Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better...

Does this guy look like the Anti-Christ to you? Nah, in fact he looks like a nice, likeable type chap. Jovial and friendly, right? WRONG! This guy will attach his fangs to whatever you hold sacred and suck the blood out of it, then turn it against you! He's a vampire! But unfortunately, he's only one of many in H'wood. It seems that Tinseltown has run full blown, stock car, blue streak gonzo out of ideas. Original ideas, that is. Hence I am brewing up a special cup 'o venom today over...THE FILTHY EVIL MOVIE REMAKE!

We’ve been watching the Left Coast melt down since about, oh...probably the early '90's and I think I now have a theory about why. I believe H'wood copped out and weaseled down the same path the music industry slouched down several years ago and essentially said "Hell! Why spend money and time investing in new talent and original products! Let's just take the same old crap and rearrange it slightly and sell it as the flavor-of-the-moment! Before anyone notices our latest offering sucks like an 8 pound Oreck, we'll just dump a new one on them! With any luck, the sheer newness of our latest trick will distract them from noticing that no one in this town has any real depth of talent anymore! Wheee!"

The sick thing is, I think it is working. These remakes are making money, encouraging more of this Grand Theft Cinema every day. It galls me to see the arrogant and lazy copycat revisionism going on just because no one in La La Land can write a script anymore. It seems the elitists out there believe they can take any film, any franchise or any brand and remake it one, two or three times better than the original just because, well, they are THEM and THEY thought of doing it! They seem to think that they are the ‘Great Them’ that can create pixie dust just by farting, squeeze bullion out of their buttocks at will, pee platinum and hork up history all on demand! Right? Just ask 'em, they'll tell you so.

If you're like me, you might resent really good (or even decent or just plain beloved) television and movies from your childhood being savagely adulterated by this new generation of wannabee hacks that call themselves film makers. It seems they think they can improve any idea from the past just by cranking out a cheap reboot/remake of other people's past work. And as we all know, because their version is newer and has more yelling, cussing, graphic sex & violence, and is stuffed with more CGI than Rosie O'Donnell has Krispy Kremes ballooning up in her gut MUST mean the newer version is better, right?

Wrong. Now, I'm not specifically talking about the pathetic, weak attempts at retrocuriosity that belched forth such compost as the newer incarnations of Charlie's Angels, Bewitched and Starsky & Hutch that have vomitously spewed from the same ‘ol Studio Sewer Pipe. The subject matter in these lame efforts wasn't exactly screaming for The Paper Chase type respect, anyway. Although these shallow efforts did betray the shocking lack of originality within the dwarfish craniums that decided to remake such fare, it frankly wasn't that offensive. Stupid, juvenile and embarassing, yes. Art theft? No.

Honestly, who'd give a crap if a TV-to-film version of a Sherwood Schwartz creation bombed flat anyway? That's like being surprised that a cover version of Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by B2K failed to crack the American Top 40. I don't think Casey Kasem would be going on a 'Snuggles the Dead Dog' type rant over a failure like that. Some things you just see coming. Scat happens, n'est-ce pas?

No, the franchises I am witnessing being plundered and pillaged were actually respectable and somewhat esteemed in their time. I am old enough to remember when Mission: Impossible was actually an entertaining, adult program that let the viewer use SOME brain power to engage in the story and the principals. This is of course before Brian DePalma, John Woo and J.J. Abrams stretched it over a pinball machine and raped the dog smear out of it and turned it into Tom Cruise: Wiseass Midget - The Video Game. I mean, making Mr. Phelps the bad guy!? WTH?

Sadly, the more this happens, the greater frequency that it will happen again in the future. I mean if a studio can, with a straight face, say "Hell, let's not only do a remake of Psycho, let's do AN EXACT LINE BY LINE, SCENE BY SCENE COPY! Yeah!" then no one is safe. What's next? Casablanca 2: Nazi’s Gone Wild?

Psycho (1998) was not Vince Vaughn's proudest moment, but the moron that green lighted that crapcan project ought to be castrated with a barbed wire fence. Once the Hollywood camel gets his new and improved Beverly Hills plastic surgery reshaped nose under the 'remake tent,' well then it’s Goodnight Irene. Once these jackals get a bad idea they’re going to pound on it like George Foreman on Ron Lyle and they will never stop. That is, until the money finally dries up from over-over-over-over doing it.

I mean, besides the aforementioned atrocious adventures into thematic Xeroxing, can anyone explain to me WHY we needed a Halloween remake? And WHY OH WHY did it need to be directed by a B level heavy metal rock and roller? Oh yeah, that's a great idea! I guess John Carpenter was either too busy or NOT TALENTED ENOUGH!? HUH!? Let's give it to the tattooed heroin abusing Rob Zombie! He's done videos! He’s an artiste! Yippee! Bollocks!

