Crank: High Voltage is the sequel to Jason Statham's frenetic sex-and-violence vehicle Crank. The premise of the first flick is that the hyperactive, superstrong street scum Chelios (Statham) gets injected with an evil Chinese gang drug. If he ever lets his adrenaline fall below psychotic levels, he'll die. Though he falls out of a helicopter at the end of Crank, he manages to survive into this sequel in grand videogame style. Some Chinese gang dudes peel him off the pavement, give him open heart surgery in a massage parlor (managing to get only a little cigarette ash into his chest cavity), steal his mega-heart, and fit him out with a total artificial heart powered by a laptop battery.

Of course, Chelios is awake during his open-heart surgery. He seems pretty content to just chill on the table until the doctors let it slip that the next organ they're going to harvest is his monstrously huge cock. That's when he gets up, kills everybody in sight, and sets out on his new quest: To get his awesome heart back. His first bit of intel comes from the lone remaining gangster after the slaughterfest. The guy is begging for his life on his hands and knees, but he won't tell who has the heart. So Chelios dunks the tip of his semi-automatic gun in oil, and jams it deep in the guy's ass.

This movie is some fucked up shit, yo. And it's glorious. This is the videogame-amped, YouTube-poisoned, porn-soaked, gang-controlled future that suburban America fears most. And so it's nothing short of cathartic to see every pop nightmare unscroll before our eyes in a lurid parody like the best dirty joke that Larry Flynt ever dreamed up. Crank 2 is thrilling because the filmmakers have blasted away their self-censorship mechanisms and let flow the unexpurgated contents of their blackest (and silliest) hearts.

Chelios' Los Angeles is pretty much the same semi-imaginary city where Grand Theft Auto takes place, a world of gangbangers and whores who exist entirely to be killed, and hopefully in a way that is memorably bloody. Just when you think the action can't get any more fucked up, Chelios will follow the gangsters who've got his heart into a strip club. Where a guy is being tortured by having his elbows chopped off. And strippers who've been shot in the chest run through the club screaming as silicon goo streams down their stomachs and their breasts deflate.

To keep his heart battery from running down, Chelios has to keep shocking himself. His underground heart surgeon, doing medical research while boning yet another hooker, checks in on the cell phone every once in a while to dispense heart-maintenance advice to our beleaguered hero. Try rebooting it by clamping jumper cables to your nipples. Try tazering your cock. Try creating a bunch of friction by rubbing another person! That last order ends well, with Chelios fucking his girlfriend (the hilarious Amy Smart) on the racetrack while a bunch of horses run over their heads, flashing their horsey cocks.

Meanwhile, we take several gratuitous detours into sex-violence slapstick, as Chelios has to cross a picket line of striking porn stars (yes there's a cameo from Ron Jeremy), and meets up with a gay sidekick who has "full body Tourettes" (WTF?) but later saves Chelios' ass with his giant gang of butch queers. No surprise that this movie exhibits Grand Theft Auto's idea of multiculturalism, too: Everybody (including the white dude) is a racist stereotype; everybody is a sexist stereotype; and everybody is equal in their sleazy, homicidal abandon. It's Jackass Darwinism - survival of the biggest fucking asshole.

Eventually it turns out that a Chinese gang leader – played with parodic racist aplomb by David Carradine – has installed Chelios' heart in his own chest. So it's a race to get the pumper out of Carradine's chest and back into Chelios. Things get even more science fictional as our characters head into a showdown on Catalina Island that plays like a hellish cross between the movies of Ron Jeremy and Eli Roth. And by that I mean: OMGWTFBBQ.

I've been accused before of being immoral for enjoying movies like Crank 2 – for admiring their savage honesty, their brutal parodic punch. There is something undeniably disturbing about a story that is so plainly intended to degrade every character in it. And yet that is its charm. Nobody tried to excuse the sex and violence here in the service of art or politics or some kind of warning about the nasty future our terrible videogame habits will lead to. But at the same time, Crank 2 does recognize its own self-destructive sensibility. That's why the movie's refrain – repeated in many languages, by many people - is "Fuck you Chelios!"

