[Sca-cooks] OT: I feel ill...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Huette von Ahrens:
>Whether or not it gets made, a lot will depend
>not so much on the star as it will on the writer
>and director.  Jim Carrey can be a very good
>actor if he is directed well.  He is like the
>little girl with the curl ... when he is good,
>he is very, very good, but when he is bad, he is
>horrid.

I suppose that's true. On the other hand, poking at old scar tissue 
in a non-aggressive way can still produce the same results as the 
aggressive/violent way, if you know what I mean. I cannot look at him 
in the almost completely good "The Truman Show", "The Majestic",  or 
the 11 good minutes of "Bruce Almighty" without seeing him as The 
Riddler.

>  > Maybe the
>  > remake of "The Pink Panther" will get lost in
>>  development hell?
>
>Well, they did try to make an Inspector Clouseau
>film without Peter Sellers not long after the
>Pink Panther and it flopped royally, because
>only Peter Sellers really could make the
>Inspector funny.  It was called "Inspector
>Clouseau" and starred Alan Arkin.

Note also that "The Pink Panther" is itself a sequel to "A Shot In 
The Dark," and the producers had not yet determined (although I 
coulda told them) that what made the formula work was Sellers, rather 
than the characters per se, or the format.

>   There
>was a 1993 "Son of ..." version with Roberto
>Benigni, which also flopped.  The current one
>is set to star Steve Martin.  I just can't see
>him doing Peter Sellars, and his own persona
>just won't work.

Steve Martin. A funny man on his own, but spreading devastation in 
his path as he reinterprets the portrayals of actors ranging from 
Spencer Tracy, Clifton Webb (sort of... maybe), and (this one you 
probably haven't heard of) Franc Luz, an otherwise undistinguished 
soap-opera and horror-movie performer whose original off-Broadway 
performance as the evil Dr. Orin Scrivillo, D.D.S., when compared to 
Martin's performance in the same role, in the filmed version of the 
musical "The Little Shop of Horrors" is enough to make a grown man 
(at least, me) cry.

>However, sometimes a remake can be as funny as
>the original or even funnier.  I am thinking of
>the Nutty Professor movies made by Eddie Murphy.
>Both of these movies are, to my taste, much
>funnier than anything that Jerry Lewis made.

Initially I flat-out disagreed with this, but then I considered the 
number of people (generally children who don't know any better) who 
will rate a movie based on its makeup and CGI effects, I guess I 
can't really say that you are in a vast minority in that opinion 
(which doesn't assume that that's why you hold that opinion, it 
merely shows me that you're probably standing in a larger crowd than 
I at first thought).

The problem is that the Nutty Professor movies (I'm not sure I saw 
all of the remake, but I remember some of it) are such different 
movies that it's really hard to compare them. Jerry Lewis is for some 
people an acquired taste, but in his capacity as basically the Last 
of the Vaudevillians, he represents a kind of humor most people don't 
understand today. I mean, when you think which movie people claim Lou 
Costello as an influence, the first name I can think of is Quentin 
Tarantino (who has claimed more than once that "Abbott and Costello 
Meet Frankenstein" is the most perfect piece of cinema in history), 
and this is not necessarily a good thing.

I like Eddie Murphy when he's doing his own material, and there are 
maybe four movies where he shines, but I think ultimately he'll be 
remembered for his standup, stage, and TV work, and this is probably 
fairly just.

>Eddie Murphy is a genius with characterization
>and a master of imitation.  He would be excellent
>in a remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets, as he
>has already proven that he can play all members
>of a family.  The dining room scene where he
>plays all of the Klumps, except the little boy is
>hysterical.  Robin Williams only knows hou to
>play Robin Williams.

And then there's the simple fact that Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams 
together would perhaps fill only _one_ of Alec Guinness's shoes, with 
room to spare...

The one thing a remake of KHAC would have going for it is that, as 
proposed, the more obvious theme of an attack on racism would be 
slightly more faithful to the source novel (Roy Horniman's "Israel 
Rank"), which deals with the ambitions and vengeance of the son of an 
aristocratic English lady disowned (to her ultimate destruction) by 
her family for marrying a Jew. In the original movie this was watered 
down to "marrying beneath her", specifically to an Italian opera 
singer. The proposed casting of Will Smith suggests that the 
unsuitable marriage, in this case, would be to an African-American. 
Arguably more faithful to the spirit of the novel, but not 
necessarily better.

But "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is, in its own right, a perfect gem in 
a perfect setting, one which should not be tampered with.

How about a nice remake of "Casablanca" or "Gone With The Wind" instead?

>  > Adamantius, picking up brush for remake of The
>  > Mona Lisa.

><snip>

>It probably already has been done.  I remember
>seeing a parody of the Mona Lisa years ago and
>I had to look and look to see where the parody
>was.  When I looked at her cleavage, she had
>three breasts.

And there I was, trying to think of something suitably outrageous, 
only to find that the world has once again surpassed me.

A.