Here are two things–one awesome, one sucky–I discovered watching the trailers before Wanted:

1) I had heard that R rated movies were going to start playing Red Band trailers before them again (for those who don’t know, Green Band trailers are for General Audiences, Red Band for Restricted Audiences) but I hadn’t actually seen one in the theaters until today while watching Wanted. I had to restrain myself from clapping when I saw the screen fill with a blood red light before the trailer for Step-Brothers, the new Will Ferrell movie. And sure enough, there were some big jokes that revolved around the use of the F-word. Bravo, Hollywood. Maybe we’ve finally gotten past that whole Post-Nipplegate bullshit.

2) If you haven’t seen Death Race 2000 yet, do yourself a solid favor and rent this awesome Roger Corman flick. What doesn’t look so promising is the new remake I saw a trailer for, which is just titled “Death Race”. Jason Statham plays the lead, but instead of reprising David Carradine’s awesome Frankenstein, a masked man who enters the Death Race for mysterious reasons to shake the game up, he’s instead a NASCAR driver framed with his wife’s murder to add a little drama to the Death Race.

This is where Paul W.S. Anderson ruins a great idea, kinda like he always does. He takes a super original idea and manages to make it feel like every other movie you have ever seen. Instead of going with the plot of the original, which involves a cross country road race with colorful celebrity drivers, where you get points for killing your opponents and random pedestrians (TV audiences lap this stuff up) this one involves prison inmates racing around what looks like a bland industrial park, killing each other for their freedom. It’s kind of like a boring remake of the Running Man, only instead of running, they drive cars. I was kind of pumped for a Death Race remake, but this trailer really turned my stomach on this property.