Le Casse gives the viewer all those things and more! Omar Sharif behind the wheel of that all-time great high-speed chase vehicle- the Opel Rekord- and Jean-Paul Balmondo trying to escape him in his screamin' Fiat 124. You may have to suspend your disbelief a touch, as that 124's rear suspension manages to survive a dozen or so death-blow curb impacts, but that's what movies are all about! Thanks to Stefan for the tip.

On the surface, it's little more than a featureless piece of asphalt. Unless you're a civil engineer, a museum curator, or a hooker, there is little difference between a good one and a bad one. Its primary purpose is to hold parked cars, a task that most people view as dull. To Joe Public, the lot is little more than a civil appliance.

We beg to differ. In fact, we'd like to offer up a revolutionary thought: The parking lot is important. It matters. It is the car's unloved (and yet wholly necessary) offspring, and it has soul.

Think back to the first time you drove somewhere on your own. Chances are, if it wasn't a friend's house, it was a parking lot. Remember what it felt like to climb out of the car, to realize that you had finally gotten somewhere real on your own? Would it have meant half as much if you had pulled up to a valet, left the car running, and simply strolled away? How would you have felt if you hadn't been allowed to get out and walk around?

Without parking lots, we would have places to go, but we wouldn't have anything to do when we got there. It starts early; Americans may live in their cars, but they grow up in their parking lots. What teenager hasn't leaned up against a borrowed car on a boring-ass Saturday night in the middle of nowhere? What suburban mall lot hasn't played clubhouse, garage, and impromptu bar for thousands of high-schoolers? Is there anyone out there who didn't spend at least part of their youth under the fizzy glow of a twenty-foot halide?

We see The Lot playing a pivotal role in film so often that we tend to ignore it. Films as diverse as Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and the cult documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot have effectively made lot culture a part of our collective memory:

Even Say Anything, Cameron Crowe's quirky ode to teenage love, contains a key piece of Lot Theory. Crowe is fully aware that lots are where we go when we have nowhere else to be:

Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack): I got a question. If you guys know so much about women, how come you're here at, like, the Gas 'n' Sip on a Saturday night, completely alone, drinking beers with no women anywhere?

Joe (Loren Dean): By choice, man. We choose this.

Happily, there's also something called The Parking Lot Movie, an independent film that focuses on one lot and the obsessive people within it. It contains the following quote, which summarizes Lot Theory in a nutshell: "That's like the word of the day at the parking lot — hanging. Can you hang? It's a combination of being really relaxed and not letting someone talk you down." (For reference, the film is a riot.)

The list goes on: Football tailgating. The unplanned, pre-concert lot party — hippies make this sort of thing last for weeks — that takes place before stadium shows and club gigs alike. Autocrossing, where weekend racers compete on the cheap in their own cars. The blue-collar cruise-in. Cars and Coffee. Any of these could happen without a parking lot, but they wouldn't be half as accessible, cheap, or fun.

Like any American icon, the lot's family tree runs far and wide. Consider the drive-in movie, which is little more than a parking lot with a giant screen in front of it. (The town of Ann Arbor, Michigan once took this concept to its meta conclusion, showing films on top of a multistory parking garage.) Or take the Midwestern-style field party, which requires little more than a grass pasture, a keg of beer, and ten or fifteen pickup trucks. (Hello, impromptu lot.) The Lot is versatile, it changes with the times, and it loves you.

That love aside, nothing lasts forever, and lots are no exception. Given enough time, the parking lot as we know it will disappear. It will likely be replaced by automated garages, more effective mass-transit systems, and future infrastructure we cannot yet imagine. When this happens, we will have lost one of our greatest unintentional achievements. And we will be worse off for it.

Douglas Adams once pointed out that people like to congregate at boundary conditions — where land meets water, for example, or where earth meets sky. We like to be on one side, he said, and look at the other. Parking lots — where people meet pavement — fit nicely into this theory. They're not without flaw, but they matter. They deserve our respect. The next time you park your car, do a Lot mitzvah: take a moment to say thanks.

Good on ya, Lot. Long may you run.

Photo Credit: iMorpheus, Ben McLeod, Ypmiley / Flickr

After storyboards are done, VFX artists move to a stage called pre-visualization — a crude version of the action. [PopMech]

Director Roland Emmerich shoots the limo — a Lincoln Town Car L — against a massive blue screen in Vancouver, Canada. [PopMech]

Next step? Rendering! [PopMech]

Better than the takes-a-couple-hours-per-frame renders is this. It's called a doughboy render that takes just a few minutes per frame. [PopMech]

The final result? Well, simply put, it's epic disaster porn. Want to know the rest? Head on over to Popular Mechanics.