Even people I respect are borrowing from themselves when it is totally unnecessary! When Michael Mann stated he was going to do a Miami Vice film, I thought “Whoa! If ever a remake can be done right and worthwhile, this is it!" Oops! Think McFly, think! What would the ultimate purpose have been, really? Well, it seems there wasn't one. I was wrong in my hope and that film stunk on ice.

Unless you dig Colin Farrell as a 'thugspeak' mumbling, pan fried model for mullet haircuts and simpering moodiness, then Miami Vice was one rotten Trojan horse for you, too.

Disappointment doesn't even cover how I felt. Oh, where have you gone, Donnie Wayne Johnson, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you...oooh, oooh, oooh...

But the ante gets upped even more by this next one! J.J. Abrams, whose photo graces the top of today's blog, is the vunderbrat that gave us Lost and Alias and such cinematic art as Cloverfield. Yeah, that genius. Well about 2 years ago he was given the the pink slip, keys and the gas card and to one of the biggest franchises of all time, Star Trek, with great expectation that his upcoming film would revitalize Roddenberry's creation, and make it relevant again. When I heard this, my left eye began to tick.

Now, this upcoming movie does not have to be a Biblical disaster per se. I know many of us were pretty antsy when it was revealed that his vision for the new Trek film would be a 'retcon' (marketing speak for remake) and that we'd get a new Kirk, Spock, et al. and a fresh start over, kind of like hitting the ol' reset lever on your Atari 2600 if you died to quickly in Pitfall. This 'hit the reset button' stuff is all the rage in Tinseltown these days. And why not?

Just look at what it did for the Batman and James Bond franchises. But sadly, for every Batman Begins or Casino Royale, there are ten Punisher's or The Hulk's waiting to crater on screen. Slim odds for a grand slam, but the decision was made. That's it. We're going to get a new Trek and that's that. Well, OK...fine.

I can still live with that IF the transition and translation are both done right. All you'd have to do is honor the actors that made the franchise what it was when it was at its best, honor the fans that made it so profitable for Paramount over the decades, and honor the traditions that give it its character and unique vision.

Obvious things to do, right? So of course they did them, right? Uh, no. Whored the whole works out for cash, instead. Despite the evident nature of the above suggestions, the boy brat Abrams made sure to do what first? Oh, yeah. Excommunicate William Shatner from the franchise! Errnt! Errnt! Red Alert! Shields up! Moron on the Bridge! Brilliant, Abrams. Throw the one guy under the shuttlecraft that made the whole franchise watchable to begin with. Good move, doofus.

Shatner is Kirk to the entire world! Why would Abrams go out and Fort Marcy Park The Shat? Well, Trek is Abrams' toy now and he simply doesn't want a walking billboard of 'the way things were' chewing up the scenery and reminding everyone that the pimple-faced-boy-band-singer-looking-dweeb playing Kirk now ain't even in the same area code as the face punching stud who's been doing it for over 40 years. "No, no, really, Chris Pine is tough and macho, really! Oh look! An explosion! Uhura's naked! Great movie, eh!? Eh!?" (Paramount sales pitch, there. Ugh. No sale, pal...).

Hey, maybe J.J. will do a Rolling Stones biopic and write in Pat Boone as the lead singer. I mean, as long as we're spitting in the fans faces, let’s eat some potato chips first, right?

Oh and in another Mensa-worthy move, in an Entertainment Weekly interview Brillo head Abrams made the inspirational Einstein-like political move of stating that he never even liked Star Trek to begin with! He 'always thought it was too intellectual.' Then geek boy goes on to drool about how Star Wars was a better 'visceral' franchise (read: special effects laden for slow witted fan boys that buy all the toys and want to see things go 'boom'), and therefore Trek should adopt the George Lucas model of "shoot first, in the middle, at the last and never ask questions or explain plot holes!" Oh, and make sure to jiggle the camera a WHOLE lot, even during those boring dialog scene thingys, just so your audience never forgets this is an action, action, action, action, action film!

Oy. So, what kind of Trek remake are we going to get? Watch the unwatchable trailer for yourself and see...


Star Trek = Transformers + Friday Night Lights. Yeechhhhh.... Somewhere Gene Roddenberry is tearing the head off a Gorn in anger. Y'know, it would take something this putrid to make Trekkies worldwide scream in unison "WE WERE WRONG! BRING BACK RICK BERMAN!" Never thought it possible....

