And another Thing.

re4

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:18:00 +0000

I can't not take a moment to mention that a Sony internal memo apparently is penciling in a September 17, 2010 release date for Resident Evil 4, presently Resident Evil: Afterlife. Much more on this to come, of course.

Wild Hogs

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:55:00 +0000

The things I do for you people. Sorry for the quality, best I could do with limited equipment.

Ease on down the road

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:22:00 +0000

For some time at my video store, the most perplexingly awful-looking movie has been Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls (aka Silly Movie 2, though I can find no trace of Silly Movie), firmly ensconced in the IMDb's Bottom 100 with a 1.9/10. It's some kind of combination of Cast Away with Miss Congeniality, stars Eric Roberts and Charlie Schlatter, and is a source of concern for everyone I've shown the DVD box. The real high point is on the back cover. I can't find a picture online, but among other selling points, it features a sort of Tyrannosaurus with a pig head, something very much like the suave customer pictured to the right, if rendered in particularly low-grade CG.

Michael Jackson plays "Agent MJ" in it (one of a raft of cameos including Bob Denver as Gilligan, Pat Morita, and somehow Jerry Lewis). Was Jackson expanding his role in the Men In Black sequel, in which he played merely Agent M?

I don't mean to be snide; this is just the most direct interaction of Jackson with this blog's range. Perhaps we should take the same tack with movies as with the musical and the personal, and remember Michael in happier remake times.

Return of the crestfallen

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:02:00 +0000

I have so little interest in Transformers 2 that I can't be bothered to look up the correct subtitle, but today is release day for either Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen, or Transformers 2: Return of the Fallen, or Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

I am of the right era, but didn't have any Transformers as a kid, so there's only the faintest hint of nostalgia (I did find them neat at other kids' houses) for me, and the franchise would have to have some type of saving grace as a movie to work. I skipped the flick in theaters, but my roommate ended up with a copy (I'm hoping he didn't buy it), and after it sat on the shelf for about a year, my curiosity got the better of me one hot summer day. I can recommend it for students of the latest special effects, Megan Fox droolers, the extremely nostalgic, and literal or figurative juveniles. As for the latest installment, try Roger Ebert's delightful evisceration.

What it's all about

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:20:00 +0000

New Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 comes out today. It's from Tony Scott, making his third Denzel Washington actiony thriller in five years, after Man on Fire (also a remake) and Déjà Vu.

I liked the old one from director Joseph Sargent, who's done a lot of TV work I wouldn't be into (and some I would) but had quite a sweet spot in the early/mid-1970s, Also, I heard a newscaster refer to it as "The Taking of Pelham One-Twenty-Three" and got mad at the TV. One-Two-Three, people. It's as easy as A-B-C.

Off we go...

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:24:00 +0000

Computer seems to be somewhat broken. Hiatus roughly as long as it takes me to diagnose, buy parts, etc.
Posting from alternate computer, so no access to my usually vast store of images and notes. Hope to have it up and running soon; will leave you guys this to think about.

What was it Kubrick said?

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Let us honor Mother's Day with some overly tailor-made news: an upcoming remake of Mother's Day, Charles Kaufman's second directorial effort for his brother Lloyd's Troma Studios.

It'd be easy to lump Mother's Day in with the raft of early 1980s holiday-named slashers following the success of Friday the 13th – but Mother's Day has an alibi: it was being filmed in late 1979 at the same time as Friday the 13th, on the opposite side of the same lake (a store location in Mother's Day even shows up in Friday the 13th Part 2), and released just a few months later than F13's theatrical date. Its campy quality does makes it feel like a few of the 80s slashers, but it's heavier on...certain unpleasant content than slashers tend to be, and ultimately plays more like a very light I Spit On Your Grave than a woods-based stalker flick, fitting less into the slice-n-dice genre than the backwoods-horror tradition. It's got a small following but not one of my favorites.

The new version is expected for Mother's Day of next year. Director is Darren Lynn Bousman of Saws II-IV and Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Co-producer Richard Saperstein tells the Hollywood Reporter that the flick "will be post-'Strangers' in that it has very realistic qualities but has a high-concept overlay, this punishing maternal figure." Expect a mess.

A product of fear

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:30:00 +0000

One of the odder sequel pitches in recent years must have been S. Darko ("A Donnie Darko Tale"*), straight to DVD on May 12. Unsuccessful in the theaters, Donnie Darko gained some critical notice and a cult following on video, though adoption by a certain quantity of the alternative youth demographic (the one for which Hot Topic is a shorthand) has led some older folks to distance themselves from it. Abstract and moody, if its hints of larger pictures mean you can't quite consider it self-contained, it distinctly does not say 'sequel.'

