+ Rumors are flying fast and furious (that was a shout-out for all you Vin Diesel fans!) this morning about Bryan Singer developing a feature film version of "Battlestar Galactica" for Universal, based not on the Ron Moore-David Eick series but on Singer's own re-envisioning of the series, which got shelved in 2001. What do you think about this idea?
+ This Monday, free tickets will be distributed for a special 16-minute preview of James Cameron's upcoming 3-D flick, "Avatar." Word on the street is that this will be much of the same footage that was screened at Comic-Con but with some new bits added and also with the added benefit of not being shot with someone's iPhone from 1,000 yards away and then posted on YouTube. To vie for tickets, go to the Avatar website at AvatarMovie.com.
+ From the network that brought you "Mad Men" comes...zombies! Yeppers, AMC has bought the rights to turn Robert Kirkman's comic book series, "The Walking Dead" into a TV series produced, written and directed by Frank Darabont, who gave us "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption." (Sadly, he also gave us "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors". Oops.) Given that its AMC and Darabont, this is something I'm looking forward to.
+ Check out this great article by a physicist looking at time travel and how it stacks up in films and television. Specifically, he gives "The Time Traveler's Wife" pretty good marks on realism. It's a fascinating read...although I'm saddened to discover that the whole "infinite number of alternate universes" thing may be a big fake out. I've always enjoyed imagining an alternate universe where I'm a gazillionaire and my pool boys all look like Daniel Craig. Thanks for ruining my day, science!
+ Want to look at pictures of pretty people? Sure you do! Entertainment Weekly gives us their gallery of "12 High IQ TV/Movie Hunks" -- some of the captions are kind of insulting, like "this guy's way too handsome to play a smart dude" but really, who's looking at the captions when there's pictures of Jeremy Davies to be had? There's a gallery of smart chickie characters as well. You know what's nice about swimming in the shallow end of the pop culture pool? You totally don't need water wings.
+ And finally, I file this one under the "we made him, we can do whatever we want with him" section of British hilarity. A UK-based theater company called Shakespeare 4 Kidz -- which is wrong on so many levels right there -- is planning to do six 3-D musical versions of Shakespeare plays, starting with "Hamlet," as well as a televised "American Idol"-style show to choose the leads for "Romeo and Juliet." (As someone who watched every episode of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" on BBC America last month, I will quietly refrain from comment on that.) What I don't understand is...how does a theater company produce a 3-D play? I mean, aren't live human beings generally considered 3-D? Will they be launching Yorick's skull into the audience for maximum effect or what? If so, AWESOME!
12 comments:
My first reaction to the BSG remake idea is not polite in mixed company. I am so fed up with these people who once, maybe, walked by the set of something as it was filming and think that gives them the right to re-make it in their own (and in this case, apparently once-rejected) image. The same with Fran Kuzui wanting to do a Buffy remake. Writing for TV and Movies has now turned into fan fiction. "Well, I don't like the way they did that very successful and respected thing, so I'll just rewrite it, probably with more nudity and sex and things blowin' up. Yeah, that's the way it should be done". The truly sad part is that people like Singer et.al have the current capital to get their bastardized creations made and foisted on us. Count me as a NO.
I'm not sure how I feel about a BSG movie. The new BSG show was so well done (and the characters were so well played) that it would be weird to go back and start over. I suppose if they're spinning off of the 70's show versus the new show, it wouldn't really matter. But I wouldn't really be interested in seeing it either...
On BSG ... maybe it will turn out well, but seriously Hollywood ... can't you go and work on something new and original for a change? Must we keep rebooting? There have been great reboots but it would be nice to see something actually NEW once in a while!
Shakespeare 4 Kids has been around. David Tennant did an audio recording of their Hamlet.
Tracy, was David in 3-D? :) I don't mean to pick on any group that promotes Shakespeare for kids. I'm just confuzzled on the whole 3-D thing -- and also get slightly cranky at any organization that spells "kids" with a z. It's like when I go up north and the candy shops spell "caramel" in like 17 different ways.
And I agree with everyone else on the BSG idea. When you do something as well as Eick and Moore did it, it seems crazy to even think about another new version. Do something original!
Darabont also brought us the film adaptation of Stephen King's "The Mist," which might have the single saddest, most heartbreaking ending of any movie I've ever seen.
He does well with horror, Nightmare 3 notwithstanding, so I look forward to his zombies.
Don't think so, Liz.
It was just an audio recording, I believe. I haven't listened to it, but believe that someone has it loaded up on YouTube. It is Macbeth (hmmm...sorry I did say Hamlet earlier) set on the football (soccer to we Americans) field.
Back to BSG ... my recollection is that the DeSanto - Singer version that was shopped around back in the earlier part of the decade was a lot closer to the original series. When the deal was announced between Moore - Eick and Universal, a lot of hardcore fans sided with DeSanto & Singer because they were horrified at the notion of Starbuck as a woman, etc.
Sadly, I only knew about 4 of the nerdy "hunks" on EW's list. And quite honestly, I'd take Leonard over Sheldon any day. :)
Of course, that leads me to wonder what I've been doing with my life, since it's apparently not watching too many TV shows...That, or I have very strange tastes in shows. No, I think it's more of the fact that I've spent the last 13 years raising kids and working on my MA...Yup, that must be it! (But it still doesn't explain why I've never seen an episode of "Friends")
No parallel universes/multiverse? That's sad...
BTW, my coincidence meter just redlined and blew up. I read that article, and then picked up a short stoy "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang. It has everything from the article: e.g. "I built the gate only a week ago. Twenty years ago, there was no doorway here for you to step out".
Are you spooked yet?
I thought the ending to "The Mist" was probably the best ending of a movie I have ever seen. In fact, Stephen King himself stated that had he thought of that ending he would have used it.
As for BSG, I like most of Bryan Singer's work...really loved Apt Pupil as a matter of fact. I can only hope that Singer's BSG will go right were RDM's went so very, very wrong. Lest I spoil it for those who haven't seen the entirety of the SyFy (cripes I hate that) version, I won't expand on the particular plot points I found unimaginative and vapid.
For a second I was thinking Bryan Fuller when I read that, which would have been... interesting. Anyway, sounds like a terrible idea. It's far too soon after the show, and people will go into it expecting or comparing it to that. It's sad that the guy didn't get a chance to work on it before, but then we have no idea if what he made would be as good. (Allegedly? I still haven't watched the show.)
The time travel article is making my head hurt. (Time travel has that effect on me) "To put it more simply: You cannot alter history in any way that changes it from what it always was." But that statement kind of invalidates time travel of any kind, to the past at least, since just being in a time where you weren't before would alter history.
So if the argument seems that time travel is impossible... then what's the point of trying to apply the laws of physics to it? Just let us have our silly paradoxical fun!
I'm psyched by the idea of a Singer BSG going forward! Especially if it's following more the idea of the original. I don't understand the comments of "it's too soon after the show" -- it's been decades, people! The RDM version was a completely different story -- the original BSG has so many rich, unexplored questions and plotlines to go after-- the RDM version shared so little with the original. I mean, you can hardly compare a thousand yarn war to such a recent conflict as shown in the RDM version.
I also find it quite amusing that people are upset about a version which may actually keep continuity with the original yet love the RDM version which is itself a re-imagining.
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