Over on Keith's blog, he's got a link to the horrific, revolting, stupid (pick an adjective, any adjective) news that "they" (pick a they, any they that revolts you) are slated to REMAKE Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai". Whether you know the film or not (I don't, but I have huge respect for it, the director and its fans) this is simply unnecessary, stupid, disgusting (pick another adjective, you know the drill) and so damn sad.

It's certainly not true that this is all they're doing lately - there are lots of original stories being made in Hollywood lately (I don't go to a lot of movies but here's the list of movies I went to in the last couple of years: "Good NIght, and Good Luck", "Wallace & Gromit" The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", "A Mighty Wind", "March of the Penguins", "Cars")- but doesn't it seem that they're just being too damn lazy, too damn unwilling to take risks or pay real writers for real ideas when they announce this kind of stupidity? whether it's a movie version of some cheesy tv show (oh, boy, "Starsky and Hutch" the movie) or Scoobie Doo, (oh come ON now, no don't tell me if it really was groovy, ok?) or a "new" "Poseidon Adventure" or "Manchurian Candidate, this sucks hugely. It insults the viewer, the original film-maker, and on and on.

But here's the worst thing that happens when you read something like this: - Your inner voice which you can't shut off goes "Oh, my god, what next?" And THAT gets SO scary because we all have them, don't we? Classic movies or favorite movies or movies from our childhood or stories we just thought were told SO WELL the first time that we loved the movie and it was @$*#%(^ perfect as is? (And I make an exception for "High Society" which was a surprisingly decent remake of "The Philadelphia Story" for what it was, using much of the same script - but Bing Crosby is NO C K Dexter Haven, lemme tell ya.)

My nightmare: remakes of "Casablanca" and "To Kill A Mockingbird".

Yours?