But back to Mirren, can we get her to star in a straight-up action vehicle without any winks? She’d be great as Jason Bourne.

That’s the questioned asked in this trailer for Warm Bodies which seems like a charming and inventive addition to the genre. This does for zombies what Edward Scissorhands did for freaky scissor-handed people. It’s not the groanworthy Twilight-ification that we all expected. Just total fun and has John Malkovich and an undead Rob Corddry in addition to Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer in the lead roles of zombie and the girl who inspires his heart to beat again. Hate on it if you have to, but at least they aren’t fast zombies.

As seeming proof of this project’s inevitability, Dean Parisot has been attached as director. He’s best known for the cult comedy Galaxy Quest, but he’s done a few other movies in addition to some stellar recent work in TV. His flair for action-comedy would seemingly make him a good fit for Red 2, which is as action-comedyish as you’re likely to get without Chris Tucker shouting at you. There’s no word yet on who of the cast of Red will be back for the sequel, but hopefully they’ll all be able to make it if they don’t die of old age first, yuk yuk yuk. (The Playlist)

“[It's] set in Cambridge, Mass., during the 1980s….and centers on a teenage boy who’s contemplating coming out. But in a twist, his ultra-progressive family (Keener and Malkovich would play the parents) actually wants to celebrate the boy’s newfound sexuality, while all the boy wants is to be left alone.”

That sounds funny. Why can’t nice young men like Peretz make movies without bad words? They’re only for people who don’t have any other shit to say. (The Playlist)

Watson signed on to star opposite Logan Lerman in The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, an adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s heavily-banned novel. The John Malkovich-produced film had a hard time finding a home but now there’s news that Summit will pick it up with plans for shooting to begin this June.

In the film, Lerman will star as an outcast who mails anonymous letters to strangers. Watson will play one of two classmates who befriend him. The other will be played by an awkward-looking underaged red-haired boy who grown women in my age group have a sexual attraction to for some reason. You know who you are. (Vulture)

I loves me some badass, bald Bruce. He’s my hero and Red had all the makings of the kind of crazy action movie I like. In some ways it kind of delivered but I’m still disappointed by it. The comedy works and making that the context for the action totally works, but it’s more "Moonlighting" than Die Hard.

Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) goes about his daily routines, flirting with Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) by phone as she handles his pension check. When ski masked guys come to his house, he takes them all out, goes after Sarah and gets the old gang back together. He was a CIA operative with Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) and Victoria (Helen Mirren). Now agent Cooper (Karl Urban) is on their tail.

More after the jump…

All the shenanigans are played as comedy, in fact as romantic comedy between Frank and Sarah. That’s fine. I always say action is an inherently comedic genre anyway. The stunts and payoffs are punch lines. It still has to cohere like an action movie though. Red feels like just a collection of stunts with no flow.

Action sequences are just poorly shot. It feels like they took a few comic panels from the book, but you don’t see the effects of a given action. It’s hard to see how Frank takes out the intruders, but he looks cool doing it. Those trailer moments like getting out of the spinning car or shooting rockets at bad guys are cool, but they only play as stunts that somebody filmed, not actions the characters performed in the scene. You barely see Mirren with the machinegun at all.

Romantic comedies could take a cue from Red though. How many stupid movies have we seen where a woman hates the difficult guy until she learns he’s really not all bad? Well, Sarah has every right to feel that way, dragged on the run by a sketchy guy she’s only spoken to by phone, so she doesn’t even know that he’s the good guy. It works largely because Parker is so adorable.

The team is great together and they’ve got an all star cast of supporting actors to play opposite too. Every scene feels like a bunch of old pros reminiscing, whether they’re colleagues or villains. There’s some nifty caper as they orchestrate their mission, everyone gets some badass moments and they have outrageous sets for the characters to play in.

That’s a lot to be happy about in Red but it failed me on the most important aspect. I could just accept that it’s an all star comedy with great characters, but that would be wrong. The action scenes left me cold and that’s no good in an action movie.
 

Somehow in 10 years of journalism, I’d always just missed John Malkovich until now. I’d grown up watching In the Line of Fire and Con Air, but since going pro, never got to talk to him about Being John Malkovich, Color Me Kubrick or Burn After Reading. For my first ever interview with the screen legend, I would receive a phone call with that familiar, mellow/menacing cadence on the other line.

In Red, Malkovich joins a team of A-listers in an action comedy. He plays Marvin, a retired CIA agent who’s still paranoid from being force-fed LSD over the years. He lives in a bunker and springs booby traps in the forest when Bruce Willis and Mary-Louise Parker come to visit him.

The phenomenon of John Malkovich is bigger than any single movie or entire filmography though. You say Malkovich and everyone know what you mean. Everyone, maybe, except for Malkovich. He was probably just being coy, or perhaps making me work for it, but that’s exactly what I’d expect from Malkovich anyway.

