The other day Vince and I were making S’mores and chatting about life, when he pointed out that 2011 was the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War, that era in world history when everyone lived in pants-crapping fear that the U.S. and Russia were going to destroy us all. More importantly than global genocide and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, the Cold War had an undeniable impact on the movie industry, most notably in creating one of the easiest and most overused plot devices of the last 50 years.

Obviously, the Cold War gave us classics like Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and the entire James Bond franchise. It also gave us The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy’s career, as well as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and wherever else Shia LeBeouf and his grandfather Harrison Ford take us. It gave us The Manhattan Project, The Good Shepherd, Thirteen Days, Top Gun, Good Night, and Good Luck, and even Salt, which was a modern reminder of just how hilariously off-the-wall – and flat out terrible – some Cold War films were.

In fact, those are the films that I want to celebrate – the movies that both embraced the terrifying nightmare of global war and laughed in the face of four decades of silent terror. Because without them, we’d probably all be living in mountain bunkers or adapting to our tentacles.

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The Expendables 2 has a trailer out, and it’s great if all you were looking for was two-second shots of all the characters. REMEMBER WHO’S IN THIS!? DO YOU?! Although that skull logo that got stabbed in the eyes and grew a billion guns out of its head was pretty cool. Somewhere, Ed Hardy is furiously scribbling ideas onto a notepad. They’ve also released a synopsis, and not to worry, the characters still have ridiculous names.

The Expendables are back and this time it’s personal… Barney Ross (Sylvester Stallone), Lee Christmas (Lee Statham), Yin Yang (Jet Li), Gunnar Jensen (Dolph Lundgren),Toll Road (Randy Couture) and Hale Caesar (Terry Crews) — with newest members Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth) and Maggie (Yu Nan) aboard — are reunited when Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) enlists the Expendables to take on a seemingly simple job. The task looks like an easy paycheck for Barney and his band of old-school mercenaries. But when things go wrong and one of their own is viciously killed, the Expendables are compelled to seek revenge in hostile territory where the odds are stacked against them. Hell-bent on payback, the crew cuts a swath of destruction through opposing forces, wreaking havoc and shutting down an unexpected threat in the nick of time — six pounds of weapons-grade plutonium; enough to change the balance of power in the world. But that’s nothing compared to the justice they serve against the villainous adversary who savagely murdered their brother. That is done the Expendables way…. [Collider]

Would you say that the odds are… JACKED against them??? (*Terry Crews flexes, punches through laptop screen and bangs your girlfriend*)

Starring! Statham! Crews! Couture! Lundgren! Van Damme! Schwarzenegger! Li! Norris! …And introducing …SYLVESTER STALLONE’S PEN!

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Continuing its tradition of being theoretically awesome but a chore to actually sit through, The Expendables franchise added two more aging action legends to the cast of its sequel back in September, and now the first pictures of Norris and JCVD have hit the web (via ComingSoon). Continuing the tradition of silly names, according to IMDB, Norris is playing “Booker,” while Van Damme will portray “Jean Vilain.”  Just going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing the latter is a bad guy. In either case, I’m sure their characters will be introduced only in the most organic, necessary-to-the-plot manner. (Sidenote: It must be awesome for Chuck Norris that he has all those Chuck Norris Facts to distract people from what a whack job he actually is.)

I also enjoy that they managed to get a Belgian in a black turtle neck and a Hollywood producer in tinted shades and a ridiculously unnecessary scarf. All that’s missing is an Italian guy in a speedo flipping pizza dough and a Mexican pulling a donkey. Come to think of it, Danny Trejo should really be in this. Playing “Juan Tofessobee” or something.
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Showdown in Little Tokyo is not a good movie. It is poorly acted, poorly written, offensive, over the top in every way, and it features gratuitous amounts of nudity and violence. Showdown in Little Tokyo is an AMAZING movie. (Note: The above video is super-NSFW. SHHH! Don’t tell Youtube.)

The movie is centered around two mismatched cops, played by Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee, trying to take down a Japanese crime organization that is flooding the streets with high-quality methamphetamine. Now, at this point of these Scene Breakdowns, I usually try to give you some quick background info about the movie. Instead, I’d like to direct your attention to this passage from the film’s Wikipedia page, which is so wondrously written that it makes me question what I’m even doing here:

Los Angeles cop Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is an American who was raised in Japan. He is given a new partner, Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee), an American of partial Japanese descent.

Kenner does not appreciate American culture, while Johnny does not much like Japanese culture. One thing they both enjoy are the martial arts, of which they are both experts.

Yup, that about sums it up. Anyway, the scene I’m breaking down has it all: evil criminal bosses, implausible feats of strength, decapitation, neck-snapping, shameful Hollywood stereotypes, machine guns, attempted seppuku, nudity, and explosions. It is a true American treasure. Fun fact: This is the second straight movie I’ve selected to breakdown where the main character, without the aid of a ramp or trampoline, avoids being hit by an oncoming car by leaping straight up over it like that’s something people do.

I guess you could say I have a niche.

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Noooooooooo!

Achtung, Jews, I got you an early Hanukkah present.  L’chaim, it’s a new Uwe Boll movie!  What, don’t tell me you’d have rather gotten money, that’s so typical (haha, chill out, that’s just a little Jew humor I picked up at camp).  Fresh off that film where he plays a Nazi at Auschwitz (NOT a comedy) and that other one about the fat, Nazi-fighting half vampire where he plays Hitler (supposedly a comedy), Uwe Boll will soon be drinking shirtless Absinthe shots with Dolph Lundgren. That’s because Boll has reportedly cast Hitler’s ideal of perfection as… wait for it… a medieval war veteran who gets sucked back in time by ninjas.  Hey, man, don’t kill the messenger (Mel Gibson hates it when you do that).

Lundgren told blogtalk radio: “I play an ex-middle ages war veteran who gets f**ked up but he gets pulled into some sort of medieval power struggle, kind of gets a bit of a redemption for all his pains in service. It’s a role I just wanted to play. It’s fun to exercise my acting chops [sic] once in a while. I’ve got to get ready for ‘Expendables 2′.”

Speaking about the plot – which is set in the kingdom of Ehb – director Boll said: “It’s like contemporary, right now big city, and we have Dolph Lundgren basically being a cop or like a fighting coordinator working as this, and one night he gets attacked by ninjas in his house and fell with the ninjas into a vortex back in time.  [...] And then it turns out it’s like 50 years after the first part ‘In the Name of the King’ ended, and Ehb is destroyed and everybody is dead, Jason Statham and everybody who was in the first part, got wiped out.”

‘In the Name of the King 2′ is set to start shooting early next year in Canada. [Bloginity via LiveforFilms]

Uwe Boll has made three movies this year despite there not being a single plausible explanation for financing an Uwe Boll movie in the last 10 years.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, I know people say this a lot, but there’s no way this movie happens.  Just having Uwe Boll and Dolph Lundgren on the same set is enough to get the Anti-Defamation League so far up your ass you couldn’t see straight.

"I must break you," he said sadly to his tanning bed.