lizlet: 10 minutes and $30,000 in the life of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter project. (Specifically, 8:49-8:59 AM PST. The total is now, of course, much higher.) Currently over $675k - I’m curious to see where it goes. I’m also curious to see how this affects WB’s internal navigation of future film financing. I’m not opposed to giving money to ensure projects I care about get made (like this one) but I also don’t want film to become like video games where you’re now encouraged to “pre-order” (and therefore pre-pay for) new titles without any information on quality or gameplay. There’s currently a very uncomfortable shift going on in the video game industry where pre-orders are highly encouraged so first-day sales can overwhelm and eclipse the reviews. Film loves their opening weekend, and hates that twitter and facebook can kill a film dead by midnight on Friday - I hope this is being seen as fandom supporting projects they care passionately about and not a method to get your money before you can torpedo a project with your opinion.
View Separately

lizlet:

10 minutes and $30,000 in the life of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter project. (Specifically, 8:49-8:59 AM PST. The total is now, of course, much higher.)

Currently over $675k - I’m curious to see where it goes. I’m also curious to see how this affects WB’s internal navigation of future film financing. I’m not opposed to giving money to ensure projects I care about get made (like this one) but I also don’t want film to become like video games where you’re now encouraged to “pre-order” (and therefore pre-pay for) new titles without any information on quality or gameplay.

There’s currently a very uncomfortable shift going on in the video game industry where pre-orders are highly encouraged so first-day sales can overwhelm and eclipse the reviews. Film loves their opening weekend, and hates that twitter and facebook can kill a film dead by midnight on Friday - I hope this is being seen as fandom supporting projects they care passionately about and not a method to get your money before you can torpedo a project with your opinion.

kenyatta: Sigourney Weaver as ‘Ellen Ripley’ in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) Watching Aliens on TV right now. This movie holds up so damn well over time. I think people forget how important Aliens was to pop culture. Most sci-fi action movies and games look they way they do because of the art direction and production design of Aliens. (The first movie, Alien, borrowed a lot of its look from 2001: A Space Odyssey.) This was James Cameron’s first studio movie after the low budget, independent The Terminator. Aliens proved that Cameron knew what he was doing and set off a fantastic career. The success of Sigourney Weaver’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Aliens created roles for strong women in Hollywood action movies.  It preceded a cultural shift in America, past second wave feminism and towards a world where we were allowed to celebrate women who rocked. Ripley also became the archetype for James Cameron’s later characters of Sarah Connor (Terminator 2), and Max Guevara (Dark Angel).  I’d even argue confidently that Ripley laid the groundwork for all of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi asskickers from Buffy to River Tam. Also: Paul Riser’s greedy, conniving “Burke” was the perfect foil for a 1980’s America pissed off at the greed of yuppies who seemed to value profits over humanity. I’ve read board posts where people describe the dialogue and tropes of Aliens as cliché — the sci-fi movie with the false ending, the badass military Latina soldier, lines like “game over man, game over” — but most of this is ignorant of pop culture history. You have to remember that many of these elements became tropes because everybody copied them from Aliens. Also: Alien 3 is still a huge fucking disappointment. This is the legacy of Aliens. It’s a seminal film - though Kenyatta and I seem to disagree on whether Alien or Aliens is a better movie (spoiler alert: I think Alien is - but I also love the claustrophobic feeling of confined filmmaking) and to what degree Alien borrowed from 2001, versus to what degree Aliens borrowed from Alien (I think there’s a lot more of Geiger in Alien than there is 2001, and I think Aliens took that Geiger and simply ran with it.) However, Aliens did literally create and then define a genre of film, and then it simultaneously defined the tropes and archetypes of that genre so well that they’ve almost never deviated. Additionally, it created a new style of female protagonist that was unapologetically awesome, completely modern and unlike anyone else in contemporary media. Also worth reiterating, James Cameron wrote and directed it, so all of this was his defining vision (presumably) from start to finish. So I mostly agree with all of this…with the possible exception of the last line. Now to be fair, I’m also disappointed in Alien 3, but I’d like to expand on why. The film David Fincher intended to shoot was ballsy. It was a throwback to the intimacy and organic claustrophobia of Alien. It treated Aliens like The Empire Strikes Back, and openly recognized that the entire trilogy was actually the story of Ripley and the inevitability of her solitude. She is, without getting into hyperbole, the loneliest woman in the universe. She has seen and survived things that no one else has; this is her strength and her weakness. From that standpoint, Alien 3 attempted to finish her story of being fated to a life of solitude, survival, loss, and never knowing anything more than pyrrhic victories. In fact, fate versus free will (especially within the contexts of class and religion) was a big theme running through the whole film. But where Aliens was a sequel trusted to the singular vision of one writer/director, Alien 3 was now a “franchise film,” subject to meddling, studio-mandated script changes, and production infighting. The best description I can think of is that David Fincher set out to make a sequel to Alien - a film that was claustrophobic, thoughtful and lonely - but the powers that be wanted Aliens 2. The film was co-opted and then edited to be…well, awful. The film cobbled together for the Alien Quadrilogy Anthology from the husks of what Fincher shot and what made it into the theatrical version is…well, it’s okay. There’s a lot of potential, but it’s still uneven. It’s certainly miles ahead of Alien: Resurrection, which was nigh unwatchable. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for the film nonetheless. I consider it the final leg of Ripley’s dramatic arc. Her tragic final act, if you will, and a fitting end to her character. When taken out of the context of any other Alien sequels, it’s a recognition of the importance of her character, and it treats her with the respect that she deserves without shying away from the inevitability of her fate. Her final act is a sad - albeit selfless - end and the one time in the three films she’s ever, truly been in control of her own fate. She takes back control over her life by ending it in defiance of the Xenomorphs and the corporation that have combined and conspired to haunt her for unknowable years now; and the relief on her face is the last image we have of her life, her journey, and her fate. It’s beautiful, really. Flawed beauty, but beauty nonetheless. …Of course, then they made a fourth film.
View Separately

kenyatta:

Sigourney Weaver as ‘Ellen Ripley’ in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)

Watching Aliens on TV right now. This movie holds up so damn well over time.

I think people forget how important Aliens was to pop culture.

Most sci-fi action movies and games look they way they do because of the art direction and production design of Aliens. (The first movie, Alien, borrowed a lot of its look from 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

This was James Cameron’s first studio movie after the low budget, independent The Terminator. Aliens proved that Cameron knew what he was doing and set off a fantastic career.

The success of Sigourney Weaver’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Aliens created roles for strong women in Hollywood action movies.  It preceded a cultural shift in America, past second wave feminism and towards a world where we were allowed to celebrate women who rocked. Ripley also became the archetype for James Cameron’s later characters of Sarah Connor (Terminator 2), and Max Guevara (Dark Angel).  I’d even argue confidently that Ripley laid the groundwork for all of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi asskickers from Buffy to River Tam.

Also: Paul Riser’s greedy, conniving “Burke” was the perfect foil for a 1980’s America pissed off at the greed of yuppies who seemed to value profits over humanity.

I’ve read board posts where people describe the dialogue and tropes of Aliens as cliché — the sci-fi movie with the false ending, the badass military Latina soldier, lines like “game over man, game over” — but most of this is ignorant of pop culture history. You have to remember that many of these elements became tropes because everybody copied them from Aliens.

Also: Alien 3 is still a huge fucking disappointment.

This is the legacy of Aliens. It’s a seminal film - though Kenyatta and I seem to disagree on whether Alien or Aliens is a better movie (spoiler alert: I think Alien is - but I also love the claustrophobic feeling of confined filmmaking) and to what degree Alien borrowed from 2001, versus to what degree Aliens borrowed from Alien (I think there’s a lot more of Geiger in Alien than there is 2001, and I think Aliens took that Geiger and simply ran with it.)

However, Aliens did literally create and then define a genre of film, and then it simultaneously defined the tropes and archetypes of that genre so well that they’ve almost never deviated. Additionally, it created a new style of female protagonist that was unapologetically awesome, completely modern and unlike anyone else in contemporary media. Also worth reiterating, James Cameron wrote and directed it, so all of this was his defining vision (presumably) from start to finish.

So I mostly agree with all of this…with the possible exception of the last line.

Now to be fair, I’m also disappointed in Alien 3, but I’d like to expand on why. The film David Fincher intended to shoot was ballsy. It was a throwback to the intimacy and organic claustrophobia of Alien. It treated Aliens like The Empire Strikes Back, and openly recognized that the entire trilogy was actually the story of Ripley and the inevitability of her solitude. She is, without getting into hyperbole, the loneliest woman in the universe. She has seen and survived things that no one else has; this is her strength and her weakness.

From that standpoint, Alien 3 attempted to finish her story of being fated to a life of solitude, survival, loss, and never knowing anything more than pyrrhic victories. In fact, fate versus free will (especially within the contexts of class and religion) was a big theme running through the whole film.

But where Aliens was a sequel trusted to the singular vision of one writer/director, Alien 3 was now a “franchise film,” subject to meddling, studio-mandated script changes, and production infighting. The best description I can think of is that David Fincher set out to make a sequel to Alien - a film that was claustrophobic, thoughtful and lonely - but the powers that be wanted Aliens 2.

The film was co-opted and then edited to be…well, awful. The film cobbled together for the Alien Quadrilogy Anthology from the husks of what Fincher shot and what made it into the theatrical version is…well, it’s okay. There’s a lot of potential, but it’s still uneven. It’s certainly miles ahead of Alien: Resurrection, which was nigh unwatchable.

But I do have a soft spot in my heart for the film nonetheless. I consider it the final leg of Ripley’s dramatic arc. Her tragic final act, if you will, and a fitting end to her character. When taken out of the context of any other Alien sequels, it’s a recognition of the importance of her character, and it treats her with the respect that she deserves without shying away from the inevitability of her fate.

Her final act is a sad - albeit selfless - end and the one time in the three films she’s ever, truly been in control of her own fate. She takes back control over her life by ending it in defiance of the Xenomorphs and the corporation that have combined and conspired to haunt her for unknowable years now; and the relief on her face is the last image we have of her life, her journey, and her fate.

It’s beautiful, really. Flawed beauty, but beauty nonetheless.

…Of course, then they made a fourth film.

Source:

6 Filmmaking Tips from David Fincher

tyrannosaurpaddock:

1) “What you learn from that first [film] - and I don’t call it ‘trial by fire’; I call it ‘baptism by fire’ - is that you are going to have to take all of the responsibility, because basically when it gets right down to it, you are going to get all of the blame, so you might as well have made all of the decisions that led to people either liking it or disliking it. There’s nothing worse than hearing somebody say, ‘Oh, you made that movie? I thought that movie sucked,’ and you have to agree with them, you know?”

2) “I never fall in love with anything. I really don’t, I am not joking. ‘Do the best you can, try to live it down,’ that’s my motto. Just literally give it everything you got, and then know that it’s never going to turn out the way you want it to, and let it go, and hope that it doesn’t return. Because you want it to be better than it can ever turn out. Absolutely, 1000 percent, I believe this: Whenever a director friend of mine says, ‘Man, the dailies look amazing!’ … I actually believe that anybody, who thinks that their dailies look amazing doesn’t understand the power of cinema; doesn’t understand what cinema is capable of.”

3) “A friend of mine once, he was directing his first film and he called me and said, ‘How many takes can I ask for?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well I’m working with this actress and she said that she’s only going to give me six takes.’ And I said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, you ask for whatever it is you need.’ I’ve never understood… It’s not about an actor presenting their work to forty people around them. It’s about, you know, it’s the boom operator, it’s the camera operator, it’s can you tweak the light better, can the person hit their mark better, can they be in focus. There’s so many aspects, it’s not just about the actor. That’s the focus of what you’re trying to get, but it’s a ballet between so many different people. And to me that’s the thing, to make it all coalesce, to make it look effortless.”

4) In the commentary track for Se7en, Fincher explains that when he was working at ILM, he was taught that a director should look at each scene’s set up with each eye individually. Left eye for composition (because it’s connected to the creative right side of the brain). Right eye for focus and technical specs (because it’s connected to the mathematical left side of the brain).

5) “A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the filmmakers. I think that The Game is a movie and I think Fight Club’s a film. I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn’t look at Panic Room and think: Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire. These are footnote movies, guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They’re not particularly important.”

6) “You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say ‘I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear … How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.”

More discussion, links, videos, and other great stuff here

David Fincher is maybe my favorite director of all time. Here are six reasons why.

(via mikeambs)

Source: tyrannosaurpaddock

evangotlib: jonprins: gunsandrobots: After watching the new trailer, I don’t think Pixar’s Brave could check off more boxes in the things that I adore in a movie list. Want to watch. Nao. As a father to a new baby girl it makes me SO happy to see a female Pixar hero!  Can’t wait to watch this with Chloe one day. …and then teach her archery!
Pop-upView Separately

evangotlib:

jonprins:

gunsandrobots:

After watching the new trailer, I don’t think Pixar’s Brave could check off more boxes in the things that I adore in a movie list.

Want to watch. Nao.

As a father to a new baby girl it makes me SO happy to see a female Pixar hero!  Can’t wait to watch this with Chloe one day.

…and then teach her archery!

Source: gunsandrobots

On George Lucas and Star Wars Revisionism

ericmortensen:

They’re his films. He can do what he wants with them. I’m actually intrigued by what he’s doing, even if I don’t actually want to watch the doctored work. The bummer is that he doesn’t make the originals available. The even bigger bummer is that technology moves quickly and devices capable of of playing the original video releases are quickly disappearing.

On the bright side, we’ll eventually see some beautiful homebrew digital versions of the original films. Perhaps they already exist. The kids are usually the ones fucking with things. This time they’ll be protecting the sanctity of the original.

An underground community has been doing something similar with Beatles records for over 25 years. They’ve preserved the original sound when digital presentations deliberately mucked it up. There are countless competing Beatles catalogs being traded via BitTorrent, Usenet and certain record stores around the world. Sometimes the community has to take matters into its own hands in order to preserve certain cultural touchstones. 

Of course, once a piece of art is ingrained in a culture for this long, its relationship with that culture ceases to be about the original work. It becomes a shared, and fluid, idea. Maybe Lucas is just actively participating in this fluidity instead of resigning himself to the sidelines as the mere creator of the work, as tradition dictates.  If so, what he’s doing today might be just as groundbreaking as what he did in the 70’s. 

An interesting take on things. To Eric’s point, I’ll say that while I own Dark Side Of The Moon on vinyl (original pressing, no less - thank you honey), MP3, and CD, one of my prized downloads is an unauthorized DTS 5.1 mix that really makes the whole piece come alive. It’s not as organic as the vinyl album (analog audio always sounds better to me than digital - maybe it’s a personal thing, but no matter how many times a second you sample something, it doesn’t feel as organic as a simple traced waveform) but has its own life and unique qualities that I really appreciate.

While there were various quadrophonic and 5.1 versions released, this one was never available for purchase. So far as I’ve been able to find, this mix was entirely community created. I don’t know how, or why, - maybe out of simple love for the original - but it’s become one of my favorite versions of the album.

heressomeawesome:

There really isn’t any point in denying my undying love for the Portal games. I think they’re fantastically fun, brilliantly written, and incredibly subversive in every way a modern game should be. They’re also incredibly cinematic, with characters that display true pathos and situations that try your emotions in unexpected ways. So obviously Portal is ripe for a transition to film. But here’s the thing: I can’t think of a single game-to-film translation that didn’t suck.

Until now.

Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning: this film is awesome. Dan Trachtenberg, co-creator and co-host of The Totally Rad Show, commercial director, and overall video game connoisseur, took on the challenge of translating the Portal games to film and just knocked it out of the park. Taking on a decidedly darker tone than the games, Portal: No Escape is a distilled and concentrated 7 minutes of incredibly dextrous storytelling that notches right into the Portal universe while even making its own additions. This isn’t just a fanfilm, this is a proper creative addition to the Portal universe.

Dear VALVe: hand Dan the keys to Portal, find him a proper film budget, and let this man run wild. Trust us – the results will be worth it.

rebeccalando:

spytap:

teamtigerawesome:

The Trailer for “Battleship.”  Holy shit this looks terrible but I can’t wait to see it.