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

More video game spoilers! The video game closely follows the plot of the movie, and climaxes with a fight against Devastator in Cairo. The Decepticon known as Demolishor, by the way, makes up the bulk of Devastator's chest, as you may be able to glimpse in this photo. [MTV]

And here's a new image of the film's official "standee," a cardboard cut-out that stands up in movie theaters. Bigger version at the link. [MTV via Cinemablend]

Also, talking to MTV, Michael Bay explained about the personalities of the film's new robots. The Fallen is "the ultimate bad boy," who "goes way back in the Transformer world. He's one of the first Transformers." And the Twins (Skids and Mudflap) are really fun: "I just kept thinking, ‘What if we have two dumb Transformers that are young and dumb?' … They are just irreverent, dumb Transformers." Devastator, meanwhile, is the most complicated digital model ILM has ever made. The new characters run the gamut from funny to devious to "little teeny ones that are a little irreverent," says Bay. Video at the link. [MTV via Transformers Movie Chronicles]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

IESB has the "extended synopsis" of this mutant solo outing:

Movie audiences will meet Team X, a covert military cadre comprised entirely of mutants. Its members are: Wolverine; his brother Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth, a feral being of unimaginable power; Wade Wilson, later to be known as Deadpool, a high-tech mercenary skilled at swordplay; Agent Zero, an expert tracker and lethal marksman; Wraith, a teleporter; Fred J. Dukes, also known as The Blob, a morbidly obese and super-strong behemoth; and Bradley, who can manipulate electricity. Leading them is William Stryker, a figure introduced in "X2" but whose origins and motives are now fully explored, for it is Stryker's complex relationship with Wolverine that defines much of Logan's past ...and future.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE also explores Logan's tragic romance with Kayla Silverfox. Kayla's fate triggers Logan's involvement with the ominous Weapon X program, a top secret, billion-dollar military experiment, in which Wolverine and other mutants are key players. They include Gambit, a young Scott Summers (later to be known as Cyclops); a beautiful young mutant named Emma Frost; and the aforementioned Deadpool, against whom Wolverine faces his ultimate challenge...

The main story of X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE begins with Logan seeking solace from a past rife with darkness, working as a lumberjack in the remote Canadian Rockies. Finding love and contentment for the first time in his very long life, Logan leads a seemingly idyllic existence with schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox. "He couldn't be further away from the past he's so long been trying to escape," says Jackman. "Kayla is a catalyst for the biggest changes Logan's ever faced," says Lynn Collins, who took on the role after Jackman had seen her on stage in "The Merchant of Venice," opposite Al Pacino. "She leads him to think differently about the conflict of being human and being a mutant. Their relationship leads him to try and heal old wounds, and experience the consequences and risks of love."

But as Logan searches for the peace that has eluded him more than a century, "the world he's been trying to escape keeps drawing him back in," says Jackman. "As with anything in life, unless you've really dealt with a problem, unless you're really at peace with it, the problem tends to recur. And it's clear from the beginning that Wolverine has run away from things he needs to face. And one of them is Victor, his brother."

Victor Creed, also known as Sabretooth, possesses powers similar to Logan's. They are both virtually indestructible and have a feral, super-human strength. Victor's ferocity encompasses a feline-like fighting style and leaping ability; at times, he'll race to the attack on all four limbs.

As we learn in flashbacks, Logan (born James Howlett) and Victor did not learn they were brothers until their teens, in the aftermath of a family tragedy that leads to the emergence of Logan's signature berserker rage and claws that power their way through his flesh as razor-sharp spikes, turning him into something more and something less than human. Logan and Victor flee their home, forming a bond that transcends even brotherhood. As indestructible warriors, they fight together through major conflicts spanning two centuries, including the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam. "Logan and Victor are a team," says Jackman. "They go through a journey together."

