Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved anime series ever, and a live-action feature film has been in and out of development for a very long time. In its current iteration, it’s at Fox with Keanu Reeves attached to play protagonist Spike Spiegel.

However, back in the early 2000s, there was another set of producers looking to cash in on Cowboy Bebop, and they had someone else in mind: reportedly, Stephen Dorff was set to play Spike Spiegel, with Cameron Diaz as Faye. The above poster is a fan-made affair that circulated the net in 2003, based on rumors at the time. If you know Cowboy Bebop, you’ll know that the poster and the cast do it far from any justice.

Luckily for Cowboy Bebop fans, the film never materialized. The new version with Keanu Reeves was reportedly put on hold in 2010 pending a rewrite in order to reduce the budget of the production.

Director Zack Snyder is hard at work on the new Superman film, which is scheduled to begin filming this spring. According to rumors, Warner Bros. is in late-stage talks with Bradley Cooper for the part of none other than super villain Lex Luthor — a role which has been previously portrayed by heavy hitters like Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey.

Bradley Copper seems somewhat of an odd choice for the bald villain, but we’ll see how it works out (we’re yet to see Cooper bald, after all). The new Superman movie, officially titled Man of Steel, is scheduled for a 2013 release.

Peter Jackson and crew and well underway with filming The Hobbit part one and two, but they’ve had enough time (and footage) to splice together an impressive trailer. The Hobbit premiers in December 2012, with part 2 scheduled for release a year later.

Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated sci-fi thriller Prometheus has received its first teaser, and boy does it tease. It brings back memories of Alien and follows a similar storyline: mankind has discovered origins of life in the Universe, and sets out to find out what happened. The movie opens in Summer 2012.

Great trailer and needs no introduction; it tells it all. I am excited. It is freezing here in Northern California, but watching this trailer warms me up. I can feel summer coming. May 25th is when Men In Black 3 hits the theaters.

Today, folks, we’ve got something special for you, as the folks at The Asylum sent over a copy of Dragon Crusaders for us. This by itself wouldn’t be so special, until you consider one important fact: I can’t tell what movie they’re ripping off. Thus, it looks like we’ve got something interesting here–original Asylum fare.

Dragon Crusaders takes us out on the open sea, as a group of Knights Templar find themselves up against a band of pirates. Naturally, Knights Templar don’t much care for pirates, and descend upon them with all the fury you’d expect. But when the knights in turn are cursed to take on horrible forms, they find they must take on something much, much worse than they expected in order to break the curse, and by extension, save humanity from a fate only slightly worse than being burned alive–being burned alive and eaten by enormous lizards.

Original Asylum fare doesn’t happen very often these days, with the bulk of their work dedicated to titles that sound vaguely familiar, because, not surprisingly, they are. But sometimes they get something original out, and that’s where the bulk of their best movies comes from. Sure, they have the occasional clunker–who doesn’t?–but give The Asylum some original content, the stuff that hearkens back to their best times when they were just getting started and putting out some really impressive stuff, and they can really show you a good time.

See, Dragon Crusaders is almost disturbingly ambitious. They’re going to have dragons and gargoyles and even zombies–though they call them revenants–in here. Though admittedly, the narrative is a little light on the cohesiveness, it’s not exactly doing a terrible job of getting the point across. And what it lacks in decent narrative structure it will amply make up for with a lot of action. Plenty of swordfights and the like will race across this like no tomorrow.

The question you’ll have to ask yourself, of course, is are you okay with a plot that only half makes sense but will pack in loads of clanging swords and people getting hit with pointy things in a thoroughly medieval fashion? Chances are most will be, and with good reason. Dragon Crusaders is reasonably fun and pretty exciting; flawed, to be sure, but still very exciting.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Dragon Crusaders, as a result, a flawed but still fun six out of ten. It’s certainly one of the more fun pieces I’ve seen The Asylum put out, especially recently, but it’s not without its problems. Though those problems are pretty substantial, it’s still hard to ignore the sheer amound of fun involved in this one.

Photojournalism has often been regarded as one of the more exciting branches of the fourth estate, and if you want to see that for yourself, then it’s a good idea to check out Five Days Of War, a copy of which the folks out at Anchor Bay sent us for review. You’ll be able to get this one Tuesday, and you’ll want to see it when it hits.

Five Days Of War takes us back to 2008′s brief, sharp war between Russia and Georgia. And a group of journalists are out in the midst of the combat, filming and doing what they can to get the story. They even manage to save a school teacher caught in the middle of the horror. Things only get worse the farther in they get, and they’re recording every last scrap of it. And this diligence has drawn the attention of the various parties involved in the fighting, who want desperately to suppress the news, because when you’re fighting a war the last thing you want is CNN or the like to start screaming “war crimes”. But there’s a problem–the Beijing Olympics is going on right at the same time, so the networks are shorthanded. And that means the footage that our reporters are risking their lives for may never get out in the first place.

