I had traveled half-way across the country to spend some quality time with my father. We were drinking Tomintoul scotch whiskey in his Colorado cabin. It was snowing outside and we were quiet, watching a movie, entranced. I turned to my dad and shared with him the undeniable truth I had gleaned from the film: "Transporting is the greatest job on earth." He sipped his drink, reflected on his years of wisdom, and nodded: "Yes. Yes it is."

If you're unfamiliar with Luc Besson's Transporter series — or wonder why a father and son would spend a portion of their few, precious hours together watching a movie about a guy and his car — its appeal can be summed up in two words: Jason Statham. The titular star doesn't make transporting look easy, of course. Adhering to a strict moral code while transporting goods for less-than-reputable businessmen is taxing. The guy has to make BMWs perform stunts that would confound a physicist. Cars just don't move like that, and if you're carting around a petite young woman in the trunk, as a transporter often does, you've got to factor in her continued survival as a goal. Plus, the job keeps you so busy — maintaining your pristine black suit and kicking the crap out of nameless thugs — that you don't get much of a chance to enjoy your secret seaside villa. (Incidentally, The Transporter has five named thugs in its credit list — Thugs 1 through 3, Little Thug, and Giant Thug — but Statham seems to brutalize quite a few poor, uncredited thugs, as well.) And getting your work finished in a timely manner is complicated by your nagging sense of honor. Human trafficking? Crap, you can't transport when you know that's going down. A wan model, wearing nothing but an unbuttoned nursing uniform and two uzis, kidnaps the rich toddler you're driving to school? Shit, doesn't look like you're punching out early today. And with all that going on, when does Statham find the time to sculpt his guns?

This is what you think about when you experience Jason Statham movies. You ask the big questions.

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It's difficult for me to be objective about Hammer and Tongs' second major motion picture, Son of Rambow. At one time, I was its protagonists, a kid whose imagination was set on fire by the bombast of media in the 1980s. Like Garth Jennings, Nick Goldsmith and their pre-pubescent proxies, the political subtext of Reagan-era action was completely lost on me at that age, eclipsed by the catharsis of violent fantasy and superheroics. It's impossible for me to watch Son of Rambow away from my intimacy with its subjects, so certain parts of it that I know aren't necessarily good filmmaking still strike me as wonderful.

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The Hulk is an easy sell on screen. It has a foundation ready made for spectacle but is also based around a character built for pathos. While our first look at Marvel’s franchise reboot didn’t exactly promise any sort of delivery on these inherent themes, this fresh trailer is very, very promising.

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While my respect for the man knows no bounds, I cannot say that I have much love for Roger Ebert. My bitterness was born out of the one and a half star rating he had bestowed on The 13th Warrior. This guy gave Anaconda three and a half stars! Even Ice Cube punching a snake in the face and calling it bitch doesn’t warrant two full stars over solid John McTiernan action. I’ve continued to take issue with many, many things the man has said since but Rog and I will always agree on one thing. Dark City is awesome.

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I have something of a man crush on good ol’ Charlie Rose. The commanding hunch of the shoulders, the patient but challenging inquiries he poses to the powerful and intelligent, the flagrant and often hilarious womanizing. Chuck’s got it all. Here, he appears in a delightful nugget of post-modernity that proves one thing: You can never have too much Charlie Rose.

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Before we get to the inherent silliness of kidnapped, space-slug mobster brats or the fact that Uncle George has gone ahead and Lucased-up one of the last good things about Star Wars, I need someone out there to answer a question for me.

Why in the hell is Obi-Wan Kenobi’s beard made of wood?

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This rumor’s now a couple of days old, but we here at The Screengrab won’t let a little thing like internet mustiness get in the way of bringing you the hardest hitting hearsay around. This one has something of a personal significance to me though. Just about a year ago, I had something of a spiritual experience with the films of Jean Claude Van Damme, one of which being the science fiction classic Universal Soldier. Universal Soldier is a profound work of speculative fiction with strong messages about life, love, and Jerry Orbach produced zombie soldiers.

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Superhero movies. Now that is novel! I kid, I kid. In light of the fact that filmed superhero fiction has more cultural currency today than it ever has (in both film and television), it’s interesting to observe the diversification of the genre over the past five years across movies like Sky High, parody trash like Epic Movie, and now Will Smith’s summer vehicle Hancock.

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It’s never good when you ask yourself if something is funny or not. Hilarity, under ideal circumstances, is self-evident. Make no mistake, I laughed watching this trailer for Hamlet 2. But I stopped laughing when I realized the lead was not Meet Joe Black’s Jake Webber. It’s not my fault Steve Coogan looks like everyone’s favorite budget-Tim Roth!

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Can you smell it, Screengrabbers? The summer blockbuster season approaches and it is filled with heretofore unknown riches! Respected actors playing gaudy superheroes, neon fantasias about cars that spit on the physical laws of nature, and George Lucas humping the leg of nostalgia one final time. Maybe not though! USA Today has a hot new interview with that spry upstart star of hits like Witness, Harrison Ford, and Calista Flockhart’s boytoy says he’s down for more whip cracking.

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Dear Mr. Myers:

There is no blood in that stone. Please cease squeezing the stone.

Sincerely yours,

The Screengrab

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Good old Dr. Knowles posted up a brilliant piece of history today in the form of a 1984 test film for what eventually became Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. What makes this test special is that it was made by Hayao Miyazaki, the world’s most recognized and celebrated Japanese animator. This test definitely points the way to the film that was ultimately made by Masami Hata in 1992 but Miyazaki’s distinct character design and fetish for flight are emphasized greatly in the test. It’s a shame that version never got made as Miyazaki and Windsor Mckay is a literal match made in heaven. Mckay’s early 20th century comic strip and it’s hallucinatory take on childhood flights of fancy is a clear influence on much of Miyazaki’s work, from Laputa to Spirited Away.

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That’s right, the internet is back and it’s more horribly terrifying than ever before! No, the internet never really went away but sometimes it’s less scary. Not so on April 10th, 2008. I mentioned just a couple of days ago that it’s occasionally difficult to separate actors from personae they’ve inhabited on screen. Much like Willem Dafoe, Jeremy Irons is stuck in a few different visages, all of which are disturbing as all hell outside of their proper context. Humbert Humbert, Franz Kafka, twin drug-addicted gynocologists, shitty-Alan Rickman in Die Hard (“Hook, lihne, and sinkah, McClane.”) While this video isn’t from one of Irons’ past or future films, it is him singing Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” in gentle, menacing dulcet tones.

The internet will scare your dad.

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My hero, Michael Bay? He don’t take no guff. You might think that when someone crosses into the Bay from international waters that they’d get exploded by an army of helicopters or giant robots with guns that shoot helicopters. But the Bay is all class. After being called a “fucking retard” by Uwe Boll on Youtube, one of the Bay’s acolytes went to the official Michael Bay message board and asked how he felt about it. The man’s response? “I find people who rant like that - calling shit about both me, and George Clooney - comes from someone screaming because he is not being heard. He is obviously a sad being. When you ask ‘do I care’? Not in the slightest. –M”

Sticks and stones do not break Michael Bay’s bones, Screengrabbers. Nothing breaks Michael Bay’s bones!

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Uwe, Uwe, Uwe. You need to know that the delusion goggles you wear do nothing. As we mentioned this past Monday, Uwe Boll sent an inadvertent challenge to his haters when he said he’d cease making movies if one million people signed a petition in the interests of making him stop. After nearly 150,000 individuals with moderate to good taste signed said petition, Uwe released the following statement on Youtube. NO ONE CALLS MICHAEL BAY A FUCKING RETARD IN MY TOWN!

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Sometimes certain movies can ruin actors for you. They can be the finest performer in the world, but they end up bound to a very specific performance in your mind. My brain refuses to see Willem Dafoe as anything but FBI Agent Paul Smecker from Boondock Saints, which has proven problematic in enjoying his films. Anamorph, as you can see from this trailer, seems like a decent, stylish piece of Fincher-esque crime fiction with a good serial killer hook. But all I see is Dafoe showing up at a mobster’s mansion in drag while a morbidly obese Italian man refers to him as “primo box”. You can see how this would ruin the tension.

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Yes, we are a film blog. However, our coverage of this glorious medium has wonderful crossovers with other forms of expression. While it would seem that this clip is videogame based, you’d be wrong. The medium here is Buseydom.

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You know, I’ve been sad these past few weeks. Ever since the format wars between HD-DVD and Bluray ended, I haven’t had quite so many opportunities to talk about my hero here on the ‘Grab. I’m talking, of course, about Michael Bay. Michael Bay, he with the flowingest of golden locks! Michael Bay, lover of helicopters, maker of explosions, promoter of Martin Lawrence! I have missed the tender caress of his booming, patriotic films. Thankfully, I won’t have to deal with separation anxiety any longer because the slow trickle of information leading up to the inevitable release of Transformers 2 has begun.

