See Kevin Smith and Bruce Willis discussing Die Hard 4. Do they explain why the supposedly immortal "Yippee Kye-Aye" line is disrupted by gunfire before it gets finished? Of course not. For some reason, pretending Bruce swears in the film is a central pillar of the marketing.
Who do they expect wants to see this film? And the thing is... I fear they're right.
Die Hard 4.0 isn't long pas the point of interest for me. The talent roster is pretty unappealing to me all round - except for some of the lead actors. Willis is great at this stuff, Justin Long is fine, Mary Elizabeth Winstead too and Timothy Oliphant's addition was the one thing that sparked my interest more than anything else. For about three seconds, until I remembered some of the far more interesting films that were upcoming and they washed Die Hard away.
Now I've seen these clips it seems as absolutely generic and perfunctory as I had anticipated.
Directly download clip one or two and see for yourself.
Collider have a video interview with Justin Long that's ostensibly about Die Hard 4 but actually touches on many other things. The best bit, as far as I was concerned, detailed a scene shot for Jake Kasdan's Walk Hard.
In said scene, Long plays George Harrison of The Beatles; Jack Black, as mentioned in the headline is Paul McCartney; Paul Rudd is John Lennon; and Jason Schwartzman is Ringo Starr.
Can't fail... can it?
According to Variety, the smoking of cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos and pipes is to now effect the MPAA's rating process. I hope for everybody's sake that there's not too much puffing on cancer sticks in Die Hard 4.0 or their sought after, somehow controversial PG-13 status will be in doubt.
I don't know if you've been following the conversation between Bruce Willis and the Talkbackers (ie; geeks a bit like me and maybe you) over at Aint it Cool. The short story is, basically, he's talking up Die Hard 4.0, even in its PG-13 version.
At first he was pretty much anonymous, posting as Walter B. Then Harry's Gang outed him, marked all of his posts with big black boxes and even set up another Talkback specifically for people to address him directly.
Some of his stuff has been priceless. Here are some excerpts:
This episode if Die Hard is as good, if not better than the first Movie. And I was there for that one too. In a Summer filled with CG/fantasy driven films, Live Free or Die Hard is an in-your-face, hard-ass Action movie that will satisfy Vern, and anyone else who is a fan of the Die Hard series. All PG-13 means is that you cannot say f*ck more than twice. Other than that, the Mythology of Die Hard lives....
Since they have existed, I always said the first Die Hard was the only good one. I will go on record here as saying that Live Free or Die Hard is better than the first one.
[Michael] Bay would have ruined DH4. Few people will work with him now, and I know I will never work with him again.
I had a website up for a while, I shut it down for an indefinite period, but now, getting ready to launch the longest shot of my careeer, I feel a strong personal pull to hear from an audience I do not know, sans Bullsh*t,(And that means I tell the Truth), sans gossip, just the straight, tight sh*t. I would personally hope it might be more about my work, good and bad, just us.
Takagi would still have his brains blown out had he been in DH4. Perhaps with a bit less gore, but we have some kills in DH4 that will still rock your *ss.
beedub/MaF*ckin'Clane/Walter B and proofreading is for pussies.... All I can say is that I will do what I can to remain comprehensible.
other than the 5 year old character of Lucy MaClane, who is now 26, there are no cameos from the 3 previous Die Hards. Thanks BW
If you need swearing to make you happy at the movies, there are plenty of those out there. But if you want a new action movie that will rock you, go see LF or DH.
That's enough. Go hunting for more, if you're still curious. It is quite fascinating stuff, really.
I left a question myself. I hope it gets answered. It will be interesting to compare the response to the question, and ultimately the film that is released. It reads: Hi, Bruce So can you please attest to the quality of Die Hard 4.0's storytelling? Are there many plot holes? Contrivances? Superfluous coincidences? Do the characters stay in character? Do the plot twists play fair? Basically, can you tell us that the film is well structured, properly constructed and, generally well put together? And how is Wiseman with screen geography these days?
I'm hoping some other filmmakers follow this lead. There's plenty out there I'd have some serious questions for.
This is a very big update, and there should be something for everyone...
- Lionsgate are to release Michael Moore's Sicko across the states on June 29th. That's the same day as Die Hard 4.0 and Ratatouille.
- The Film Agency for Wales are to fund Wyndham Price's Abraham's Point, Justin Kerrigan's I Know You and Caradog James' Blonde. They're also lining up Seperado!, a documentary about Super Furry Gruff Rhys' solo-tour of South America that struck me as more appealing than the fiction films put together.
- The premiere of Ocean's 13 is set to raise cash for the Not on Our Watch charity, which supports relief efforts in Darfur.
- La Vie en Rose is the opener for this year's Sydney Film Festival, Day Watch will be the closer.
- People have some preview shots from High School Musical 2.