Trek isn't the only remake disaster coming, either. As longwinded as I am, this post could be 5 times longer if I tried to deconstruct every remake that's been done in the last few years. In fact, there is a veritable flood of these coming, so buckle up. This is only going to get worse. H'wood is the only place I know where a bad idea keeps getting repeated over and over and over and over, because "it might work better this time!" Well, the only other place besides Washington D.C.

So what are all these coming glittering clumps of remanufactured movie remake/reboot/regurge dung that we're going to get stuck to the bottoms of our movie going shoes in the future? Well, snap on those chin straps, sports fans, this is a long but only partial, list:

Poltergeist
Red Sonja
Rock & Roll High School
Robocop
Red Dawn
Valley Girl
10 (no Bo Derek, I'm guessing...)
Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Topper
The Jetsons
Dallas
Magnum PI
The Fly (again!)
I Dream of Jeannie
Logan's Run
Tron
The Toy
Sharkey's Machine
Love at First Bite
My Bodyguard
Revenge of the Nerds
Warriors
All of Me
Friday the 13th
ChiPs
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Creature from the Black Lagoon
The Omen
Sunset Boulevard
The Thing
The Boys from Brazil
Clash of the Titans
20,000 Leagues under the Sea
The Dirty Dozen
The Big Chill
Footloose
Taps
Escape From New York
Scanners
Hellraiser
Saturday Night Fever
Jason and the Argonauts
Weird Science
Karate Kid
Top Gun
The A Team
The Last Starfighter
Evil Dead
Death Wish
Conan The Barbarian
The Birds
Fahrenheit 451
Westworld
Meatballs
Short Circuit
1984
Dune
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Fame

Yup. These are all coming remakes. And these are just the ones officially announced. This list doesn't even include the most certainly hundreds more that are on the drawing table. Well, I guess if it's OK to rerun the late 1970's today, with economic upheaval, capricious & spurious energy policies and an incompetent, socialist neophyte as President, then rerunning TV shows and movies from the '70's & '80's too would seem to logically follow, wouldn't it?

I just wish the price of 1970’s concessions would 'rerun' as well. Honestly, who knew a bucket of lawnmower oil flavored popcorn could cost $8.00!

Yeah...I feel your pain, Bill.
I feel your pain...

Election Update!

I just looked at the polls coming in at around 9:50pm Central Time. Wow.

Florida is gone, Ohio is gone, Iowa is gone, Colorado is gone, Virginia is gone, Nevada is gone and Indiana is gone.

This is a disaster. Now I remember why I got so sick to my stomach the night McCain became the Republican Candidate.

Oof.
Maybe they put Election Day so close to Halloween for a reason....

Ready, Aim...

Here it is. D-Day. I have a feeling how this is going to go tonight, but either way this is could be one of the most damaging elections in our history.

Damaging for whom? Well, in the short term, it will be damaging for American individual freedoms, rights and prosperity - in other words, us. But in the long term, this election is going to bust up tonight's winner. Without fail. How?

Well, if Obama, the self appointed Deity of Socialist Revolution, emerges triumphant tonight, then you can kiss off about 3/4th’s of the Bill of Rights and 4/5th’s of your wallet due to his policies of social control and anti-capitalism. But if McCain the Liberal-Light version of Bush wins, then we'll have 100 years of the Media and Dems screaming 'Racism! Outrage! Revenge! They Stole the Election!" Oh boy, here we go.

Sadly, there is no way for Herr Obama to lose fairly, even though we all know how extremely possible that might be. No, the marching, charging Brown Shirts at ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBCNYTIMESLATIMESE and at the Democrat National Politburo will ensure that this truth will never be allowed to live and breathe. If Obama does actually lose, we will get decades of drum banging about how evil the GOP Yellow Stripes are for 'keeping the black man down' and how they stole another election. This is how disastrous tonight's contest could really be. If we think Bush was hamstrung by the closeness of the 2000 election and suffered vicious partisianship as a result, man, we ain't seen nothing yet.

See, I believe the Dems planned this election to go exactly this way. By nominating a black man, they knew they could brutally intimidate the GOP candidate into not attacking or challenging Obama because if the Republican candidate did go on the offensive, his efforts would be labeled as ‘racist,’ 'the politics of personal destruction,' 'gutter tactics,' or some other similar nonsense.

If their chosen black Messiah does lose fairly, even if it were by a massive margin of say two million votes, the Dems would still tar and feather the GOP winner with false charges of whatever mean spirited garbage they need to cripple that winning Republican President, hamstringing him until the Dems can attack again in 4 years. This is the pathetic reality of the McCain campaign - he loses no matter what happens tonight. He cannot win, White House victor or not.