*Not a Donnie Darko tale. S. Darko follows Donnie's younger sister Samantha (you remember her from Sparkle Motion). Seven years after the events of Donnie, Samantha (Daveigh Chase, the only returning cast member) hits the road to LA with her friend, uh, Rayanne. They end up in Conejo (Spanish for rabbit) Springs and loosely re-enact Donnie Darko with one of the guys from Twilight (Jackson Rathbone) and a fellow who looks like the other guy from Twilight (Ed Westwick of Gossip Girl). Also features the not-un-Jake Gyllenhaal-esque James Lafferty.

DD writer/director Richard Kelly denounced it as a cheap cash-in and refuses to read the script, watch the trailer, etc. He is of course in the right, but the movie's not as bad as it could have been. Upon first (and likely only) viewing, I found it tolerable – though not especially sensical or necessary, and often weird for weirdness' sake in its efforts to ape its source material. Writer Nathan Atkins hits most of Donnie Darko's key points overfaithfully, and director Chris Fisher borrows style as well as structure (e.g. DD's atmospheric 1980s UK darkwave montage now returning in 1990s format to the strains of Catherine Wheel, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance). The whole thing's not necessarily decodable or worth decoding in the manner of DD, certainly an oblique presentation, but one which left viewers wanting to make sense of it. (I have not seen the Director's Cut, which by most accounts tries to explain away the mysteries and in doing so sacrifices the film's appeal.)

One further note: this is Matthew Davis. I vaguely remember him from David Twohy's interesting Below, but neglected the rest of his work (Legally Blonde and Pearl Harbor, how could I pass?), but it struck me during S. Darko that he can presumably be retained for a fraction of Bill Paxton's cost. I expect to see him in the Paxton roles in remakes of Wild Bill's work from now on.

I think it's what's next

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:01:00 +0000

David Cronenberg's 1983 Videodrome is up for remake (I know because I was invited to a Facebook group called I Protest a Remake of Videodrome). No director yet, but writer is Ehren Kruger, in whom I haven't got much faith. Arlington Road had a decent premise, and The Brothers Grimm was a reasonably clever script, but Kruger's other stuff includes Scream 3, Reindeer Games, and Skeleton Key. It strikes me as problematic that any one man's writings on technology in the modern era should include both Videodrome and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

But then it looks like the new Videodrome isn't headed in a particularly Cronenbergian direction. Variety's clipping: The new picture will modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.

Let's check in with David Cronenberg for his thoughts:
"They haven't called me. In fact, I know nothing about this."

Less fun

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:07:00 +0000

Your straight-to-DVD sequel for today. Third in the Legally Blonde series sees Reese Witherspoon as producer; flick stars Milly and Becky Rosso as imported English cousins to Witherspoon's character.

Surprised to see it was directed by "Savage" Steve Holland, talented animator and director of 80s comedy classics Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer (How I Got Into College has its fans, but did less for me). Looks like Holland has been working for the Nickelodeon/Disney crowd for a few years now, on shows such as Even Stevens, Lizzie McGuire, Zoey 101, and I guess I might as well type out Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide.

Additionally, let me note that I could not possibly have come up with a better name for an actor in this film than Chad Broskey. I am going to assume it's pronounced with a long O.

This is the Time - These are the Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:01:00 +0000

A note: this is not a review of the Watchmen film, just thoughts on the periphery. It contains no major spoilers but does touch on some thematic aspects of the comic and characterizations therein, so proceed (or do not) as appropriate.

Douglas Wolk sez in Wired: "You can make a movie with the plot of Watchmen, but it won't be Watchmen. You can kind of imitate it, in the same way you can kind of imitate the way Frank Miller drew the comic book 300. But Watchmen wants to be a comic."

Which makes sense. It's a comic book about, among other things, comicdom, and in that sense, it belongs, and perhaps only resonates properly, in the relevant medium. It's worth pointing out that one of the the things that "wants to be a comic" about writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons' work on Watchmen, or at least wants the printed page, is a technique itself unusual to comics: a simulated multimedia approach. Watchmen's 12 chapters (except the last one) conclude with excerpts of non-comics documents from the Watchmen universe: Dan Dreiberg's essay on bird-watching, Adrian Veidt's intra-office paperwork, police and hospital notes on Rorschach's psychological profile. This makes it seem odd to assert that it "wants to be a comic" – its mixed format undoubtedly lends itself to words like "unfilmable," but wouldn't you just as readily say of a piece involving pages of pure text that it "wants to be a novel"? This sort of novelly feel is why we started applying "graphic novel" to Watchmen in the first place, since it's more accurately a comic book "maxiseries" of 12 issues, not originally a single standalone piece.