The return of the Interceptor makes us wonder if this movie will be some kind of prequel, as Max's rare-in-story Ford XB Falcon was thoroughly blown to smithereens in The Road Warrior. The truck on the other hand looks like a hot wheels car, with a ridiculously huge supercharged engine and a thoroughly chopped top. Looks like every Billetproof builders wet dream, and we wouldn't sneeze at taking it for a spin either. The two are part of what's expected to be quite an armada of vehicles planned for the $100 million Warner Brothers backed film which will be constructed over the next year. The cast is currently completely up in the air, after Miller refuted previous reports of lead roles going to Sam Worthington and Charlize Theron. Filming will begin next summer in New South Wales, Australia.

[ABC News]

While you're here, you might as well enjoy a bit of one of Newman's later roles. Sure, sure!

And we really can't talk about Newman's career without an excerpt from this Malaise Era classic:

Oktapodi was created in 2007 as a graduate project by a team of French students at the Gobelins L’Ecole de L’Image, a Parisian film school. It has gone on to win a number of awards and was even nominated this year for an Oscar in the animated short film category.

What makes the short such a treat even if you’re not a particular fan of cephalopods is the choice of vehicle to depict breakneck speed: the Vespa-based Piaggio Ape minitruck, featured here on Jalopnik a short while ago. In a genre where V8’s never hurt and tractor trailers can come in very handy, the truck in Oktapodi is equipped in real life with three to fifteen cubic inches of single cylinder power.

But Oktapodi shows that when it comes to flinging vehicles about with reckless abandon, it’s not the size of your engine that counts.

Source: Oktapodi.com

The new movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen), Chris Hemsworth (James Kirk from JJ Abrams' Star Trek) and Isabel Lucas — who we're hoping doesn't have a weird robot tail that emerges from her nether regions this time round. All those cast members sound great, but we're puzzled by the absence of the 1978 Chevrolet K-10 Cheyenne.

In case anyone's forgotten how utterly spectacular the original film was (to our minds, Patrick Swayze's finest role), here's the original trailer. [via RedDawn2010]

And, of course, that got me to thinking: what about all the other cars driven by movie bad guys? We've seen some excellent bad-guy movie cars over the years, and today I'm honoring fifteen of them. Those of you who were outraged by what I missed in the last list (yeah, I got all your venomous emails about the exclusion of Vanishing Point Challenger- a movie car I love dearly, believe it or not- last time around), prepare for further jaw-droppingly egregious omissions!

Here we go, in no particular order of preference, the Jalopnik Sinister Fifteen Movie Cars! Thanks to the Internet Movie Car Database for most of these images.

