Red certainly isn’t an important or groundbreaking film, but it is a lot of fun, and that counts for something in my book.  Sometimes that is exactly what we are seeking out, and this film delivers.  It’s a blast.

Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, a man who appears to be living a  ho-hum existence  in the suburbs.  He spends his free time convincing a government employee in Kansas City (Sarah, played by a sassy Mary-Louise Parker) that he has not received his government checks.  He is really ripping them up, just so he can call her every few days and talk.  The two have adopted a flirty rapport during their chats.

In a thrilling opening sequence, Frank finds out (rather unexpectedly) that he is being targeted by assassins, and he quickly and efficiently employs a variety of weapons and booby traps to thwart their efforts.  It is clear that this is no ordinary citizen, you see Frank is classified by the CIA as RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous.)

After he has time to get his wits about him, Frank rushes to Kansas City to rescue/kidnap Sarah, because she will be targeted l if the unknown assailants check his phone records.

Continue Reading →

The name of this year’s movie game seems to be massive casting. If Expendables was for the slightly older action star, then Summit Entertainment’s RED is definitely skewing much older in terms of casting.

The film stars Bruce Willis as the leader of the greatest CIA agents ever to go through the agency. The only problem? They’re all over the hill and retired. Willis leads a team of Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren, with folks like Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfuss joining along as well. In order no to alienate the viewers under the age of 50, Mary Louise Parker, Julian McMahon, and Karl Urban fill out the cast.

If the action and casting isn’t enough to warrant your $10, then how about the fact that the film is based on a comic of the same name? Originally written by Warren Ellis, the script comes from the Hoeber brothers, who also brought Whiteout to the silver screen.

We’ve got 5 brand new clips for you to check out after the jump, so be sure to enjoy the action, and catch RED in theaters on October 15th.

Continue Reading →

While the Summer might be ending, great television for the year is just beginning. That’s why Cortney’s TV Digest returns to The Flickcast this month, where we’ll be bringing you some great shows from our favorite networks, including Showtime and MTV.

Mad Men

AMC might not have a lot of television shows, but what they lack in quantity they certainly make up for in quality. Breaking Bad just finished up a fabulous third season over the Summer, and that means it’s time for Mad Men. Season 4 started last month but continues on this month, as Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce begin to establish their new, but struggling, ad firm.

Mad Men is on every Sunday at 10/9C on AMC.

Weeds

Our favorite pot-dealing, crime-scheming Nancy Botwin is back, as Weeds enters its sixth season. It’s so hard to write about this show without absolutely spoiling everything, but to be discrete, this episode picks up right after the last one left off, and looks like this season is going to be a doozy as everyone in the Botwin pack deals with the implications of Shane’s actions.

If you’re a new-comer to Weeds, you’ve got about two weeks to catch up on all five of the previous seasons, but the episodes are so good (and, luckily, short) that it won’t take you much time at all to see what all the fuss is about. Weeds begins its new season on August 17th on Showtime.

Continue Reading →

A brand new trailer for Red, featuring Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, and Mary Louise Parker made its debut at San Diego’s Comic-Con. The film is based on the cult D.C. graphic novels by Warren Ellis and Cully Hammer.

It has been branded as  “an explosive action-comedy.” Mirren, Willis, Freeman and Malkovich play a foursome of retired CIA operatives who are now being framed for assassination, because they know too much.  They must band together and use their combined wit and skills to survive.  They also uncover a massive conspiracy.

Red is directed by Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife.) I think it looks like a blast.  Who doesn’t love seeing Helen Mirren toting weapons? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Red is being released by Summit entertainment on October 15. Check out the new trailer after the break.

Continue Reading →

Oh Nancy Botwin, what have you gotten yourself into now? Oh wait, I already know. First, your husband dies and you have to turn to selling pot to make ends meet.

Then, you risk everything for a relationship with a known drug dealer and also have his illegitimate child. Oh, your youngest son also manages to bump off your baby daddy’s chief handler so she won’t be in the way. Too much to imagine? Nope, just another day for the folks over at Weeds.

With last season’s great cliff hanger ending still fresh in our memories this new season of the show, its sixth, promises to be even more fun. In this new trailer for it we see that although Nancy and the gang are in different surroundings, they are still the same awesome band of lovable misfits we’ve come to know and watch every week.

Click through for the trailer. Weeds begins its new season on August 16th only on Showtime.

Continue Reading →

The list of TV networks, studios and comic book companies attending San Diego Comic-Con keeps on growing. This time around it’s premiere cable network Showtime and their announcement of all they will be bringing to the show this year. The networks panels this year will include Dexter by itself as well as a special Anti-Hero panel featuring series star Michael C. Hall, Californication’s David Duchovny and Weeds’ Mary-Louise Parker.

Both panels will be on the first day of the con, Thursday, July 22.  In addition to the cast mentioned previously, the panels will feature producers and writers from Dexter, Weeds, Californication and Nurse Jackie. Okay, I like most of these shows and also are fans of their stars. However, I’m not really sure what these particular shows have to do with Comic-Con.

