“Yo son, come wit me if U wants 2 liv.”

What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than with a little C-Tates? We’re still a month away from the release of White House Down, which I predict will be the Kate Upton to Olympus Has Fallen’s Courtney Love, but Yahoo! was kind enough to release a featurette about the film’s director, Roland Emmerich, and his endearing dedication to creating the most over-the-top action and disaster films in Hollywood today.

White House Down appears to be his greatest visual feat to date, as he has somehow taken James Vanderbilt’s $3 million script about terrorists attacking the President’s crib and turned it into something so much more ridiculous than we could ever imagine. Seriously, there’s a scene in which the President, played by Jamie Foxx, shouts, “Don’t ever touch my Jordans!” while he kicks a bad guy in the face. I may never watch another movie again after this.

But nobody does it better (or worse, depending on which critics you ask) than Emmerich, and the stars of White House Down sure seem to love him for it.

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“Yo, follow atcha boy, mistah prez.”

One of the most commonly asked questions that people have regarding White House Down is “Why? Why on Earth was this film necessary?” After all, we just watched the same movie, Olympus Has Fallen, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Gerard Butler, Morgan Freeman and Aaron Eckhart, so why, then, do we want to see Roland Emmerich, Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx drag us through another story about terrorists taking over the White House and a secret service agent/wannabe rescuing the president?

And the answer is White House Down, like the chicken, was created first. At least I assume it was, because Sony paid screenwriter du jour James Vanderbilt $3 million for his Die Hard clone, while Olympus was written by first-timers Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. So if Sony ponied up $3 million to create a duplicate, well, that’s a sucker move.

So what exactly does a $3 million spec script include anyway? According to the new trailer for White House Down, it’s the black President of the United States shouting, “Don’t! Ever! Touch! My! Jordans!” Seriously, this trailer is a work of art.

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BAWK BAWK. “Willie Beamen, come quick, the world needs you!” “Not now, little girl, I’m in disguise.”

I used to hate Sony’s Annie remake on account of it being another Will Smith vanity project starring one of his obnoxious little fame avatar children. But Willow got too old to play the lead, and Quvenzhane Wallis (I just won Scrabble!) from Beasts of the Southern Wild was cast. I guess I don’t hate it as much now, but I really hope Hollywood doesn’t ruin that adorable little girl’s life. Anyway, now Jamie Foxx has been cast as Daddy Warbucks. Only they’re calling him “Benjamin Stacks” in this one. Get it? Because it’s an African-American remake, and “stacking Benjamins” is African-American talk for making lots of money. I heard they tried to do an African-American remake of The Rainmaker but… you know what, I’m not even going to finish this joke.

Jamie Foxx is in negotiations to star opposite Quvenzhane Wallis in Annie, the update of the classic comic strip-turned-musical that Sony is making with producers Will Smithand Jay-Z.

Foxx would play a character named Benjamin Stacks, a variation of the Daddy Warbucks personage, who takes in the spunky orphan girl being played by Wallis. (You know he’s rich because his name literally means stacks of $100 bills, aka Benjamins.)

I admire the restraint it took not to spell it “Benjamin Staxx.” That never would’ve happened had Vin Diesel been producing.

The Django Unchained star has received an offer from the studio and sources say his team has begun to negotiate.

Will Gluck is directing the project, which has a host of producers: Smith and his Overbrook Entertainment banner partner James Lassiter, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Jay-Z. Also producing are Jay Brown and Tyran “Ty Ty” Smith through Marcy Media. [THR]

This project used to be fun to make fun of at least, but now it’s like a yawn wrapped in shrugs. I guess that’s a good thing, because if I had to watch one of Will Smith’s millionaire brats rapping about her “hard knock life,” I might’ve had an aneurysm. “At least he died watching something he hated,” people would say.

It’s really hard to keep track of the developments involving The Amazing Spider-Man 2, because it basically seems like all director Marc Webb learned from the critical failure of Spider-Man 3 was to start cramming the films with characters and villains before you finish the trilogy. So we know that Shailene Woodley has joined the film as Mary Jane Watson, Paul Giamatti is playing Rhino, Chris Cooper is Norman Osborn, Dane DeHaan is Harry Osborn and Jamie Foxx is Electro. Also, Venom may or may not be introduced.

But Giamatti and Foxx are the real eyebrow raisers, not because they’re not great actors, but mainly because the characters they’re playing have rather unusual appearances that may not translate very well on the big screen. Like Electro, who has a giant yellow starfish on his face. Well, scratch that concern off the list, because thanks to Vulture (the site, not the other awful Spider-Man villain that should not be played by Ben Kingsley in The Amazing Spider-Man 3) we now know what Electro looks like.

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The Twelfth Man.

Django Unchained isn’t just a glorification of gratuitous violence and foul language, EVERYthing about Django is gratuitous. There’s an extra character in it, like the crowd noise as the invisible twelfth man in a football game, only in this case, it’s the frequent and persistent voice of worried studio execs and concerned friends trying to reign Quentin in. If you listen closely, you can hear it throughout the film.

“Hey, so uh, Quentin… maybe seven blood packets instead of twelve in this scene? Also, I’m not sure you need that sorta ‘gurgle-slurp’ noise after the slaver gets his head caved in.. but I’m sure you know best, haha!”

“Quentin, buddy! Hey, I know this is about slavery and stuff, but what if we just said the N-word, like, ten fewer times? I think people get it, you know? I mean, just a thought.”

“Yo, Q-Ball. I’m loving this, buddy, I really am, but… this shot of the underside of Django’s hairy nutsack? What if we just shot it from, say, from a little further away? Maybe we try one your way and one my way? I dunno, just spitballin’ here.”

“Hey, T-Squared, I know you like putting yourself in your own movies and stuff, but… I dunno, does your character really need an Australian accent in this one? I’m worried it’s going to come off… silly. But hey, one man’s opinion.”

To see Django Unchained is to watch Quentin Tarantino studiously ignore that voice. You know Tarantino could easily make a refined movie that every asthmatic, private school-educated film critic would love, just by dialing back his peccadilloes half a tick. The beauty of Tarantino is that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t. As brilliant an audience manipulator as he is, he’s still that video store clerk who can’t spell, who just loves sticking it to the shrivs and poindexters who’ll never fully appreciate something this rowdy. He’s like a comedian who constantly hears people tell him that he’s clever enough to be funny without swearing. “Yeah, but I like swearing. That’s what’s funny to me.”

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