The Watchmen movie attempts to simulate or tributize Moore's approach by including the research-materials angle so beloved by readers. The current Watchmen project (I'm not sure whether to call it a movie plus extras, or a 'piece,' or just a colossal advertising blitz) does extend beyond just a hundred and sixty minutes of art direction and crystal-clear slo-mo with a DVD tie-in. While that massive Watchmen promotional push has made the comic's fans grouchy by slapping one of their most sacred texts onto bus ads and into Hot Topic, the upside is that there's money for viral marketing, and well-done viral marketing (in combination with the availability of the bulkier side-story DVD, which we'll get to shortly) is a pretty fair analog to the book's presentation of extras. It doesn't directly accompany the film, making it a more optional pursuit, but let's be honest: how many readers skipped the dauntingly dull-looking, text-heavy annexes? The filmic Watchmen universe has come to include its own supplemental materials, ranging from Golden Age-styled Minutemen photos to Adrian Veidt's letter of congratulations from the World Chess Association and ads for his line of action figures (more on that later).

The comic has abilities the movie can't, but so does the film format have abilities of its own. There's video footage from excellent to awkward floating around Youtube, and also a raft of user-created content made for contest purposes, theoretically for playing on screens throughout the movie, but ultimately useful in terms of expanding the general Watchmen world.

Most of the official materials are remarkably faithful to the text, and while the New Frontiersman website is a little more transparent than it might be (once you have clearly visible links to the film and its production partners, your enterprise is more advertisement than viral), the whole endeavor shows a reverence for details that might just as easily have gone unnoticed. Where the materials are new, they're faithful in spirit: hypothetical memoranda from Alexander Haig, sealed Senate testimony, and numerous artifacts texty and technical enough to be mistakable for Moore's own. Ton Duc Thang, Creighton W. Abrams, Francis Giancarlo, William J. Franklin – like Moore's work, these materials blend 'historical' and 'fiction' smoothly enough to send all but the hardiest history buffs to their preferred research sources.

Certainly their presence of these – let's call them 'adds' – doesn't mean it's the same text as the book. First evidence the film can't replicate the comic is to point out that movies don't work the same way in terms of timing, the old argument that sequential art as a medium allows for more complicated interaction. You slow down, you flip back a couple pages, you reread a paragraph. If that's an argument that's lost a bit of steam in the home video era, it's even less convincing with the advent of more interactive DVD features, and if I'd waited for the DVD releases to write this, it might be even less urgent. The eventual Blu-Ray version of Watchmen is expected to have a somewhat interactive function, wherein certain points in the film will allow viewers to activate scene-specific commentary, alternate bits, making-of stuff. Sounds unrelated – but here it's worth remembering that the book itself includes instances of Moore drawing back the curtain to reveal the form (take as illustration the simulated paper clips present in the supplements, pictured). It's nowhere near the same, especially because the complexity of Watchmen means there's a particularly high likelihood of going back a page to check something, or ten chapters, or stopping to hold up an issue and flip all the pages out from the center, two at a time, to study the symmetry of the layouts. It's just worth noting that DVD as a format allows for something that begins to simulate the user control of a book, and while Watchmen isn't the project that'll bring that about (there have been a few endeavors which hinted at it, though they've been less than revolutionary), it's a project that reminds us of the potential. It'd be nice if this was the property that entailed the type of reassessment of the DVD form that Moore and Gibbons did for the comic form, but maybe the distinct lack will light some creative fires out there somewhere.

Among Watchmen-readers who feel the book is unfilmable, one gripe (of many) is the removal of the Tales of the Black Freighter storyline, an in-comic comic that parallels, overlaps, and at times even narrates the main action. Zack Snyder's original plan was to include an animated Black Freighter segment in the film, but studio-imposed running time limitations vetoed this plan, and it was relegated to a DVD release (scheduled for the first Tuesday after Watchmen hit theaters, though now postponed until March 24th). That DVD release will also include a combo live-action/animation dramatization of another supplement from the text: Under the Hood, Nite Owl's memoir of the good old adventuring days – though as it was primarily a text document, the execution's up in the air. Watchmen itself will take different forms on DVD, and at least one of the versions (three are planned) will integrate the Black Freighter. The theatrical film runs about 2:37; the director's cut will hit DVD in July (reportedly before the theatrical version) running about 3:10, and the ultimate mega-cut will arrive in fall at about 3:25, expected to feature not only the Black Freighter but already-shot transition scenes set at the newsvendor which features prominently in the comic. The Freighter story itself runs 26 minutes and Under the Hood runs 38, which would seem to indicate the director's cut will include Freighter and the complete cut will include parts of both, among other footage.

Even with the Freighter included, the pacing's won't be the same. It won't have the panel-by-panel complexity of the interplay in the comics, the narratives combining and playing off each other. The work needed to splice the animated film into the feature in the precise format of the comic would be baffling (though I do look forward to a fan-edit hitting the internet in a year's time, splitting the segments of Freighter and overlaying narration line by line where it originally appeared). Also, expect some intrepid fan to apply the Watchmen: The Motion Comic treatment to Black Freighter as well, using high-quality scans from the deluxe edition of Watchmen and Gerard Butler's voiceover from the DVD.

