An article/interview in the SF gate about the remake of "The Women".

The woman who wrote and directed it is obviously a complete idiot who doesn't understand what made the original fun and enjoyable. She wants to focus on the "friendship and betrayal" of Mary Haines by Sylvia Fowler, rather than anything to do with Mary's husband. She thinks that nobody in the original movie is especially fascinating either. Um, what?

This just pisses me off!!! :mad: :mad:

WTF???

Seriously. And it's getting horrible reviews so far:

Slant Magazine

Films in Review

I guess I'm not too worried. I smell a bomb.
Besides, there will always be the original.
:)

Saw the Jewel Thief last night, part of our Bollywood collection - it's amazing how plot twisty and convoluted you can make a movie when 3 hours is a common running time. This one had it all - love interests and femme fetales, mistaken identities, swanky apartments and private jets, car chases, dance numbers, a secret hideout with secret panels behind more secret panals - honestly I'm having a ball exploring this genre.

It seems to me that three hours is an increasingly common running time here these days, but our blockbuster style doesn't tend to fill that bloated time with intriguing twists or colorful dance numbers. I wish H'wood would emulate B'wood more closely.

Oh, the film is jam packed with plot twists as well as song and dance numbers. I'm sure it could be edited down to a more concise film, but I'm not sure that would make for a better film. Most Bollywood films seem to run at the 3+ hour mark. I'm not sure when cinema-going audience members take bathroom breaks!

But, if you have an attention span that is greater than the majority of the American audience, like Bond and Hitchcock and can appreciate Bollywood-style musicals then you will enjoy this fim - even with its faults.

Bill and I just watched Brokeback Mountain again... <SIGH.....>

This weekend:

Drunken Master - The movie that essentially made Jackie Chan a star and went a long way towards establishing a more comedic form of Hong Kong martial arts movie. It isn't a great movie but has the seeds of everything that would eventually become great. On the plus side, it spends almost no time on story and is pretty much wall to wall fight scene. More like a porn model of storytelling than most. The choreography is too staged but it isn't horrible.

Bangkok Dangerous - Awful. Simply dreadfully awful. Since it is set in Bangkok and uses a mostly Thai cast I kind of hoped there'd be some Tony Jaa in it even though I hadn't heard such (but I hadn't been looking). Nope. I'm really sick of the conflicted hitman story. I'm really sick of the Nicolas Cage drawl. I'm really, really, really sick of the conflicted hitman story told in a Nicolas Cage drawl.

The Omega Man - I hadn't seen it since high school. Forgotten how bad it was (though I'm sure the Rosalind Cash nudity helped back then). Though I do wonder just how spitting mad the director must have been when they got the dailies back from the opening scenes showing a dead Los Angeles and in the far background of one cut there is a car driving and in another a pedestrian crossing a street.