Nightmare!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

OK...trying to remain calm...taking deep breaths...feeling horrible Hulk-like rage...OK...

One of my BIGGEST FUCKING pet peeves is the constant remaking of classic movies. It is a very, very bad idea 99.9% of the time. The original is ALWAYS better - on RARE occasion, the remake is quality, but ALMOST NEVER as good as or even better. Take for example Cape Fear. The remake was a good movie, but nothing compared to the original (mmm, Mitchum...). (aside: I don't know how I feel about The Departed versus Infernal Affairs. I really like both.). But the majority of the time, the resulting film is disatrous, horrible, insulting, and so on. It makes me literally sick to my stomach to think that there are millions of people out there who think that Get Carter is a really bad Stallone movie, Alfie is a really bad Jude Law movie, The Italian Job is a really bad whoever the fuck all those people were movie, Te Ladykillers (oh, Coen Brothers, Where Were Thou? A crack house??) is a really bad Tom Hanks movie...I could go on for days. Don't even get me started with the whole Americans-are-too-dumb-to-read-subtitles remakes. The Vanishing, every Japanese horror flick of the past few years...I could go on and on and fucking on here. I have a feeling I am preaching to the choir, though.

And now today's news: Turns out that Nicole Kidman has bought the rights to remake How to Marry a Millionaire (thanks to Michael K of dlisted.com for, as always, keeping me informed of such horrors). This is one of my favorite films - for those who have not seen it, it stars Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable as three young gals-about-town in NYC whose collective sole mission in life is to marry rich. So they pool all of their resources into renting a very swanky apartment, which they can barely afford to keep, so it's almost completely unfurnished. Marilyn Monroe is particularly excellent, playing a ditzy Marilyn Monroe-ish character who has terrible eyesight but refuses to wear her glasses and is always walking into things. I shudder to think who they would cast in this role. Perhaps Cameron Diaz or Drew Barrymore - they both supposedly do that goofy/clumsy/charming shit well, or so goes the conventional wisdom. Then again, Scarlett Johansson is shorthand for "curvy blonde" these days. Yeesh. Lauren Bacall is imperious and glamorous and fabulous as the smart one, the leader of the pack. I am quite sure this is the role our Nikki has in mind for herself. Betty Grable is the girl next door trying to be the big city girl, but she can't hide her true nature and winds up falling for a park ranger with no money. Again, I shudder to think...I can just see some prickwad producer thinking Lindsay Lohan's freckles=country girl/girl next door. Heaven help us.

As for the men...the only chubby & nerdy male actors working in Hollywood today that spring to mind to play Piggy, Marilyn's equally vision-impaired beau, would be Philip Seymour Hoffman or Jack Black. As for the debonaire rich-man in hiding who Lauren Bacall spurns only to find put he's a Rockefeller...I guess Clooney...sigh..I have no probelm with Clooney, but I have a major problem with this movie being remade. A) It's pathetic that all those overpaid chump stains in Holywood can't come up with a decent original idea to save their hides. Fassbinder lived to be 37 years old and made 42 completely original films and one adaptation (Querelle, which was based on a novel by Jean Genet) and did it all while whacked out of his mind on drugs. B) It may be cultural fascism on my part, but I believe that if Hollywood thinks these movies are so good that they need to be remade, people should be forced to see the original versions. Imagine if they put the marketing muster and dollars behind promoting a wide screen re-release of the original How to Marry a Millionaire. And a whole new generation fell in love with it. Now that would be cool.