Sylvester Stallone has developed a strong with his relationship with his fans.  Years ago, he did an ask-me-anything on AICN before AMAs even existed.  He’s willing to critique his past work, and he’s happy to share what’s happening with his latest projects.  Stallone recently took to his Twitter feed to provide some updates on The Expendables 3.  He revealed the return of Mickey Rourke by tweeting, “Mighty Mickey is back…..”.  Then Stallone teased a couple of new additions to the cast.  In December, Jackie Chan said he was on board, and Stallone tweeted yesterday, “What’s the plan? Ask Jackie Chan….”  And now that Wesley Snipes is out of prison, Stallone says, “Talked to WESLEY today … He can not WAIT to fight to the top again !!!!!!! Over…”  I’m sure Wesley Snipes’ stunt double will be glad to hear it.

Hit the jump for what Stallone had to say about The Expendables 3 trying to outdo one of the best action films in years, The Raid.

Director Gareth Evans has released a new image from The Raid 2 showing that the sequel will be no less violent and gory than the original.  In the tweet, Evans says that the image is from a shootout that they filmed yesterday.  Filming is set to go for over 100 days, and they’ve been rolling cameras since the end of January.  If Evans is willing to tweet out this kind of gory image, it’s likely this is just the tip of the blood-soaked iceberg that will make the original pale by comparison.

Hit the jump to check out the image, and click here for Steve’s interview with Evans from Sundance 2012.  The Raid 2 (aka Berandal) stars Iko Uwais, Tio Pakusadewo, Putra Arifin Scheunamann, Julie Estelle, Alex Abbad and Roy Marten.

Production has officially started on writer/director Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2 in Indonesia and we’ve got the first images from the sequel to share with you.  Picking up where The Raid/The Raid: Redemption left off, Rama (Iko Uwais) leaves the high-rise behind in order to infiltrate a Jakarta crime syndicate with the intentions of protecting his family and unearthing the corruption within his police force.  The sequel also stars Tio Pakusadewo, Putra Arifin Scheunamann, Julie Estelle, Alex Abbad and Roy Marten, and will shoot for the next 100-odd days.  Check out Steve’s interview with Evans in which he talks about the sequel, then hit the jump to see the first official images and read the full press release for The Raid 2.

Gareth Evans‘ action flick The Raid: Redemption took festival audiences by storm at TIFF 2011, Sundance 2012, and SXSW 2012, and the director is already hard at work on the sequel, Berandal (which means “thug”).  Speaking to Steve at Sundance, Evans said the sequel will be bigger, and he hopes to “bring car chase elements to it as well. So we have like a cool fight scene where you go inside a car, fighting against four people as it’s speeding along a one-way.”  The Raid is an intense ride for its hero, Rama (Iko Uwais), so I’m sure he’ll have time to rest up.  He barely made it out of the tower with his life.  So how much time will he have for some much-needed R&R?

Two hours.  Hit the jump for more.

So many modern action movies are CGI and superhero spectacles. Yes, there’s action sequences, but they rarely involve real contact. And what’s great about The Raid (or as it was dumbly retitled for America The Raid: Redemption) is that when punches are thrown, they connect. You get the visceral thrill of watching people who know how to fight fight well. Director Gareth Evans gives you so many great bone-crunching moments of gleeful violence, the likes of which we haven’t seen much of since the rise of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980’s and 90’s. Our review of the Blu-ray of The Raid follows after the jump.

About a year or so ago, film festival-goers started ranting and raving about the mindblowing badassery of Gareth Evans’ The Raid, a film that is to the action genre what Chuck Norris is to humanity.  Earlier this year, The Raid finally broke free of the festival circuit and toured a number of smaller, art-house theaters to similar critical acclaim, and today—now that the film’s finally available on DVD and Blu-ray—it’s expected that the buzz surrounding the flick will finally evolve into what The Raid’s been destined for all along:  cult-classic status.

To commemorate this awesome bit of news, the good folks at Mondo teamed up with Jock to produce an appropriately blunt, perfectly imposing screenprint for Evans’ film.  Wanna see it, and find out where you can get your own Thursday?  Find out after the jump, folks.

We knew that Iwo Ukais, star of director Gareth Evans’ The Raid, was set to return for the sequel, Berandal, but now we have our first look a a new character.  Evans tweeted an image of Alicia, aka “Hammer Girl,” recently, but no other information on her character has been released.  It’s not clear which side Hammer Girl will be on when Berandal hits screens.  If you haven’t seen the original film, you’re in luck: The Raid: Redemption is now available in an unrated version on Blu-ray and DVD.  Hit the jump to see the image of Hammer Girl and for more on The Raid and Berandal, including an interview with Evans himself.

If you missed out on The Raid: Redemption when it was released in theaters earlier this year, then that’s too bad because the movie is really entertaining.  Usually, films that don’t dominate the box office get a pretty bare-bones DVD/Blu-ray release, but Sony Home Entertainment is doing right by Gareth Evans’ Indonesian martial arts flick.  The Raid will be released unrated on DVD and Blu-ray, and while I’m not sure what violent craziness was removed for an R-rated cut (if any; you can stick a few seconds of footage on a movie, not show it to the MPAA, and qualify it as “unrated”), but I’m hoping for at least 33% more machetes.

Hit the jump to check out the press release and a full list of special features.  The Raid: Redemption hits DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download on August 14th.