Granted, the con has become way more about movies, TV and such and less about comics, but I think the panels should have at least something to do with comics or the geek community in order to be included in the con. I can see what a show like The Big Bang Theory or Fringe, for example, are doing coming to San Diego but Weeds and Nurse Jackie? Not sure. At least Californiacation’s David Duchovny used to be in The X-Files so that, at least, makes a little sense.

Oh well, if you like these shows (and I do like most of them) and are going to Comic-Con, I guess you’re probably pretty happy now so I’ll just be quiet. Click through for a full description of all the panels and be sure to check back right here for more info than you can handle on this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

Continue Reading →

A host of  recent indie films have specialized in caustic characters and unlikable leads.  Greenburg, Mother and Child, and Please Give have all featured some of the most unpleasant fictional characters of recent memory.  However, none of their characters can hold a candle to Ben Kalmen in Solitary Man, played with gleeful abandon by Michael Douglas.

The former movies at least  allowed us to believe that those characters wanted a chance at redemption.  Those characters would have liked nothing more than to assuage their guilt over their toxic actions toward others.  Not Ben.  He gets a couple of opportunities to redeem himself,  he thumbs his nose at said opportunities. He is one of the most narcissistic characters ever brought to life on film.  He’s also a misogynistic pig.

Ben is sixty years old, yet he won’t even look at a woman over twenty.  The lone exception to this disturbing rule is his current girlfriend (Mary-Louise Parker) who he keeps around because she is wealthy and has a well connected family. Ben is trying to rebuild his life and fortune after an embarrassing career-ending swindle he pulled when he was a car-salesman guru.

Disgraced and penniless, Ben tries to make up for his shortcomings by bedding as many women as is physically possible for a man his age. He treats the women with cool disregard and cruel contempt after they succumb to his charms.  He is truly awful. He espouses offensive observations such as, “No one over forty is stick-thin.”

Continue Reading →

If you’re not familiar with Warren Ellis’ three -issue comic miniseries Red don’t worry. Unless you’re a fan of Ellis (which I am) you may not have seen it before. Regardless of that, Hollywood — and Summit Entertainment in particular — has seen fit to adapt Red for the big screen and we have the first trailer for that adaptation to show you today.

To be honest, this trailer doesn’t really remind me much of the comic. In fact, it almost seems like an entirely different story. Sure, the original miniseries was only three issues so some enhancement had to take place. But this trailer and the movie it represents seems more like a comedy than the balls out action comic about a retired assassin who should have been left alone I remember reading.

Although it does seem quite a bit different, at least to me, I still kinda like it. That’s the problem with adaptations of novels, comics, games or whatever, they don’t usually stay the same way you remember them. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If changes are made that are simply arbitrary, that’s where I start to have a problem with them.

Having read Red very recently, I’m probably just sensitive to perceived changes. After all, its just a trailer with a whole movie still to come. Guess I should just wait and see.

Does this trailer work for you or is it yet another sub-standard adaptation of a comic to come out this year? Judge for yourself after the jump. Red, which features Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Mary-Louse Parker and Morgan Freeman, opens October 15th.

Continue Reading →

We’re about 3 months away from the August 16th premiere of Weeds Season 6, yet Showtime is already ramping up their marketing for the newest season with a brand new teaser showing Mary-Louise Parker rocking out to an indie track by April Smith & The Great Picture Show.

Last we left the family Botwin, things got pretty heavy when Shane (Alexander Gould) committed the unthinkable. There hasn’t been much speculation on where the series is headed this season, aside from the fact that Linda Hamilton will be joining the cast in the short-term.

From what we can gather in the cryptic teaser, Nancy seems to be burying everything that has to do with Esteban (Demian Bichir) including a gun, cell phone, and the infamous croquet bat.

Check out the teaser after the jump, and join Weeds on Showtime as “The plot deepens” on August 16th.

Continue Reading →

According to THR’s Heat Vision Blog, John C. Reilly and Mary-Louise Parker are now in negotiations to join the cast of Red, Summit Entertainment’s adaptation of the Wildstorm/DC Comics miniseries written by Jon and Erich Hoeber and being directed by Robert Schwentke. If they do end up signing up for the film, they will join a cast that already includes Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.

Originally published in 2003 and 2004, Red was co-created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Cully Hammer. It centers on a former black-ops agent Paul Moses (Bruce Willis), now in retirement, who has to contend with younger, more high-tech assassins who want to kill him and keep his former exploits from going public. Naturally, the first hit squad fails and alerts Moses that he’s being targeted. So, he goes on the offensive in order to stay alive.

If cast, Reilly would play a retired CIA agent who is paranoid that everyone is out to kill him. Parker would play Willis’ character’ love interest, a federal pension worker who becomes embroiled in the Willis character’s struggle to stay alive. Red is expected to begin filming in January in Toronto with an projected release later in 2010.