The first pictures of vehicles that will turn into giant sized robots in the live action Transformers movie have hit the internet. Some folks have gotten near some of the vehicles, including a bitchin’ Camaro, a cop car and a tank, and snapped a few shots. The motto on the side of the Decepticon cop car is “To Punish and Enslave,” and I can’t decide if that’s too on the nose to be funny. It is funny that the cop car is evil, though. It’s what I’ve been saying for years.

Anyway, you can check out more info about the 20th anniversary edition of Transformers: The Movie here.

It’s possible that my take on the teaser poster for The Grudge 2 is skewed by the fact that I thought the first film was a piece of shit and that the 400 previous Japanese versions were pieces of shit and that director Takashi Shimizu is a talentless waste who doesn’t even pretend to insert variation into his endless series of boring, lookalike, plotless pieces of shit.

Head over to JoBlo to see the whole of this crummy poster.

Word is that Chris Tucker is illiterate (but boy can he do math – look at his Rush Hour 3 payday), so the idea of seeing him play a gangster who pretends to be a doctor when his parents visit and then decides to actually become a doctor to impress the woman he loves – well, shit, I’m just looking to see how good an actor Chris is when he essays the unfamiliar act of reading books.

I’m actually surprised Tucker doesn’t do more remakes – he doesn’t have to have anyone read the script to him when he’s deciding whether to sign on!

Avi Arad is stepping down as Chairman and CEO of Marvel Studios. He will stay on as Creative Advisor for Marvel through the remainder of 2006, but will be turning his attention to independently producing films through his Avi Arad Productions. He’ll remain involved in some current productions, such as Spider-Man 3, Iron Man and Hulk 2, and he’ll still be producing Marvel films in the future.

I don’t know enough about the fiscal and political aspects of Marvel Studios to comment on why Avi might be leaving his position now, so I’ll leave that to you guys.

I had to make sure no one spiked my coffee this morning when I read that the Weinsteins want to cast George Clooney in a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

I just hope that this doesn’t interfere with Clooney’s plans to star in a remake of Roots. I think his Kunta Kinte would be spectacular.

Baz Luhrmann is a filmmaker who I really admire, which is why it bugs me so much that he hasn’t made a movie in years, and that every time he tries to get one going, it seems that bad luck takes him down. After the masterpiece of Moulin Rouge I thought Baz would sail right into something fantastic, and it looked like he was set to do an Alexander the Great movie – and maybe one that would have tread in gay territory Oliver Stone was afraid to enter. But that movie kept getting delayed, and once Stone’s film tanked, Baz’s was dead.

Nicole Kidman remains on board, but rumors that Heath Ledger would be taking Crowe’s place are unfounded. What does this mean for the movie? Fox is supposedly still behind it, but I wonder who Baz can get to fill Crowe’s shoes – at least who Fox will think is bankable enough.

Is this the line for the Rian Johnson bandwagon? If so, I want on. The young director’s first feature, Brick, is an often brilliant film made all the more amazing by the fact that it just should not, in any rational world, work at all. Johnson has married the plot structure, characters and dialogue of a noir film with the setting and youth of a high school movie. It sounds like a gimmick, the sort of conceit that the film and the audience would tire of before the end, but it almost never feels like a stunt, and while Johnson is essentially doing a plate spinning routine, you don’t care so much about the trick of making the plates spin as how beautiful they look there.

The plot has to do with a murder and a drug dealer and a missing brick of heroin and betrayed love and teenage angst. Like any noir, it’s impossible to accurately summarize the story of Brick without spending paragraph upon paragraph talking about every plot twist and switch and turn.

In the time it’s taken another Die Hard to come together, I could’ve (hyperbole alert) gone through police training, made detective, had my own improbable encounter with terrorists and shot my own movie about the experience.

After a decade of rumors (Justin Timberlake as John Jr.? Tony Jaa as the villain?) and false starts and screenwriters spun through the revolving door, John McClane is finally ready to take his Beretta 92F out of storage to deal with some more bad guys in Die Hard 4 (or whatever they eventually title it), and he’ll be guided by Underworld(s) director Len Wiseman.

An unexpected but interesting selection – say what you will about the Underworld movies (I’ll say they looked great and took themselves far too seriously) but it’s hard to deny Wiseman can shoot the hell out of a movie. Let’s hope he just finds the right tone, and dials down the filters.

With the Gruber family eradicated, McClane will now be coming out of retirement to face off against a group of computer hackers. That’s about all we know of the story at this point (the script apparently took place in New Orleans and was reworked to avoid any Katrina fallout), but the script comes from Doug Richardson, who has previous experience with similar material from Die Hard 2 and Hostage, itself a McClane movie in rural clothing.

BUY IT AT AMAZON: CLICK HERE!
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
MSRP: $28.98
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 104 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Commentary with director and stars
• Trailer
• Bloopers

The Pitch

"A magical blending of noir, comedy, action, and satire."

