Anyway, by now all you guys out there (that are reading this, not just skimming, yes I’m talking about you) should know that Resident Evil: Afterlife is coming out this weekend in glorious James Cameron/Vince Pace Fusion Camera 3D, 3203 theaters no less and just like the previous 3 times, Sony and Screen Gems are bringing it to us. So Milla Jovovich is obviously back as Alice, exactly where Resident Evil: Extinction left us but what’s new is that her real life husband, writer, director and producer Paul W.S. Anderson is back in the director chair after handing the last two movies to some other guys that probably tried their best.

Another thing worthy of mentioning is Afterlife is the most expensive Resident Evil movie (and probably zombie movie for that matter) made so far, so a lot is hanging on Anderson’s back, around $60 million according to IMDB. Now don’t quote me on the most expensive zombie movie ever, but do feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, fellow zombie lovers out there.

I guess the movie should do decent business at the box office, at least opening weekend. In line with previous entries I can see this opening with $26 million or so, maybe a little more thanks to 3D but truth be told, previews did not look to good (actually some looked really bad) so my expectations are low for this one (coming from someone that enjoyed all previous Resident Evil movies).

Aside from Resident Evil: Afterlife, we’ll have The American finishing in second place with $7 million while Takers is probably going to beat Machete for 3rd place with $6 million compared to $5.5 million. Now Machete here ain’t breaking any records but it sure is doing better business than that last Robert Rodriguez movie, Shorts. Make Sin City 2 already man, come on!

Rounding out the top 5 is going to be The Expendables with $4.5 million or so, unfortunately not enough to make it pass the 100 million mark on Sunday, but it will get there either on Monday or Tuesday next week. So again, good job old timers. Oh, and Sly, when did you say the sequel is coming out?

Resident Evil was written 6 times in this post and I haven’t even mentioned the games it is based on, but I guess you guys already know enough about those and since, you know, this movies don’t exactly follow the games plot-wise, why even bother going there.

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Following the success of The Expendables at the box office the director, writer and star of the movie, Sylvester Stallone, decided to create a Twitter account. After acknowledging his success (“Just enjoying being number one at the box office two weeks in a row. Looking forward to this weekend. Tough competition”) Stallone tweeted that he “had dinner with Bruce Willis last night” and wants “him in EXPENDABLES II as a super villain.”

The Expendables has made $75 million so far in the US, which can partly be credited to the heavily promoted scene between Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. People love seeing the big 80s action stars on the big screen together, so I’m sure most will be interested in seeing Sly vs. Willis in a sequel. For those who haven’t seen the film yet (spoilers) Willis has a cameo as “Mr. Church,” a shadowy figure who sends Sly and his team of mercs on their mission.

Do you want to see Bruce Willis as the villain in an Expendables sequel? Maybe they can get Jean-Claude Van Damme in this one too.

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Yeah, you know it’s going to be an bad weekend when the most anticipated movie is a re-release of an 8 month old blockbuster with 8 extra never-before-seen minutes added to the mix, in IMAX for the last time (or so they want you to believe).

While Avatar: Special Edition (from now on simply called Avatar SE) is the highlight of the weekend, it probably won’t also be number one. Coming out (again) in 812 theaters (3D and IMAX 3D only) Avatar SE is expected to gross around $8 million or so, but then again, Avatar was only expected to gross a heck of a lot less then it did, so who knows. If there’s one movie you don’t underestimate, it’s Avatar. Even more so for this cause this is a Special Edition, get it, it’s Special.

Then we have The Exorcism of someone, I personally lost count. Oh wait, this is supposed to be The Last Exorcism, now I get it. Coming out in 2874 theaters, $14 million or so is what I’m seeing, good for number one, easy. Come on, this is pathetic, like last weekend pathetic times 2. But hey, 69% on RottenTomatoes says this movie ain’t actually bad, so I might eat my words in a few days/weeks.

And finally we got this movie Takers, and yeah, it’s about a bunch of guys that want to take something, go figure. This is in 2206 theaters and might be looking at probably $10 million for a second place finish.

In 3rd place we should be getting The Expendables with $9 million for an $81 million tally in just half a month. Then I guess Sly wasn’t half mad when he started working on The Expendables 2 even before the first one came out (oh, and he has plans for a 3rd one also).

In 4th and 5th place we will have the battle of the ages (not), Julia Roberts (Eat Prey Love) and 8 extra never-before-seen minutes of blue people (Avatar SE), both aiming for $8 million.