Part commentary on the media industry and part commentary on war, the commentaries do have a tendency to get a bit heavy-handed, but they’re going to be packaged in the midst of so much straight-up action that it’s going to be hard not to be engrossed by what you’re seeing here. If you ever wanted to see a combination of action and drama done right, look right here. The best part is it’s even going to offer a few–a very few–laughs along the way serving as a way to break up some of the tension, which is a nice bonus. You run constant tension and it stops being entertaining and starts being just plain old grueling. And Five Days Of War does an excellent job of breaking up its tension occasionally enough to where you get the full effect of it without it being too much of a strain on you.

It’s a top-notch experience that delivers up a whole lot, and is going to be hard to watch in a few places, but at the same time, will put on one impressive show for a great many reasons. If you ever wished your action movies had a bit more substance to them, or if you just want a kind-of-realistic account of war journalists, then you’ll definitely want to have a look at Five Days Of War.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Five Days Of War an eight out of ten–it’s going to be loud, violent, and bloodsoaked, but one thing it will not be short on is pure substance.

Impressively prolific studio Lions Gate brings us another set of terrific titles to make up the multi-review this week, and the block this week is made up of three they’ve sent out for us: Mob Rules, From Prada To Nada, and KJB.

Mob Rules gives us a dose of dramatic action, as we go out to London. A pair of felons with a penchant for Shakespeare find themselves out for revenge in a bid to get back the money they should have received from a job gone wrong years prior. And said felons have a plan to get it all back that’s going to take them from London to America and points beyond.

While there is both plenty of action and drama in Mob Rules, there’s an interesting sense of humor running throughout that crops up at unexpected points and gives a distinct note of surprise that’s very welcome. Think of this like a slightly gritty, slightly urban, slightly downsized, and very, very English version of Ocean’s 11. The end result is still very watchable, and brings together a lot of interesting and largely dissimilar (but surprisingly interrelated) plot points that make this one unexpectedly deep.

From Prada To Nada, meanwhile, takes us out to California, where a couple of Beverly Hills princesses have been living it up on Daddy’s fortune. But when Daddy’s fortune goes the way of the dodo, the duo finds themselves staying with their aunt. And in the process, they get exposed to a whole new side of life. Will the experience make them better people? Or will it break them just as much as it broke Daddy?

If this one is giving off a Simple Life with Paris and Nicole kind of vibe to you, then rest assured, you’re not alone. However, considering that this is actually a strange kind of Latino version of Sense and Sensibility (complete with mariachi band at a man’s funeral), it’s going to be a little deeper than you might think. Okay, it’s going to be a lot deeper than you might think. It’s actually a reasonable facsimile, though it’s been a while since I last read Sense and Sensibility. Fair warning, though: it will spend a good chunk of time being a total downer, but then, so did pretty much everything Jane Austen ever wrote. Still though, it’s surprisingly engrossing stuff, and you’ll likely get a kick out of it, especially if you have a literary bent.

Lastly we’ve got KJB, which here is an acronym for the King James Bible. And this is the story of how it came to be. For those of you not familiar, the story of the King James Bible is actually a deep and complex tale that’s jammed to the gills with intrigue and just a little suspense to round out the whole package. See, a lot of people had a vested interest in keeping the King James Bible out of a lot of people’s hands, and this is going to give you at least some of the story behind that.

I say some, of course, because this is actually a Dove Family Film selection. That basically means that you’re not going to get the whole story out of this, but you’ll get quite a bit of it, anyway. And considering the kind of performances put up here, you should be reasonably happy with the final outcome. Want a shot of history that doesn’t come from the History Channel for a change? Like religious history? Then you’ll be in excellent company with this one.

So there you go, another three fine Lions Gate titles; each have their ups and downs, and each one will cater toward a specific interest, but each will be worthwhile in its own way. You’ve got plenty of great options out there, and keep it right here for plenty more to come!

This week’s multi-review comes our way from the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent out a variety of impressive titles for us to tackle, and we’ll be looking at a real mixed bag of them today with Blood Out, Pros And Ex-Cons, and Rabbit Hole.

We kick things off with Rabbit Hole, a movie that introduces us to Becca and Howie, a young couple who kicked off life together in the grandest of fashions, together, along with their young son only eight months prior. But fast forward to eight months later and we see how much life can change in even the shortest of times. But will the loss that Becca and Howie find themselves forced to endure break their life apart again and provide them with a whole new loss, each other?