With Rorschach ski masks and replica grappling guns available for sale, it's evident that not all of the Watchmen merchandising is quite as lofty, as with our next familiar cash-in for any comic-based movie. Nearly always present, nearly always poor, the tie-in video game is almost invariably a cut-rate job, sloppily assembled (for a hard movie-release deadline), financially successful, critically panned. Iron Man's 2008 batch of games averages a 44% on Metacritic; Incredible Hulk's games hit 48%. Watchmen: The End Is Nigh fares a bit better at 62%, but is still far from revolutionary, but notable for its pedigree, its support by those who could easily have refused. Dave Gibbons consulted on art and design, and the story was written by no less than Len Wein – a mentor of Moore's and an editor on the original run of Watchmen. (We will leave for another time discussion of Watchmen: Justice is Coming, an altogether separate entry designed for iPhone and iTouch only).

Playing a game means you're being asked to align yourself with the characters, a questionable concept in Watchmen's world, in which we are constantly re-evaluating our willingness to identify with the 'heroic' leads. There's no elderly Hollis Mason or Joey the Cab Driver on the player-select screen; your choice is Rorschach or Nite Owl II. Do people who comprehend Rorschach want to pretend to be him? It seems so. As unsavory as Rorschach may be, there's no denying his draw, and no reason to think a few hours of seeing him in action in violent beat-em-up gameplay is going to create a wildly different impression from his first cool, intimidating moments in the book and the legend Watchmen creates of him as an tireless crimefighter and a fearsome foe, back before he was quite so...like he is now.

Watchmen's reputation as the thinking man's comic makes a video game based on beating up thugs seem like a particular misunderstanding of the point at best, and a direct, uncaring flouting of the book's raison d'être at worst. It seems like making Watchmen interactive is a bizarre pursuit, that these characters are valuable in what we learn about them through Moore, the books structured roughly in two-issue chunks delving into each major player for just this purpose. By not-learning about Rorschach and substituting gaming, where players readily substitute their own personalities into the Rorschach mask, he becomes little more than just that – a mask, an empty, cool-looking bruiser. And here is as good a reason as any to rail against a Watchmen game/movie/merchandising/any further dilution of the original text.

So why did Moore and Gibbons collaborate on a couple of modules for a Watchmen role-playing game? They were published in 1987, though work began while the comic was still a work in progress. Moore and Gibbons were willing to entertain the concept of allowing fans to delve into further adventures in the Watchmen universe, even to the extent of pretending to be Rorschach and the Comedian, though with the disclaimer seen here in Player's Information (left). These game packs used the same angle that the new game does (a saner Rorschach, a fitter Nite Owl), setting its story before the passage of the anti-crimefighter Keene Act. Moore would doubtless scoff at the idea today, but in 1987, before DC's shoddy treatment of him became clear, he was evidently not entirely averse to leaving space open for audience identification with even the most troubling of his characters.

...which brings us back to the viral gallery and an ad for Ozymandias' line of action figures, not far off from the one included in the Veidt Industries paperwork closing Chapter 10 (above). Not just the simple photoshopping of a detail from the comic, this particular item has been updated to reflect more accurately the toy line currently on the shelves at Toys 'R' Us (that is, not a specialized internet rollout for savvy comic readers and collectible connoisseurs). If the triple duty of the ad as not just movie-supplement but viral advertisement (for the movie) and actual advertisement (for the toy line) makes you skeptical, think of it as, rather than corporate cash-in, a concretization of Moore's thesis from the notes in the comic, wherein Veidt markets a line of toys based on the adventurers. The movie version is a complicating mix: like the comic, it includes Bubastis and Moloch offerings and lifts copy from the print version; like the actual toy line, it offers The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan. Moore often asks about our tendencies toward hero worship in Watchmen, and here does it in the guise of toy collecting (a field with a large overlap with comic-reading), the strange urge that causes us to want little replicas of heroes and evildoers on our desks.

Rorschach at first seems to be the key figure, as it were. Both comic and movie ads acknowledge a need for Moloch (no actual toy is available), since your heroic Ozymandias figure needs opposition (though Veidt considers substituting an army of generic terrorists, which he expects will sell better in war-fearing times). Where does Rorschach fit in? His ad copy refers to him as "the feared vigilante," but the set's inclusion of his crimefighting partner Nite Owl shows that Rorschach is still meant to be one of the good guys. Moore wants us to wonder who in the comic's world would want a figurine of an actual vigilante roaming the streets. While readers are more privy to some of Rorschach's less-collectible aspects, it's an odd question as to why folks would want a little doll of a man wanted by police for numerous crimes. What's less clear is whether Moore would have imagined at the time that Watchmen readers, well aware Rorschach is in some ways a deeply unpleasant character, would still want a little Rorschach of their own. DC Direct is certainly counting on it.

