From what we hear, the movie adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary has been finished for more than a year, just sitting around waiting for a release. It’s finally set to open October 28th, and now it has a trailer. And not a moment too soon. Johnny Depp was dangerously close to becoming permanently known as “that guy from the Bruckheimer movies with all the accessories.” Anyway, it’s nice to see him back drifting towards anarchy, poverty, and craziness, trying to live a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas goat and all that.

Directed by Bruce Robinson, the cast is pretty insane, starring Depp as the newbie ex-pat Puerto Rican journalist Kemp, Richard Jenkins as Lotterman, Aaron Eckhardt as Sanderson, Amber Heard as Sanderson’s fianceé, and Giovanni Ribisi as Moberg (a character who gets blackout drunk and the next morning locates his car by smell — a man after my own heart), who I hear steals the show. So, from what we know, a real movie with a real cast and a real story. It’s nice to see that someone finally got around to actually releasing it between movies about explosions, aliens, and the military. The book it’s based on is quite popular, and I’m told there’s even a climactic rape scene that they reenact every year at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. What? I kid, I kid.

BOOM. MOTHERF**KIN BEDAZZLED TORTOISE, SON!

Here we have the trailer for The Great Fight, which will almost certainly go down as one of the greatest artistic creations of the last thousand years, perhaps million. It’s a film which flows from the idea, “Some autistic kids are savants. What this movie presupposes is, what if one was a savant at CAGE FIGHTING?”

As if that weren’t already the ultimate walk-off home run of a premise, it was directed by Sherri Kauk, the acclaimed, long-time camera operator on Mexico’s “Glam Girls”, and it stars both ROBERT LOGGIA and MARTIN KOVE. Who’s Martin Kove you ask? He’s John f*cking Kreese, that’s who, you ignorant motherf*cker.

The trailer opens with the title, “From the mind of best-selling author Kenneth DelVecchio.”  That’s right, “from the mind.” Our boy Kenny’s going all M. Night Shyamalan on our asses. Clearly his name is worthy of inclusion before the title or any of the footage. And why not? After all, we are talking about the man who wrote such books as “New York Criminal Code of Justice: A Practical Guide,” as well as “Test Prep for New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice,” to say nothing of “Code of Criminal Justice: A Practical Guide to the Penal Statutes.”

From there, we meet a cop who breaks a guy’s wrist because he has a ponytail. Our suspicions that he’s a cop are confirmed in the very next title, which reads, “A Cop…” But before long, we’re meeting our protagonist. A kid introduced as “A student with some very special skills.”

Those special skills? NAMING ALL OF THE US STATE CAPITALS! INCREDIBLE! I haven’t been able to do that since sixth grade, so clearly we’re dealing with a very gifted individual, a Rain Man-like geography machine with a brain like a supercomputer, capable of memorizing UP TO FIFTY FACTS AT A TIME. But soon we found out that he has not only a gift, but a very special disorder. AUTISM. Specifically, the type of autism that makes a person nearly comatose like the characters in Awakenings, but with cerebral palsy hands. FEEL FREE TO BOUNCE A BASKETBALL OFF HIS HEAD, TOMMY, HE HAS AUTISM!

But as a wise movie starring Sylvester Stallone once told me, “Once you’re pushed, killin’s as easy as breathin’.” It is much the same with an autistic cage-fighting savant. You push him and he will beat you up in gym class, even if you are a trained MMA fighter who trains at a gym where the fighters spar in prison jumpsuits. And that’s when it happens. ROBERT F*CKING LOGGIA. This movie stars Robert Loggia, who growls his Robert Loggia growl at an autistic MMA prodigy in order to toughen him up. Game over. The Great Fight could go down as the best movie in history.

After the jump, my favorite TubeChop I’ve ever made.

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Last year the Alamo Drafthouse started a film distribution arm, Drafthouse Films (its first release was Chris Morris’ Four Lions). They recently announced that the new director of Drafthouse Films would be none other than Evan Husney, a guy who’s been feeding FilmDrunk exclusive clips from the strangest films you can imagine for a few years now. I have no idea how he finds the stuff he finds, but I know that if there’s one guy you want running a distribution arm specializing in films with cult potential, it’s Evan. One of the first films Drafthouse acquired under their new director is Brandon and Jason Trost’s The FP, a twisted homage to The Warriors which premiered at SXSW and whose must-watch trailer is below. Check out this synopsis:

“Set in a near post-apocalyptic future, THE FP centers on two rival neon-clad gangs raging an underground turf war for dominance of Fraizer Park (“The FP”) in the deadly arena of “Beat-Beat Revelation” – a competitive dance-fight video game. THE FP is a nod to ‘80s sci-fi/action genre fare and is directed by brothers Jason and Brandon Trost (Cinematographer, CRANK 2: HIGH VOLTAGE and the upcoming GHOST RIDER 2: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE), and Executive Produced by Jason Blum and Steven Schneider of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and INSIDIOUS fame. A limited theatrical release for the “rare ready-made cult hit” (Moviefone) is planned for Q1 of 2012.” [Movies.com]

“Beat beat revelation” is top three entries on all my to-do lists. You can check out the trailer from SXSW below, and aside from the magnificently over-the-top production design, it has some of the finest brilliant-dumb one-liners I’ve heard since Hobo with a Shotgun, and frankly, this looks like it goes one better.

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As you may have gleaned from my not-at-all-hyperbolic review of Elite Squad 2 back at Sundance, which I called “a two-hour Brazilian The Wire on steroids,” which “melted my face off and kicked my balls in,” I quite liked it.  But don’t take my word for it, just know that it was the highest-grossing Brazilian film of all time, and MGM hired the director for their Robocop remake (after Darren Aronofsky dropped out).  Well ice your face and cover your balls, because now Elite Squad 2 is getting a US theatrical release.

New Video has acquired the rights to Jose Padilha’s Elite Squad: The Enemy Within, which it has scheduled for theatrical release through its Flatiron Film Company label in the U.S. and Canada in October. Digital, VOD, DVD and television roll-out will follow in early 2012.

New Video has recently released Gasland, Waste Land and, on digital, Restrepo. [THR]

I hope it gets a bigger release than those other films. And wait, did you say “The Enemy Within?”  It’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to call it “Elite Squad 2″ here in the US, where Elite Squad 1 didn’t get released, but holy lame titles, Batman. Elite Squad 2 is easily the best movie I’ve seen this year, and “The Enemy Within” is so generic-sounding it might as well be a Hoobastank album.

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Being the mega-important movie blog impresario that I am, I was able to score a screener copy of Rubber, the movie about the psychic tire that explodes peoples’ heads, about a week ago.  Only my DVD drive crapped out on me and I still haven’t found a place to watch it.  And now, my screener is all but worthless because the film is already available on OnDemand to you, the idiot layman, the undulating masses.  Magnet Releasing debuted a new poster for the film, which will also hit select theaters April 1st.

Here’s the synopsis again, because I think the poster glosses over an important plot point, the fact that the tire is named Robert.

RUBBER is the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life. As Robert roams the bleak landscape, he discovers that he possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the ability to destroy anything he wishes without having to move. At first content to prey on small desert creatures and various discarded objects, his attention soon turns to humans, especially a beautiful and mysterious woman who crosses his path. Leaving a swath of destruction across the desert landscape, Robert becomes a chaotic force to be reckoned with.  [Apple]

My God, that is just the Charlie Sheen of movie synopses. The only thing that could make this better is if Arnold Schwarzenegger was there to deliver Commando one liners.  “You’ll have to excuse my friend — he’s dead TIRE’d.”

Shut up, I was already leaving.

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