Considering that this is based on a stage play, you probably have a pretty good idea of what we’re in for here, a downer on an absolutely epic scale that some people will take the opportunity to call “powerful” or “moving” but for the most part just means is the opportunity to feel really, really depressed for ninety minutes or so. And, just as a bonus, it will feel much, much longer. That’s not to say the whole thing is bad, of course–it’s got some really nice moments in here that should make you smile–but for the most part we’re watching a movie about a couple whose kid has recently died and they’re moving apart as a result. It hangs over everything, and though this is, for the most part, the point, it still doesn’t exactly make for light-hearted entertaining fare.  Good, but not good if you’re looking for a happy, fun experience.

Next up is Pros And Ex-Cons, and now we join a pair of the titular ex-cons who’ve joined up with a crime boss who has a mysterious project in mind for them. They finish the job nicely, but discover that the job didn’t go as smoothly as they’d thought when they took it on. Now they’ve got to undertake a much more dangerous project in order to correct the first before it’s too late. And moreover, they’re going to be in the middle of a whole lot of other affairs as well.

I know I’m being a little bit cryptic about this one, and with good reason. If I go too far into it and tell you about the projects in question, I’ll actually give away large parts of the movie. And on the surface, you might think this sounds like one of those great English crime dramas like Layer Cake, Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Indeed, that’s just what’s going on here. It’s actually quite fun in a few parts, very much Ocean’s 11 style as done by complete incompetents.  If you like your crime dramas with a little bit of comedy involved, then you’ll be very happy with Pros And Ex-Cons.

Lastly, we’ve got Blood Out, a movie that gives us a man who loses his brother to gang violence far too soon in life. And now, a small town sheriff is the only thing that can get justice for the murder when the big city police refuse to step in and do the job. But the further in the sheriff gets, the more he discovers that things were never really as they seemed.

Admittedly, the biggest red flag in this one is the appearance of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which has never exactly been a bell-ringer as far as quality filmmaking goes. But still, the end result isn’t too bad. It’s very much an action title, but without the comic edge that we got from Pros And Ex-Cons. Straightforward and predictable were the watchwords for this one, but still, it’s reasonably likeable. It’s got something of the Walking Tall vibe in it, though without the fun that one put up thanks to the unusual styling that The Rock brought along in the role of county sheriff. Blood Out takes itself substantially more seriously than it probably should, and this is to its detriment, but the end result is still of fairly good quality.

And there you have it, another three choice titles from Lions Gate to make up our weekly multi-review. Some better than others, of course, but no matter what your taste there was likely something in here for you today.

It wasn’t so long ago we tackled the first three Spy Kids titles in a big old multi-review over the weekend, and all that was building up for what we’re about to hit today. The folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy of Spy Kids 4: All The Time In The World for us to review

Spy Kids: All The Time In The World kicks things off by introducing us to Marissa Cortez Wilson, who’s gotten married to reality show host slash quasi-legendary spy hunter Wilbur Wilson, and now has two stepkids to her credit. Marissa happens to be a former spy herself, but finds herself called back into the fray by the appearance of the Timekeeper, a maniac with designs on world domination. But Marissa can’t tackle this alone–she’s going to need the whole family, husband, stepkids…and a couple other, more familiar Cortezes…to step in and help out to put the Timekeeper on a permanent pause.

And in the grandest Spy Kids tradition, it’s going to be full of thoroughly wild yet reasonably family friendly action in which no one gets shot or even seriously hurt but most everybody will be in mortal danger at some point. There will even be a few good shout outs here to earlier work like Shorts (there’s a great sequence you’ll miss if you’re not careful featuring the two stepkids engaging in a breath-holding contest), as well as a sequence that’s a lot like the first movie in which the kids have to hit a panic room at the last minute.

It’s also got that same immature humor vibe going on–wait until you see what the Wilson kids use to fend off three henchmen flying around on Green Goblin-style flying wings, not to mention the offensive weaponry (in every sense of the term) that the dog can bring to bear–that makes this clearly geared for the kids.

Still though, it’s an improvement over the third one, which is a distinct surprise, but at the same time, it’s quite a bit of a retread given the earlier versions we’ve seen so far. It’s great fun if you like the Spy Kids franchise, and though it likely won’t win very many new fans, it’s still reasonably fun and can be endured for the most part. It’s even got some rather nice twists, some of which you might see coming, and others you might not. But I definitely have to respect a movie that does this much twist in its script. It’s a bit heavy handed in its morals, but still, not half bad.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Spy Kids: All The Time In The World a seven out of ten, for succeeding in the design of its script but failing in the content, and making what is overall a worthwhile package.