The insidious, clever truth of 'political correctness' is blooming and on full display here in 2008. Its core theme works like this: If you disagree with Liberalism and the Socialist Democrat party, YOU ARE EVIL. Further, you are not entitled to disagree or have a difference of opinion, you are not permitted to criticize, you are not allowed to expect morality from society or your leaders, you cannot have the freedom to express any opposing point of view and you absolutely are forbidden to educate children to think for themselves, independent from the All Mighty Government.

Frankly, this is Stalinism on the march and anyone who has studied history has seen this before, especially in the early to mid 20th Century. When a party or movement relies on the demonization and outlawing of anyone who disagrees with them, they are telling you something! They are telling you that they are in fact a fetal dictatorship that is fighting come to a full term. And this year they are very close to getting exactly what they want.

Obama is the poster boy for all that the left have aspired to achieve since the 1930's, which is a Government of total control and domination over its subjects (not citizens) that CANNOT be contained, criticized, out-voted, called down, questioned or held accountable because if one tries to do just that, they are branded as intolerant haters of children, minorities, the poor, the handicapped, animals, the environment, blah, blah, blah.

And haters can be made illegal because they, well....they hate. And hating is mean. And this gives the ruling party the right to not tolerate any dissent from an opposition that hates. You see the setup? The intolerant can outlaw the intolerant because intolerance is mean.
Clever, huh?

Now, I hope McCain wins just because it will be harder to create another Obama movement quickly again. My intuition is that if Obama loses, the left will have pretty much shot its bolt on the whole 'history making' candidate crap and will find it tougher to do this again in 2012. It is difficult to artificially construct this kind of irrational, emotionalist momentum once, much less two or three times. In fact, it might take a few cycles before they can realistically try this fertilizer again.

However if Obama wins, he and Bela Pelosi and Scary Reid will move hard and fast in the first 100 days to cram through the nation-changing paradigm shift they lust after that will presumably turn America into a European Socialist State. Will they succeed? Of course that depends on the majorities they win tonight and how many Blue Dog Democrats in the South and Weenie Liberal GOP'ers in the Northeast they can bribe, intimidate or threaten.

The left hasn't had a taste of this much power in our nation's history. In the short term, like a spoiled brat teenager left in charge of smaller children, they will vastly overreach in their power lust, bullying and cowing the opposition to bow to their will along the way. They will attempt to bury us in an avalanche of new legislation designed to irrevocably set the table so as to castrate any conservative surges in the future, securing their control for generations. They will attack our freedoms ‘for our own good’ like an Apache raiding party while telling us that if we disagree we are intolerant bigots and hayseeds. This is truly a terrifying night in our history.

But in the long term, when the truth of the Communist, American-hating, Black Panther, Chicago Street Thug Obama finally surfaces in the general American awareness, a massive counter reaction will follow. We will wake up in a year or so and utter one huge, collective “WHAT THE ****!?" We will clearly see how inept, naive and out of his league this idiot man-child is and how dictatorial his movement strove to be.

The fact is that if Obama wins he will likely go down in our Republic’s history as the biggest failure ever installed in the Oval Office. He will become a bigger joke than that moron peanut farmer from Georgia. If Obama loses, though, he will be elevated to ‘Greatest Martyr in History Since JFK' status, meaning his legacy would be bigger and last longer if he went down in flames tonight! Interesting, huh?

Look, if it took a Carter to get a Reagan and it took a Clinton to get the ‘94 Congressional Takeover, then all those breathless leftists might want to pause and think for a second before celebrating tonight. If the size of each resulting Conservative tsunami is always in direct proportion to the Liberal Botch Job that preceded it, then look out!

Obama has the potential to be the biggest, loudest, most disastrous left wing flop in Presidential history. If that turns out to be true, then how big will the resulting backlash be? Whoa. You Leftists better watch out…you maybe planting your own firing squard post tonight.

The real truths underlying this 2008 Election season as I see them are as follows:
1. McCain CANNOT win this election, no matter the result is tonight.
2. Obama would be a bigger hero to the left if he LOST tonight's election - the future will be cruel if he wins.
3. If Liberalism wins tonight, it will pay a painful future price for being EXACTLY what it is because it always overreaches in its desire to wield totalitarian control.
4. Conservatism in the end WILL triumph because it IS Americanism and is the ONLY political philosophy that dove tails with the vision of those giants who founded our nation and made it great. America is still a center right nation and will not tolerate extremists trying to subjugate liberty under the harness of a radical agenda.

All is not lost, fellow Patriots. One election does not a nation make, so take heart! Truth WILL win in the end!

We ain't dead yet, you commie bushwackers!