Bill Duke's 1990 Chevrolet Caprice
Payback, 1999. Crazy Mel Gibson has been in quite a few good car movies, in between drinking shots of holy water and shaking his fist at the Vatican, and this minor neo-noir masterpiece has plenty of Jalopnik-Grade™ rides. For corrupt cops, you just can't beat the good ol' Caprice.
Albert Popwell's 1973 Cadillac Eldorado
Magnum Force, 1973. After Popwell's character Drāno-izes a ho who holds out on his money (this execution method inspires the line "That shows a certain sense of style" from Clint Eastwood), he meets his doom in this gorgeous pimpmobile at the hands of vigilante motorcycle cops.
Bob Skokes' 1968 Chevrolet El Camino
Suburbia, 1984. I totally spaced on the punked-out Ford LTD from this classic film in my last list, but the El Camino driven by the bitter dog-slaughtering laid-off autoworkers can make this one!
Paul Newman's 1958 Cadillac Sixty-Two Convertible
Hud, 1963. Newman's character of Texas rancher's son Hud Bannon stands as one of the meanest amoral bastids in motion picture history, and his (pink, according to the dialogue in this black-and-white film) '58 Cadillac suits that character perfectly, given the landscape of pickup-drivin' good country people.
Conrad Veidt's 1926 Mercedes-Benz Modell K
Casablanca, 1942. Nazis in movies are always sinister and/or evil (unless you're Leni Riefenstahl), and there's only one vehicular choice for them in Vichy-governed Morocco: Mercedes-Benz!
Lord Humungus Motor Pool 1973 Chrysler Valiant VH
The Road Warrior, 1984. With all the outstanding baddiemobiles in this movie, how do you choose one car? In the end, the quad-pneumatic-arrow-gun turret gave this Valiant the edge.
Drive-By Shooters' 1986 Hyundai Excel
Boys N The Hood, 1991. It's hard to imagine an '86 Excel even running, much less holding together long enough to facilitate a drive-by, but sometimes the cinema viewer needs to break out the ol' suspension-of-disbelief thing.
Emmett Walsh's 1966 Volkswagen Beetle
Blood Simple, 1985. I can't make any movie list without something from Los Hermanos Coen, and it's hard to come up with an ickier bad guy than the unnamed VW-driving detective in their first film.
Dennis Hopper's 1968 Dodge Charger
Blue Velvet, 1986. It's hard to imagine a scarier bad guy than Hopper's Frank Booth, who huffs from a mysterious can of compressed gas, beats women, and hits the road in a completely evil beater Charger.
Emile Meyer's 1956 Ford Fairlane
Sweet Smell Of Success, 1957. This incredibly dark movie- which pretty much bombed when released, but is now regarded as one of the all-time greats- wouldn't have been complete without the corrupt Fairlane-driving cop doing dirty work for the Walter Winchell-based Burt Lancaster character.
Larry J. Blake's 1948 DeSoto Custom
Sunset Boulevard, 1950. What do the burly and ominous repo men coming after William Holden's Plymouth drive, as they attempt to de-wheel (and maybe de-kneecap) him in the City Where Only A Nobody Walks? Yessir, a stolid DeSoto.
Ann Blyth's 1942 Pontac DeLuxe
Mildred Pierce, 1945. Dan Savage says it's the greatest film ever made, and he may be onto something. Based on a novel by master crime writer James M. Cain, this film features a sporty little Pontiac convertible driven by the thoroughly evil- yet utterly shallow- character of Veda Pierce.
David Patrick Kelly's 1955 Cadillac Hearse
The Warriors, 1979. The gang costumes alone make The Warriors worth watching, but the supremely evil '55 Caddy hearse driven by the Rogues vaults it into all-time Bad Guy Movie Car greatness. "War-ri-yers… come out to play-ee-yay!"
Robert Mitchum's Model T Ford
Night Of The Hunter, 1955. I really wanted to use a car driven by Mitchum in Cape Fear, because his character in that film is so terrifying as to make De Niro's version in the Scorcese remake seem like Mr. Rogers by comparison, but Max Cady takes the Shoe Leather Express instead of getting wheels. No problem, though, because Mitchum's character in Charles Laughton's directorial masterpiece is damn near as menacing (and even slimier), and he does drive.
Robin Williams' 2002 Toyota Echo
One Hour Photo, 2002. Williams' creepy, obsessive character managed to purge all the happy from the image of the cute lil' Echo.

You might notice that there's no Vanishing Point Challenger, no Two Lane Blacktop '55 Chevy or GTO, no Road Warrior Falcon, no French Connection Pontiac LeMans, and so on; you can go anywhere to find those admittedly deserving machines in a Top Movie Cars list… but you're in for something a little different when your Rambler clanks into my drive-in!

