The budget for this remake [And let's be honest, that's what it is. 'Reinvention' is just a way to say 'recycled idea' without sounding as creatively desperate as you actually are,] is $25-million. Which in Hollywood terms is pocket change! And that’s another reason why every new Actor deserves the same kind of break as this movie should give those at its core.

Any Actor who demands $50m or more just to get out of bed is an over-sized ego, with legs. And whoever who pays it is that Actor’s fool. Give the freshmen a worthwhile chance and the results can burn holes in the screen. New Actors have a passion their more experienced peers ceased to feel or care about years ago. But the $50M guys put butts in the seats, so they get all of the breaks. And that’s sad.

For those too young to remember, ‘Fame’ is the story of the joys and despairs felt by hyper-talented teens and their mentors during a year of devotion [and copious sweating] at the High School for the Performing Arts in New York. The original movie set box-office records and quite rightly collected two Oscars. I hold no such hopes for its parody’s future.

The movie will debut on September 25 and I wish its new stars boundless success. I just think Hollywood should give its nascent new talent a more worthy, original showcase.

Photo by Megyarsh

“Batman, TDK” includes six scenes that were created in Imax as a way to lure audiences to more profitable Imax cinemas to enjoy the effect. To date, it has produced $60+ million from those screens, and several Directors have seized on this fact as consummate proof how essential it is that they get to play with this shiny, new toy.

According to Variety, Transformers 2 will include three scenes shot in Imax. Iron Man 2 will also include some Imax scenes, and several pictures in pre-production are now being considered for similar treatment.

No-one would argue that DVD’s have shredded a movie’s Box Office potential and studios need a way to get people back into theaters to watch the films there instead. It’s more profitable. But Imax isn’t it.

Audiences don’t stay home because the format is wrong. They stay home because they’re tired of intellectually vapid, comic-inspired, derivative sequels. Imax is 70mm and produces resolution you could shave with. But crud in 70mm is still crud. Make an original, intelligent movie with a strong script, a believable premise and a well-chosen cast and the audience won’t care if it’s in Super-8! Choose any other path and the fault is your own.

Transformers 2 is booked for a simultaneous debut on regular and Imax screens on June 26. Let’s see who has the mental acuity to learn this small lesson in time.

Imax photo by: Laffy4k
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Sorry…Just kidding – They’re going to remake Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The 1988 original, helmed by Frank Oz, is one of the most forgettable films to ever stimulate the human synapses. And now they want to do it again. And this probably won’t be the last time. No-one has signed on to have their careers blighted by this travesty yet, but A-list talent is [claimed] to be reviewing the project with interest.

And it doesn’t end there: MGM also have remakes of Red Dawn, Robocop, Fame and Poltergeist in development. Robocop I can almost understand – The original is a kitschy classic, but it was hollow. They made a good idea…badly. It might actually do better in remake. And Poltergeist has been re-made as every shlock-horror flick of the last twenty years, so that’s a moot point. Red Dawn was a good movie, but without Patrick it’s doomed to be a messy pastiche of its former self. Not a good idea.

But my favorite item from MGM’s public confession of creative inadequacy is Fame. Released on May 16th, 1980 it was a box office juggernaut and won two Oscars. So at 28 years old it was made years before any of the audience MGM hope to sell it to this time, so they’ll think it’s a new idea. Add the two Oscars and it doesn’t take a mental giant to see the appeal.

But the funniest part is the subject matter. Set at NYC’s High School for the Performing Arts, it [at least, the original of it] contains more action and movement in one scene than a 2008 teenager has experienced in their entire cosseted, Wii-thrashing lives.

MGM are clearly thinking it was huge in 1980, so it can be huge again now. Wrong! 1980 was a different world – Wii’s didn’t exist, PS3’s didn’t exist. Cellphones were the size of dictionaries, and computers were large, clunky boxes in the corners of science labs, and could only be touched by odd little men with white lab coats and terminal acne. A 2003 teen would call it the stone age. And looking back, I’d agree. But that’s just the point: Make a movie about ‘The NYC Academy of Txt Msgng’ and you’d have lines round the block! But show today’s teens a movie where intelligent people who are not on medication indulge voluntarily in frantic activity that leaves every inch of their bodies hosed in sweat, and they’ll think it’s a cult. Or some kind of torture.

They move their fingers to type, or their thumbs to talk. Show them more exertion than that and the only thing they’ll move is their butts…Towards another movie! I can only wish MGM well with their forthcoming flop…And feel deeply relieved it’s not my money at stake.

MGM Cat photo by: 00ucci
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So, this earth-shattering anti-climax invokes two vital questions:

A) Is there anyone out there with the intellectual evolution to tie their own shoes that believed for a moment he actually wouldn’t?

…and B) Does the world really need a Spiderman 4??

Correct me if I’m mis-reading the clues but this has all the hallmarks of yet another tiresome crusade to manipulate the public to gain free PR; You present the media with a ‘tragic’ scenario, then sit back in palm-buffing glee as they slavishly report your onanistic fallacy like it had the smallest scintilla of a chance to be fact. Then, once the resultant furor has peaked, you issue a second announcement, informing what you indulgently perceive as a panic-stricken world that this fearful circumstance – which was never real to begin with – has been miraculously averted, thanks to the selfless dedication of the same malfeasant half-wits who caused its creation.

Result? Two non-stories for the price of one, and long [profitable] lines at the Box Office.

And those who make movies are far from the only ones guilty of this insulting charade; Pick any performing medium and you’ll find the same brainless knavery; Self-inflicted drug ‘addiction’, Cows cut in half and embedded in plastic, two faded movie starlets kissing in public [in front of every camera they could possibly find,] declaring your candidacy against John McCain…three months before the election….The list is as endless as it is disrespectful.

As the audience, we deserve higher regard. Show us a performer imbued with genuine talent and we’ll make them a legend without further delay. It has been thus since the dawn of movies in those halcyon days of the roaring 20’s. But woe betide s/he who practices trickery – Despite the corrosive effects of the cranial oatmeal that forms the majority of American TV we still have an intellect, and we neither appreciate nor deserve its being abused or insulted for exploitative gain.

Quite how we can counter this sickening trend has yet to be clear, but we need to do something or it can only get worse [If that's possible.] Suggestions of ways to achieve our redress are hereby invited. Meantime, I’m off to rest in a darkened room with 10lbs of Hershey’s, while my brain recovers from this latest assault.

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So, of course, our friends in LA have decided to do it again.

20th Century Fox describe the upcoming and wholly inexcusable re-make of the 1951 sci-fi classic, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” as ‘a contemporary reinvention’…which is enough to chill any movie buff’s blood before you even finish the the press release! The plot concerns Klaatu, an alien who crosses the vastness of space to educate our feudal society on the need for peace among the worlds, promptly causing a degree of incoherent panic not seen since the Jonas boys were in town.

The original starred the unique (and perfectly cast) Mr. Michael Rennie. In this hideous re-tread his role will be played by Keanu….Need I say more?

Assuming the effects of whatever herbal medication it took to convince so many people that this glorious and iconic movie was in the slightest need of ‘reinvention’ don’t wear off by then, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ is scheduled to open on December 12th.

If there was ever a perfect time tor the Vogons to arrive, that date is now it.