Friday, September 08, 2006

GRINDHOUSE-A-GO-GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





Reportedly, three more actors have just joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino's half of Grind House (or is it Grindhouse), the double feature he's making with longtime friend and frequent co-conspirator Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino has cast CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's Michael Bacall, Hostel and Cabin Fever director Eli Roth and Mr. "blood is the new black" Omar Doom in his car-wielding slasher flick Death Proof, (Robert Rodriguez's segment is Planet Terror).

Grindhouse will obviously fit snugly into the mold of the 1970s exploitation films that have clearly been a significant influence on both Rodriguez and Tarantino. The two 60 minute films will be joined by phony ads and trailers for 70's exploitation staples including a blaxploitation film trailer, perhaps a kung-fu trailer, a sexploitation trailer (for a faux sexploitation film called ‘Cowgirls in Sweden.’) and of course a spaghetti-western trailer.


As everyone undoubtedly already knows Tarantino's Death Proof will also stars Escape From New York alum Kurt Russell, Sin City's Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, CSI: NY's Vanessa Ferlito, Cabin Fever's Jordan Ladd, Scream's Rose McGowan, Marley Shelton, Tracie Thoms, Sydney Tamiia Poitier (yes that Poitier) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.


Rodriguez's entry, the presumably extraterrestrial, amputee go-go dancer vs. zombie's fest Planet Terror, has already wrapped shooting. It's cast, featuring Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez, the very same Scream slash Doom Generation alum named Rose McGowan as Death Proof, Into the Blue's Josh Brolin, Bride and Prejudice song and dance man Naveen Andrews, Marley Shelton, Fergie as in the hips part of the Black Eyed Peas Stacy Ferguson , Body Part's Jeff Fahey, From Dusk Till Dawn's Michael Parks and Kyle "The Terminator" Reece himself Michael Biehn.

The Weinstein Company will be releasing Grindhouse on April 6, 2007. I for one can't freakin' wait

Posted by Peter Collinson at 10:55 PM | | Comments

Thursday, September 07, 2006

BEST “GENRE” FILMS OF ALL TIME (PT 6)


1. FORBBIDEN PLANET: Far and away the single most prescient and influential piece of genre filmmaking ever to grace the silver screen. There was nothing quite like it in cinema’s canons beforehand and, these days, about the only outer-space-genre we see that it wasn’t a direct influence on appears in the form of George Lucas’ lonely Flash Gordon inspired franchise. Which means that It literally created science fiction’s most popular sub-genre and “our” collective vision of the future “where things get better” with one Walt Disney assisted Technicolor stroke; and everyone who’s mined its rather substantial depths -- from Roddenberry and Larson with Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica to Straczynski and Whedon with B-5 and Firefly should be paying its creator’s royalties. O’ yeah, and it was a damnably smart and damn fine film to boot.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 9:13 PM | | Comments

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

BEST “GENRE” FILMS OF ALL TIME (PT 5)


2. BLADE RUNNER: Ok, let’s “Man in the High Castle” things for a moment and pretend that Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford never got together to make this puppy . . . With nothing to otherwise inspire him, Masumane Shirow either becomes an erotic artist (think Sorayama version 2.0) or gets arrested for kiddie porn and so never creates Dominion Tank Police, Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell, so no one in Japan ever gets the idea to do Bubblegum Crisis or Akira or anything like them and anime dies on the vine after Robotech and the rest of its Robert (Starship Troopers) A. Heinlein inspired stuff plays out, and so of course there’s no longer a tie for the number four spot on this list, because the Washowski brothers wind up working at a comic book store managed by this dork named William Gibson who definitely never writes a novel called Neuromancer that spawns the entire cyberpunk sub-genre. What I’m saying here is that you could make a pretty good case for this being the most influential film of the latter half of the cinema century (only Pulp Fiction could potentially challenge its top spot). Responsible for nothing less than the most popular public conception of our future “where things stay pretty much the same.” A visionary masterpiece in no uncertain terms.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 9:50 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The Return of Michelle Yeoh!!!!!!!!