Fee Waybill's 1968 Plymouth Sport Satellite
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, 1981. Just look at this evil '68 Satellite, driven by the character played by Tubes mastermind Fee Waybill in the nearly-forgotten punk classic starring Diane Lane.
Stacey Keach's 1972 AMC Matador
Up In Smoke, 1978. Some folks might try to tell you that Cheech's '64 Impala is the automotive star of this all-time Malaise Era classic, but those same guys will sell you a bag of "Acapulco Gold" that turns out to be oregano. Sergeant Stedenko's unmarked Kenosha sedan, take a bow!
Isaac Hayes' Cadillac Fleetwood
Escape From New York, 1981. An apocalyptic Caddy with chandeliers on the fenders, in jail, being driven across a mine-studded bridge by Isaac Hayes? Why the hell didn't Cadillac issue a chandelier-equipped Escape From New York Edition Cadillac?
Barbara Stanwyck's 1937 LaSalle
Double Indemnity, 1944. It's taking all my willpower to avoid stacking this list with nothing but film noir cars- for example, the cop '49 Ford stalking Sterling Hayden in the opening sequence of Asphalt Jungle- but there's no way we can neglect this LaSalle, which features in the greatest post-murder-victim-body-dump 'car won't start' sequence in cinema history.
Robert Mitchum's 1950 Ford
Thunder Road, 1958. That ol' dope-smoking Bob Mitchum won't let the '57 Chevy-drivin' revenoors catch his triple-carbed Ford, no way! You'll get some nice closeup shots of the triple-carbed overhead-valve Ford V8 in this excellent car movie.
All 250 Vehicles In The Final Sequence Of Used Cars
Used Cars, 1980. The greatest Malaise Era movie of all time! You'll see everything from an early Bronco to a Fiat 128 burning rubber in the final ten minutes of this Kurt Russell classic.
Mel Gibson's 1994 Chevrolet Caprice
Conspiracy Theory, 1997. A movie in which Crazy Mel delivers the line "It's time someone lifted the festering scab that is the Vatican" is already starting off on the right foot, but his awesomely evil Caprice cab sets a new standard for scary movie taxis.
Harvey Keitel's 1972 Imperial LeBaron
Mean Streets, 1973. What do low-level mob associates drive in Early Malaise New York City? Exactly. Spoiler: this car doesn't get a happy ending.
Reese Witherspoon's 1967 Dodge Coronet Wagon
Freeway, 1996. This movie features cynicism galore, a nightmarish Danny Elfman soundtrack, Brooke Shields sticking a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger… and this beautifully wretched Coronet wagon, the crapping out of which starts Witherspoon's character on her Red Riding Hood-esque adventures. Murilee says check it out!
Bette Davis' 1947 Lincoln
What Ever Happened To Baby Jane, 1962. Yeah, so I like my movies dark and cynical- you got a problem with that? Davis' character, Baby Jane Hudson, uses this reminder-of-past-glory luxury machine to haul her crippled sister to her death on the Santa Monica beach.
Ronald Reagan's 1959 Ford
The Killers, 1964. Man, imagine having an actor become governor of California! Watching The Great Communicator- in this case, playing a criminal mastermind plotting a mail-truck heist- hoon this gigantic boxy Ford down a dirt road while wearing the same exact suit he wore as President… well, I'm shopping for '59 Fords now!
Dick Rude's 1976 Toyota Corolla
Repo Man, 1984. I'm going to go on record stating that Repo Man is the Greatest Car Movie Of All Time, and that choosing one car to honor in this list was quite difficult. I've read the screenplay many times, and it's telling that Alex Cox specified the exact year, make, and model of every car to be used in the film (and, in most cases, those are the cars that were used during the production). The red Eldorado? The Government Agents' Matador? The Malibu? I'm going to give the honor to the "get sushi and not pay" gang's very punk Toyota… and that reminds me that I've committed a grievous mistake by omitting the Torino from Suburbia in this list. Well, next one!
John Lurie's 1965 Dodge Coronet 440
Stranger Than Paradise, 1984. What's the best possible car for a pair of small-time gamblers to drive from New York to Cleveland to Florida during the winter in 1984? Jim Jarmusch knows!
Rodney Dangerfield's 1966 Mulliner Park Ward Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III
Caddyshack, 1980. What car best epitomizes bad taste and conspicuous consumption, Middle Malaise Era style? Sure, a Zimmer might have worked just as well, but a Mulliner Park Ward Silver Cloud is just as horrifying and ten times as expensive!
Matt Dillon's 1965 Cadillac Fleetwood
Drugstore Cowboy, 1990. When you're ripping off drugstores for that good pharmaceutical-grade junk during the Nixon Era in the Pacific Northwest, there's no better ride.
Billy Bob Thornton's 1940 Dodge Coupe
The Man Who Wasn't There, 2001. Of all the Coen Brothers' films- which show excellent taste in vehicular selection- I settled on this one as my favorite. Tough choice, and I almost went with the '85 Cutlass Ciera in Fargo, or the detective's Beetle in Blood Simple.
Roger Sloman's Morris Minor 1000 Convertible
Nuts In May, 1976. This annoying little car is so perfectly suited to Sloman's fingernails-on-chalkboard character that it's impossible to imagine him driving anything else.
Gloria Swanson's Isotta-Fraschini
Sunset Boulevard, 1950. Wicker bodywork. Leopard skin upholstery. 800 feet total length. Best of all, a golden telephone to speak to the driver!
Burt Reynolds' 1972 Citroën SM
The Longest Yard, 1974. A drunk-driven SM being chased by Malaise Era Mopars, with Burt Reynolds at the wheel and Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio. Enough said!
Ömer Simsek's Opel Manta
Manta, Manta, 1991. As any longtime Jalopnik reader knows, we have a sick love for the Opel Manta, otherwise known as "the German Camaro." Here's one of the many, many gorgeous Mantas from the German film Manta, Manta.
Image source: Automobilsport

Featuring Hilary Swank as Amelia and Richard Gere as her husband George Putnam, Amelia promises to relive the glory days of the daring aviatrix' life up until the night she disappeared. Amelia flies into theaters on October 23, 2009.