- Hilary Swank is to be beset by Vampires in Fangland.
- Uri Geller has tried to remove an expose of his pathetic charlatanism from YouTube, but the plan has backfired, and now he's being sued. Good. He's a cynical conman and he might make a good example if this blows up big enough.
- Another Die Hard 4.0 featurette has been certificated for DVD - this time, a 40 minute look back at the first film.
- George Lucas has dissed Spider-Man 3 to Fox News. Silly man - he never directed a film that was a half as well made as Spider-Man 3, for all its faults.
- No more Warner Bros. talker screenings in Canada. Apparently, this is because the Canucks are big time pirates. Let's see if this tactic actually has any effect.
- Five films from CalArts students are now online, and are well worth your time.
- Besides The Jetsons, Robert Rodriguez is also considering a film version of Land of the Lost with Will Ferrell. What an utterly unappetising pair of prospects. I hope he finds something better to do than become a studio hack.
- Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont are scripting Sisters of Mercy as a Will Smith vehicle. Yep - I'm looking forward to Made of Honor, have Can't Hardly Wait on DVD, and I'd buy Josie and the Pussycats if I saw it cheap enough. Sue me.
- Peter and Michael Spierig's Daybreakers is finally moving ahead: Ethan Hawke has signed to star.
- Roger Langridge is working on a Muppets strip for Disney Adventures magazine. Roger and I once had work published in the same comic, I believe.
- The Veronica Mars 2.0 show seems to be a go, after all.
The BBFC have certificated a 14 minute featurette called The Continuing Adventures of John McClane. Either they're getting ahead on the Die Hard 4.0 supplementary material, and this is a first glimpse of what the DVD will contain, or this is a promo piece, very possibly to be given away with a newspaper.
There's been countless publicty DVDs attached to the rags over the years, but some were truly worthwhile. The Kill Bill disc that came with The Times being a particularly good example.
More Die Hard 4.0 hype is going on with chocolate bar promotions - I saw some kind of logo on a rack of Kit Kats earlier. Are people really going to care that much about this film? In the UK? I thought we just sort of shrugged the Die Hards off over here.
Aint it Cool reported an upcoming Vanity Fair piece in which Bruce Willis expresses his displeasure at the likelihood of Die Hard 4.0 being released with a PG-13 certificate. The implication is that a PG-13 Die Hard 4.0 simply couldn't be as good as an R rated Die Hard 4.0. This strikes me as incredibly weak logic, for obvious reasons. I'll state them below anyway.
The Willis dissents story has spread across the web and the consensus seems to be that people are siding with Bruno. Makes me sigh, I'm afraid. What on earth is the connection between a film's quality and the MPAA rating it receives? Aren't there a whole heap of action classics with PG-13 ratings? Yes, there are. And when Die Hard 4.0 fails to live up to a long list of them and it's problems become apparent, how many of those problems could be resolved by including more profanity or nudity or making the violence more explicit?
I don't see what it is in the Die Hard concept that cries out for R-rated material to succeed. It needs a strong plot, well conceived action sequences and to be executed with skill and flair. That's what it needs - not pandering to the pubescent and pseudo-adult juvenilia.
Having said all of this, if a film is censored from a natural, organic R rating to acheive a PG-13 for marketing, that's a different argument entirely. But, of course, Die Hard 4.0 is almost certain to have been designed as a mass-market PG-13 product from day one.
Mike Markus is a virtual signpost. Today he points at an international trailer for Live Free or Die Hard that McClane afficianados are calling "best trailer version yet".
What do they know? You be the judge of that.
So, what are going to be the films to make up the second Grind House double feature?
Talking to VH1, Eli Roth discusses Thanksgiving:
The trailer was so much fun. It's all gore and nudity. It's all money shots, bodies being chopped up and people being stabbed and cheerleaders stripping on trampolines. It's three minutes of pure happiness. The feature will never live up to the trailer unless we just do 90 minutes of that. For Grind House 2 I think there's a very strong chance of shooting it. Quentin and Robert and the Weinstein Company love the trailer so much they're already asking me, "Where's the script for Thanksgiving?"
(He also suggests he turned down Die Hard 4, The Hulk and Halo to make Hostel 2)
And, in another chat, Tarantino spells out his plans for the future:
There's all these subgenres in exploitation movies and cinema in general that we like, and this gives us a license to explore them all ... I do have an idea in my mind for an old-school kung-fu movie that would be shot in Mandarin ... there would be a long version of it, with subtitles and all serious. Then I would cut another version way down, like they did in America, and dub it! Not to make it look silly, but you can't help but benefit from its humorous quality.
If the audience screams for Thanksgiving and Don't! or Werewolf Women of the S.S., and Rob, Edgar and Eli want to do it, we're all down.
And the then confirms, once more, that his next film will be Inglorious Bastards.
