You may recall when Robert Rodriquez first came on the scene with El Mariachi, a movie he allegedly made for $30,000.
I loved his bigger budget version of the film, Desperado, and enjoy Rodriguez’s work when he’s on top of his game, like with Sin City, and the first Spy Kids, but it’s unfortunate to see him wasting his talents on a lot of the schlock he’s been making lately.
So now comes the news that there will be a Sin City 2, which is cool cause the first one was terrific, but there’s also going to be another Machete movie (Zzzzzzzz), and the unfortunate news that Mel Gibson, of all people, is “in talks” as they say in Hollywood, to be a part of it. This news of course comes on the heels of Gibson going to war with infamous screenwriter Joe Ezsterhas (Showgirls, Basic Instinct), who released a scathing nine page letter he wrote to the star, and also leaked another foul-mouthed Gibson rant to The Wrap.
How on earth Mel Gibson can get a Taco Bell commercial at this point is beyond me, but Rodriguez apparently thinks it’s a good idea to bring him into Machete Kills, his sequel to the faux B-movie he made based on his fake trailer in Grindhouse. Rodriguez promised The Hollywood Reporter the new Machete will take the franchise “to another level.”
First will come the Sin City sequel, A Dame to Kill For, which Rodriguez will shoot this summer, and he’s also going to do a remake of the Ralph Bakshi animated fantasy, Fire and Ice. Bakshi of course was the infamous animator behind Fritz the Cat, Wizards, the 1978 Lord of the Rings, and American Pop, and famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta produced the film.
Rodriguez told the Reporter that this would be a tribute to Frazetta, but using the technology of Sin City. “I want it to be as if you stepped into one of his paintings.”
Speaking of grindhouse and schlock, as if all this weren’t enough, Rodriguez’s 1994 flick Road Racers is also going to be headed to Blu-Ray. This was part of a series of stories Rodriguez and several other filmmakers made for Showtime under the Rebel Highway series, and like Grindhouse, it was supposed to be a tribute to the classic B movies of the fifties, and they kept the names of a number of B films, but with completely different stories.
