Look At My Briefs -- 9/30/10

Cool, one more day until the start of ROCKTOBER! WOOOO! What better way is there to start such a festive month than by reading another edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

I absolutely loved the Swedish film Let The Right One In, a movie that is both a gruesome horror story and a touching coming-of-age film. Therefore, I wasn't happy when I heard that an American remake would be coming out soon. Tomorrow, in fact. I simply assumed they would try to jazz it up with action sequences and probably give it the Twilight treatment by making the kids into sexy young adults instead of 12 year olds. Well, not only did they not do that but the movie is garnering excellent reviews. The fact that the movie might be good actually seems like a violation of some sort, as if the natural order of things has been upset.

Speaking of violations and natural orders being upset, I present this: AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Yes, it's true, aliens have replaced George Lucas with a guy who's planning to do a 3D conversion to the Star Wars movies. This is all part of the alien plot to destroy all that is good and holy. After this, some sort of puppy killing virus will be introduced to the water supply then the atmosphere will be polluted with some sort of additive that will cause all the world's soft ice cream to harden up. If I'm wrong and this really is George Lucas doing it, I'm sure he'll try to make it up to the fans by offering to edit Shia LeBeouf out of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Last week, I expressed my dislike for the new Fox drama Lone Star. Despite its generally high rating from critics, I found it boring and wondered if I was the only one. Then I read this from an article on Hollywoodreporter.com:

From the beginning critics wondered if "Lone Star" could draw a broadcast-sized audience. The show best resembled the sort of nuanced character-driven dramas seen on basic cable networks like FX and AMC. But Fox expressed high confidence, with entertainment president Kevin Reilly telling critics the only reason shows like "Mad Men" pull such low numbers is because they're not on his network.

"The only reason those shows aren't watched by more people is they're not on Fox," Reilly said. "The [basic cable networks] don't have this [promotional] machine."

Those are the final paragraphs added in, I assume, because of the writer's cruelly ironic sense of humor. I say this because the subject of the article is the cancellation of Lone Star after only two episodes. One thing Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly failed to take into account when boasting about the incredible Fox marketing juggernaut was that Mad Men is excellent while Lone Star sucked.

Roland Emmerich is doing a period thriller about the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays. I'll get back to this in about six months as my brain is incapable of processing the concept of the guy who made Armageddon, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow switching gears like...see? I can't come up with anything else.

Staying in perfect character, however, is Uwe Boll. His last movie was a comedy that opened with the destruction of the World Trade Center called Postal. The fact that most of you probably think I'm kidding tells you all you need to know about the critical and financial success of that film. Now, Boll took the conclusion of the public that he couldn't possibly sink any lower as a challenge and has made a movie about Auschwitz. Judging by the article, Boll's artistic vision was to remake Saw and set it in Auschwitz, just as those who died there would have wanted it. There are two pieces of good news. The first is that, like all of Boll's films, it will only make a profit because it cost so little to make. The second is that Boll will have to die someday.

Chris Noth has a point. If film critics didn't have such discerning taste that allowed them to easily identify godawfully bad films, Sex and the City 2 would have been more popular.