Other note worthy events for the weekend are the fact that Inception is going to pass $270 million in North America and Toy Story 3 the $1 billion mark worldwide today (so technically, it’s not there yet cause we don’t have any official numbers until tomorrow, so Liam, I know Deadline and Disney said it, but it didn’t happen yet, not officially, and yes, I know this is just me being a giant douche cause I wanted to write about it and you took away from me the single most note worthy event of the week).

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Since the first day the ridiculous cast was announced for The Expendables, action movie lovers everywhere have been anticipating the release of Stallone’s magnum opus of manliness. This movie almost seems like required viewing for a certain segment of the population, and if you count yourself among this group, nothing in this review will change your mind. But for the rest of you, I must admit (with a heavy heart): The Expendables is a waste of impressive casting, a spent bullet casing of a movie that leaves you scratching your head and asking, “this is what everyone was waiting for?”

I had high hopes for this film – too high, as it turns out. With audacious character names like Barney Ross (Stallone), Lee Christmas (Statham), Tool (Rourke), Yin Yang (Li), Gunner Jensen (Lundgren), Paine (Austin), and – I sh*t you not – Hale Caesar (Crews) and Toll Road (Couture), I figured this movie had to be so self-aware that it had to be a parody of the genre. While The Expendables is definitely a throw back to the brawny action films of the 80′s and 90′s, there is absolutely nothing else going on under the surface. I enjoyed Stallone’s previous film, 2008′s Rambo, because – while being shockingly violent – it also had a message behind it. Stallone used his iconic character to comment on the atrocities in Burma, and while you could enjoy the movie without that reminder, it gave the film a little extra for us to chew on. And if you’ll forgive the continuation of the analogy, The Expendables doesn’t provide any meat this time around – just spice, in the form of excessive explosions.

Look, of course I love explosions on film. I’m a guy. But I like my action movies one of two ways: either Bourne-style, with a legitimate storyline that makes me think, or Tony Jaa-style, in which there is only the illusion of a plot, allowing Jaa to transition from one action sequence directly to the next. This film teeters toward the latter, but unfortunately relies too much on exposition that no one cares about (Mikey Rourke’s mirror scene, anyone?) and sacrifices fun in the process. The tone is so somber for most of the movie that we can’t even celebrate victories with the characters; as soon as a scene ends, the leads – especially Statham’s character – go right back to moping around, feeling sorry for themselves because they can’t hang onto their women (mercenary soldiers are never home, you see).

The writing is absolutely atrocious. Like the ludicrous names of the characters, I hoped it was done on purpose to provide a sort of commentary/parody of the genre. But after the first fifteen minutes, I couldn’t remember all of the horrendous lines of dialogue anymore because there were so many flying off the screen. The unsettling truth set in very early: this wasn’t on purpose at all. Stallone and co-writer David Callaham actually thought this would be a good movie. After hearing the cast talk about this movie at Comic-Con, I truly thought we were in for something special. But with one of the worst scripts I’ve seen realized in the past five years, The Expendables couldn’t even sustain my interest for its mercifully short 103 minute run time. After a point, you can only take so many cliched plot twists, reveals, and explosions.

Ah, the explosions. In the final scene, so many buildings and cars explode that on multiple occasions I thought they had blown up everything at the island compound. Turns out I was wrong – every time that thought crosses your head, something else blows up. This probably sounds awesome to some people (Trust me, I was one of you!), but at a certain point – right about this time in the movie, actually – I just didn’t care what was happening to these characters. There’s no sense of peril for any of them, even though they’re getting shot at from every angle and inexplicably survive at every turn. One character even asks, “How did two professionals pass through security, kill forty-one men, and leave?” How, indeed. Generally speaking, I’m totally OK with these kinds of movies – I really enjoyed The A-Team earlier this summer – but this one wasn’t even fun. The one-liners were embarrassingly bad (many falling flat in the theater, leaving half of my audience turning to each other with quizzical looks on our faces), and the action scenes were almost as uninspired, relying on Greengrass-style shaky cam instead of the classical 80′s and 90′s style that we wanted to see.

As expected, the acting was borderline dismal throughout the entire film. Randy Couture’s delivery was as wooden as you’d expect from a mixed martial arts star, and you get major points (salute) if you’re able to comprehend every word from the slurred Lundgren or the weathered Stallone (double points if you catch his dialogue when he’s mumbling with a cigar in his mouth). General Garza is played abysmally by David Zayas (Angel Batista of “Dexter”), and Jet Li was only there to be made fun of for being short. Yes, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger show up in a cameo. Let’s just say Arnie’s had way too much time off – aside from the fact that his character doesn’t even need to be in this scene, he was dreadful, and Willis wasn’t much better. There are some jokes thrown in during this scene, but again, they all fall flat and induce eye-rolling instead of legitimate laughs. Half of this film is spent laughing at it instead of laughing with it.

