Thursday, January 13, 2011

Look At My Briefs -- 1/13/11

It's snowing here today in northern New York. I assume that everyone on the planet is also getting snow which means none of you has anything else to do except take a peek at another edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

Even though I didn't care too much for The Cape, I'll disagree with this Salon headline and assert that television can, in fact, do supeheroes. As evidence, I present the first season of Heroes. While it sadly went downhill, season one of Heroes was as good as television gets. Case closed. I win.

Some of the saddest news I've heard in a long time is that the script for Ghostbusters 3 is ready to go. Going by Ghostbusters 2 and the fact that it's been 20 years since that came out and no one really wanted a third one, I just can't imagine this would be any good. Is it possible that I could be wrong and that this could be a delightful romp that will take me back to my childhood? Well, I suppose it's poss...NO NO NO! That's exactly what Ivan Reitman wants me to do. I will now and forever, without seeing it, judge the movie poorly and refuse to change my opinion no matter what evidence comes my way because that's how an intelligent film critic behaves.

One remake I can honestly say is a good idea is Total Recall. The Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is a decent action film and not much else. I'm sure this will have action but producer Neal Moritz at least implies that they'll be shooting for something closer to the original Philip K. Dick story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale that it was based on. That's the case with most screen adaptations of Philip K. Dick. Even the good ones like Blade Runner and Minority Report differ wildly from the original work. You have to expect that from movies, of course, or else you'll drive yourself insane but for now I will remain a bit optimistic that something resembling Dick's intelligent science fiction will make it to the big screen.

This has been a week for bad news but at least we can all be relieved that, for now, Michael Douglas has scored in his battle against cancer.

I'm trying to figure out which is a better example of reality fucking with me. Is it Baz Luhrmann's wish to film The Great Gatsby in 3D or the fact that Jersey Shore's Snooki is now a published author? I suppose I should congratulate Miss Snooki for having the dignity not to cash in on her fame by tossing a few ideas to a ghost writer and instead insisting on writing the whole book herself and submitting it anonymously so it would rise above the other books in the slush pile on its own merits. If that's not what happened, don't tell me because I don't want to know.

After suffering through several years having to hear about how seeing Janet Jackson's nipple was destroying the country and seeing it blamed for everything from the financial crisis to swine flu, I now thoroughly enjoy it when the nation's professional prudes lose a battle. Soon, the nation will be a seething cauldron of hedonism. That's what they think, anyway.

Onion Sportsdome is the best new show to be on Comedy Central since...um...hell, I can't remember the last time they had a decent show. I still like South Park and The Daily Show/Colbert but if you take those two out, Comedy Central has as much actual comedy as a 1970's Soviet farm documentary. Sportsdome is a live action parody of, among other things, ESPN's Sportscenter and, unlike the countless South Park ripoffs that Comedy Central has been feeding us for years, this is actually funny. Keep up the good work.

No comments: