It’s spring rummage week at the movies, with four releases – Lockout, The Three Stooges, Cabin in the Woods and Craig Moss’s vigilante goof Bad Ass – retooling old gems and selling off genres for parts. Maybe next year we can look forward to a film made up solely of references to this quartet – The Three Bad Asses Escape Lockout in the Woods? Wait, don’t Google that. I don’t want to know.
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Everyone is familiar with that special breed of screen performer whose names are associated with not only longevity, but also ubiquity. Gene Hackman reigned among this class for much of the last few decades, his title soon overtaken by Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicolas Cage and others who've shown a willingness to earn paychecks in everything from Oscar bait to glorified grindhouse fare. Yet another thespian exceeds them all in output, not only with an impressive slate of completed work but also a calendar-busting array of upcoming projects. Just who is the most in-demand player in Hollywood?
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Robert Rodriguez is firing up the Troublemaker machine once again for the sequel he promised from the closing credits roll on 2010's Machete, although this time around things sound decidedly less pointed and political for Danny Trejo's edged blade enthusiast. Machete Kills "finds Machete recruited by the U.S. Government for a mission which would be impossible for any mortal man. Machete must battle his way through Mexico to take down a madman cartel leader and an eccentric billionaire arms dealer who has hatched a plan to spread war across the planet with a weapon in space. Machete takes on an army in an effort to dismantle a plan for global anarchy." Is it too early to lobby for Chris Walken, a bald guy with a cat, a dude with diamonds in his face (or heck, Lindsay Lohan's real boobs) to play said baddies? [Deadline]
NBA All-Star Weekend took Hollywood by storm in more ways than one, introducing Kobe Bryant as the latest athlete to turn actor. Well, sorta: The Kobe-starring short film The Black Mamba, directed by Robert Rodriguez, is a meta, self-aware bit of Nike product placement that envisions Bryant as a grindhouse-style action hero who must contend with the likes of Danny Trejo, Bruce Willis, and Kanye West to defend... a pair of shoes. Watch it after the jump.
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