Quick clips for Thursday October 30

As if this could happen without Sam Jackson

I'll admit a degree of ignorance here. I haven't seen the 1980s "classic" The Last Dragon, which is apparently about a guy who has to learn some Kung-Fu mojo called "The Glow" so he can save a beautiful singer from an obsessed music promoter (not shocking given that the film was produced by Motown's Berry Gordy). That said, the quickest way to get me interested in a remake is to inform me that one of the characters in it is named Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem. Done. Sold. Should have seen it the first time out but I was 7, won't make the mistake again. Significantly watering down my enthusiasm is the involvement of the following:

1. Berry Gordy's son Kerry (leading me to speculate Kerry has a son named Larry and Larry will give birth to Gary...meanwhile, nobody gives a shit about Artemis Gordon), who will be producing
2. RZA
3. Sam Jackson as Sho'Nuff (although, to be fair, had the role been offered to anyone else, Jackson would have been filled with murder venom)
4. The guy who wrote Uncle P for Master P (I have virtually no idea what this means, but I don't like it)

Now, while I am almost 100% certain to seek out this DVD immediately, especially given the stills I have seen while searching for this today (afro+glowing hands=yes please can I have some more), this is one of those strange, strange projects that will flirt between intentionally awful and just downright awful and I'm not sure that the current aforementioned intellectual SWAT team is the right group to storm this particularly difficult remake meth den. Still, I have my non-glowing digits crossed.

Can I get a witness from the multiplexes?

During my formative teen years, when I was turning into the desirable man-stud I would become (and by desirable man-stud, I mean comic-collecting, movie reviewing blogger), there was, perhaps, no more pivotal literary text than "Preacher." No, I didn't say "a preacher," I'm referring to the incredibly awesome 70-issue series about a man of the cloth who loses his faith, gets possessed by the offspring of a demon and an angel (granting him the power of the "word of God," which allows him to force people to do anything he commands), meets an Irish vampire, runs into his ex-girlfriend who has turned into an assassin, and runs afoul of a secret religious organization led by a man so vile he has his own vomitorium. How this has not been made into a movie I simply cannot fathom. Well, after lots of high-school-style dry humping, the deal has finally been consummated and Sam Mendes ("Six Feet Under" and American Beauty) will be directing. Wow, nothing about that pairing makes any sense. "Preacher" involves a character called Arse-face, the ghost of John Wayne, and more cursing and vile behavior than most Web sites, so Mendes isn't an obvious choice. This doesn't mean I'm not stoked, he is more than capable of finding the right balance of what will work on screen and what will need to be left off (which makes me want to go back and re-read the series...which I just might). Anyway, this is good news in my book because even a crappy movie version is better than wondering forever what might have been. If they choose the right cast, this could be amazing. If they choose the wrong cast, I'm glad I can read.

I loved you once Gary Oldman

It sounds weird to say about a guy who was just in the second highest grossing film of, you know, all time, but Gary Oldman just isn't out there as much as he used to be (that's not referring to his mental state, which is likely still all tingly-woo). So it's cool that Variety reports that he's going to be starring opposite Denzel Washington in Book of Eli, the Hughes brothers return to directing. The film is post-apocalyptic (the coolest kind of post-anything), and follows a warrior who is trying to save society with learning...wait, what? A warrior wants to increase literacy? Is that really a job best suited for him? Is there a teacher somewhere slaughtering invaders? Anyway, Oldman is going to play the evil leader of a town who wants the book Eli is protecting. Now, I can get behind that part, so long as Oldman has the following guaranteed in his contract:

Some kind of bizarre physical condition (psoriasis, funky facial hair, one eye, etc)
An accent that makes no logical sense whatsoever
Yelling...lots and lots of yelling
If not yelling, he must be whispering
Spittle, ample amounts of flecks of saliva

If these conditions are met, we are likely to see one of those patented Oldman performances that used to get me all enthusiastic. Not that commissioner Gordon isn't a good role, but if they named him Captain Plot Exposition, it would be about the same.