Citroën Mehari-driving Project Car Hell Poster Child Franzouse stumbled across this fine 1968 motion picture and was kind enough to send in a tip. After seeing the sad Olds Vista Cruiser earlier, I thought it would be nice for us to see a GM Skywagon while it's still young and healthy. Here's what Franzouse has to say:

Just came back from a business day-trip to Brussels (hooray for Thalys): they make the best French fries there, amazing. Anyways, I'm watching a 30 year old French movie right now titled "l'Homme à la Buick" (the man with the buick). Pretty cool story, and ok film about a provincial dandy who is actually a smuggler and drives around in a big buick station wagon often being chased by cops in DS's and 404's.

Okay, we can buy the notion of robotic geishas with katanas coming out of interesting and uncomfortable places, and the "bust gun" is pretty funny, but things start going off the tracks with the chainsaw head thing. Then a geisha transforms into a freeway tank. And then "fried shrimp." What in the hell is going on here? This is one very over-the-top concept and thoroughly insane, but from the preview, it's making more sense than Transformers 2.

[Fliqz]

According to Road & Track, Tony Stark, as played by Robert Downey Jr., will be piloting the vehicle in a scene set to play out in what will undoubtedly be next springs main blockbuster. No plot details have been revealed yet, but the first official images from the movie include Mickey Rourke as the bad-guy character "Whiplash" standing on the track in a rough version of what seems to be a competing exo-suit. We're betting there'll be some sort of mano a mano showdown including a race-car destruction derby. [Road & Track]

The Ridley Scott-produced A-Team film is supposed to begin initial shooting in August and if all goes well, Liam Nesson will star alongside Bradley Cooper, who is also in early contractual talks to play Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck. Still yet to be cast are the roles for both Capt. "Howling Mad" Murdock and Sgt. "B.A." Baracus. As awesome as it would be, don't expect to see Mr. T make a return appearance.

The script will follow the original TV show premise of four war veterans wrongly convicted turned mercenaries for hire. Written by Skip Woods, of G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra and Wolverine, directed by Joe Carnahan and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the A-Team will make a planned 80's comeback on June 11, 2010. No word yet on if the famous A-Team van will make a return, but either way, we can't wait. [via Variety]

We're beginning to wonder. Early Monday morning a stunt driver lost control of his Ferrari F430 while filming a chase scene and injured two. The X5's driver, one Laura Conti, claims she was attempting to avoid a stray taxi cab and ended up hitting a parked car, which sent her onto the curb. Nobody was seriously injured, thankfully. Perhaps a wizard with stronger magic than Cage's is trying to prevent this silly film from seeing the light of day. [NBC, 1010Wins]

The incident was captured on amateur video and shows two cars weaving through NYC traffic before the stunt driver of the Ferrari lost control on the wet streets and jumped the curb, crashing into a Sbarro's. The car struck a pedestrian directly and knocked down an electrical post which fell onto another. The worst part? One of the victims was not associated with the film so that'll be a nice lawsuit. Both were taken to Bellevue Hospital where their injuries are considered not life threatening. Thank goodness, especially as we laughed at the guy flailing his arms and legs underneath the electrical pole. We feel much less like horrible human beings now.
In other news "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is based on the poem which inspired the Disney classic "Fantasia" and puts Nicolas Cage in the role of a sorcerer named Balthazar Blake who's scouring New York City for an apprentice. Yes, it absolutely sounds as stupid to us as it does to you. [New York Post]

Thanks to this beautiful concept art discovered by TFO8, we can now see that the Devastator's head opens up into a giant grinder vortex, naturally. So that explains everything, right?

I'm sorry, but why do you need to grind something if you're going to put it into another vortex anyway? It looks pretty absurdly intense but I'm excited to see him give Optimus Prime the vortex for a mouth. . Look at him go, on the left.

In other botty news here are some beautiful images of the evil Lucifer Transformer Fallen, Skidz and Mudflap and Sideswipe.

[via Flickr]

The story is based on an upcoming book of the same name by Michael Cannell. Columbia is said to be securing the services of Tony Peckham to write the screenplay (he's previously written the scripts for Clint Eastwood's new film, The Human Factor and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes). Maguire, of course, is famous for his role in Fox's TV Show Great Scott. He also had a small role in the Spider-Man films.

Hill remains the only American-born drive to ever win the Formula One World Championship (in 1961), he passed away last August. [via IMDB]