SJ: Why do you think people love to see you as crazy, eccentric characters?

JM: I don’t know. You’d have to ask people.

SJ: Did it begin with In the Line of Fire?

JM: Maybe. Could’ve, yeah.

SJ: It seems to make people happy when you come on screen with wild hair and stubble and costumes.

JM: They like it even more if I have a hatchet in my underwear. I think it’s because if they see me with a hatchet or a gun, they think there’s a pretty good chance I’ll use it. Maybe it’s that, I don’t know.
 
SJ: When you started doing In the Line of Fire and Con Air, was the action genre ever a tough sell for you?

JM: No. I never so much mind about the genre. What I mind is that it’s good and it’s sharp. Or that it’s unique in its genre or it says something and is well executed in its genre. I always like action just as much as the next person.

SJ: Why do you think we’re seeing movies about older characters kicking ass, like The Expendables, Red, Gran Torino? Why is now the time people are embracing this topic?

JM: That’s a very good question. I don’t know. To answer that honestly I’d have to have seen them all and I haven’t. I haven’t even seen Red but maybe a lot of the moviegoers now have grandparents that they don’t necessarily want to think of as expendable. Could be something as simple as that or it could be that, I haven’t seen those films, so it could be that they’re good stories well told. It’s funny, I think for movie actors, if it’s a movie actor you like, like say I always loved Clint Eastwood, I don’t like him any less than I did when he was 30 or 40. If it’s an actor you like, you enjoy that familiarity with them and their work and with the characters they’ve played. Of course if it’s an actor you don’t like, it makes you hate them even more but that’s a good question. I’d have to reflect on it. Sorry I don’t have a sound bite answer to it.

SJ: I think you’re one of those actors that people consistently like. Has the persona of John Malkovic taken on a life of its own?

JM: I don’t know. I think the world’s changed so much since I started that probably like most people that are known, a certain body of people have a perception of you. In my experience, what I’ve been led to believe about people is rarely what I find about them in my experience. But if you’re someone who has been in the public eye for a certain degree of time or only in the public eye very recently and for a very brief time, perceptions have formed about you immediately. It’s very difficult to change that perception even if you cared to and I don’t care to. But the second you’re out there, there are going to be perceptions about you.

SJ: Does having a movie about Being John Malkovich affect that?

JM: I would imagine but there are people who know you from this film, think you’re that way and people who know you from that film think you’re that way. I’m not really like any of them. But it’s okay because maybe I do the same.

SJ: How was your experience on Transformers 3?

JM: It was great. I loved it. Same producers [as Red]. I got along very well with Michael Bay and enjoyed working with him. Most all of my stuff was with Shia and John Turturro. John I’ve known since the old days of theater and I’ve always found him to be a terrific actor who I’ve worked with once before. Shia is someone I’ve always thought was a really, really fine young actor with a lot of energy and presence. He’s quick and intelligent and very well prepared and very quick to respond to anything.

SJ: Do you have a big part? How long did you work?

JM: Just five days. Five long days. Five or six days. So it’s a part.

SJ: I’ve been on Bay’s sets so I know what you’re talking about, how he packs it all into a day.

JM: Yeah, they were busy days but actually really fun.

SJ: What was your favorit weapon in Red?

JM: It’s called a Swedish K. But those little 9mm machine pistols are not without their particular charm. Swedish K is a very, very elegant sort of response, a kind of perfect form function gun that was made in Sweden which our CIA used a lot in Southeast Asia during the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. They had a nasty habit of turning up in places where we weren’t supposed to be so the Swedish stopped selling them to the American military. Then I think it was Smith and Wesson made a kind of their version of it, but I think no one judged it to be as successful as the real thing.

SJ: Would you be up for more missions with the Red team?

JM: Yeah, sure, I’d be delighted to. It was really, really fun. Assuming we all concurred on a script and all that stuff, and I would imagine most of the people in this would be very game for that because it was great fun to do. 
 

The Machete red band trailer is awesome, but not one that you can share with your grandmother. Unless your grandmother is awesome. Thankfully, we have the new trailer for RED to appease Nans.

This second trailer gives us a much better idea of what’s going on, and the film seems legitimately fun. C’mon. It’s got Helen Mirren and bazookas. You’ll never see that again until we successfully engineer that Stephen Frears-Michael Bay hybrid moster. And the funding drives for that have been an abject failure so far.

Watch a batsh*t Malkovich after the jump…

Robert Schwentke’s film adaptation of the Warren Ellis graphic novel Red looks like The Losers recast for a CBS audience. It stars Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich (going full-Nugent), and Mary-Louise Parker as former CIA assassins forced into retirement. But old habits die hard and the boredom of retired life sets in, causing them to venture out on their own to murder-for-hire. And then when their old bosses try to have them killed, they reunite to take the fight to the CIA’s front door.

Why is the CIA always trying to kill its former employees? That hardly happens with any other profession. Better off safe than sorry though. That’s why I’ve been systematically eliminating the customers from my boyhood paper route. That, and because of their ethnicities.

HELEN MIRREN POPS A CAP AFTER THE JUMP…

Red – Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

_{Megan Fox (Left) speaks with Edward James Olmos (Right) between takes.}

If the latest installment of the Jonah Hex trailer series is any indication, Hollywood is officially out of ideas.

The original trailer, which premiered last month, told the story of the upcoming Jonah Hex movie staring Josh Brolin as the titular cowboy bounty hunter who straddles the world of the living and the dead. The trailer also featured Megan Fox and John Malkovich, and was cheered by fans and critics alike for its non-stop action and witty dialogue.

Although the new trailer features the entire original cast, the sequel squanders any good will earned by the first installment. It is nothing more than a tired rehash of its predecessor, devoid of any original ideas whatsoever. Brolin, Fox and Malkovich should be ashamed to be associated with this transparent marketing ploy which seems to have the singular purpose of selling movie tickets to eager fanboys.

Watch the pathetic new Jonah Hex trailer after the jump.

_{A Malkovich handshake.}

We get it. He’s got an ugly face. But the Jonah Hex trailer wants to make sure you fully understand that fact. Josh Brolin plays a scarred bounty hunter charged with hunting down his oldest enemy (John Malkovich, unfortunately not playing himself) who is preparing to unleash Hell.

Megan Fox shows off her heaving bosom in a corset as another sexy dame that can shoot a gun with the greatest of ease. Also, Daniels from "The Wire" provides Jonah with weapons, and Will Arnett has a mustache and a word of advice. The only thing that’s missing is Kenneth Branagh operating a mechanical spider. I’d like to see Jonah come up with a quippy one-liner for that. One that Will Smith doesn’t already own.

Check out the trailer after the jump. Jonah Hex saddles up in theaters June 18, 2010.

Jonah Hex Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Just in time for the Oaks Celebration of the 136th Kentucky Derby, we have the trailer for Secretariat. Directed by Randall Wallace, it stars Diane Lane as a horse owner with a vagina (GASP!), that attempts to lead her thoroughbred to Triple Crown glory. John Malkovich co-stars as the horse’s trainer and personal stylist. Here that swelling score? That means you can lump this one into Disney’s growing catalogue of "Animals Who Defy the Odds to Blow Your F*cking Mind."

To differentiate it from Seabiscuit, the filmmakers could have taken a few liberties with the material. My suggestion: the true story of a horse who ate too much, and lounged around like he was in the Caribbean. Here’s an artist’s interpretation of what that may look like.

Check out the trailer after the jump. Secretariat charges into theaters October 8, 2010.

Secretariat Trailer – Watch more Movie Trailers

Director: Randall Wallace

Cast: Diane Lane, John Malkovich, James Cromwell, Dylan Walsh

Synopsis: The life story of Penny Chenery, owner of the racehorse Secretariat, who won the Triple Crown in 1973.

Release Date: October 8, 2010

Apparently only Josh Brolin matters on the new poster for Jonah Hex. Sure, Megan Fox is wearing a corsett, and the target audience is more likely to care about her heaving bosom than Brolin’s mangled face, but she doesn’t even get a tiny credit above the hackneyed tag.

Sweet gatling gun, Jonah. Ever tried to fire one with one hand? The kickback alone would rip your G.D. arm off. Then you’d be an amputee with bad skin. There’s a name for people like you: Sally Punkin. We drove her to tears in middle school. Well not me, but people I knew… (Yahoo)

It’s so great when celebrities act silly overseas for money. In the above commercial for Nespresso, George Clooney walks out of a shop and gets a piano dropped on his head by an off-screen Road Runner. He then travels to heaven and–wait, John Malkovich is dead?!

Enjoy these links with a nice cup of coffee. 

_{Best Football Celebration Dances Ever (HolyTaco)}

_{Fight Breaks Out Durin High School Girls Soccer (TotalProSports)}

_{Ship Made from World Trade Center Steel (TheChive)}

_{Coolio Replaces DMX in MMA Fight (FilmDrunk)}

_{15 Worst Bootleg DVD Covers of All Time (SuperTremendous)}

_{Top 8 Werewolf Movies of the Last 30 Years (Pajiba)}

_{Jessica Alba Gets a Spankin’ (CelebJihad)}

_{There’s a Calvin in All of Us (Unreality)}

_{Guys Don’t Find Skinny Women Attractive (Asylum)}

_{Will Jenn Sterger eBay Her Breast Implants? (BustedCoverage)}

_{What Does Your Bar Tab Say About You? (RegretfulMorning)}

_{You’re Dating a Gold Digger (MadeMan)}

_{Earnhardt Losing Streak Reaches 55 (AllLeftTurns)}

_{Women Freaks Out On Live TV (NothingToxic)}

_{Intercourse with a Vampire (Atom)}