I read a little while ago that MTV and some others were planning on remaking the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  Which is the sort of news I guess one greets with some level of trepidation.  I love the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I’ve watched it umpteen times, have the you beaut special anniversary edition DVD, have the CD soundtrack, went to see three different stage productions of it over the years….  what can I say?  It’s a classic.

So yeah… remaking it is either going to be fan-fucking-tastic or absolutely atrocious.  There’s no middle ground to be had here.  They’re going to have to smash it out of the park to keep their original fans happy or they’re going to tank in a spectacular fashion and be forever known as ‘that other shit new version’.

Another old Rocky Horror fan sent me a list of his ‘dream cast’ for the remake and I reckon a large portion of this films success will rest on them making solid choices in the main roles.  I mean who on earth can top Tim Curry for Frank N Furter?  That’s a tall ask I reckon.  So who would you cast if you had control of such things???  This is the list my friends came up with over dinner.  My preferences bolded and the ‘oh that would be a shit choice’ stuck out.

Dr Frank N Furter
Brendan Fraser, Patrick Warburton, Hugh Laurie, Dwayne Johnston, Jeremy Irons, Rupert Everett, Jeff Goldblum, Tim Roth, Antonio Banderas, Nathan Lane, Hugh Grant, Ewan McGregor, Ralph Fiennes, Kurt Russell, Denis Leary, Robert Downey Jnr, Hugh Jackman, Billy Zane, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, Eric Bana, Johnny Depp, Prince Rogers Nelson and Freddy Mercury (digital reconstruction!) … no one said this had to be realistic!

Richard O’Brien, Tim Curry and Patricia Quinn
Riff Raff, Dr Frank N Furter and Magenta

Riff Raff
Quentin Tarantino, Alan Rickman, Stanley Tucci, Rowan Atkinson, Kelsey Grammar, Chris Rock, John Malkovic, Bruce Spence, Armande Assante, John Leguizamo, Jack Black, Nathan Lane, Mos Def, George Clooney, Ryan Stiles, Mandy Patinkin, John Travolta, Andy Serkis, James Spader, Richard E Grant, David Duchovny, Steve Buscemi, Michael Clark Duncan, Verne Troyer, Tim Minchin, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Dave Foley… I think I’d like to see Christopher Eccleston give Riff Raff a go.

Brad Majors
John Cusack, Jeff Goldblum, Jason Lee, Adrian Brody, David Tennant, Charlie Cox as much as I love John Cusack, I think he’s a bit old in the teeth for this one.  What about Natan Fillion??

Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon
Brad Majors and Janet Weiss

Janet Weiss
Selma Blair, Jaime Pressley, Jewel Staite, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Naomi Watts, Clare Danes, Kristen Bell, Kate Winslet

Magenta
Holland Taylor, Bette Midler, Joan Cusack, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfieffer, Tia Carrere, Toni Collette, Janeane Garufalo, Selma Blair, Christina Ricci, Kathleen Turner, Christine Baranski, Julie Anthony, Julie Andrews, Joanna Lumbley, Emily Watson. (I think they must have had a fair bit of wine by this stage of the list making)

Nell Campbell
Columbia

Eddie
Dwayne (the Rock) Johnston, Dask Mihok, Paul Mc Dermott, John Travolta, Vin Diesel (yeah!), Guy Pierce, Matthew Perry, Diedrich Bader, Jack Black,

Columbia
Rosario Dawson, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Zooey Deschanel, Julie Brown, Salma Hayek, Pink, Jane Horrocks (perfect), Catherine Zeta Jones, Julia Sawalha

Tim Curry, Peter Hinwell, Susan Sarandon
Dr Frank N Furter, Rocky Horror, Janet Weiss

Rocky Horror
Dwayne (the Rock) Johnston (am begining to think there must have been a fan in the room), Diedrich Bader, Alan Tudyk…. don’t know who’d make a good Rocky. Maybe they’d be better off casting some unknown piece of buff man meat

Dr Scott
John Goodman, Ron Perlman, John Travolta, Alec Baldwin, Brian Blessed, Christopher Walken, Sam Neill, Michael Caine, Stephen Fry, Gene Hackman, Miriam Margolyes

the Narrator
Rowan Atkinson, Patrick Warburton, Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammar, John Rhys-Davies, John Goodman, Richard Attenborough, Michael Gambon, Tim Curry, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, Tom Selleck, Art Malik, Ben Kingsley, John Cleese.

