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Just to continue the Saga of the Stooges: at one point I was being cc'ed on e-mails that probably should only have been between Moe and Larry, because it was Moe telling Larry in painful step-by-step detail how to do his own job. Because I was cc'ed and privy to the exchange, I was sorely tempted to reply-to-all with a simple "Are you fucking kidding me?!?!" Yes, including the rare double-interrobang. But all's well that ends well. At least, that's what I'm hoping I'll be able to tell myself once things finally are resolved - which, as of Friday's close of business, they were not.
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So earlier this week I brought up the connection between Superman and a certain crazy-ass Sean Connery 70's sci-fi flick, as reinforced by crazy-ass-in-a-different-way Alan Moore. I've never seen the actual movie in question - Zardoz - but I admit a certain geeky curiosity. Especially since I have seen another movie in the body of work belonging to Zardoz's director, John Boorman; he directed the 80's classic Excalibur, so he has some goodwill with me.
But this seems like as good a time as any for another mini-rant, especially since I've already broken the fertile ground of ranting about the mere existence of movies based solely on their trailers. I've heard rumors that currently there are trailers floating around for a remake of Excalibur, as well as a remake of Clash of the Titans. This just hurts my brain profoundly. Why in the world would anyone remake those movies? It's not that the stories aren't worth revisiting, or that the originals are inviolably sacred. But ... but ... they're not even really originals. Excalibur is itself a retelling of the Arthurian myth. Clash of the Titans is a retelling of various Greek myths. I can't think of many Greek myth movies of late (300 was Greek quasi-history ... Disney's Hercules, maybe?) but I know there have been King Arthur movies aplenty since 1981. I don't believe either of the proposed remakes is a shot-for-shot, so that means certain things will be changed anyway ... why not put a different title on it and go all the way back to the source, instead of making an inevitably less-crisp copy of a copy? Are studio execs so enamored of remakes from the 80's now that being able to call up my generation's memories of crap we saw on HBO is the prime motivator? Oy.
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It has recently come to my attention that there exists a heavy-metal album from 2004 which is a retelling of Moby Dick. This is an awesome idea and, according to a few reviewers, an awesome execution. Why do I not already own this???
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Sometimes when we're hanging out I think of my son as just one of the guys, who happens to be exceptionally short and not very talkative. So when he picks up a Cheerio and gestures at the cup of yogurt I'm feeding him for lunch, I think, "Oh, yeah cool, you want to dip your Cheerio in the yogurt, that's brilliant." So I hold the cup out for him. And then a minute later I'm mopping away a yogurt glove that covers my son's hand from fingertips to wrists and thinking "He's a BABY, he's a BABY, he's a BABY. And his fine motor control is a work very much in progress."
A $200 million version of Beastmaster is inevitable, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteYou know what would be a great big-budget movie to make with modern CGI and suchlike? "The Roaring Trumpet," the first of the "Harold Shea" stories by L. Sprague de Camp. They're obscure to a non-geek audience, but dude, that's a mammoth hit waiting to happen. Or better, make an original Harold Shea story out of odds and ends from the stories.
True story: freshman year of college, a hallmate tried to convince me that Boorman shot Excalibur over many years, so that the actors went from youth to middle age for real. He seemed to believe this.
Not only is Beastmaster 3D inevitable, I would say it is unforgivably behind schedule.
ReplyDeleteI confess to not being familiar with this Harold Shea of which you speak, but your enthusiasm for the idea has me intrigued.
And that story about the alleged making of Excalibur is hilarious. And also so, so sadly typical of many of the peeps we went to college with.