Listen as our hosts Zach and Brian give their take on the 1996 action blockbuster that single-handily marked July 4th Weekend as Big Willie Weekend. Did Bill Paxton’s — er, Pullman’s — epic speech move you as it did us? Is Randy Quaid that good at playing someone who’s batshit crazy? Also, computer viruses can apparently take down super-intelligent aliens? All this and more on the summer special of the KICK ASS movie podcast.

As always, we are taking suggestions for movies to cover, so send them our way. The KAMPC will return for its third season this September.

Well, it’s the end of summer, the main movies that came out this week have a combined total of 16% freshness over at Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s time to look at what’s coming out this winter and next year.

Eagle Eye

Zach:  Shia Labeouf goes from a Speilberg directed film to a Spielberg produced film with Eagle Eye.  He and Michelle Monaghan are targeted by a shady group that is able to track them everywhere and able to control basically everything.  They frame them as being terrorists and are forcing to carry out some sort of mission.  Billy Bob Thorton is an FBI agent tracking them.  It looks like it will be pretty good, some good action and an interesting concept and the lady on the phone is pretty damn creepy.  It’s out on the 26th of September.

Brian: After seeing this trailer numerous times, I couldn’t elicit any kind of response. Then I saw it before “Tropic Thunder” and became a little more responsive. Still another movie I’d rather wait till DVD before rushing out to the theater.

Fast and Furious

Zach:  So apparently all you have to do to make a fourth movie title is drop the “the” from before fast and furious.  Do we really need a fourth movie in this franchise?  The first two were all right, extremely stupid but they had a certain charm.  I have not seen the third but it looked horrible.  Now basically every from the first movie is back and in the Dominican Republic stealing gas from tankers.  The trailer is basically the end of the first movie with a different type of big rig.  Oh, is it just me or does the whole trailer have a car commercial look?  It’s too clear or something, I expected a Toyota logo or something to come up at the end.  I don’t think this is the comeback Vin Diesel was hoping for, Babylon A.D. was 5% fresh and this probably won’t be much better.

Brian: I’ve never seen an entire movie of this franchise, and wear that as a proud badge. As for something positive to say, at least they got Vin Diesel and Paul Walker back. And if those are the two stars you’ve been waiting for, then that tells how bad these movies really are.

Max Payne

Zach: What the fuck is going on in this trailer?  Did someone mix up footage from Constantine or something?  Meg Griffin is running around with a machine gun, wha?  I think this movie is going to be like 20 minutes longer than it normally would be because of all the slow motion going on.  I have a feeling this isn’t going to turn the tide of horrible video game movies.

Brian: Seems lately that Mark Wahlberg is the go-to action guy. Don’t know how I feel about that. He’s a fine actor, but we don’t want him going all Bruce Willis on us and drop a Hudson Hawk. This movie? Looks okay. Just as long as they don’t do bullet time ala the first person shooting in “Doom”.

Well, that’s it for now, be sure to come back soon for the season 3 premiere with our great 2008 Summer Movie Review.

With the release of one of the biggest movies of the year last week with The Dark Knight (which blew us away with it’s incredibleness)  and Comic-Con underway in San Diego we have some big trailers popping up.  So let’s get right into it, shall we?

Quantum of Solace

Zach:  Dude, James Bond is fucking pissed!  This trailer is just pure bad assery as it looks like Daniel Craig is going to go all Jack Bauer rogue on us and just mess people up.  The scene with him walking up the hill with the shades and machine gun is awesome.  Casino Royale was a great reboot of the Bond franchise and I’m sure this is gonna be just as good, if not better.  Check it out November 7th.

Brian: I agree with Zach, the scene with Bond walking up the hill with the big-ass gun is awesome. Same goes for the end where you swings on the rope to shoot that guy. Looks like this film will at least attempt some of the questions left at the end of Casino Royale. Sounds like fun.

Watchmen

Zach:  Yeah, so confession time, Watchmen is partially on my Pile of Shame as I just started reading it this week and am about halfway through.  It’s very good so far but is a lot more classical than I thought.  It’s like it was written by Arthur Conan Doyle or something.  Anyway, the trailer seems to follow the same formula as 300, Zack Snyder’s last project, in that you show some crazy, stylish action set to a cool song and there you go.  Most of the characters look really close to their comic counterparts especially Dr. Manhattan (that blue gentleman you saw there).  Most of the talk from the internets is either “It’s looking good, I’m excited” or “don’t fuck it up!!!!”  Looking at 300 I’m pretty sure that Zack Snyder can make a stylish and exciting movie out of the comic.

Brian: I find it pretty ironic that the song for this trailer, “The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning” by The Smashing Pumpkins was originally for the soundtrack to… “Batman & Robin”. I’m excited that Zach Snyder is behind this and have read a little bit about the premise. All in all, it sounds pretty good but it’s still a big gamble by the studio. Let’s hope it pays off.

