remake

I'm not the kind of person who gets her panties in a twist over a favorite book being brought to the screen, a movie being turned into a television series or Shakespeare getting a modern revamp. Different mediums. Different stories. Different times. In the hands of the right artist, you get an equally exciting cultural product to hug, love, squeeze and call "George." Even crappy re-tellings don't have to denigrate the original. They're not necessary - High Fidelity didn't need to be a Broadway musical; Gus Van Sant didn't need to remake Psycho shot-for-shot; and no one needs to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But, for the most part, these things come and go. They haven't bothered me any... until now.

The planned movie remake of the hit '80s primetime soap Dallas has encountered numerous road blocks on its slow crawl to production. Jennifer Garner said no to role of Pam Ewing, then Jennifer Lopez, who was set to play Sue Ellen, dropped out of the project. Meg Ryan came in to take her place, but she has also left the project, along with Shirley MacLaine and Luke Wilson. That leaves John "JR Ewing" Travolta as the only one left out of the main cast. Apparently focus groups only liked the JR character, and director Gurinder Chadha was not happy with the casting choices. The abandoned roles will be recast, but it's not clear whether Chadha will stay with the project. Sounds to me like it might be time to put this particular dog to sleep for good and start working on a movie people really want to see: an animated version of Falcon Crest.

In 1990, when I was in middle school, ABC aired a two-part miniseries based on Stephen King's gargantuan novel IT. I had a television in my room, so I had a place to watch shows my parents didn't want to watch, so I stretched out on my bed and watched the movie. Perhaps I was just a wuss (and I was) but the movie scared the living crap out of me. Fast forward to college, and my then girlfriend and I decide to rent IT, which I had not seen since those two nail-biting nights in my room back in 1990. I have to say I didn't have the same reaction as before. I found it to be rather mediocre, and mildly frightening at best. Also, by that time I had actually read the book, so I knew what most fans of King's work already know, which is that movie and television adaptations of his work can be very hit and miss, but mostly miss.

But that's not going to stop them from trying it again. Peter Filardi, who already adapted 'Salem's Lot for TNT and is helming "The Road Virus Heads North" segment of the upcoming Nightmares and Dreamscapes series, told Fangoria he's developing IT for the SciFi Channel. Originally he was to make a two-hour version of the novel for TNT, but will instead stretch it out to a four-hour movie for SciFi. The article further states that the adaptation will tell the story "through the eyes of the character of Beverly Marsh."

Either I had completely forgotten about this, or I never actually knew about it in the first place, but back in the 1980s, Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi worked on an updated version of Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil, one of the best cartoons ever made. Now, Clampett was a huge influence on John K's style, so if anyone was going to try and bring this old cartoon back and revamp it for a new audience, I figure he was the best choice. Of course, I think it would be impossible to ever duplicate the brilliance of the original, but based on this full episode I found on YouTube, they did a pretty decent job. There seems to be very little information on this cartoon, and as far as I can tell, IMDb doesn't even have a listing for it. I'm fairly certain voice actor Stan Freberg provides the same voices (Cecil, Dishonest John, etc.) in this cartoon as he did in the original, though I can't be positive about that.

This is the type of news that makes me think a.) Hollywood doesn't know what its doing, b.) Producers have no imaginations, and c.) Big stars will do anything for a f***ing paycheck.

Will Smith, who did soooooo well bringing Wild, Wild West to the big screen a few years back, will take on the Robert Wagner role in an updated version of It Takes A Thief. Now, this was a very cool show. I loved it as a kid. But why do they insist on remaking these shows? It's not the premise/plot of a show that makes it great, it's the combination of a certain star at a certain time in TV history. (I've talked about this so many times on these pages I really don't have the energy to go into it anymore.)

I don't care who they have writing this or who they have directing it, I can tell you right now it's going to be lame. It has to be.

Jessica Lange and Tammy Blanchard, who is currently filming The Good Shepherd in Haiti with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, will star in the CBS remake of the 1976 NBC made-for-television movie, Sybil. Blanchard will play the title role, of a woman with multiple personality disorder. Lange will play her psychiatrist, who helps Sybil realize that years mental, physical and sexual abuse from her mother caused her emotional problems. Kinda sounds like an episode of Law and Order, doesn't it? I'm sure, in its day, the story was ground-breaking. I never saw the 1976 version, and I know I'm missing out on a lot of pop culture references because of it. The movie is based on the book of the same name which chronicled the real-life treatment of a woman from 1954-1965, who had 16 different personalities. The original version of the movie starred Joanne Woodward and Sally Field, who won an Emmy for the role. The screenwriter, Stewart Stern, also won an Emmy that year.

Filming of the remake begins next week in Nova Scotia. No air date is set.