I swear to god this looks like an upscale SNL Digital Short, but sans humor, whimsy, or fun. I can honestly say I have never been less excited about a film involving Liam Neeson and gunplay. They should have just called this “Cashgrab: The Film.”

Had to be done.

ALL THE WIN!

Source: teamtigerawesome

Sherlock Holmes 2 official trailer

nslayton:

jesthenoir:

psychluna:

This is going to be epic! Ohhhhhh @Jesthestar @Judyneeb

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

YESSS! Guy Ritchie. Sherlock Holmes. Again. Is it Christmas yet?

Gotta say, I loved the hell out of the recent BBC Sherlock Holmes series, but only liked the recent Guy Richie film. Given my druthers, I’d fund 10 seasons of the BBC series as opposed to a single film sequel.

Source: lunas-labyrinth

Roger Ebert: Sequels and Unoriginality in Hollywood

Aside from his spot-on commentary on the state of originality in mainstream film, I also thought this paragraph was particularly apt:

Trailers also do their best to spoil secrets and sight gags for you. One executive told me: “We want them to feel like they’re seeing the whole movie, except that it’s longer.” This model can also be found in the aisles of supermarkets, where you’re offered a bite of cheese on a toothpick. After you eat it, you know everything there is to know about that cheese except what it would be like to eat a pound of it.

More than ever before, I get the feeling that my colleagues at various studios think that I’m rather slow.

in which langer kills any hope that ebert could have possibly generated about the film ‘Avatar’

writer-a:

ericmortensen:

vruz:

—by langer:

Avatar is a bad film.

Not because it lacks any meaningful character development (which it does), not because its plot is laughably flimsy (which it is), and not because it is little more than a big-budget remake of FernGully, but because it is yet another example of b-grade Hollywood moralizing, of not very smart people with typically superficial good intentions offering Americans an insidiously shallow civics lesson along with their 64-oz Cokes and shrink-wrapped boxes of Butterfinger Minis.

American audiences have long preferred to buy their cultural sensitivity on the cheap, and Avatar is no exception here. Cinema regularly lures its viewers into an empty sense of mea culpa by safely buffering any requisite admission of guilt with the distantiation of history, of fairy tales, or of good old fashioned exaggeration. Our collective sins are pointed out for us in a way that doesn’t demand we see those same sins in ourselves. In any theatrical contest between Good and Evil, ticket sales will only ever cover production costs if while being asked to root against our own image we’re allowed to remain reasonably convinced of the implausibility that we ourselves could ever individually be as evil as these representations suggest.

It’s the uncanny valley of morality.

This is why we were all supposed to feel a little bit better about ourselves after watching Crash, because even though the film’s white antagonists didn’t drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag bumper stickers but lived in McMansions and kept hired maids and drank Starbucks and drove BMWs and looked generally indistinguishable from well-to-do liberal types just like us, their racism was so exaggerated and unsympathetic that we could condemn ourselves without any of the uncomfortable consequences of actually condemning ourselves. Then we all patted ourselves on the back and congratulated each other on how far we’ve come by handing this lousy film the Best Picture award. In an age when a political activist is someone who tints his Twitter avatar green, this Oscar was our Emancipation Proclamation.

This is why when watching The Last of the Mohicans we rooted for an indigenous culture that we ourselves had once oppressed as we watched them be subjugated by white colonizers we call our forefathers, since despite our shared lineage with the bad guys we can comfortably cast judgment because theirs were historical sins for which we’ve long since apologized with national monuments and Congressional resolutions, and because the indigenous culture in question has already been so decimated and so quarantined by poverty and desert reservations as to no longer pose any ongoing challenges to our national interest.

And this is why we cheered on a bunch of dwarves and elves and talking trees, because the two white guys oppressing them commanded an army of orcs instead of Blackwater personnel.