The Humans

Robert Downey, Jr., Val Kilmer. Michelle Monoghan, Corben Bernsen, Shannyn Sossamon, Larry Miller, Dash Mihok.

The Nutshell

Downey portrays Harry Lockhart, a two-bit thief who stumbles into a mystery as well as the Hollywood lifestyle when his "crashing" of an audition lands him a chance to star in a major motion picture. His life gets even more complicated when he bumps into a long lost love, dead bodies, and is partered with a tough but sweet private investigator. Comic gold follows.

Recruitment for the Perrineau Fan Club starts at the grass roots.

The Lowdown

You want
to talk about a film that is so disinterested in what focus groups and studio
heads want and expect? This is it. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is so fiercely
of its own mind that it comes around on the other side of the moon as one of
the more accessible and wholly entertaining films in a decade simply by sheer
force of will. It’s that rare film that both defies and adheres to convention
in all the right ways at all the right times. Sadly, it’s a tough film to
critique. It’s a strange little firecracker, hardly original in plot and not an action
film you’d mention in the same breath as Shane Black’s claim to fame, Lethal
Weapon. It’s an oddity, a flick that just infects you with charm and
bite and a confident swagger that’s impossible not to love.

Just be glad I showed the Downey/Kilmer KISS KISS pic and not the BANG BANG.

Part of
the joy of the film is in seeing the true virtuoso of acting that is Robert
Downey Jr. playing in the big leagues again as a lead. It’s been a long and
winding road, but when the man is allowed to shine he pretty much makes a lot
of the golden boys look like amateurs. As our bumbling lead and narrator
(possibly the best narrator we’ve seen in a film this side of Mr. John Cusack),
he gets to have a lot of fun with his new lease on Hollywood
life and he shines. Additionally, his rapport with Val Kilmer’s Gay Perry (the
gay private eye) is amazing stuff. The two actors have had rollercoaster
careers, but this serves as a high
point for both. There’s as much movie star magic here
as in nearly every big buddy flick except this one is twenty times smarter and
cockier. Shane Black on a bad day is capable of high quality venom and pointed
comic banter. Here, in his writer/director debut he often attacks a joke from a
different angle, allowing his actors to own it with their performance. He chose
well.

The budget for Marvel’s Mysterio biopic was surprisingly low.

A lot of
you didn’t catch this in theaters (and for that I scorn you), so I don’t want
to go into detail about the more special moments involving Captain effing Magics,
corpse pissings, celebrity lookalikes, waterlogged guns, extras standing in
front of the camera, and the proper way to close a door, but I’ll say that this
is a film made for repeat viewings. With the very gifted and very cute Michelle
Monaghan sealing up the heroic trio and a fun group of bad guys both obscure
and familiar, there’s not much to dislike about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. It’s
electric stuff, but oddly so. There’s no one moment you can use to sell your
friends on it, you just have to let it run its course and by the end the army
has another recruit to spread the word. This is one of those films that fans
feel ownership of, devotees who will spread the word at all costs. It’s the best
plague ever.

Reviews
don’t do it justice. Nor does the trailer. Nor does the cool and stylish
opening credits sequence. Nor does the Abe Lincoln appearance, though it comes
close. Just trust us. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a classic and a reminded of how
alone and cold we’ve been all these years since Shane Black has left us to the
wolves of action filmmaking.

You’re goddamn welcome.

The Package

The blooper reel is a useless special feature 99% of the time, either being only funny if you were there on the day. Typically it’s only funny if you realize that the line being flubbed was the 99th take after 98 consecutive takes where the same line was flubbed or whatever. They’re typically less funny than the actual material, something which goes against the whole laws of bloopers. Of course, bloopers tend to be piss in general and geared more towards the people who find America’s Funniest Home Videos to be high comedy. The best bloopers tend to be on PG or G rated films where someone makes a mistake and proceeds to call everyone in earshot a cocksucking coward.

The guy is as funny as they get and probably as gifted "in the room" as any of the most prized comedians but he can’t get a word in edgewise with such high wattage and charismatic talents like Downey and Kilmer in the room. Surprisingly, it’s Kilmer who hams it up the most. I expected Downey, who is a virtuoso, to take the conn. Instead, Kilmer cracks jokes both funny and silly and it obviously causes a bit of a disjointed feel to the commentary track. Downey is no slouch himself, but he seems a little more on point. Black fights for his airtime when he has something that needs to be said, but seems content to just let things run their course. It’s a natural and fun track, not as informative as you might hope but still great.

9.0 out of 10

Remember a little over fourteen years ago?

And e-mail it to: contests.special.edition@gmail.com

Be creative. Make shit up. I don’t care. Just as long as I laugh or cry or even forward your e-mail to the FBI’s profiling department; all entries are accepted. Just make sure you follow the tiny little rules and then I won’t delete your furious typing skills. We’ve got a couple of these to give away and I think you could be fully emerged back into your own rotten existence with the Sinclair family. As such, this contest runs for exactly one week and then winners will be notified. Losers should grumble and hold a grudge.

Good luck!