But Victor relishes the fight much more than Logan. "Victor is incredibly brutal and has a bloodlust unlike any character I've ever played," says Liev Schreiber. "This guy is a real killer." Victor's savagery in battle leads the two to face a firing squad - but of course mere bullets cannot stop them. Recognizing their unique abilities, a military officer, Col. William Stryker, asks them to join a special team he is putting together - a covert, black ops unit known in comics lore as Team X, comprised of mutants possessing powers that make the team unstoppable...

But in telling this story of "origins," no mutant has greater impact on Logan's journey than his brother, Victor Creed. Appalled by Stryker's ethically-challenged directives, Logan had abandoned Victor and Team X, but the two brothers cannot be separated by time or by distance because they are two sides of the same person. "I think of Victor as Logan's doppelganger, his darker side," says Liev Schreiber. "What drives both of them is their desire to find their place in their world - to belong to something. And that one thing that Victor belongs to is Logan. When that bond is broken, Victor looks to reconnect with his brother, for better or for worse."

It is Victor's brutal murder of Kayla that triggers Logan's quest for revenge. When they are reunited, Logan and Victor fight, leaving Logan battered and wounded. Stryker, again entering Logan's life and again forever changing it, offers what he calls the only solution: the top-secret Weapon X program ("X" denoting the Roman numeral for ten). In the procedure, Logan's entire skeleton will be bonded to adamantium, an impenetrable metal alloy that will make Logan virtually indestructible -turning him into the Wolverine we know from the previous X-Men movies. "To beat Victor," Stryker tells Logan, "you're going to have to embrace the other side of you. Become the animal."

But to undergo this transformation, Logan has to suffer more pain than any man could ever endure. Audiences had seen tantalizing flashes of the Weapon X procedure in "X2," but here its full power - and horror - is fully unveiled. As Logan lies in a water-filled plexiglass tank the size of a lidless coffin, robotic arms that taper into foot-long needles spin at high speeds, entering his body, bonding his bones to the adamantium. Wolverine has suffered and survived gunshots, knife wounds, car crashes, executions and explosions - but he's never suffered like this.

Wolverine emerges from the ordeal to face yet another betrayal and an epic showdown with Victor and with the next generation of Stryker's military experiments. Undeterred by Logan's escape from Alkali Lake as the now indestructible Wolverine, Stryker has abducted mutants to fulfill his twisted mandate of turning them into weapons. The unwilling participants in this work are teenagers Scott Summers (Tim Pocock) and Emma Frost (Tahyna Tozzi). Scott, who can emit a powerful beam from his eyes, grows up to be Cyclops, a leader of the X-Men; Emma, another major figure in X-Men comics lore, is telepathic and possesses a diamond-like skin that is indestructible.

Together, the mutants face off against an enemy who has sworn to see them destroyed, in a battle - a revolution - that will set the course of the epic war that lies ahead.

The reference to "flashbacks" is intriguing. I wonder if that means the film has been edited so it begins with Wolverine being a lumberjack, and then we flash back to the events that drove him to wear flannel? [IESB]

Crank 2: High Voltage:

Porn star Jenna Haze plays one of the porn stars on strike, in this film. Here's how she describes her role:

Jason Statham was driving a cop car with Amy Smart in the background, and I jump on the cop car and start screaming stuff, and I flash my boobs while he's looking at me. I don't know how much of me they left in it, but they left some dialogue that I said. They had me scream into the camera, saying all this stuff. We were porn stars on strike, so we had to protest. It was hard for me to protest because I was like, "But, I like my job! I make good money. I wouldn't really be protesting." The camera would come to me and they would say, "Jenna, scream something!," and I'd be like, "You guys wanna see me suck that dick? You know you do! I know you wanna see it! You've gotta pay my rate!" It was really funny.

[IESB]

Dollhouse:

There may be one more surprise from November, the Doll programmed as Paul's neighbor/lover Mellie. And Paul goes to a really dark place, that's not the dark place we (or he) expected him to go to. It's really twisty, and Paul gets tortured a lot more, says Joss Whedon. Also, because Dr. Claire Saunders has a history with Alpha, we get to see her run into him before the season ends.

