Pretentious quote here

There's a story about the movie Slumber Party Massacre that goes that it was written by a feminist as a parody of slasher movies, only the director filmed it completely straight. Now, the end result of that isn't nearly as interesting as it sounds (there's basically just some cheap phallic symbolism), but I could totally believe that's how Showdown In Little Tokyo came to be. It basically does for Lethal Weapon what Austin Powers did for James Bond, only completely unintentionally. There's the outrageously homoerotic partnership, the completely over-the-top violence, the hilariously offensive rape subplot, and then there's the premise. A wise-cracking American cop gets a new partner, an honorable Japanese samurai-cop, and together they fight Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat (that guy is never ever good in a movie. If there were a movie where Jackie Chan played a villain and he played a hero, the world would turn upside-down.

Okay, but here's the thing. Apparently just to utterly fuck with anyone who's ever heard of cultural appropriation, the samurai is Dolph Lundgren, who was raised in Japan, and the wiseass is Brandon Lee, who actually is Japanese, but was born in America (but he still knows kung-fu). Yes, Ivan Drago with a katana: THIS MOVIE.

( Now let me present to you the five stages of watching Showdown In Little Tokyo. )

In conclusion, it's on Netflix Instant and you must watch it immediately.

Also, now there's this pretty firm rumor that Marion Cotillard is going to be in the next Batman. Which has now gotten weird backlash for Nolan reusing too many people from Inception. Which, I don't get, because if you have a harem of amazing actors, you should keep using them. I know, I know, the current Tim Burton-Helena-Bonham-Carter-Johnny-Depp triad of mediocrity, but that has more to do with Burton sucking these days than reusing actors. And as long as it's not some weird thing like Spielberg has with Shia LeBeouf, where he keeps reusing that guy despite the fact that he always plays the guy from Even Stevens. Seriously, you could title his movies that. Indiana Jones And The Even Stevens. Even Stevens Meets Giant Robots. Even Stevens: The Incredibly Obvious Rip-off Of Rear Window.

Anyway, I'm guessing this would square with the old report that there would be a villainess and a love interest in Dark Knight Rises, presumably with Catwoman as the love interest and Cotillard as Talia al Ghul. (Cotillard would continue the vaguely French tone of Ducard/Ra's.) Which would really make sense with the casting of Hardy as Bane (and presumably the ditching of the Santa Prisca backstory). Tom Hardy's locked up in some maximum-security prison, Talia extracts him and basically turns him into Ninja Bruce Wayne 2.0, only this time with Venom as the League's ace in the hole instead of fear toxin. Then you have JGL as Alberto Falcone, distributing Venom as a street drug to further the destruction of Gotham, and you've got a nice balanced story with a Batman/Catwoman team facing down the Talia/Bane team. Or probably something much better than that (yeah, somehow I doubt there's going to be a Nolanverse story with a bunch of superstrong junkies fighting Batman, even though that would be a good Knightfall substitute for emptying Arkham Asylum.)

Oh, and I do love the random speculation that Damian Wayne will show up.

Chris Nolan: By the way, audience, we didn't show you, but in the first movie when Bruce was having a training montage, he also fell in love with Liam Neeson's daughter and impregnated her, but then he just forgot about Marion Cotillard so he could moon over Maggie Gyllenhaal.

If Mr. Freeze is too unbelievable for the Nolanverse, then that certainly isn't happening.