It makes Moore's points with the toy line less snarky and more actual, putting them to the test. Would comic collectors want a set of action figures of Watchmen to pay tribute to a favorite book? Maybe so. Would casual fans? This is where his point comes into play, and shows that maybe the almost-universally-beloved-when-you-get-down-to-it Rorschach isn't ultimately the issue at all. The point to see how many kids want a Comedian figure. If he is at times a powerful and intimidating character (traits lending strength to the sort of hero worship that makes people collect little idols), he's also loathsome – though not in the handy way that lets you put him on Moloch's team. Will people buy The Comedian because he's a very tough guy in a costume? Will they buy Rorschach because he looks cool? What it does it mean if your kid wants an Ozymandias figure? Moore should be curious about the sales figures on these. It's great that he doesn't want any of the money, but there is something to learn from how people will respond to the characters and the packaging of them as hero-toys, just as Watchmen asked us to rethink our packaging of our heroes.

"If it ever comes out there’ll be a shitload of merchandise: watches, badges, Rorschach Action Men – wind them up and they’ll break all the fingers on your Transformers! Dr. Manhattan dolls that give you cancer…" Alan Moore on a potential Watchmen movie, 1988

Oh, how the ghost of you clings

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:01:00 +0000

Watchmen day! The flick will shortly be the widest-ever release for an R-rated movie. I hope to have another post on it soon, but a little basic info as regards this blog specifically.

Director Zack Snyder says he will not do a sequel: "Will they make one? I have no idea how you would. The work is the work. This movie is about ideas. Anything else you would do, if you did a sequel to it, misses the point entirely of what Watchmen is. To continue is to either rehash the same idea again or you're going to try to fix the characters, which goes against everything the book stands for, or you could pick up new characters. To me, philosophically, it just doesn't make sense."

Officially, the major cast members all have sequel clauses in their contracts, but are less than enthusiastic.

Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) wouldn't be interested.
Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan) doesn't see the point.
Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl II) can't see how it would happen.

"But hey, if Alan Moore writes it, I'd love to read it."

Happy new year

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:01:00 +0000

In comparing stats between the last couple of years (comment section two posts back), I realized I've neglected to give some type of personal quality assessment of the year's sequelly and remade flicks.

Here's what I got:

BEST BY A MILE
Rambo

BETTER THAN EXPECTED AND I DON'T SEE WHAT PEOPLE ARE GRIPING ABOUT
Quantum of Solace
X-Files 2

SEQUELS I MAINLY LIKED BUT HAD PROBLEMS MOSTLY WITH THE LAST 20 MINUTES OR SO
The Dark Knight
The Incredible Hulk Again

CAN'T GET TOO EXCITED ABOUT
Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Mootly
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
Star Wars: The Clone Wars

LET'S NOT BRING UP
Death Race 2012 I Think It Was
Indiana Jones And The Wildly Overlong Blog Post

Wait 'til next year!

Carrey over

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:29:00 +0000

DVD release day!

Here's today's sequel news.

I'm sorry.

Really, I'm very sorry.

This Year In Originality

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:01:00 +0000

A little late in coming, but the Oscars end my fiscal moviewatching year. With that deadline hit, I give you 2008's top hundred flicks by gross (as of 1/01/08; some settling may occur), summarily labeled by the relevant information. Rankings courtesy of Box Office Mojo; categorizations by your humble compiler. This is by my own recollection, so caveat emptor. It could always turn out that Step Brothers was loosely based on an excised-for-quality Mad TV sketch or something.

"Sequel in works" refers to any stage past general rumor, generally a greenlight or more.