If the show gets a second season, we'll get to see whether Adelle sticks to her resolution to stop seeing Roger, the personality programmed into Victor. And meanwhile, we'll continue to see the Victor/Sierra relationship develop, even though they're both mindwiped puppets. [Zap2It]

Episode 13 feels like an epilogue to the show, so if it doesn't air, it may actually make it easier to continue the show in a second season, says Eliza Dushku. And she says episode 12 shows Echo getting to have some fun but also being in serious pain - and it opens a door for the character that's startling. It leaves open lots of "cool and twisted" things the show could do in its second year. It involves the Echo/Paul relationship. [Sci Fi Wire]

Could that surprise have something to do with this "April Fools" video? (Which we mentioned before but couldn't find an actual copy of previously. Thanks Test!)

Chuck:

Here are a couple of clips from next Monday's episode, "Chuck Vs. The Colonel."

Lost:

Will we see the smoke monster again? Michael Emerson hints we may not. [Doc Arzt]

Here's an image from the next episode, from the Lost Untangled video. Poor Phil! [Lyly Ford]

Heroes:

In the season finale, Sylar turns into Nathan in order to shake hands with President Worf. And once he's touched President Worf, Sylar can transform into him. Also, Sylar proposes marriage - to Claire. Says Tim Kring:

Sylar corners Claire and springs a proposal on her... He has this theory that she will come to love him because he can never die and she can never die - and thus, they're destined to be together.

Uh huh. The episode ends with a teaser for the next arc, "Redemption," which starts three months in the future and features the return of a character we thought we'd never see again. And Sylar shape-shifts again, says Kring, and "who he becomes is a real shocker. It's the goofiest thing we've ever done - and I mean that in a good way!" [TV Guide via Heroes Television]

Crank is so crazy, especially the scene where you and Jason have sex in public. So how did you top the scene like that in Crank 2?

They definitely topped it. They basically took the same premise from Crank, but now he has an artificial heart. So he has to make friction with his body to keep the battery charged so he can keep his heart working... They found many more outrageous things that you can do to keep his heart rate up.

Involving you specifically?

Yes there is another Chinatown scene involving me specifically.

I read that you pole dance in this movie, how did you prepare for that?

Well, because of her scene in Chinatown last movie, she became very sexually liberated and decided to use pole dancing to continue that exploration. I took a number of pole dancing classes to prepare for Crank 2 where she's pole dancing happily.

I heard you and Bai Ling get in a big cat fight, what was that like?

She's hilarious, we actually have a cat fight in the strip bar. She kind of tags along with Jason and my character is stripping and has a boyfriend played by Corey Haim. My character thinks he's dead, and then he shows up. There's a little competition between the girl that he's been tagging along with [and me]. It's really funny. She has this really wild energy.

Did you kick her ass? Was it choreographed?

Yes, it was choreographed. We have to look good in the film. It's so much fun, we have a really great big bottle to work with. We're pushing and grabbing each others hair.

When the directors come to you (with outrageous scenes) how game are you to run through these crazy scenes?

Initially, I'm excited to do it because it's so outrageous. I really enjoyed doing the first one, I had so much fun filming it. It's another way to live out a fantasy, because it's not real life, because you couldn't do this in real life. It's completely over the top. Half the takes are messed up because we end up laughing, it's so funny. I'm not scared to look like a complete fool in front of someone.

What was it like roughing up Corey Haim and working with him?

He was a lovely person and so great to work with. He was so grateful to be back at work after all of this time. He has really good comedic timing, he plays my pimp/boyfriend in the film. And he has this really funny mullet and he thinks he's such a tough guy.

Is Jason Statham always down for getting naked on screen and having sex in front of thousands like in the first movie?