None of this is to say I hated the movie. There are some bright moments scattered throughout, certain explosions or fights choreographed in a way that make it quasi-interesting for those looking for hints of new ideas. There are two that I can think of, and Statham is involved with both of them. I could mention specific scenes, but I’m sure most of you will end up seeing the film for yourselves anyway, so I won’t spoil anything. I’d probably do the same thing if I were you. This is the kind of movie that, in theory, only comes around once in a lifetime and demands to be seen on the big screen. (I say “in theory” because there are already rumblings of a sequel.) The Expendables is not the savior of modern action films that I yearned for: instead, it’s a straightforward, big, dumb action movie and if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be pleased. I was just hoping for a bit more from the talent involved. Until next time…

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We’ve seen a few trailers and behind the scenes videos for The Expendables in the past, although most of them appeared on YouTube and probably weren’t released officially. However today Yahoo! got themselves the first official trailer for the film, and it’s quite good. Not only do we see see explosions, fight scenes and general badassery, we also see the scene featuring Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In The Expendables a mercenary team heads to South America where they try to overthrow a dictator. Sylvester Stallone leads the team, which includes Randy Coture, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Jason Statham. We will also see Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts and Steve Austin, and Arnold Schwarzenegger will make a brief appearance with Bruce Willis. Is there anyone who isn’t interested in seeing this?

The Expendables will be released on August 13th.

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Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Steve Austin, explosions and a scene featuring Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. Does anyone really need to see a trailer for The Expendables before they purchase a ticket for its opening weekend? For those that do, a new trailer lasting 3 minutes and 6 seconds has been released and can be seen below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-z9t8mew-0

The fact that the movie contains stereotypical 80′s action movie bad guys, while slightly laughable, if just another reason to look forward to The Expendables. The original release date was set for April 23rd 2010, but it has since been pushed back four months until August 13th to extend production time.

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Earlier this year Bruce Willis said in an interview that he would soon be joining Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger to shoot a very special scene for The Expendables. Now according to Ethelmae’s Blog the scene was shot last weekend and having witnessed this historic movie event she described what went down on the set:

After Arnold, Bruce and Sly went through the scene a couple of times they all 3 headed off to wardrobe and make-up. at 8:10am with three cameras rolling the biggest action icons of our time went to work. I thought it was electric in Brazil when all of The Expendables stepped on set – but today was atomic!!!! the whole crew was mesmerized as we watched the three of them play off of each other in a pivotal scene that sets up the whole movie. And while I can’t/don’t want to give too much away I can tell you that Arnold’s character is Trench and Bruce is Church, the scene was shot in an empty church without extras and minimal set dec and it has tension and humor – what more can a girl ask for! Sly was in top form as a director today and was in total command. Bruce and Arnold were consummate professionals at all times – we got through the scene quickly without compromise. In 6 hours we did wide shots, close-ups, turned around…the whole nine yards…pretty impressive. Very Clint Eastwood.

I can’t wait to see this scene. It was probably too much to ask for all three to appear in a big movie together, however an ‘electric’ scene will be good enough. We have around 6 months to wait before Lionsgate unleash The Expendables, but in the meantime you can watch the trailer below.

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Below we have our first look at some footage from The Expendables. We see a few behind the scenes clips and one or two short scenes from the film.

In The Expendables a mercenary team heads to South America where they try to overthrow a dictator. Sylvester Stallone Stallone leads the team, which includes Randy Coture, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews and Jason Statham. We will also see Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts and Steve Austin and Arnold Schwarzenegger will make a brief appearance. But wait, there’s more! MTV recently spoke to Bruce Willis and confirmed that he will have a cameo in the film, but he hasn’t filmed it yet:

“I want to send best wishes to Sly,” Bruce Willis said with a grin when we spoke with him last week. “And the Governor of California, my old pal Arnold.”

The “Die Hard” star confirmed to MTV News that he is leaving time open on his schedule to shoot a cameo for “The Expendables,” the ultra-violent, star-studded action flick written/directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone. Willis said that the he will soon join Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger to shoot a very special scene for the flick.

Willis confirmed to us that the scene will involved himself, Arnold and Sly together on camera. “That’s the concept,” he said with a grin. “That’s the plan.

Your testosterone and aggression levels will rise on April 23rd 2010.

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