7/15/2005

A Chocolate Factory by any other name...

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is pretty much sacred ground. Lord only knows who would dare even attempt to remake it, and of course the question is why bother? This isn't like the several bad versions of Dune that exist out there, they got it perfect the first time. But, if anybody's got the stuff to make another version and do something different with it and have it not completely suck, it's got to be Tim Burton, the master of wonderfully weird. And someone like Depp is sure to put a unique stamp on the eccentric candyman.

And while I'm interested to see how Charlie & The Chocoalte Factory turns out, I'm actually much more interested in this weekend's other offering-Wedding Crashers with Vince Vaughn & Owen Wilson. Why? Because it's the first big budget comedy in a couple of years (I think the last one was American Wedding) that's clearly aimed at a non-middle school audience with an apparently hard-earned R rating. And while guys like Wilson & Vaughn don't need to be raunchy to be funny, it's when they are really allowed to let loose in adult fare that you see their best stuff. It's also good to know that no sacrifices were made for the bottom dollar. I'm really expecting this to be the first great comedy of 2005 (not hard considering the only even good one so far has been Hitch).

In the realm of WHY GOD WHY?!?!?-Sony pictures has apparently greenlighted three more sequels that nobody asked for in the first place. Roadhouse (without Patrick Swayze, because apparently he's too busy being a janitor in a pet store), Hollow Man and I Know What You Did Last Summer are ALL getting sequels. Road House and Hollow man were pathetic, and Last Summer was entertaining, but c'mon it already has one horrible sequel, it doesn't need a second. It's just amazing how people love to burn money in Hollywood. You can't claim brand recognition because they don't have any with these titles, and I doubt anyone who was in these movies and still has a career would bother signing up, so there goes any star power. I would just love to sit in on these pitch meetings where someone came up with this idea, someone else thought it was great, and nobody else in the room had the brains to say "ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?"

Finally, The primetime emmy nominations were annoucned today, and it was nice to finally see Scrubs and especially Zach Braff get nominated (although John C. McGinley does such a great job as Dr. Cox that he should've also been nominated as well) considering how hard NBC has made it to even find out when the damn show is on. But otherwise there weren't any really good suprises (although I like that the guy from House was nominated, he's awesome, actually he's like Dr. Cox if he was in a drama) and mostly old favorites (only reason Sopranos didn't scoop up all the nominations possible was because it was taking the year off). But I was geniunely delighted and suprised to see Arrested Development win for best comedy last year, so maybe if they start giving awards to shows and people that actually deserve it, I'll start tuning in again.

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