No, he's much more shy than that. He's a great badass on screen. But he's definitely shy at times. It helped that we were both being so completely outrageous together. It feels like you are on a roller coaster ride, and you're climbing up the tracks at the top and you know you're going to surrender to this crazy ride. That's sort of what it is when you're doing these crazy scenes in these movies... It has that real adrenaline rush because you're putting everything on the line, and hoping everything to comes out OK.

Can you talk about any particular moment that got your adrenaline up?

We definitely have another Chinatown scene. I don't know if I want to give away. I'll just give you two words: Horse Racetrack.

What is the craziest thing you had to do in this movie, where you couldn't believe you were doing?

It's hard to say [in] this one. There's a part in the film where I'm getting sprayed with a firehose down a horse racetrack. It's one of those massive water hoses that can literally spray 30 feet. That just felt so disgusting and I'm in that mud, there is horse shit in the mud and I felt dirty and gross and I just needed a shower.

Has there been any talk if this movie is successful will there be a 3?

I know definitely that they are talking about a third film but I have no idea what the story would be.

Crank 2: High Voltage is released Friday April 17th.

We were lucky enough to spend some time with Bai, whose well-known zany sense of humor was on full display. (When we asked her where in China she originally hailed from, she told us she'd actually descended from the Moon, via satellite, and had landed in Asia.)

But then she did tell us all about Ria, her character in the movie: "She's totally crazy, and she's very free and she's hilarious. She'll make you laugh..." When we first meet Ria, she falls from a second-storey window, onto the street.

The film's hero, Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) saves Ria's life, and afterwards, Ria says, "I'm yours, you saved my life!" Chev is in a hurry to track down his superpowered heart, which an elderly Chinese gangster has stolen. So he tells Ria that he doesn't need her. And Ria says, "You need me like Whitney Houston." The madly-in-love Ria starts following Chev around, and eventually helps him track down the bad guys.

But first, Ria has to have a hilarious catfight with Statham's girlfriend, played by Amy Smart. "She beats me, too. She's tough. It's fun." She calls it a "rollercoaster" of a movie, a 90 minute adventure that feels like 20 minutes. There are tons of crazy moments where Jason Statham goes around electrocuting himself to keep his artificial heart beating. Statham gets pumped up like a cartoon character, grabbing wires that are attached to devices with "DANGER" written on them, and he gets blown down the street but still survives. All the while, he's searching for his missing heart.

"There's a great message in the movie: Looking for a heart," says Bai. "Aren't we all looking for a heart?" Especially in the modern world, with everybody spending all their time on computers and interacting with technology, this is a message she feels resonates.

And Bai explained that she improvised a lot of her dialogue in the film:

My character's supposed to be funny, because it's a comedy. They ask me to read specifically what they've written, because they think it's funny. I ask, "Can I do something else?" They say sure, so I start to improvise. And then after that, they say, "Wow, you're hilarious!" So they let me do whatever I want to do, and say whatever I want to say. "Just keep going, Bai Ling!" Okay, if you encourage me, I'm like a kid. All these weird things come to my mind. Everything I say is like strange - it doesn't make any sense to you, but in her character, when you hear her, it makes perfect sense.

Not only that, but she did all of her own stunts, including one sequence where she gets hit by a car and goes flying up in the air. The wirework backfired, and Bai nearly smashed her nose on the pavement.

They had a stuntwoman there, who looked exactly like her, but Bai insisted on doing the stunt herself, even though the stuntwoman said, "You're crazy." But the directors said it was okay. She had straps attached to her legs and waist. She's chasing after Chev, and the car comes out and hits her. She's flung up in the air, and falls upside down, and the pavement rushes towards her face. She was supposed to flip over and land on the sidewalk, but she hurt her arm in the process.

Bai also said she developed her own "silly but crazy" fighting style for the film. And when directors/writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor told her how her character ends, she decided that wasn't fun enough and came up with her own final scene. They let her choose her own guns - which turned out to be way too heavy and overwhelming for her to handle. And she came up with a "very spontaneous" ending for Ria. (But it sounds like Ria doesn't die, because Bai says she's hoping to come back for Crank 3.)

