More on the depravity of Hollywood’s Creativity

Yesterday my sister and I, freshly returned from our Tahoe adventure, went to the local cinema to see A Series of Unfortunate Events . I like the series quite a lot. If Ed Gorey and HP Lovecraft got together you’d get a style similar to “Lemony Snicket” ’s - investigative with a heavy dose of black humor.

Watching the previews for movies coming up both my sister and I were struck by the fact that NONE of the previews were original. The preview (note the singular) that was not a direct remake or conversion of a sitcom, it was a pastiche of several other movies we’ve seen oh-too-many-times.

Coach Carter: Here’s the one that’s not a re-make, but it is a pastiche of things we’ve seen before. Could it be that a black (To Sir, With Love) is going to teach a basketball team (Hoosiers) to play as a team (Remember the Titans) but not allow them to forsake their grades (Stand and Deliver)?

It seems that the only bit of new it this derivative crap will be that the parents actually seem to want social promotion and their kids to pursue basketball as a career.

Bad parents, I have bad news. There are more jobs for people who can add than for people with a great fade-away jump shot.

Bewitched. Great. Yet another sit-com makes its way to the big screen. Hey, Hollywood, you do pay writers out there don’t you? WRITE SOMETHING NEW! I admit, Nicole Kidman is cute and can pull off a Samantha (even with all her charms in sum, she’ll never hold a candle to Elizabeth Montgomery in this role, or nose twitching ability) and Will Ferrell is pretty good at playing hapless….but…what could the plot be? Someone is to “out” her as a witch (insert morality play about how we should all tolerate each others’ differences)?

Or will it be a sit-come remake in that send-up style (A la “A very Brady Movie”) in which they try to be more Bewitched than “Bewitched” ever was? Either way, it won’t be new.

War of The Worlds. This is enough to inspire weeping. The original, a Cold War filming of HG Wells’ master plot [link] is nearly perfect. Why must this be remade. Tom Cruise, please, stop. Spielberg, go back to making predictable Oscar rakers. The only thing you can add would be Independence Day grade shit-blowing-up.
Willy Wonka. A movie that didn’t need to be remade damn you Tim Burton. Depp, I love you, cat but your strangely purse lipped nutjob is hardly anywhere in the scale of the alternatingly paternal and psychotic Gene Wilder. Tim Burton’s strange-ass visuals are hardly enough to justify re-making a movie for.

Anyway. I guess this is the reason I find myself not going to the movies very often.