Believe it or not one of your humble editors here at the ArsonPlus Entertaimnet preview blog just happens to read (and speak) French and according to sources in France (read: their version of Entertainment Tonight) Michelle Yeoh (yes that Michelle Yeoh) is in negotiations to star opposite Vin Diesel (yes that Vin Diesel) and the luckiest man on earth himself . . . Vincent Cassel in Mathieu Kassovitz's upcoming sci-fi/action film "Babylon A.D." The film, inspired by Maurice G. Dantec's novel "Babylon Babies" . . . set in a near future rife with genetic manipulation where a hard-boiled leatherneck mercenary veteran of Sarajevo named Toorop (Diesel presumably) is hired by mysterious persons to escort a young woman, named Marie--whos's carrying a genetically modified embryo an American cult wants to produce a genetically modified Messiah with, from Russia to either Canada or China (hey, we've read both).

Michelle is perportedly considering the role of "Sister Helen" (but unfortunately, as the editor in question has not finished reading Babylon Babies yet, we have no idea whether or not the part will call on Yeohs legendary butt-kicking skills). Babylon A.D. is set to begin filming in Prague this November--and coincidentaly enough the Czech Republic is a dead ringer for both Russia and Canada but not at all like China, so that's probably that.

Babylon A.D. is set to be released by Twentieth Century Fox in 2007.

Posted by Peter Collinson at 7:39 PM | | Comments

Monday, September 04, 2006

BEST “GENRE” FILMS OF ALL TIME (PT 4)


3. AKIRA: What else? It blew the damn lid off anime (please try and remember that before this sucker came along Battle of the Planets was probably the most widely known example of that art form). It forms the connecting tissue between the films above and below. It has the final denouncement that Revolutions needed to do better here than a tie. And, it tells its deeply personal tale on such an epic scale that it actually ends where the bible begins. Indelible. Breathtaking. Spectacular. Probably the greatest single work of genre filmmaking since Metropolis, managing to surpass even the glories of 2001 by the sheer virtue of the gut-wrenching emotional core at the center of its swirling ideas and stunning visuals. And it would likely be in that oft coveted number one spot if it weren’t so obviously indebted to . . .

Posted by Peter Collinson at 2:18 PM | | Comments

Sunday, September 03, 2006

BEST “GENRE” FILMS OF ALL TIME (PT 3)


4. LORD OF THE RINGS - THE TWO TOWERS: Unlike my lovely wife, I’ve never actually met the man, but I can’t help but firmly believe that Ray Harryhausen wept at his first sight of Gollum. This is one of two films on this list, not because of the ripples it caused but rather because of the promise it so completely fulfilled. A fairly sizable number of fantasy films preceded its appearance, and quite frankly the vast majority of them were downright execrable (Ator: Fighting Eagle anyone?), a great number were dumb-fun, (who doesn’t love Hercules Unchained?) and a rare few were gems in their own right (Conan the Barbarian pretty clearly tops that short list) But this was the first one that was just plain great. I don’t know if its existence will spare us fanboys the lackluster likes of future DragonHearts but we’ve definitely seen the last of the BeastMaster. Thank God.

TIE:

4. THE MATRIX – REVOLUTIONS: Like it or not, at the end of the day, this is just that kind of list where considerations of ambition and range of influence carry a tad more weight than those of pitch-perfection. So maybe you weren’t as impressed as I was, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t be treated to pale imitators of this baby for at least the next decade or so. And it doesn’t mean that it didn’t send the next generation of genre-filmmakers into film schools (the same way the “unfinished” Blade Runner sent me). And, it definitely doesn’t mean that wasn’t an extraordinarily rich chunk of raw imagination – a postmodern myth set forever into digitized celluloid. Absolutely the one live action film, and perhaps the only film, this side of 2001, that compares favorably to . . .

Posted by Peter Collinson at 12:46 PM | | Comments