I asked her if she's comfortable with the way Crank 2 portrays Asian people, since its main villain is Hu Dong, a 100-year-old Chinese gangster. She responded, "I don't consider myself an Asian actress or an Asian American actress. I'm just one of the creatures in the world, happy to have the gift as an actress [who's] working." People might point out that a lot of actors from Asia or Eastern Europe play prostitutes or "somebody's girlfriend," but "a lot them in real life are." So there's nothing wrong with showing it. And there's no point in having a lot of anger, or being caught up with criciticizing one aspect of a movie. "There is a Chinese mafia, and they do a lot of bad things. So it's fine for this film to show that. It's their choice."

The best thing about Crank 2 is that it's not the type of "fashionable action movie where everything's polished and beautiful. Everything's raw, like the street." Neveldine and Taylor shot the movie in the worst parts of Los Angeles, and filmed from weird camera angles. The directors shot some of the movie themselves, racing around on roller blades. There were eighteen cameras, and Bai couldn't even tell where they all were. Once, she asked where the camera was, and the directors pointed directly under her skirt. (At this point, she mimed looking down, locking her legs together, and pulling her skirt down tight.)

Bai said she hopes she'll return to Lost at some point. "They told me it's like the pyramids. Every character, every element is planned. I love that show."

She also talked about how she had to learn French in two weeks for Luc Besson's 2003 film Taxi 3, in which she plays a leading lady who "says philosophical things." She managed to memorize the French in the movie, in time to audition for the film, but was so embarrassed afterwards she ran and hid in the bathroom. But then Besson came and found her and said everybody adored her performance because it was funny. "After that, I learned the potential of the human mind," she said.

Crank 2: High Voltage is in theaters April 17.

Jason Statham has one hour to live in this exclusive spot that can only be found at io9 right now…and it looks like he'll rub up against anything to stay alive.

I am so ready for Crank High Voltage to come out, we desperately need more Chev. I especially enjoyed the moment where our dear anti-hero is getting tasered by a group of cops and then proceeds to take down all five of them in one swift movement. Or is it Bai Ling running around in a bikini with guns? No, it's definitely getting glimpse of what I'm hoping is another segment of gettin' busy in public with the delightfully dirty Amy Smart.

Crank High Voltage opens April 17th.

In this episode Chev isn't dead (despite that whole deadly fall in the first Crank) and Statham wakes up mid-surgery. His heart gets replaced with a mechanical ticker, and now Chev has to jolt his body every hour or so to keep it running.

Crank 2: High Voltage opens April 17th.

Chev (Jason Statham) gets scraped off the ground and thrown into surgery. A mob boss starts harvesting off his organs starting by replacing his big heart with a mechanical one. He escapes, but now he has to charge up his fake heart every so often with electricity — or else wild, wild sex with Amy Smart.

Crank 2: High Voltage opens April 17th.

[IGN]

Chev Chelios is back in Crank 2, kicking ass despite being saddled with a mechanical heart that needs to be pumped up every few moments with electricity. And probably having sex with Amy Smart in a public place, again.

Crank: High Voltage is being released in theaters on April 17, 2009.

Big Man Japan
A nobody who moonlights as a giant superhero has to battle all sorts of beasties but also has to deal with a growing mob of superhero haters, and an Alzheimer’s-stricken grandfather. BMJ will be out in March.

Pandorum

The amazing, astounding, fantastic Ben Foster is stranded on a spacecraft with his coworker Dennis Quaid — and there's something aboard that wants them dead. Release date is September 4.

The Princess and the Frog

Hooray for old timey animation! Disney returns to the princess animations with a New Orleans set Princess in the Frog fairytale out December 25.

Push

It's like Heroes, the movie. Everyone has a brain power in Push, be they Movers or Sniffers (sadly, no Shakers) The powered film comes out February 6.

Crank: High Voltage

Wow Crank 2 just got a whole lot more insane. Will they be stop motion animating Jason Statham, but huge? God, I hope so. Crank 2 is out April 17.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

Kristin Kreuk masters the high-kicks, in her own Chun-Li Street Fighter origins story, due out February 27.

