While everyone in the world is dreading the remake of The Karate Kid, I have learned new information today that has me at least a little excited: the redo will retain the original title, despite the fact that it will be set in China and involve kung fu, not karate. Why is this exciting? Because it reminds me of my favorite bad movie, Bob Clark’s The Karate Dog, of course (check out this clip for martial arts insanity featuring a talking pooch and Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight). Despite the title of that atrocious family film, the canine protagonist was a master of kung fu.

Okay, so the news that the remake won’t actually be titled Kung Fu Kid isn’t really that cool. In fact, it’s annoying and potentially racist. But if Will Smith, as producer, can slip in some sort of reference to that other mistakenly titled movie, either by casting Voight or (please, please, please) giving Jackie Chan’s Mr. Miyagi Mr. Han a pet named Cho-Cho (with or without the voice of Chevy Chase), I might actually decide to see it. At least on YouTube, anyway, which is the only place I’ve watched scenes from Karate Dog.

In case you’re interested in anything pertaining to this Karate Kid remake — instead of seeking out more Karate Dog clips, that is — Clint Morris at Moviehole shares the exclusive synopsis details today. And reactions (i.e. complaints) from the blogosphere can be found after the jump:

…Read more

In the subversive new comedy Observe and Report, Seth Rogen plays one very angry mall cop. But despite what you’ve figured out from the trailer, the character is not set off by a pervert flasher, nor is his violent behavior necessarily triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication. No, he’s simply incensed by Hollywood’s depiction of mall cops. If the movies aren’t stereotyping them as idiot police rejects, like in this year’s other mall security guard movie, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, they’re replacing them with also-flawed, laser-shooting, head-exploding robots, as in Chopping Mall. When Rogen is seen bashing skateboarders’ skulls, he’s not merely fed up with teenage hooligans wrecking his own place of employment; he’s also obviously reacting to the scene in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol where David Spade gets away from a real cop and a mob of irate shoppers after skating recklessly through a mall (there are also skateboarding villains in Paul Blart).

On top of all this, Rogen’s character is likely tired of all the destruction caused to malls in the movies. And after seeing damage caused by police cars, aliens, robots, zombies, time travelers, terrorists, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (multiple times), he’s just so hard on the offensive, because he feels he has to be ready for anything. Unfortunately, teens and perverts are all he’s got. So, to illustrate the kinds of threats he seems more pumped up to handle, we’ve selected the ten best action scenes set in a mall:
…Read more

Yesterday’s list dealt with Tom Cruise’s performance in Tropic Thunder. Today, a response to Robert Downey Jr.’s role in the same film as a white actor portraying a black soldier in a war movie (seen in the above clip). Doesn’t it seem such an original and shocking idea? I guess not if you see it as an update on blackface. Fortunately, it’s different when it’s an actor playing a character who makes himself up to look black. It’s funny. But isn’t it typically more acceptable when the make-up isn’t quite as authentic-looking as Downey’s? He actually looks black. Specifically, he looks like Fred Williamson.

I’ve seen plenty of lists detailing the worst instances of one race or nationality playing characters of another race/nationality (John Wayne and Susan Hayward in The Conqueror comes to mind as #1), but I can’t recall any lists involving actors playing characters disguised as or playing another race. So here’s one:

…Read more

• Disney celebrated Earth Day by announcing Disneynature, a new production shingle exclusively devoted to making documentaries about the environment. Films in the pipeline include Oceans, the lastest from Winged Migration director Jacques Perrin.
• Jackie Chan has been recruited by the MPA as the poster boy for a new campaign targeting piracy in China. The action star will appear on a “huge” anti-piracy billboard, to be displayed in Beijing’s Silk Market for two weeks.
• The RAAM Conference on British and Irish film distribution will lure surely reluctant attendees to an advance screening of Iron Man, by first presenting an award to Variety porn analyst/editor-in-chief Peter Bart.

