cow-catcher A-Teamed to the front bumper as it hurtles toward a January 2013 release. But we digress.) It makes perfect sense to tie Stand to Expendables 2's release given Schwarzenegger's prominent role in the latter; it would feel like promotional malpractice to do otherwise.
Oh, happy day! Variety reports that James Franco has signed up for Homefront, which follows "Phil Broker (Statham), an ex-DEA agent who moves his family to a quiet town hoping to escape his past. However, he finds the town to be overrun with violence, drug traffickers and an evil meth magnate named Gator (Franco). To save his endangered family, retribution is now the only thing Broker seeks." And yes, Sly wrote the film but won't be starring in it. Hopefully they'll bring him on set and let him have all kinds of unimpeachable creative input, though?
After all the action, stunts & physical abuse shooting The Expendables 2 and The Last Stand, it was time for a little tune up on my shoulder. Look who was coincidentally waiting in line behind me for his shoulder surgery. Now we're ready for another round of great times and action when we shoot The Tomb. #greattobeback
In a bit of amazing good luck, Hollywood Prospectus knows the nurse who was in charge of their room, and he (or she!) has furnished us with this partial transcript of their conversation:
Matthew McConaughey will star alongside Gerard Butler and Sam Worthington in Thunder Run, an adaptation of David Zucchino's book Thunder Run — The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad about the three-day assault at the beginning of the Iraq War. Here’s the thing, though: This will be a 3-D CG movie that will use facial-capture technology and green-screen technology to create a unique effect. “What we capture in our cameras will be them,” explains producer Brian Presley. “It’ll have a stylized effect to it but we are shooting them.” “That means when CG Matthew McConaughey takes his shirt off, the real Matthew McConaughey has also taken his shirt off,” Presley did not add. Grade: B+ [HR]
