Movie News: Chinese Cowboys and Other Seekers of Fortune and Glory

Robin Hood 2



The first one's not out yet, but they're already talking sequel. Apparently, Ridley Scott envisions the first one as the origin story and the sequel would follow Robin through the height of his career, possibly all the way to the signing of the Magna Carta. Though Scott describes that as 17 years of events, so is he possibly thinking of multiple sequels?

All this concerns me a bit for this first movie. Especially the part where Scott implies that you won't really get that Russell Crowe is Robin Hood until the last few minutes. I'm now trying to adjust my expectations from Russell-Crowe-as-Robin-Hood to Russell-Crowe-in-a-generic-medieval-adventure-film. That does require a large shift in thinking, but there's no reason that I wouldn't enjoy Russell Crowe in a generic, medieval adventure film directed by Ridley Scott. [/Film]

The Good, the Bad, the Weird



Make sure to check out the trailer for this Chinese adaptation of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. As much as I respect the original, this looks like a lot of fun. An Eastern Western with heavy Indiana Jones influences. [Updated: A commenter let me know that - while it's set in China and was shot there - the movie's actually Korean. And not half bad either.]

Buy Indy's hat



Speaking of the archeologist, his hat - signed by Harrison Ford - is up for auction and there are still a couple of days left to bid (the auction closes shortly after midnight on Thursday morning). Current bid as I'm typing this is over $10,000, so make sure that checkbook's balanced.

Joss Whedon, Clash of the Titans, and a couple of alien invasions after the break.


Avengers director



Everyone knows about this already. I'm just posting about it for completeness. I'm not a big Joss Whedon fan (Firefly's the only project of his that I love unconditionally), but he does have a knack for ensemble casts, so I'm happy with the announcement. [/Film]

Missed opportunities in Clash of the Titans



I didn't have a lot to say about the Clash of the Titans remake, so I didn't write a full review. At the time, I thought it was no more or less good than the original. There was some fun action and fantastic visuals that were loosely held together by a plot that didn't make a whole lot of sense and featured characters that I didn't particularly care about.

But then I re-watched the first one and discovered that I liked it more than I remembered. Or, at least, the characters' motivations in it made a lot more sense than they did in the remake. Now that I'm re-exploring some of the original mythology (and have seen a genuinely good mythological movie in Jason and the Argonauts), the nonsense in the new Clash of the Titans pretty much just pisses me off.

And the sad thing is, it wasn't originally supposed to be that way.

(It also wasn't originally going to be in 3D, which is why the 3D effects in it absolutely sucked. That's the last time I pay extra for a 3D version of a movie that wasn't shot in 3D.)

Turf



My favorite vampires vs gangsters and aliens comic that I haven't read yet has become my favorite vampires vs gangsters and aliens movie that I haven't seen yet. [/Film]

The Darkest Hour



Olivia Thirlby (Juno, The Answer Man) and Emile Hirsch (Speed Racer) have signed on for a movie about some American tourists stuck in Moscow when an alien invasion occurs. They have to survive the attack and then try to figure out how to defeat the invaders. [/Film has a couple of posts on it.]