Terminator: Salvation

Zach: As you are probably aware the KICK ASS Movie podcast loves us some Terminator but expectations were not high after the pretty crappy Rise of the Machines.  But then it was announced that 4 was going to be set entirely in the future and Christian Bale was going to be John Connor.  Hope is back as Bale brought Batman back from the depths of hell that was Batman & Robin.  The trailer above doesn’t really reveal much except some quick shots of robots and assorted apocalyptic hijinks but I think this could bring the franchise back to goodness, if not greatness.

Brian: Bale is the looking to resurrect yet another dead franchise in this film. All signs look promising, but this is still directed by McG - responsible for shitty music videos (groan) and the Charlie’s Angels movies (double groan). Probably going to kick ass in some way or other, but that is my biggest skepticism so far.

So there you go, two big franchise sequels and the movie adaptation of “the greatest graphic novel of all time”  Keep checking back all summer for more posts and we’ll see you in September for our big Summer Recap premiere episode.

Trailer:

Part 6 of the whole movie on Youtube, you can see it change into Top Gun near the middle, with Harry Connick Jr as the poor man’s Goose:

Speaking of Top Gun, I mentioned it in the episode but here is perhaps the greatest music video of all time, Steve Stevens and Harold Faltermayer with “Top Gun Anthem” (recently available to dl in Guitar Hero 3):

Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay need to have an explosion off one of these days:

Will Smith is on the highway to the danger zone (that’s it for Top Gun references, maybe):

Coming this fall to Fox, Will Smith and the Alien!:

You can’t talk about Will Smith without getting at least a little “jiggy wit it”:

The Apple Powerbook was the only laptop that could save the world:

Rifftrax adds much needed “Over the Top” references and berating of untan people:

the Angry Video Game Nerd reviews the horrible PS1 game based on the movie:

Bill Pullman’s epic speech:

I offically challenge David Duchovny to a Jeff Goldblum Off:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ud3Bqqvg-bI

and finally I leave you with Jeff Goldblum cracking under the hilarity wave that is Will Ferrell’s Harry Carey:

So another year, another American Film Institute TV special.  This year they counted down the top ten films in ten different genres.  We learned that apparentley Disney is the only company that can make animated movies, Gene Hackman is the effing man and Courtroom Drama and Gangster are more important genres than Action or Horror.  Check out the lists below.

Animation:

1. Snow White
2. Pinocchio
3. Bambi
4. The Lion King
5. Fantasia
6. Toy Story
7. Beauty and the Beast
8. Shrek
9. Cinderella
10. Finding Nemo

Romantic Comedies

1. City Lights
2. Annie Hall
3. It Happened One Night
4. Roman Holiday
5. The Philadelphia Story
6. When Harry Met Sally
7. Adam’s Rib
8. Moonstruck
9. Harry and Maude
10. Sleepless in Seattle

Western

1. The Searchers
2. High Noon
3. Shane
4. Unforgiven
5. Red River
6. The Wild Bunch
7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
8. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
9. Stagecoach
10. Cat Ballou

Sports

1. Raging Bull
2. Rocky
3. The Pride of the Yankees
4. Hoosiers
5. Bull Durham
6. The Hustler
7. Caddyshack
8. Breaking Away
9. National Velvet
10. Jerry Maguire

Mystery

1. Vertigo
2. Chinatown
3. Rear Window
4. Laura
5. The Third Man
6. The Maltese Falcon
7. North by Northwest
8. Blue Velvet
9. Dial M for Murder
10. The Usual Suspects

Fantasy

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
3. It’s a Wonderful Life
4. King Kong
5. Miracle on 34th Street
6. Field of Dreams
7. Harvey
8. Groundhog Day
9. The Thief of Bagdad
10. Big

Sci-Fi

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Star Wars: A New Hope
3. E.T.
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. The Day the Earth Stood Still
6. Blade Runner
7. Alien
8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
10. Back to the Future

Gangster

1. The Godfather
2. Goodfellas
3. The Godfather Part II
4. White Heat
5. Bonnie and Clyde
6. Scarface: The Shame of a Nation
7. Pulp Fiction
8. The Public Enemy
9. Little Caesar
10. Scarface

Courtroom Drama

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. 12 Angry Men
3. Kramer vs. Kramer
4. The Verdict
5. A Few Good Men
6. Witness for the Prosecution
7. Anatomy of a Murder
8. In Cold Blood
9. A Cry in the Dark
10. Judgment at Nuremberg

Epic

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Ben Hur
3. Schind ler’s List
4. Gone with the Wind
5. Spartacus
6. Titanic
7. All’s Quiet on the Western Front
8. Saving Private Ryan
9. Reds
10. The Ten Commandments