Remember the fake trailers that broke up Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s two movies in the Grindhouse double feature (possibly not, no one went to watch it, but imdb it or something)? Well, they’ve turned one of them into a proper movie. Is that the first time in the history of cinema that they made the trailer before the film? Remember the bit in Wayne’s World where they suggested that movie execs make the Oscar clips first and work backwards from there? That’s kind of like this but not quite. Whatever it is, it made me Wikipedia post modernism for a while.
All that aside, however, how fucking jooooooookes does Machete look? “Very”, is the answer to that question:
The old fashioned, non superhero-based, possibly cop/special forces/loveable rogue with a license to kill related action movie is on the rise again. People are getting out of CGI stuff and back into real stunts and people hanging off of planes and whatnot. That’s probably because the world’s got grizzled combat soldiers on the brain thanks to the war on terror and all that stuff. Those pictures of the gnarly special ops guy with a beard that did the rounds certainly made me horny for firefights and creeping up behind sentries with a bit of cheesewire. Here he is again:
Doesn’t he just look like he was content running his Harley repair shop back home, had made peace with himself about his past and was just enjoying hanging out with his outlaw buddies and watching his grown up daughter turn into a successful sous chef, then The Agency called him and begged him to come back?
I reckon that picture is the reason the Expendables got made, and oh boy did that film have my girlfriend squirming in her cinema seat with boredom and disbelief at something being so awful (I enjoyed it, but I willed myself to, and I love flamboyant violence, whatever the context).
My boyish wonder at seeing the AA12 automatic shotgun on celluloid for the first time aside, what a fucking piece of shit that movie ended up being! And you know why? Because they didn’t go for 100% on the full high camp factor, like Rodriguez will have obviously done with Machete. They should have kept it exclusively 80s heyday action heroes and had a shameless, in-joke filled romp, and they almost did that. But, someone at Millennium Films must have got cold feet about not having any big contemporary names in it, and as a consequence of that, Charisma vacuum Jason Statham got put in the fucking thing to lower the tone from camp knowing-wink-esque genre movie designed for everyone who grew up on their old movies (Schwartzenegger’s cameo is adorable) to a movie for morons who go to the gym loads.
Jason Statham has none of the charm, campness or humour of the eighties giants he’s teamed up with (even Dolph Lundgren), he’s for people who read Men’s Health and trim their body hair, he takes himself as seriously as Danny Dyer does, and he ruined that movie by being such a boring character.
Rodriguez obviously hasn’t pulled that kind of move with Machete because he’s not part of that world, or maybe his producers just trust him to make a great movie (he’s the guy that pulled Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over out of the bag, after all). It’s not like he’s gone for unknowns or Kill Bill style blasts from the past, he’s done better, he’s gone for schlocky but current icons like Lindsay Lohan and Robert De Niro. The difference between those guys and actual trash like Jason Statham is they both have the weight of Hollywood history behind them, while Statham has no camp legacy to lend the movie a knowing wink like all the old action movies had. Have you heard the man delivering a one liner? It’s like listening to a young offender apologizing to the woman he raped, if they make him James Bond I’m gonna wait til it comes out on terrestrial so I can put a bullet through my TV like Elvis did. I reckon Machete is going to be the movie that Expendables could have been.
PS the Machete character first appeared in Spy Kids.
PPS BUFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
PPPS Another one of the Grindhouse trailers is getting turned into a movie, which looks like a whole lot of fun too:
Unfortunately, Darren Aronofsky’s new film Black Swan is not about a black man killing a swan. It’s actually about Ballet. I’ve only ever seen one film on the subject of ballet and that was Martin Scorsese’s wet-dream The Red Shoes, made by Powell & Pressburger. It was beautiful-so high hopes for this one.
Aronofsky isn’t a film-maker I particularly love. Sure I quite liked The Wrestler, but the only thing unconventional about it was Mickey Rourke’s arresting performance. Zing! Pi is distinctly mehhh and I’ve yet to see the supposedly not-for-the-faint-hearted drugs-odyssey Requiem for a Dream.
