After finally turning enough heads in the U.S. and getting a little recognition from Hollywood by making things like The Good, The Bad, The Weird and I Saw the Devil, director Kim Ji-woon finally got the chance to direct an English-language film, one starring no less than Arnold Schwarzenegger, called Last Stand. Though the film has not come out yet, I’m really anticipating it, because I Saw the Devil was one of the only ultra-violent revenge type flicks that I’ve ever really liked and, you know…Schwarzenegger. But this begs the question, now that Kim has his foot in the Hollywood door, is it going to be studio-produced English-language films from here on out? Will we next hear his name attached to some sort of big budget remake or an adaptation of an old TV show? Not quite, at least not yet. Now that things have wrapped up on Last Stand, Kim is actually heading back to South Korea to make a movie called The Fall of Humanity, which will be a collaboration with Antarctic Journal and New Generation director Lim Pil-seong. Not much is known about this project yet, or what Kim’s plans will be after he finishes work on it. Was working in the States on Last Stand just a one-time deal and now it’s back to Korean cinema full-time, or will he be moving back-and-forth between the two countries from here on out?

Last week, as I watched Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber, I noticed that the trailers on the rental Blu-Ray were all of titles sharing space at the top of my queue: titles like Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, Kim Ji-woon’s I Saw the Devil, and Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun. All, I quickly realized, had been released by the same studio, Magnet Releasing, whose label I recalled first noticing in front of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson. After some quick Internet searching, I quickly realized what I should have known initially, that Magnet was a subsidiary of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures. The practices of “indie” subsidiaries of studios has become commonplace. That majors like Universal and 20th Century Fox carry specialty labels Focus Features and Fox Searchlight which market to discerning audiences irrespective of whether or not the individual titles released are independently financed or studio-produced has become a defining practice for limited release titles and has, perhaps more than any other factor, obscured the meaning of the term “independent film” (Sony Pictures Classics, which only distributes existing films, is perhaps the only subsidiary arm of a major studio whose releases are actually independent of the system itself). This fact is simply one that has been accepted for quite some time in the narrative of small-scale American (or imported) filmmaking. Especially in the case of Fox Searchlight, whose opening banner distinguishes itself from the major in variation on name only, subsidiaries of the majors can hardly even be argued as “tricking” audiences into [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

It looks like former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is very close to signing on to be in another action film, and all is right with the world. The movie is called Last Stand, and it’s the next film from I Saw the Devil and The Good, The Bad, The Weird director Jee-Woon Kim. Last Stand will be Kim’s first English language film, and it’s being made from a script written by first time screenwriter Andrew Knauer. The news was first broke by Movie Web, who learned of it from a Polish distributor helping to finance the film, and it has now been confirmed by /Film, who say they have a source closer to the production. The film is about the leader of a drug cartel who violently flees captivity in the United States, steals a car, and is running for the border in hopes of getting down into old Mexico. Schwarzenegger would play an aging sheriff who is in charge of a staff too inexperienced to properly handle such a crazy, violent situation. When talking to Coming Soon, Kim said of the film, “My concept for The Last Stand is that it’s kind of a combination of Die Hard and High Noon where (the latter) was about protecting something very important that needs to be protected, while Die Hard is a very drawn-out, long process that almost kills someone in the process, so my film will be something that has to be very well protected and in the process, we [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Okay, maybe that ‘us’ should simply be ‘me.’ Because hot damn I’m excited for this movie!

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we invite Fat Guy Kevin Carr to give his opinion on a truly horrific weekend of bad releases. Also, we talk about the movies that came out.

Is it ever a good thing when an incredibly talented foreign director gets lured into the clutches of Hollywood? Sure it is… just not very often. With that caveat in place, Hollywood welcomes one more naive soul into their clutches.