1 Sequel, #2 in immediate series, adapted property, comic book, sequel in production
2 Adapted property, comic book, sequel in production
3 Sequel, #4 in series, sequel in talks
4 Original property, sequel in talks
5 Original property
6 Original property, sequel in talks
7 Adapted property, book (young adult), sequels in works
8 Sequel, #2 in series, sequel in talks
9 Sequel, #2/#22 in series, adapted property, book series (novel), sequels in works
10 Adapted property, book (children's)
11 Adapted property, television series, sequel in talks
12 Adapted property, Broadway musical
13 Sequel, #2 in series, adapted property, book (fantasy), sequel in works
14 Adapted property, book
15 Sequel(/relaunch), adapted property, comic book, sequel in talks
16 Adapted property, comic book, sequel in works
17 Adapted property, television series, sequel in works
18 Original property, Christmas
19 Adapted property, short story
20 Original property
21 Original property
22 Original property
23 Original property
24 Sequel, #3 in series
25 Re-adapted property, book (novel)
26 Original property
27 Original Property
28 Original property
29 Adapted property, book (memoir)
30 Original property
31 Original property
32 Sequel, #3 in series, sequel in works
33 Original property, sequel in talks
34 Adapted property, true story
35 Adapted property, true story
36 Original property
37 Adapted property, book (novel), sequel in talks
38 Original property, sequel in works
39 Remake, adapted property, short story
40 Original property
41 Sequel, adapted property, comic book, sequel in works
42 Original property
43 Adapted property, book (fantasy), sequel in works
44 Original property
45 Original property
46 Adapted property, book (novel)
47 Original property
48 Concert film
49 Original property
50 Original property
51 Original property
52 Original Property
53 Sequel, #2 in series, 3-D sequel in works
54 Sequel, #5 in series, sequels in works
55 Original property, sequel in works
56 Adapted property, folktales
57 Adapted property, book (children's)
58 Original property
59 Original property
60 Adapted property, book (fantasy)
61 Original property
62 Original property
63 Sequel, #2 in series, adapted property, book (novel)
64 Adapted property, manga/anime
65 Remake, American horror
66 Sequel, #4 in series, adapted property, book (novel)
67 Original property
68 Adapted property, stage play
69 Adapted property, book (novel)
70 Adapted property, video game
71 Original property
72 Adapted property, book (novel)
73 Original property
74 Original property (parody)
75 Sequel, #2 in series
76 Original property
77 Adapted property, book (historical fiction)
78 Adapted property, stage play
79 Remake, adapted property, book (short story)
80 Adapted property, true story
81 Spinoff, #7 in series
82 Original property
83 Original property
84 Original property
85 Original property
86 Original property
87 Sequel, #3 in series
88 Remake, European horror
89 Adapted property, book (novel)
90 Original property
91 Remake, Asian horror
92 Original property
93 Remake, Asian horror
94 Original property
95 Adapted property, true story
96 Original property
97 Adapted property, stage play
98 Remake
99 Asian horror
100 Adapted property, book (historical fiction)

The breakdown.

Sequels and spinoffs: 16%
Second installments: 9%
Third installments: 3%
Fourth installments: 2%
Fifth installments: 1%
Films with widely rumored or confirmed sequels upcoming: 22%
Remakes and re-adaptations: 10%, including Americanizations of foreign films, 4%
Original properties: 46%
Adapted properties: 40%
Television adaptations: 3%
Video game adaptations: 1%
Comic book adaptations: 5%
Broadway/musical/stage play adaptations: 4%
Book adaptations: 25%
-novels, 9%
-children's, 2%
-true story/historical fiction/memoir, 7%
-fantasy, 3%
-short story, 3%
-teenage vampire drama, 1%

Golden saucer

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:11:00 +0000

Eagerly awaited, by me at least: last night's announcement of the Golden Raspberry award for the year's "Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel." I'll put it this way.

"I haven't even told Steven or Harrison this, but I have an idea to make Shia the lead character next time and have Harrison come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out."

Him and his wilderness bullsh-t!

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:32:00 +0000

As expected, the new Friday the 13th (subpar and disappointing, but thankfully not as off-base and terrible as the recentish Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake by the same director and production company) made a truckload of money, somewhere in the $40-42 million range.

This places it at best opening weekend for the series and best weekend for a horror remake. Sequel talk should be up and running, and I imagine we'll have confirmation and rumors pretty soon. Statistically, we should be expecting Jonathan Liebesman on the remake - he followed up Marcus Nispel's last horror remake with Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, but he's busy with projects including Dead Sleep (killer bedbugs) and Battle: Los Angeles (Marines versus aliens in L.A.), so let's just go ahead and award the Friday the 13th Part 2 helmer gig to...say...Toby Wilkins.

Look for Friday the 13th Part 2 on August 13, 2010, or May 13, 2011.

Praemonitus, praemunitus

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:36:00 +0000

Lotus root

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:35:00 +0000

The Uninvited hits theaters today. It is not a remake of the still-no-DVD 1944 ghost classic starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey (finished second only to The Haunting on Arbogast's poll [sidebar] of definitive spook shows).

It is, however, a remake of Ji-woon Kim's A Tale of Two Sisters, one of the more highly regarded of Korea's recent spate of chillers. We could call it a readaptation rather than a remake, as Tale is really Janghwa, Hongryeon (Rose Flower, Red Lotus), a Korean folk tale of which Tale was merely the half-dozenth filmed version, dating back to silent efforts in 1924 and 1936. We would be fooling ourselves, as The Uninvited falls readily into the style of remade Asian horror imports, rather than into the category of Korean folktale adaptations. (I've got a translated text file of the fairly short story, which I won't reproduce here, but will provide upon request for anyone interested.)

