Entertainment and Media

My own personal "most anticipated movie of 2008" is sadly, not going to be in 2008. The follow-up to Kung Fu Hustle began to be filmed shortly after the first one, but put on hold so that Stephen Chow could film a dinosaurs in space kung fu movie. Or something like that. After that wrapped, he went back to shooting Kung Fu Hustle 2. (You can get away with that if you are the star, director, writer, producer, composer, costume designer and martial arts expert.) But, that pushed the release date in China back to 2010, and who knows how long it will be before we see it in the states.

Lots of people haven't seen or heard of Kung Fu Hustle, and don't get why I'm so excited about it that I'm writing about it two years out. Watch it. It's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen, and Stephen Chow brought an incredible vision to life when he made that movie. Seriously, I don't like to nominate films onto my top 10 list, but this easily makes it into the top 3 (and possibly #1).

This movie is doing for the Star Trek franchise what Batman Returns did for the Batman franchise. It's taking a series of movies that got off-track, and returning it to its roots. It's going to be darker and edgier, and like Batman, it's pretending that the other films never happened. This is the beginning of the story of James T. Kirk. We'll see how well it goes.

If you've read the premise of this film, it would be absolute crap if anyone else handled it. If you haven't heard about it, here's a short explanation. Jack Black tries to sabotage a power plant, and ends up with a magnetized head. This erases all of the tapes in his friend's (Mos Def) store. The store has one loyal customer, and to keep from losing her, they film a bunch of different movies over again. Jack Black and Mos Def star in "The Lion King", "Back to the Future", "Robocop", etc. They get the rest of the town involved and become big stars throughout the neighborhood.

Okay, A) Jack Black tries to sabotage a power plant? Cause you'd let Jack Black within the same zip code as a power plant?? B) The video store still has video tapes??? C) The video store only has one customer?? That's because they don't have any DVDs, man! D) When they do "Driving Miss Daisy", that's going to be wrong in a hundred thousand different ways. E) This movie is going to be hilarious in spite of itself.

In the first Hulk, Ang Lee directed and Eric Bana starred. In this next one, I don't have a clue who is directing, but Edward Norton is starring. Edward Norton. I'll give you a minute for that to sink in.

One of the things I like about Edward Norton is that he can get scary. But it's always in control scary. In fact, that's exactly what makes him scary. He seems so calm and in control that it makes you think that he means you harm AND he's already planned everything well before you became aware of it. But The Hulk is the exact opposite. He just spins out whenever he gets grouchy. It will be interesting to see how he handles it.

You don't even have to know what it's about to look forward to this movie. And it's going to make serious bank. Will we be as in love with old Indy as we were with young Indy (and does this foretell Tom Cruise doing a Mission Impossible flick in his seventies)? I think so. I'm pretty sure everyone is going to go see it. Besides, it's got my way-too-young-for-me-Hollywood-crush, Shia LaBeouf. And Cate Blanchett. Good for her. Girl needs a hit with all the crap she's been putting out. ;) (I'm SOOO kidding.)

On a sidenote, I'm most excited about the Indiana Jones Legos. Star Wars sucked and they STILL had amazing Legos. Indiana Jones was actually good, so how much cooler is that going to be.