The Total Recall remake opens this August, and it departs from the original in a number of ways, including replacing Arnold with Colin Farrell, setting the entire thing on Earth, and perhaps most worrisome, aiming for a PG-13 rating (BUT WHAT OF THE THREE TITTIES, WHAT?!). At the very least, let’s hope it shares the original’s passion for breaking glass. This supercut edits all the scenes of glass-breaking (and pretty tightly) into this video, which still manages to fill up 1:16 of screen time. That has to be some kind of record. It’s set to “Shattered” by The Rolling Stones, which is fun and apt, but what I’m really looking forward to is Arnold’s commentary track.

“Hallo, jah, this Ahnuld Sfartsineggah, and heah I am on da screen. Here’s da great glass scene wit me, and da vindow. And now in dis scene I am trying very hard to break da glass, and all da glass want to do is to not break. But den right deah I take da gun, and den right heah I break it. …Ow! And there you see, I haff broken da glass.”

I believe this was based on the Phillip K. Dick story “We Can Re-Glass It For You Wholesale.” [via TheDailyWhat]

Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I post anything about the upcoming Total Recall remake, people react as if Hollywood kidnapped their dog and shaved it, and I admit I don’t totally disagree. Len Wiseman is directing (Underworld, Live Free or Die Hard), it’s going for a PG-13 rating, and — crap, you aren’t even listening anymore, are you. WAIT! Put down the torch and pitchfork, I have other news! They released an official synopsis, and it doesn’t seem to contradict earlier reports that the new version would be set entirely on Earth, with no Martian colonies or eye-bulging space atmospheres, or things of that nature. I know, I’m not doing much to loosen your torch grip, am I. QUAID! START THE OVERREACTOR!

“Total Recall” is an action thriller about reality and memory, inspired anew by the famous short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick. Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he’s got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) who he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston), the leader of the free world – Quaid teams up with a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) to find the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy) and stop Cohaagen. The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate. [via geektyrant]

That’s an awesome cast, but there’s really nothing they can do to soften the blow of a space-free, PG-13 Total Recall where the three-boobed hooker has to wear pasties or something directed by a guy who’s never made a good movie. It’s like hearing they brought back Santa Claus, only now he just gives out boxes of raisins.

Read the rest of this entry »

"Cookies?"

When most people do DVD commentary, they generally try to give you some interesting background on whatever scene is playing — behind-the-scenes stories, the challenges of shooting something, continuity mistakes the viewer might have missed — sort of like pop-up video on VH-1. In this clip from the Total Recall commentary track, Arnold Schwarzenegger describes what’s happening on screen so literally that watching it feels like your brain is melting. Everyone commenting on it and the person who originally put it on YouTube all swear that this is the real DVD commentary and not an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator, and the only thing that keeps me from total disbelief of that is that it’s so completely absurd that it couldn’t have been imagined before it happened.

Read the rest of this entry »

As Comic Con is nothing more than a distant memory of plain girls becoming exponentially hotter for dressing like comic book characters, there are always some straggler interviews around the interwebs that offer some hidden gems. While it’s not nearly as legit and proper as Vinnie hollering at your boy, C-Tates, Frosty from Collider spent a solid 22 minutes chatting with Len Wiseman, who is the director of the upcoming Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell, but more importantly he’s the dude that makes babies with Kate Beckinsale.

Around the 5:37 mark he gets into the Total Recall stuff, after he discusses his hot wife in Underworld, and he hints at what we’ve all been wondering – Are we gonna see some tri-boobs?

Frosty: “Are there any Easter eggs for the original movie as a nod?”
Len Wiseman: “For sure. And what I did was, after I read the script, I wrote a list out of the things I remembered from Total Recall when I was 15, before I went and watched Total Recall again to see what actually stuck with me.”

Of course he means the three-breasted hooker, because any guy that doesn’t list that as the one thing he remembers from the original classic – that’s right, I’m calling Total Recall a classic – isn’t really a man. But there’s a problem with this great news – Wiseman’s Recall is PG-13. What the hell kind of tri-boob are we going to see in a PG-13 joint?

Don’t worry your precious hearts. Later in the interview, around the 19-minute mark, Wiseman recognizes that there are “different versions of the three-breasted woman” in regard to the eventual director’s cut DVD and Blu-Ray. Thank goodness. I just don’t want to live in an alternate future without bare-breasted mutants.

Read the rest of this entry »

"OI, QUAID! Start da fookin' reactor, ya styoopid coont!"

Len Wiseman’s Total Recall remake starring Colin Farrell is set for August of next year, and in their latest issue, EW just published the first photo. So I guess now we know what a single frame of that might look like (*dusts off hands, folds hands behind head, leans back in chair, waits for profits to roll in*).  Last we heard about this project, the plot, based on Phillip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, was now about a conflict between the “nation-states” of Euroamerica and New Shanghai, and may not involve Mars or space at all. No word on that in the latest piece, but they do say it will be less “jokey.” Phew, thank God. Hey, could you tone down some of the action while you’re at it? The original seemed awful rambunctious.

In the magazine, Farrell says “the tone will be much less jokey” than Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s 1990′s sci-fi hit. He says, “there’s not as much tongue-in-cheek” and that he wouldn’t feel comfortable delivering lines like ‘Consider dat a divorce!’” [TheFilmStage]

Really? Yet he had no qualms about karate chopping a midget in the neck and saying, “Back off, sharty!”? This seems like a strange thing to mention. I’m just saying, if I was doing a remake of Total Recall, that was no longer set in space, with a director who’d done two Underworld movies and a Die Hard sequel, “Wait, but will Colin Farrell be able to match Arnold Schwarzenegger’s natural flair for comedy?” probably wouldn’t even make the top 10 on my list of concerns.