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First of all, Bangkok Dangerous is a hilarious name. The sixth grader who lives in my brain starts giggling every single time I look at it. It sounds like a caveman warning you to be cautious while traveling. Second of all, am I insane or is Nic Cage starting to look like the Crypt Keeper wearing a Gene Simmons wig? Casting directors, I am telling you, the man is aging. Stop trying to makehim look like he’s 30. He isn’t.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about the trailer.

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It’s just a rumor right now but, according to the Daily Mail, Madonna is trying to get together a remake of Casablanca. A remake of Casablanca set in Iraq in which she plays Ilsa Lund. Go ahead, find something disposable to vomit in. You back? Now think of all her scenes in Dick Tracy. Bet you don’t remember eating those carrots. Now think of Guy Ritchie’s Swept Away remake. Alright, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.

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Hey, Mos, it’s your cousin! Your cousin, Marvin Def. You know that new part you’ve been looking for? Well dig this!

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Continuing with the suitably meta trend of the past couple of days, here’s another “Top” list posted on a website that loves doing “Top” lists itself. While part one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 50 Most Vile Villains list was a little hit or miss, Popular Mechanics’ list is an incredibly entertaining read top to bottom thanks to its novel premise. The list also happens to be absolutely terrifying. The majority of these films depict bleak, forbidding, soulless futures for mankind and writer Erik Sofge deftly points out how it’s all coming true. Except for Soylent Green. Soylent Green is still not people.

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For what is ostensibly a tent pole for Fox in the summer blockbuster season, there hasn’t been a whole lot of mainstream hype for the yet-to-be-officially-titled X-Files sequel. The film drops on July 25th and it’s only today that an official poster has been released (and it’s quite fetching, as you can see). Then again, there seems to be a method to the marketing madness behind Mulder and Scully’s resurrection. It works like this:

Step 1) Make brief trailer comprised purely of quick cuts, include one shot of beloved characters. Bring trailer to comics convention, allow nerds to spread good news.

Step 2) Make second trailer, include pensive dialogue between beloved characters, more quick cut action, add theme song and classic vague text alluding to “the truth” and it being somewhere. Bring to comic convention, allow nerds to spread good news.

Step 3) Profit without paying for televised marketing until summer.

That Chris Carter’s one smart cookie. Metaphorically speaking. Unless the truth that is out there is that Chris Carter is indeed a delicious, circular confection possibly containing chips of chocolate.

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Typically, we here at Das Screengrab bring you all the latest news about all two billion ninety-three comics being adapted for the silver screen. Today, however, we’re mixing things up! Hugh Jackman, the Aussie thespian who became an inexorable part of 21st century pop culture after his portrayal of Wolverine in Fox’s X-Men flicks, announced that he’ll be creating his very own funny book, Nowhere Man.

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Nah, I’m just razzing you. Looks like Jason Statham is set to continue his nearly decade-long streak of playing the exact same dude punching other dudes in Crank 2. Spoiler TV has got details on the plot (as it were) and some of the roles yet to be cast. If you’re, and I quote, a "tough fowl mouthed British kid with a cockney accent" you could play the child version of Statham’s character Chev! Who, I guess, has chickens in his mouth. Or something.

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Alright, I admit, that’s cheating. Indiana Jones doesn’t call Shia LaBeouf "Junior" anywhere in this new featurette on the official Kingdom of the Crystal Skull website. You, however, will delight in this reference to a fondly remembered film starring related characters! Ill-suited allusions aside, I found LaBeouf pretty endearing here and it’s helped get me more excited to see just what the movie’s going to be like. Given, I’m already pretty endeared towards people who get arrested at Walgreens. Nothing brings people together like shared experience.

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Hey, film buffs! What does this picture of Madonna remind you of?



Hit the jump for a hint!

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Remember a couple weeks back when the internet scared the crap out of me?

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Saying that 2008 is an interesting time for visual media is an understatement. As an art form, filmmaking has never been more accessible. Making a movie is cheap and distribution is only a Youtube account away. It’s interesting then to watch the growing trend of successful theatrical filmmakers looking to other mediums, specifically video games, as a new avenue of not just business but expression. Peter Jackson’s working on multiple projects within Microsoft’s omnipresent Halo franchise, Steven Spielberg’s developing three separate games for Electronic Arts (the first of which, Boom Blox for the Wii, you can check out here), and Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis have beaten the ravages of aging by turning to games for a third Ghostbusters. Now George Miller, of Mad Max and Babe fame, is getting in on the action.

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Those crazy cats over at Twitch have posted a Japanese trailer for John Woo’s return to the both the big screen and Hong Kong cinema, Red Cliff. We got some eyes on time with Red Cliff back at the beginning of February but this is a whole lot crisper than the earlier leak.

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