RED – Comes out October 15th
Lionsgate presented their newest adaptation of a graphic novel called RED. RED stands for Retired Extremely Dangerous and it looks hilarious. It’s a group of great actors who look like they’re just having a fun time on camera. It stars Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Karl Urban, and Richard Dreyfuss. Isn’t that an amazing cast? Bruce Willis commented that, “I think 75 movie stars are in RED” so look out for a bunch of cameos. Warren Ellis, who wrote the original graphic novel story, said that the studio bought the rights to do an adaptation, not a translation so he told them to go have fun with it. His role was to stay out of the way and collect his check. Cully Hamner, who did the graphic novel’s illustrations, said that the movie was made broader for the audiences which makes sense for a movie. However, when he visited the set, he saw a bunch of the RED books laying around so for him that showed high respect.
One of the scenes from the new trailer shows Bruce Willis walking out of a speeding car straight up and shooting…it looked awesome! Totally unbelievable, but awesome! The tone of this film is just a fun time…they want you to laugh from beginning to end. Bruce Willis kept saying that it was like recess…just going out and playing with your friends. From the footage I’ve seen so far though, it looks like John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman steal the show. John Malkovich’s mannerisms and Morgan Freeman’s blue suit look laugh out loud funny (that’s lol in internet lingo). Along with the comedy comes a lot of action, it’s more modern mixed martial arts so it’s faster and looks cooler. You can check out this feature trailer for RED which came out today!
The Expendables – Comes out August 13th (advance screening list)
The Expendables is Sylvester Stallone’s idea of going out with a bang. He admitted that he messed up with Rocky V so he made Rocky Balboa to end it right. That worked, so he thought he’d end off Rambo too…and that worked. So now he’s just greedy and going for the big finale with The Expendables…and when I say big, I mean big! This movie stars almost all of the top action heroes you can think of: Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, David Zayas, Terry Crews, Mikey Rourke, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone himself. As you can see, this is a man’s man movie full of manly men. Testosterone to the max…no estrogen allowed…at least for the panel at Comic-Con. Terry Crews said that it’s the “Manliest movie ever made.”This is a classic action film the way it used to be done with very little special effects and cgi. These actors are really going at it with each other! During the film, they made a crude documentary for Sylvester Stallone to show how it was writing, directing, and acting in an action movie like this. You start seeing the constant visits that the stars took to the hospitals because of all the real stunts they were doing themselves. Many of the cast thanked Sly for inviting them to work on this project like Terry, Dolph, and Bruce. When Steve Austin heard about the movie while he was in Texas, he heard that all of the expendables were already cast. However, Steve and Sly had a meeting in LA and Stallone offered him the role of the bad guy in the film and Steve took it on the spot.
The Expendables was shot in Brazil and from the sounds of it, they got a lot with many things that they couldn’t do in the US. As Stallone put it, you can injure people and even kill them and the people of Brazil are like hey, take a monkey…lol. They had around 70 bodyguards for the cast and crew, 1/2 of them were heavy duty cops because it was pretty dangerous in Brazil. You would see carjackings and murders on the way to the set. But, they could also blow up huge amounts of real estate and the people there loved it!
Other actors were also thought about and talked to by Stallone like Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris but because of availability conflicts and other problems, they couldn’t be in it but I still think the cast that they assembled is quite amazing. Sly said that he loves directing more than acting and that he’s going to leave the action roles to the young bloods so this very well might be his finale…and it looks like it’s going to be a great one. Here’s a featurette for The Expendables which focuses on the stars:
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Twenty-five years ago today, The Goonies was released to theaters. This past weekend, the city where the movie was filmed, Astoria, Oregon, held an anniversary celebration with the cast, crew, and fans of the classic movie. The Goonies 25th Anniversary was an amazing experience. I started with a bus tour of the different film locations. First, we went to The Goonie House where Mikey (Sean Astin) lived. You would think that for a movie, they would build a set on a sound stage somewhere in a studio lot, but for The Goonies, they used actual houses and crammed the cast and crew inside.