17 Again


Matthew Perry gets shrunk back down to the age of 17, and injected into his own teen's high school, to try and "fix" his crumbling family. That's in theaters April 17.

Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian


Bill Hader and Amy Adams join the museum cast as General Custer and Amelia Earhart (or rather, the wax figures of these historical figures that come to life after the museum closes). Museum 2 is out on May 22.

Fanboys


A group of serious fans try and break into George Lucas' Skywalker ranch, and mayhem ensues, on February 6.

Coraline


Neil Gaiman's story about a young girl who visits an alternate world comes to life in breathtaking 3D stop-motion animation, out February 6.

2012


John Cusack cools his heels while the wold ends around him, in one terrible natural disaster after another, in 2012. It's out on July 10.

Knowing


Nicolas Cage uncovers a time capsule that details in numbers when everything awful will happen on Earth. Knowing will be released on March 20.

They Came From Upstairs


Ashley Tisdale and her family have an awesome spring break, before an alien invasion happens. Or maybe after, it's hard to tell. Either way, we'll find out on July 31.

Race to Witch Mountain


Dang teens and their alien abilities to move things with their minds. This reboot of a an old Disney classic is released on March 13.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


The magic boys and girls are back in school, and ready for the fight to end all fights, yet again. Harry is out on July 17.

Cirque du Freak


John C. Reilly is a vampire who runs a circus with Salma Hayek, and your chances of seeing Hayek do something sexy are pretty much guaranteed. There is no release date yet.

More pics at the link. [L.A. Times]

Crank 2 is one of those ratshit insane movies that makes me proud to be alive. The plot follows Statham's character, Chev Chelios, who is going to die unless he does something to keep his heart pumping at an insane speed, which means grabbing onto exposed electrical wires and having wild sex with his lady friend Eve (Amy Smart). Even the mighty bad boy Statham is nervous about how far this movie goes. During the Death Race press junket he said:

Poor Amy Smart, that's my concern. There is a very indulgent sex scene on a race track. I don't want to give too much away.

But deep inside he knows this movie will be top-notch ridiculous action. He added:

They have all the capabilities of making it the crazy action movie that they wanted. It's like Crank 1 but times 1,000.

Our previous spoilers detailed an angry 100-year-old Chinese mobster who stole Chev's heart in order to make him a 'horny teenager' again. The gangster, Hu Dong, replaces Chev's heart with a battery-operated machine. On top of it all the machine stops beating every so often and Chev needs to shock himself to keep it working.

Hopefully Chev will get his randy heart back in time for Crank 3. In an interview with Collider, writer/directors, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor revealed that Crank 3 would be in 3-D. Photos by INF/Goff. [Collider via Staham Fan]

Did you even know they were making a second Crank movie? Me neither.

Crank 2's villain is Hu Dong, a 100-year-old Chinese gangster who steals Chev's super-heart to rejuvenate himself and become "as horny as a teenager." Two Chinese doctors perform the heart transplant on Chev, although it's not clear why they bother to give him an artificial heart. They wrongly believe that Chev is too heavily sedated to cause trouble, so they decide to harvest his testicles as well — at which point Chev wakes up and kills them. At one point, Chev finds a 65-year-old woman at the race track and rubs against her to get "static electricity back into his system." She later "delightedly and profanely" relives the moment on live TV.

Meanwhile, Chev's cowardly physician, Dr. Ankleson (pictured above), has an irritable female therapist who orders him "off the couch and back to reality," with disastrous results.

And yes, the film will give us deep insights into who Chev really is, deep down in the heart he no longer has. A casting notice seeks people to play:

• Chev as a young boy
• 
  
• a campy talk-show host who interviews the young Chev and Chev's mom
• 
  
• a baffled detective who tries to understand the bond between Chev and his girlfriend Eve, and
• 
  
• a young (possibly naked) stripper who's in the back of a car which Chev and Eve steal.