Dunno.  Hard choices very hard choices.  Lets just hope they don’t fuck it up  🙂
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I went to the cinema today to see Children of the Silk Road which was not bad but at the same time not quite the epic saga I was expecting.  I think the film attempts to be a sort of Schindler’s List type film but set in Japan occupied China c1930s but I’m not sure it really hits the mark.  The main character George Hogg (played by Johnny Rhys Meyers) British journalist who naively gets himself into the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up seeing things he wasn’t prepared for and then he kinda floats along on the fringes of the unrest being equally effected yet somehow distant to the Japanese occupation that was going on around him.  He seemed a bit one dimensional to me perhaps because the screenplay has come about by interviewing people who idolized him – I’m not sure.  The film is well worth seeing for some of it’s rather impressive dramatic action sequences but it was also a little disappointing … I think I was expecting something better given that Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat were in the cast.  Nevermind – they can’t all be winners.

My Mum who came to the cinema with me asked me today what my favourite movie was and I replied with a blank stare and asked her what sort of question is that?  It’s like asking what your favourite music is?  It depends so much on what sort of mood you’re in, what you’ve been exposed to lately, what is speaking to you at the time.  I could no sooner answer her with definitive answer to my favourite film than I could answer definitively to my favourite food.  I could tell you today that Grosse Point Blank is my absolute favourite film, but then I might remember how much I loved Amelie.  It’s an impossible question.

Today some of my favourite films are –

Grosse Point Blank
Dazed and Confused
Threesome
Ideal Husband
Queen Margot
Mallrats
Hero
Office Space
Artemisia
Empire Records
The Last Supper
Eurotrip
Before Sunrise
American Beauty
House of Flying Daggers
Much Ado About Nothing
Monsoon Wedding
Heathers
Curse of the Golden Flower
Pushing Tin
Amelie
Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann)
Reality Bites
Matilda
Pump Up the Volume
The Importance of Being Ernest
8 Femmes

Ask me again tomorrow and I’d probably have a totally different list.
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I watched a strange movie tonight – “In Bruges”.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, the trailer makes it look like a comedy revolving around some criminal hitmen types that are hiding out in Bruges and while there were some truly bizarre moments that you can’t help laughing your arse off at for sheer absurdity (eg: when Ray comes back from his date and describes it to his mate Ken – fuckin’ gold).

But it also had some pretty hefty content for a comedy the hitmen being emotionally distraught and not coping with their chosen profession  – Ray (Colin Farrell) is all wrung out over his first hit going pear shaped and the other guy Ken (Brendan Gleeson) doesn’t seem to be coping either with his years in on the job even though they originally appear really nonchalant about it all.   I know we all laugh at deadly serious situations all the time it’s one of those ‘Pain + Distance = Humour’ things but a lot of the themes running through the movie were anything but funny and the twists and action stuff in the second half gets pretty messy.

There were some absolute fantastic dialogue and really witty one liners here and there which I always enjoy.  So yeah… death, cocaine, medieval history, dutch hookers, a film crew, an American midget, a clock tower and a half blind ‘gay’ skinhead petty criminal….  

“Two mankey hookers and a racist dwarf… I’m going home!’

That just about sums it up really 🙂
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I’ve spent my weekend doing mundane things…

• pottering around the house (but not ‘pottering’ in a Patrick Swayze/Ghost kinda way)
• making meals (good call on the tacos Angel)
• watching small children for a bit (how does so much noise come from such little people) 
• embroidering A LOT (whose stupid idea was that?)
• shopping for poles (nobody gets paid for holding a pole unless you’re Betty from Cardiff!)

And other than that… what else have I done?  Memory failure again… happening far too much.

Think I went to the movies…. yep have just been reliably informed that I went to see Iron Man yesterday… all I remember is that it was interminably long and sitting still so long absolutely killed  my back and the guy had a cool suit or something like that.

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