This new film stars gorgeousness-and-gorgeousity made flesh, Natalie Portman in the lead role. Isn’t she lovely? Perhaps the only saving grace of George Lucas’s misguided Star Wars prequels, she managed the exact same feat when she single-handedly saved Zach Braff’s inconsequential and infinitely overrated Garden State from being ‘pure excrement on celluloid’. (Big love to my bwoiii Mastracci for that one.)
Where as The Red Shoes aimed to bring ballet to the silver screen, Black Swan, a stylish-psychological thriller, seems to have used it as a means of exploring the darker depths of the Portman character. With the life-and-death struggle depicted in the dance story reflecting her descent into mental illness.
It didn’t take much razor-sharp perceptive deduction, after viewing the (insert ominous adjectives here) trailer, to work out that Portman is a bit fucking insane here. I mean what’s going on with her back?!?!? She’s got it worse than even these poor fucks.
Macaulay Culkin’s clunge, Mila Kunis, co stars as a rival ballerina. According to the Venice Film Festival reviews, (which have btw-been excellent) Portman feels intimidated and undermined by Kunis as she herself canny play the Black Swan effectively. Pfft I think old Nat forgot that this is the girl getting Michael Jackson’s sloppy seconds. But anyway she decides to have lesbian sex with Kunis and go rouge in order to fully realise her dark passion. As you do like. Mr. Darren clearly understands that doing a Woody Allen is generally an efficient way to get people to come and see your movie.
So if an intriguing premise, a beautiful black and white colour scheme, the aforementioned girl-on-girl, some mad-exciting talent and a genuinely chilling trailer aren’t enough to get you hot for this one—- check ya pulse blud.
Hold on to your dicks because in less than a month’s time Kenny Powers - the Shelby sensation, the reverse Apache master, the man with the golden dick - will return in the second series of the grand slam sitcom Eastbound & Down.
Anyone who hasn’t seen the first season of HBO’s Eastbound & Down needs to take a long hard look in the motherfuckin’ mirror and ask themselves why they suck so hard. Staring Danny McBride and co-created by Jody Hill (the guy who directed Observe And Report - a film that is collectively know as being ‘not as good as Paul Blart Mall Cop‘) Eastbound & Down is the thing that will make you love fall back in love with the brash arrogance of America and forgive Will Ferrell for decades of sub-Saturday Night Live, self-satisfied, overacting nonsense.
Instead of trying to sum up the plot or express how fucking awesome this show is in my own inadequate words, I’m just going to shove you in the direction of the flawless opening set-piece from season 1. If you don’t recognise it as genius then I just fucking give up.
But this isn’t a post about nostalgia and Kenny Powers isn’t a man content to rest on his laurels - he probably doesn’t even know what laurels fucking are. It’s time to look ahead in anticipation for season 2 and the new dawn of Kenny Powers.
The first clues came a few months back when this very teasy teaser trailer was released…
Kenny Powers devotees will notice that this contains no new material but is just a compilations of phrases and saying from season 1 with a logo for season 2 tagged on the end - lame! What followed a couple of weeks later was this short clip containing some actual new footage!
However, again you can’t glean too much from this. Cue a quick google search which revealed the following:
The new series will be set in Mexico. After failing to land a spot on a big league team and after ditching the buxom April at a Gas station, Kenny heads south of the border to regroup and get his shit together. While there I predict he will have all sorts of comic misadventures with hilarious consequences, some of which may or may not involved baseball. Word is that the cast for season 2 will be almost entirely new, with this guy and this mega babe being the principal new recruits. Although, fans of Stevie Janowski will be please to hear that the ex-music teacher does manage to track Kenny down and join him in Mexico.
A new series also means that the Eastbound & Down promo machine has switched up into high gear, spoiling fans with some added extras like Kenny’s partnership with crap athletic trainer brand K-Swiss, which I assume is bigger in America than it is over here. First off was this video on Funny Or Die of Kenny landing the lucrative K-Swiss contract…
Then came the actual campaign on the K-Swiss website, with TV spots to run in the US.
The second coming of Kenny Powers will be at Easter but on September 26th 2010 - this is a Jesus comparison that Kenny would be wholly comfortable with. Although all you lucky American fucks get to watch it live on HBO, the rest of us will have to be content with downloading the torrent and watching it on our laptops a couple of days after. Although, I have a special cable that links my laptop to my TV, so fuck y’all.