I keep forgetting that Kung Fu Panda is a real movie. I mostly relate the computer-animated panda character with his cross-promotional spots for AMC Theatres (memory escapes me again: is it for silencing your cellphone or anti-piracy or something entirely different?). But now that we have this full trailer for the DreamWorks Animation movie, I’m reminded that it is in fact a feature release. Unfortunately, it arrived a few days after the new trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom, and I’ve already laid dibs on my most anticipated martial arts film of 2008. Sure, Kung Fu Panda also features Jackie Chan (or his voice, anyway), here as “Master Monkey”, but when it comes to kung fu beginners, I’ll take Michael Angarano over the voice of Jack Black any day.

I shouldn’t be too harsh on Black (especially after yesterday’s unnecessarily mean-spirited trailer-of-the-day), though I couldn’t help but notice his own personal shtick making its way into the anthropomorphic actions of the cartoon bear when I saw that AMC spot (by the way, AMC, National CineMedia scored Martin Scorsese for a better promo — jealous?). And I simply can’t stand it when any animated film character is made to sound and look and behave like the Hollywood star providing its voice. Nothing will ever be as distracting as Robin William’s overcooked performance as the Genie in Aladdin, but it’s still always annoying. It’s odd that Black ever disliked the idea of Kung Fu Panda. What hammy actor would ever dislike an idea that permitted for such scene-chewing? …Read more

I just realized that Michael Angarano is not the same person as Shia LaBeouf. No, just kidding, but I did just realize that he is to LaBeouf as Brian Cox is to Albert Finney, as Gary Busey is to Nick Nolte, as Skeet Ulrich is to Johnny Depp, etc. (for others see the Daily Doppel). Perhaps one day the two young actors will even get to star in a film together and it will be anticipated with the same excitement as The Forbidden Kingdom, which teams up for the first time Hong Kong superstars Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Of course, I hope nobody has ever confused these two martial artists and do not mean to insinuate they are anything like each other’s doppelganger. In fact, they are such distinct and amazing performers in their own right, it’s almost too much to feature them both in this movie.

The last teaser trailer for The Forbidden Kingdom was pretty much a disappointment, as it focused almost entirely on Angarano’s character, an American teenager who magically winds up in ancient China. Sure, it’s alright for the little guy to be in the movie — he’s probably needed to water down the movie’s awesomeness, which is so extreme, what with Jackie Chan, Jet Li and action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping on board, that it would probably make us all explode otherwise. With this new trailer, though, we get the whole story and a lot more of the real stars. Sure, it leads us to believe that Angarano is to become the next great kung fu master, and there’s a little more CGI than I like in a Jackie Chan movie (might as well get Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott), but it still looks hot.

The Forbidden Kingdom arrives in theaters April 18.

Earlier this week, Grady Hendrix (co-founder of Subway Cinema, the collective that puts on the annual New York Asian Film Festival) re-launched his Kaiju Shakedown Asian cinema blog at Variety. Yesterday, Hendrix posted a mighty listicle, in an effort to catch his readers up on the Asian film world gossip that they missed while the blog was on its “six month bathroom break.” And thank God he did, because otherwise, we would have never known about this post on Jackie Chan’s official blog, dated July 16 and titled “Absolutely No Fun”. An excerpt:

Today is Monday. I have to begin my fourth day of prosthetic make-up. Thinking about doing the same thing tomorrow just makes me feel like there is no joy in life. Supposedly, I was scheduled to finish filming my prosthetic make-up shots today. But they told me they needed an extra day because they haven’t finished filming all the shots. When I heard this news, my whole body felt like it was about to break down. I totally lost my appetite. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to make any phone calls. Even if someone called me, I didn’t want to answer the phone. I didn’t want to write my diary. If they needed me to film, then I would film. Otherwise, I didn’t want to do anything else…

The prosthetics are for a film Chan is making for The Weinstein Company with Jet Li, called Forbidden Kingdom, and since the pairing of the two stairs makes this a huge project for martial arts fans he’s apparently contractually forbidden from releasing pictures of the “no fun” make-up job (Twitch linked to some cast photos in June, but there are no close-ups of Chan). We wouldn’t want to wish this kind of suffering on anyone, but you’ve got to wonder: is Chan undergoing some kind of karmic retribution for continually enabling the ascendancy of Brett Ratner?