The casting news for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming foray into the Western genre, Django Unchained, just keeps getting better and better. Like a sports nerd amassing the perfect fantasy baseball team, Tarantino has been looking over the stats and picking out the most rock solid actors to fill key roles on his squad. Like a seasoned Dungeon Master, he has been amassing the Hollywood personalities with the most awesome points to accompany him on his quest. And Variety is reporting that the man is nearing yet another blockbuster acquisition. Now he’s in talks with Joseph Gordon-Levitt to join an already-excellent ensemble. Apparently Gordon-Levitt has every intention of working with Tarantino and joining this increasingly awesome-sounding movie, but there are some scheduling hiccups to work out. You see, JGL is a busy, busy man, and he’ll probably have to shift some stuff around in order to get his skinny little hinder on set when Tarantino needs him. If the two parties are able to work things out, it will see Gordon-Levitt joining a cast that already boasts names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, and Kurt Russell. That’s almost enough to make what Stallone is doing on The Expendables 2 look girly in comparison.

We’re in the middle of October, the month of Halloween, and the scariest new DVD release this week is The Zookeeper. But no one’s seriously planning on renting that film, are they? That leaves possible drinking games for Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer (and honestly, what third grader is going to try that?) or The Tree of Life, and a drinking game for that would get me into more trouble than my review did. So considering it’s the month for scares, and the remake/prequel/reboot/reimagining of The Thing comes out at the end of this week, plenty of folks are revisiting John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. So pour your Jim Beam into your Chess Wizard computer and crack open a Coors. It’s time to go drunk retro with this film, available on DVD, Blu-ray and Netflix Instant.

It was recently reported that Kevin Costner was dropping out of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming revenge Western about slaves and slave owners, Django Unchained. Costner was supposed to play a mean old snake named Ace Woody who oversees a plantation and keeps the slaves in line using not so nice methods. It seemed like a great opportunity to give Costner a meatier, or at least more interesting role than he has had in a while, and I was pretty disappointed to hear that he wouldn’t be able to work with Tarantino. Sometimes I’m astounded at how fickle I can be.

John Carpenter’s The Thing may be among the greatest remakes of all time. It shares little with its predecessor, and actually calling it a remake may be unnecessary, as they’re both born from the novella Who Goes There? Anyway, let’s call it a remake – let’s not mince words, because if I did that now, the rest of my argument wouldn’t make much sense, because I’m calling out 2011′s The Thing for not copping to what it is. The thing is, it’s exactly what it seems like, unlike the alien in the movie, but the filmmakers just won’t admit their film is a remake. I mean, they sort of aren’t against calling it a re-something. Kind of. See, to them it’s a prequel. It tells the stories of the Norwegians, so it’s part of the canon. It can’t be a remake if it actually takes place in the storyline. It just becomes an installment of the franchise. Normally, that’s fine. Who cares? A prequel isn’t as good as a sequel, generally, but we regard it as a step up from a remake. But here’s the problem: watch the trailer for The Thing. This movie is a God damned remake and there ain’t no two ways about it.

For every ten unnecessary remakes that make it to the big screen it’s worth remembering that once in a while we dodge a bullet. The most recent example being the big budget reboot of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. Carpenter’s admittedly goofy but entertaining as hell classic from 1981 has been on track for a remake for some time now. Every few months names of newly rumored directors and stars would hit the blogosphere including Brett Ratner, Len Wiseman, Gerard Butler, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hardy, and Breck Eisner. Of those only the last was really appealing in the slightest as Eisner turned in a fine horror flick with his remake of The Crazies, but this was never an endeavor to getting excited over. The original film is set in the far away future of 1997 where the island of Manhattan has been turned into a walled prison (still a great idea) that no one ever exits. Air Force One crashes inside and Snake Plissken, an ex-soldier turned convicted bank robber, is given a single shot at freedom… get in, find and rescue the US President, and get him out alive. There’s a lively supporting cast including Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Van Cleef, and Adrienne Barbeau, but the real stars of the film are Carpenter and Kurt Russell. It’s a fantastically fun ride that mixes action, cynical humor, and social/political commentary into an entertaining B-movie. Per Deadline New Amsterdam, New Line and Warner Bros. [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]

We all have DVDs and Blu-Rays we haven’t dug into quite like we thought we would when we slapped down our hard-earned cash to take them home with us. I’m right there with you. Chief among the special features I have ignorantly looked over are the commentary tracks. There is vast film knowledge just resting in those tiny discs. The libraries of information just resting on our DVD shelves are immense and full of interesting stories and facts. It’s time we start cracking through them. Enter Commentary Commentary, a new weekly column where I will listen to the commentary track of one of the films sitting on my shelf, waiting over there like Jason Voorhees waits behind a random tree. But I can’t just give you the title of a movie I watched that particular week and go have a latte. That would be easier, but it wouldn’t serve you, the reader. So I’ll make a list of things I learned from that commentary and give an overall opinion on how well the commentary served that particular movie.

Every day, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. This trailer is incredible simply because it spoofs the in-house PSAs still so popular in movie theaters regarding their stance on leaving trash behind and smoking cigarettes while you watch Thank You For Smoking. Plus, it shows a certain eye-patched badass in his big screen return. Snake for President. Think you know what it is? Check the trailer out for yourself:

Carpenter seems untouchable these days, and he’s only getting started. See what he’s got up his sleeve inside…

Based on the real life backstory of the 1980 U.S. Men’s Hockey team, a team that defied all odds and rallied a nation by defeating the Soviet Union during a time of great sociopolitical tension, Miracle is also the very human story behind one of the greatest moments in sports history.

There are certain questions in life one puzzles over furiously. Today, we examine a tricky one by asking what the hell happened to Kate Hudson’s career? Cinema Sleuth is on the case.

Death Proof opens on a pair of shapely feet, with polished toes, natch, resting on a sunlit dashboard. Tarantino needn’t even bother putting his name in the credits anymore.