Alongside David Strathairn and Elizabeth Banks, The Uninvited casts as the two sisters Arielle Kebbel, who showed up in the Grudge 2, and Emily Browning, whom most know from the Lemony Snicket movie (no sequel/s to that yet?) but whom I remember as the little girl from the terrific set piece that kicks off Ghost Ship (2002). Ghost Ship did not place in Arbogast's poll.

'03 Bonnie and Clyde

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:01:00 +0000

Addition on that Story of Bonnie and Clyde (2010), the Chicago Sun-Times reported the responses of the former leads to the news of the upcoming version with Hilary Duff and Kevin Zegers:

WARREN BEATTY: Why?
FAYE DUNAWAY: Couldn't they at least cast a real actress?

But I can tell you people they were the devil's children

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:41:00 +0000

Presumably inspired by her hat, Hilary Duff to play Bonnie Parker in Tonya Holly's The Story of Bonnie & Clyde, 2010. Opposite Duff as Clyde Barrow: Kevin Zegers, who seems to have a bizarre parallel career. On one side, he was the star of most/all (I'm not looking it up) of the Air Bud films, Most Valuable Primate, and various family-friendly TV fare. On the other, he was "Kid" in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, showed up in Wrong Turn and the 2004 Dawn of the Dead, and has played kids with stigmata twice (X-Files and "Bram Stoker's" Shadow Builder). I hope Duff is up to a heavier part than her usual Disney thing; perhaps she should have used the Zegers technique to ease into it, say, a small part in Final Destination 3?

Information

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:22:00 +0000

Back in the college days, I had a friend invite me (and unlimited others, posting flyers with an intriguing old-timey bicycle graphic around campus) to a marathon of The Prisoner: every episode, roughly seventeen hours, of a late-1960s British TV series he could barely describe to me other than its basic premise: a former British agent (Patrick McGoohan, who created the show and wrote and directed numerous episodes) is kidnapped and held in a mysterious, quaint village, where he is given a number instead of a name and held at bay by higher-numbered residents. I was fairly busy, but the guy knew his stuff and he'd gone to a lot of trouble, reserving the auditorium and projector equipment, buying enough popcorn to feed a theaterful of college students, so I figured I'd stop by. After I'd finished with classes and obligations on the day in question, I showed up several hours in, filled a bag with popcorn, and found an empty seat.

Many hours later, it was all empty seats, except for me, the host, and maybe another straggler or two. I think the flyer is still around here somewhere.

The Prisoner was trickled out to the public in infuriatingly small three-episodes-on-two-discs DVD box sets from A&E, and just last year a drastically improved but expensive and UK-only complete set from Network (compare here).

AMC TV, putting aside the "American" and "Movie" parts of their name, are showing all seventeen episodes online, partly to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the show, but mainly to drum up interest in their remake of the series, now wrapped and airing in November. Jim Caviezel takes the lead; Sir Ian McKellen will play penultimate foil Number Two (in the original series, #2 was constantly changing). Supporting cast: Jamie Campbell-Bower, Lennie James, Ruth Wilson, Langley Kirkwood, Hayley Atwell.

The Prisoner was sequelized/concluded in comic book form in 1988 from DC. The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, from Mark Askwith and Mister X creator Dean Motter, was a four-issue run that sought to tie up loose ends, taking place twenty years after the final episode. The only previous licensed comics project was an adaptation by the legendary Jack Kirby in 1976, shortly before PBS picked up the show for U.S. rerun in 1977. The comic was never published, but Kirby enthusiasts have found the material; see some and read the details in this reproduction of Kirby Collector if interested. Kirby was a lover of the show; shortly after it first hit airwaves, he ran a storyline in Fantastic Four (#84-87) in which the FF visit Dr. Doom's home of Latveria, here styled much after The Village.

While writing this, I learned that Patrick McGoohan died last night in Los Angeles. Wonder if he was in town for press on the remake. Sad to see him go.

Joyeux

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:01:00 +0000

Happy holidays of choice! I'll be off for a couple of weeks, but I'll leave with some glad tidings that have improved my spirits.

It looks like Rob Zombie will be making Halloween 2! Sequel to remake, not remake of sequel.

Folks that know me will be surprised to see me jolly at this, but the last word on Halloween 2 was that it'd be handled by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, whose Inside (A l'Interieur) was one of my favorite horror flicks in years. It had been deeply dismaying to see them packed into the recent trend of bringing talented French horror directors over to the States and throwing them onto sequel and remake properties to pay dues (though I'd had some mild optimism for their attachment to the new version of Hellraiser, which is currently tied to – oh well – French director Pascal Laugier).

Zombie's dibs on the next Halloween means he can safely continue to make crummy films I don't care about, and hopefully that Bustillo and Maury can get something with a little more potential. There's no guarantee they won't end up on a new version of The Burning, but I'm grateful for small favors. Joyeux Noël mes amis!

One very large baked potato

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:20:00 +0000

While we're on the topic of 2012 – not everyone's subscribing to Darren Daulton's astral-ascension end-times scenario. Paul W.S. Anderson picked that same year as a setting for his new take on Paul Bartel's 1975 cult classic Death Race 2000, and he picked modestly. Originally slated as Death Race 3000, it's a good bet that the '3000' angle was scrapped due to its promise of futurism; the new Death Race offers nothing in the way of speculation, nor any of the original film's entertaining, snarky angle on things to come.

Anderson's 2012 is roughly 2008, with the very minor addition of some sort of death race. The flick opens with a title card on the broken-down U.S. economy and a scene set at a manufacturing plant in the process of shutdown. That's it. By now it doesn't require extensive imagination to visualize a world in which bloodsport is available on Pay-Per-View, but Anderson has no interest in developing it any further.

Death Race is tire-slashed the same way Stephen King's Running Man novella was hobbled in its transition to film: by translating a countrywide scenario (of a police state supplying gory entertainment to satiate the public and offer sublimation for any potential revolutionary impulses) to a local soundstage production. With it, both films surrender any interest the previous iterations had in examining the country, preferring instead the easiest possible surface assertion of viewer bloodthirst (In 2012, the U.S. economy has collapsed, and now people like to watch violence!) and leaving it at that. Death Race goes even farther than The Running Man in removing the action from the up-close and personal connection it needs to make its point. The Running Man at least chooses for its gaming grounds a cordoned-off part of post-earthquake Los Angeles, but Death Race sets its action on Terminal Island, a minor nowhere-in-particular land mass having nothing to offer but a prison, an industrially tricked-out racetrack, and a bridge (and really, why a bridge? You couldn't have taken a cue from Alcatraz? Château d'If? People have known it's a dumb idea to build a bridge to your prison island for quite a few centuries now).

Presumably Anderson thought this was a clever reference to Terminal Island, Stephanie Rothman's influential 1973 women-in-prison flick and alternative plan for convict dispersal – but it's a backfire. All the new placement does is drag the action to a more remote, vague spot, and remove the action that much more from relevance. Minus ten points.

...and the World of Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (math) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 03:53:00 +0000

I know I (and the rest of the internet) gotta stop giving these guys at The Asylum free press in the form of snarky look-at-this-nonsense bloggery, but I also can't resist posting The Day The Earth Stopped, a directorial effort from C. Thomas Howell, with a script from frequent Howell collaborator Darren Dalton*. This apparently sort of green-tinted mecha take on The Day The Earth Stood Still stars Howell, Judd Nelson, and includes the following selected characters, in order of billing: Terrified Woman, Mourning Woman, Champs O'Fallon, Guard, Spec Ops #7, Guard #3, Agent, The Man, Guard #7, Spec Ops #3, Man Running, Agent #2, Terrified Man, Spec Ops #4, Spec Ops #2, Lt. Tuck Pendleton, Spec Ops #1, Guard #6, Guard #5, Sky Baby, Guard #4, Woman Running, Drunk Man, Running Irishman (Champs O'Fallon doesn't run), Guard #2.

Buried in the cast list between Special Operatives Abbott and Costello you'll have noted the solitary film role of an unconvincingly pseudonymed Thunder McQuaid, portraying one Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton. It's one thing to rip off this or that new megabudget remake, but stealing Dennis Quaid's name from Innerspace? That's crossing a line.

*Not this guy, though the spelling of the last name is only one of two critical differences. While Darren Dalton the writer has put his end-of-the-world theories into the extraterrestrial invasion camp, Daulton the former Phillies catcher is on record as subscribing to the Mayan calendar theory of a 12-21-2012 cataclysm. Of all the National Leaguers to win Comeback Player of the Year, "Dutch" is probably the one most likely to be, or at least to be mistaken for, a science fiction writer (taking that title from Ray Knight, I believe). His 2007 tome If They Only Knew, a title based on the unreportable clubhouse shenanigans of the '93 Phils, is an examination of the science fictional and the speculatively and delusionally metaphysical.

From Daulton's own website:

In If They Only Knew Darren talks about issues of ascension such as dimensions and levels of consciousness, the prophesy of the Mayan Calendar and December 21, 2012, looking within our selves to create our own reality,
the energies of awakening and a lot more.

Dalton works with UFOs; Daulton works with astral projection, planetary ascension, and the ancient secrets of the pyramids. In other words, both Darrens are equally likely to get the call for some work on the next Indiana Jones flick.

Anyway, at least one person is probably looking forward to seeing C. Thos. Howell and Darren Dalton's latest collaboration.