Efren Ramirez Tagged Articles at Cinematical

On the eve of its release in 2006, some local pals accommodated me at their screening for the first Crank film, and when my reaction afterward was one of surprising enthusiasm, they kindly chalked it up to a matter of "demographics." (To them, this most recently excused my thoughts on Observe and Report as well.)

Three years later, I found myself attending a midnight show of Crank: High Voltage alongside plenty of demographically-appropriate (read: texting) kin, anxious to see just how Jason Statham's unstoppable hitman is going to beat the odds this time around. And three reels later, I began to wonder whether or not too much had finally become just that. Oh, dear... what if they told me to leave my brain at the door and my heart still wasn't in it?

As Scott told us last October, there's a sequel to Crank on the way. This might seem surprising, considering the ending, but movies can make just about anything happen. This one will somehow take the seemingly finite ending and continue the story without the use of "dream sequences or long-lost twin brothers." Now, months after Jason Statham signed on for more Crank action, we've got the supporting cast for Crank 2: High Voltage. Variety reports that Chev's girlfriend, Amy Smart is back, plus Dwight Yoakam and Efren Ramirez. But that's not all -- Bai Ling has also signed on, along with Clifton Collins Jr., who will play Chev's nemesis.

This time around, "Chelios faces a mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working." If it's not low heart-rates and poison, it's mechanical hearts and electric jolts. He should ditch Eve and hook up with Gwen from Angel -- a girl with electric hands could come in handy for this action tale. I guess Clifton is the mobster, but there's no word on who Bai Ling will play -- perhaps a butt-kicking henchwoman.

The sequel kicks into production on April 28 in Los Angeles.

Casting for the upcoming Revenge of the Nerds remake (or re-imagining) is heating up, and we now know who will be playing the main nerds. IESB reports Chris Marquette, Dan Byrd, and Efren Ramirez have signed on as members are the Lamda Lamda Lamda fraternity, with Marquette and Byrd playing the lead roles. They also tell us Kristin Cavallari will be joining Katie Cassidy as Kailey, best friends and sisters in the Pi Delta Pi sorority.

This marks Marquette's second time working with director Kyle Newman, as the two also paired up on Fanboys. He'll be taking on the part of Max Foster, lead nerd. Byrd will play his sidekick, Owen DiMarco (aka "horn dog"), the kind of guy who majors in women's studies. Not surprisingly, Ramirez will portray a foreign exchange student (a la Napoleon Dynamite) named Santiago. In a recent interview with Coming Soon, Ramirez noted his accent will be "quite like Mr. Deeds' John Turturro with the personality of Raul Julia in The Addams Family." Okay, that sounds a bit bizarre ... but I dig it. When asked whether any of the nerds will be based off characters from the original film, Ramirez replied, "They're all new."

So, what do you think about the new cast? Any chances they'll screw it up?