Last week, we re-arranged our episode to avoid The Cabin in the Woods spoilers.  This week, we’re back to the good old format (“old”: the one we used for our first two episodes) of news, reviews, and recommendations.  On Episode 4 of The Collision, Adam Chitwood and I were joined by the lovely and talented Jason Barr (Dave was unavailable this week, but he’ll be back next week).  The three of us talked about viral campaigns, and how much they provide as a prologue to the movie and how well they work as a marketing tool.  We also discussed the fourth season of Arrested Development airing all at once, and we looked at the line-up for this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  On the review front, we decided to skip this week’s new release (oddly, no one wanted to see The Lucky One) and instead talked about The Raid: Redemption.

Click here to listen to our latest episode, click here to listen to our previous episode, and click here to add The Collision to your RSS feed.  Hopefully, all of our episodes will be available and easy to find on iTunes this week.  Finally, hit the jump to check out the trailers for our recommendations.

[This is a reprint of my review of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  The movie, now entitled The Raid: Redemption, opens tomorrow in limited release.]

A good action movie is not simply throwing every single bullet, punch, slice, and explosion into a blender and dumping it onto a screen so it can punch you in the adrenaline gland. It has to be finessed. There has to be tension—the wind-up to the hit, the pull of the hammer. The Raid: Redemption writer-director Gareth Evans knows how to deliver some of the most magnificent action scenes in years, but more importantly, he knows how to build to those scenes. Working off a bare-bones, serviceable plot and characters built more for their fists than their personalities, The Raid is an action feast that keeps finding new ways to dish out inventive kills and fights, and keeps its blood-thirsty audience cheering.

Mike Shinoda is a songwriter, performer, record producer and visual artist, best known for his vocal and musical endeavors with the two-time Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum band Linkin Park. Joe Trapanese is a composer, arranger, orchestrator and producer of music for film, television, multi-media, theater and concerts. Together, they co-composed and re-scored the insanely high-octane action film The Raid: Redemption – about a covert mission involving the extraction of a brutal crime lord from a rundown 15-story apartment block – for its North American release.

At the film’s press day, Collider sat down with both Mike Shinoda and Joe Trapanese (who also partnered with Daft Punk on the awesome score for Tron: Legacy) for this exclusive interview about their initial response when they first saw the film, whether this is the type of movie they would typically go see, what drew them each to composing music, how their collaboration came about, putting different musical themes and sounds together for different characters, and maintaining your creative freedom as an artist. Trapanese also talked about what he learned from his collaboration with Daft Punk, while Shinoda talked about how this experience has changed the way he approaches things with Linkin Park, who have a record set to come out later this year. Check out what they had to say after the jump:

Though we’ve known for quite a while, director Gareth Evans is now officially set to direct Berandal (tentative title), the sequel to his much buzzed about action pic The Raid. I haven’t stopped hearing great things about The Raid since it screened at TIFF, and our own Matt Goldberg recommends it without hesitation. The martial arts-heavy film centers on 20 elite SWAT team members must make their way up the treacherous floors of a criminal-infested highrise in order to get to the gang’s leader. It’s a simple premise, but after watching the trailer you begin to see how Evans has crafted a pretty insane actioner.

The film opens in the U.S. on March 23rd under the title The Raid: Redemption, but Evans previously told Steve that The Raid is the first in a planned trilogy. He talked extensively about the follow-up and said he hopes to bring car chase elements to the sequel, Berandal. THR confirms that both Evans and star Iwo Uwais are officially set to return for the next installment, and Evans told Steve that the budget for Berandal will be “significantly larger” than the first film, with an eye towards close to $3 million. Production on the sequel will apparently last around 100 days.

We’ve been covering director Gareth Evans’s insane Indonesian action movie The Raid (retitled The Raid: Redemption for US audiences) for quite a while now. The film comes with a ton of buzz, and Matt caught it at Sundance and recommends it without hesitation. The martial arts-heavy pic centers on 20 elite SWAT team members must make their way up the treacherous floors of a criminal-infested highrise in order to get to the gang’s leader. We brought you the first US trailer a few days ago, the final poster yesterday, and now an extensive 13 minute “Making-of” featurette for the film has gone online. It highlights how Evans brought the film to life, choreographing the crazy fight scenes, how they sent the cast to boot camp, the mixture of practical and CG effects, and so much more.

Hit the jump to watch.  If you missed it, be sure to check out Steve’s interview with Evans where he talks about the planned The Raid trilogy. The Raid: Redemption opens on March 23rd.

We’re proud to premiere the final poster for The Raid: Redemption.  It’s the only movie I saw at Sundance that I recommend without hesitation.  Everyone who loves action movies should see this.  The martial arts on display are mind-boggling, and director Gareth Evans knew how to shoot the hell out of every punch thrown and bullet fired.  As for the new subtitle, I imagine it’s because The Raid is the first movie in a planned franchise.  I don’t think it’s necessary, and it doesn’t really have much to do with the plot, which is about a SWAT team enduring a hellish fight through an apartment building in order to capture a crime boss.  If the movie absolutely had to have a subtitle, I think “Good Times with Machetes” would be more fitting.

All of this is beside the point.  The Raid comes out March 23rd and you’re going to see it.  No arguing.  Hit the jump to check out the poster, and click here to watch the latest trailer.