Among our cult car movies, Disney/Pixar’s Cars ranks high. Very high. The way it pictures the car industry and culture, the characters, the photography, the design, even the storyline… it’s a fantastic movie. So ever since Cars 2 has been announced we’ve been giddy like schoolgirls. Only problem is: we have to wait until 2012.
To help us wait, John Lasseter’s team had come up with a mini-series of shorts featuring the beloved Mater. The Cars Toons: Mater Tall Tales air on the Disney Channel, Toon Disney, and ABC Family and include: “Rescue Squad Mater”, “Mater The Greater”, “El Materdor” and “Tokyo Mater”, that we’ve embedded below for your viewing pleasure. This fourth installment premiered in theaters in December 2008 before the movie Bolt and is our favorite. It’s a great parody of the Fast and Furious franchise, mainly of the second and third movies.

|Source: Wikipedia|

Click on “Read more” to watch Tokyo Mater in its full length!

With Transformers on its second instalment already and G.I Joe coming soon in theatres, we have good hope to see the a live-action movie in the next few years (but should we…?) and that’s what some fan thought too when he put a trailer together on his computer. Yeah it’s a bit amateurish, but still it’s still cool that he spent the time and energy to make it!

Watch his work after the jump.

And of course,the real cartoon intro:

This Motocompo jumps real high.

The Honda Motocompo is a great funny foldable bike, built between 1981 and 1983. It was meant to be stored in the trunk of a small car and was thus known as a “trunk bike”.
It’s also he bike used by Natsumi Tsujimoto in the anime You’re Under Arrest, and you can see her abuse it in the following video…

Watch it after the jump!

And again, another Speed Racer video! There’s definitely a Tron feeling to Speed Racer. So many neons on the buildings, the tracks… and look at that big rig! No element is left without a splash of color or some graphics. We also finally get to see Trixie (Christina Ricci) and her helicopter.

This new trailer brings us more images, including the Mach 6 transformation AND it’s very cool to see it in Italian. It really feels like the movie will be a music-video paced visual overdose. Weirdly enough for a flick that seems targeted to a younger audience (try the toy section of your local Target store to see what I mean), it’s rated PG.

Oh well, as they say: dal 9 Maggio Al Cinema!

Speed Racer is coming fast, so the promotional armada is kicking into high gear. Magazine articles, cereal boxes, trailers… and contests. The latest is the one you might want to get your name into, since you could win a custom Corvette -built by Spike TV- inspired by the movie, and estimated around $100,000.

Specs

Corvette C5 with a C2 body, LS1 350 hp aluminum V8 engine, 6 speed transmission, double overdrive, active handling system, custom graphics, custom leather interior, bose sound system

The graphics don’t seem to be entirely finished though: on some pictures the car is all white, on others, the graphics are there…Photoshop maybe?

To enter the contest, go to Race for Speed Racer.com
On our part, we’ll pass. The car is so-so, and we especially don’t like the new/old combination.

Source: Autoblog

Nostalgia and revivals are in full force these days (lack of creativity? lazyness? good idea? need to go back to a more comfy era during our uncertain times?) and KITT is on TV again, so what’s next? Here’s a three-part overview.

The A-Team

Yep, one of the all-time crowd favorites will be back in 2009, but as a movie, which seems to be the big trend (Knight Rider being the exception). Ice Cube is rumored to be replacing Mr.T as Sgt. Bosco ‘B.A.’ Baracus, while Woody Harrelson would be Capt. H.M. ‘Howling Mad’ Murdock, originally pplayed by Dwight Schultz. As for the van… GM must be trying real hard to not lose the product placement contract to Ford like they did on the Knight Rider!
Release date: June 12, 2009.

Magnum P.I

Funny how things are in the air sometimes…
Right when we were getting this article about the upcoming Magnum movie ready, Autoblog wrote about it, citing an article from Cinematical. On our part, we got the news just a couple days ago from a little research on Wikipedia and IMDb:

Keep reading about the upcoming Magnum and Death Race 2000 remakes!

In January 2006, it was announced a feature film is again in the planning stages (after several false starts most recently in 2005) and Rawson Marshall Thurber (whose filmmaking credits notably include Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) would write and direct the screenplay.
In January 2007, it was reported Matthew McConaughey would play Magnum, with Steve Zahn as Rick, Tyrese Gibson as T.C., and William H. Macy as Higgins.

IMDBpro.com has said that on January 17, 2007, the script is finished and the film will be released in 2009.
It is not known whether the film will be simply titled Magnum, P.I., or whether a title of a more revisionist nature will be used instead.

We’re looking forward to see the adaptation but, considering the previous credits of the screenwriter, we’re also anxious to see if it would keep the original Magnum feeling or if it would become a parody like Starsky and Hutch with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. But Matthew McConaughey is not Ben Stiller, so we can keep our hopes up.
Release date: 2009.

Death Race 2000

We told you about the remake of Death Race 2000 before, but more details are starting to leak about the Jason Statham-lead feature. So far it’s been shortened to Death Race and we learned from concept artist extraordinaire Harald Belker yesterday, that he is the one who was in charge of the design for all the vehicles. According to him, he “was given some of the hottest cars on the market” and had to “desconstruct” them. We sure are looking forward to see the result!

Don’t miss the part II of our “revival” overview, where we’ll tell you more about Akira, Speed Racer, MacGyver, Dragon Ball Z, Miami Vice, G.I Joe and other oldies (brace yourself for some surprises) scheduled for a makeover in the next couple of years!
Release date: September 26, 2008.