In the case of Avatar the bad guys again look just like we do, they wield the mighty hammer of the military-industrial complex just like we do, and they speak the language of colonialism just like we do. Yet in a country where anything short of full-throated support of the military is verboten we’re exonerated for rooting against these former Marines because they’re conquering a make-believe planet populated with make-believe aliens in a make-believe time. We’re allowed to cheer for this oppressed people because the missile strikes come from futuristic gunships and not from Predator drones. And we can safely criticize this fictional military because it takes its cues directly from its heartless capitalist overlords, while ours only takes its heartlessly capitalistic cues through the more familiar proxy of a popularly elected commander in chief.

As with any other case study in the ever-cheapening cinematic pedagogy of morality, it speaks volumes about the contemporary American audience that James Cameron had to spend fifteen years and $300 million inventing a race of people and the necessary technology to tell a story that could have just as easily been told with a handheld camera and a flight to the Ecuadorian rainforest—albeit one that wouldn’t have sold any tickets if it had.

And now millions of Americans get to go home and take comfort in the fact that while our empire may have its flaws and our military may be regularly dispatched to conquer “savages” who made the tragic mistake of establishing their homeland on top of massive deposits of natural resource, well, hey, at least we’ve never blown up a bunch of adorable purple aliens.

Yes, that is absolutely correct. I see films instead of going to confession; it’s so much less painless than self-flagellation.  But thanks for breaking this down for myself and the millions of other addled Americans who left the theater completely overcome by a glucose head rush and a curious sense of unattributable exoneration. Before this post, it was completely lost on me and my fellow hordes of grunting, barely upright knuckle draggers that we were perhaps brainwashed into living another day relieved of guilt… all for the price of a theater ticket.

Pardon the sarcasm.

My question for you is, since we both agree that the weak character development isn’t the main issue here, should we also damn Plato’s Republic and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings too? Or are we only jumping on allegory-as-film? Is it possible that maybe the theater-going experience isn’t about mea-culpa after all? Just possible? I hope so, otherwise I’m afraid I’m going to have to await your next film before I can feel less guilty about enjoying everyone else’s.

Pardon my french, but remember when you went to the movie because it was fucking fun and didn’t feel the need to check beforehand whether or not you would already pre-agree with someone else’s interpretation of the “message?” This is a watershed film and will be remembered as such. Who cares if you don’t “agree” with the film, there have been hundreds of films I didn’t “agree” with that A) I still enjoyed, B) I still appreciated, and C) I’m glad I watched.

When exactly did your inner child and sense of wonder die? Maybe you can still enjoy a film without dissecting the historic or science-fiction interpretations through the lens of modern politics. Maybe you don’t have to get permission from your overlords to accept the messaging before seeing an entertainment property. Maybe, sometimes, you can just drop into a film and enjoy the ride.

Fuck, modern political discussion is retarded. If The Godfather were released now people would be up in arms over their interpreted “message” of the film. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - if you’re looking for a reason to get up in arms about “Hollywood liberals” or “liberal messaging” or “forced brainwashing and liberal guilt” you’ll fucking find it everywhere you look - because you’re an idiot and have only one tool at your disposal. You’re a one-trick pony. Actually, you’re also the tool.

We used to play that game in film school - reinterpreting historic films’ messages from a modern context - Star Wars was the communist manifesto, Indiana Jones was just Ayn Rand with treasure hunting, Die Hard was Vietnam, etc. But it was fucking ridiculous, that’s what made it a such a joke!

“Dad, do you remember seeing Star Wars in theaters?”

“No, Tim, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t agree with the Hollywood Liberal Anti-America brainwashing - of course the “empire” had to be evil. George Lucas just hated America and was sowing seeds of liberal guilt. Darth Vader could have easily been written as a unifier, but they made him the bad guy. And in the end their pagan mumbo-jumbo overthrew what’s obviously meant to be the pope - who of course was also evil. Brainwashing, that’s all it was.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, Tim.”

“You missed out.”

Source: langer

thedailywhat:

Moving Trailer of the Day: First official promo trailer for Sylvester Stallone’s testoster-fest, The Expendables.

The film, which stars Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crewe, Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Danny Trejo, and features cameos by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is set to open wide August 20, 2010.

[via.]

This is a truly ridiculous trailer. It’s waay too long and has the same cheese to content ratio as Wisconsin…and yet…