It’s already the second day of 2012, which means we’ll all be sober within the next day or two. It also means that we can officially start looking (through blurry eyes) ahead to the future. A future of promise and potential. A future of hope. A future of tingling anticipation that the road stretched out in front of us that leads to the cinema will be paved with gold. Will there be piles of excrement along the way? Of course, but we don’t know how many or how badly they’ll tarnish our yellow-bricked roller coaster ride. All we can see from this far out is the shimmering wonder of movies to come – the vast unknown that looks wonderful (and might just live up to the hype). In past years (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), we’ve gone with a fairly arbitrary count of 20-30 movies. This year, we decided to prove that there were 52 movies worth prematurely celebrating (even though what we found were many more). That’s one for every week (even if there are some weeks with a few and some weeks with none at all). Regardless of the number, Rob Hunter, Neil Miller, Kate Erbland, Allison Loring, Landon Palmer, Brian Salisbury and Cole Abaius have joined forces to remind us all that there are a lot of great movies to hope for this year. Go grab a calendar and pencil in everything that gets your blood pressure up toward unsafe levels. It’s going to be a busy, flick-filled [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]

There was something about Taken that audiences just responded to. I don’t know what it was, but I felt it too. For some reason we were all just ready to see Liam Neeson go completely badass and mess some people up. The guy may be in his 50s, but when he told those guys that he had the set of skills necessary to take them out in that trailer, we all believed it. So I went to see the thing, and I sat there, not expecting much, yet inexplicably drawn to the film. For the first 30 minutes I was pretty bored and upset that I had been sucked in by the ad campaign. And then his daughter got taken, and for the rest of the runtime the movie was pure, brutal ass-kickery. And I’m not talking about the flippy, dancy, show-off type ass kicking that we get in most movies these days. Liam Neeson was a bone breaking, tooth and nail, creepy psycho. It was very satisfying to watch, and the movie ended up making a ton of money. So, guess what, bad news for Liam Neeson… somebody in his life is going to be taken again! Can you believe it? Or maybe there will be a twist and this time Neeson will be the one who gets taken. Either way, Taken 2 is looking like it’s going to happen. Neeson seems to be on board, Luc Besson is going to write again, and they’ve found a director. This [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 would have been an awesome opportunity for other aging actors to hop into the role and turn it into a Bond-like revolving door of men trying to rescue their daughters, but Liam Neeson has worked out a deal to star in Taken 2. It’s good news all around, and it’s difficult to see this sequel being anything more (or less) than the same airtight action of the last with a straight line toward the murderizing of bad guys. Plus, there’s nothing that says Luc Besson can’t start a series of films with all the 60+ actors of our time crushing skulls and saving daughters. Think about it, Besson. C’est Parfait.

This seems calamitous, but Liam Neeson may not be able to reprise his role as the father with a very deadly set of skills (unless you count Unknown as a de facto sequel to Taken). Deadline Aransas Pass is reporting that Luc Besson wants to make a sequel happen this year, but Neeson wants to take some time off from a grueling schedule. If he does, and if Besson wants to push anyway, they’ll need to find another actor for the job. This sounds awful, but there is a silver lining. Imagine if this random scheduling problem launches a series of movies about aging, highly skilled bad asses trying to get their duck-running daughter back. What if Taken 2 was Gary Oldman kicking ass and chewing bubble gum, followed by Clint Eastwood in Taken 3 and Harrison Ford in Taken 4. Colin Firth, Tom Hanks, Jason Isaacs, Bruce Willis, Robert De Niro, Russell Crowe, Geoffrey Rush. That’s right. I said it. Geoffrey Rush. Put guns in all of their hands and set them loose on baddies of all different stripes. Then top it all off with Helen Mirren playing a mother with a particular set of skills, and you’ve got thirteen of the most stream-lined action flicks of the past four decades. But, yeah. Losing Neeson would be pretty bad news.

Liam Neeson is soon to star in the film Unknown, which opens February 18th here in the US. But before he was able to so confidently open an action film filled with espionage and intrigue such as this one, he was first slotted into the starring role of the 2008 film Taken. In that picture he assured us that he was a man with a “very specific set of skills” which ended up mostly consisting of hunting people down and killing them in horrifically satisfying ways. It wasn’t a movie that should have made much of an impact at the box office, and it didn’t resemble anything that had real franchise potential; but there was something about the film that really resonated with audiences. When Neeson said that he had a specific set of skills in that trailer, people believed him. They believed him so much that they showed up to see him exhibit those skills in droves. And despite his advancing age, Neeson was able to convincingly kill a bunch of people without any of it looking unlikely or exploitational. Despite all rational to the contrary, Liam Neeson had become a modern day action hero with just one role, even though he was already a hundred years old. In an era with a pathetic cache of action icons, in an era where today’s children might not even understand the transcendental heroics of blowing a guy’s head clean off, a classic revenge film like Taken came as a huge breath [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]

Screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen and Luc Besson have designs on another Taken and a new version of District B13. Today’s forecast calls for ass kicking with a slight chance of parkour.