Just About The Worst Damn Thing I've Ever Seen...

[The Hen]

Fergodsake Jim. Will you just go and have your martini and loosen your tie!

[Lord Jim]

Hen,

My last reply was total sarcasm...

Loosen up lass,,,

[The Hen]

Git your damn Martini!

I have been strring and shaking it all morning. It is more like a milkshake now!

[Lord Jim]

I have been strring and shaking it all morning. It is more like a milkshake now!

Well if it's chilled properly, then perhaps I'll have it . (two olives...I'm trying to increase my vegetable intake...there's a love....)

[dales]

I DARE HOLLYWOOD TO REMAKE ANY OF THESE TITLES!


[youtube]T7fwh-pwI5c&feature=fvst[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7fwh-pwI5c&feature=fvst

[The Hen]

I have been strring and shaking it all morning. It is more like a milkshake now!

Well if it's chilled properly, then perhaps I'll have it . (two olives...I'm trying to increase my vegetable intake...there's a love....)

Here Tis!

[Crackpot]

C-P, I love the original, I have a couple of DVD versions of it, I've not seen the remake, and reading your links, not inspired to I'm afraid.

I quite enjoyed the original myself And my memories of it (haven't seen it in at leas 15 years) stills hold up well THe New one while it sufferes from the usual modern genre pitfalls has more than a few things going for it:

Geoffrey Rush Doing a quite good Vincent Price Impersonation.
The whole literal inmates running the asylum thing a horror angle that never fails to give me the chills.
Plausible deniability for most of the cheesy horror get them alone mainstays.
And the singe biggest reason is the easter egg at the end of the credits showing the "death" that those not lucky enough to survive are damned to endure. Creeped. Me. The. Fuck. Out.

THt being said you have to remember what you're watching: A Horror Movie. Not high art by a long run. Leave any expectations beyond that at the door and it's quite enjoyable.

Interestingly enough I once rented it on DVD and they had a whole tribute to the old Castle horror films the original included.

I was thinking of the two versions of ":The Haunting", the original which was a superb psychological terror, the remake which was a CGI wankfest and actually made me want to smack Catherine Z J.

I figured you were

[Gob]

Another "remake" given the "treatment", I despair...

TWELVE years after the French film The Dinner Game conquered half the known world, spawning versions in Hindi, Malayalam and Chinese, we come to the American remake.

It was originally to star Sacha Baron Cohen as the schmuck - or one of them - but he walked during an endless development nightmare that included the Hollywood writers' strike, the divorce of Paramount and DreamWorks and the usual ''creative differences''. It now stars Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, with an unusual supporting cast that includes Jemaine Clement from The Flight of the Conchords and David Walliams from Little Britain. It cost around $70 million, according to the Los Angeles Times, which is about $5 million per laugh if I'm generous.

The American version of a successful ''foreign'' film is almost never as good as its parent, but it solves the problem of asking American audiences to read. The avoidance of subtitles is not just an American affliction, either: many Australians refuse to go there, just as teenagers rarely watch films in black and white. That closes the door on much of the greatest cinema - including the greatest era of American cinematic comedy, from the 1920s to the 1940s.


The French film was called Le Diner de Cons, a title best not translated in a family newspaper. It was written by Francis Veber, who adapted his own hit play. In a 40-year career, Veber has written some classic French farces. This one was about a wealthy businessman (Thierry Lhermitte) who enjoyed a cruel game: a weekly dinner with his friends in which there was a prize for the one who brought the biggest idiot. Jacques Villeret played Monsieur Pignon, a sad-faced roly-poly bumbler from the Ministry of Finance whose hobby was to build matchstick replicas of major landmarks. There was no dinner in the film: Pignon kept the two men largely in the businessman's apartment, as havoc followed his every action.

The new version changes much of that, of course. There is now a big dinner at a baronial mansion, hosted by a financial shark called Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood). Tim (Rudd) is desperate to advance in Fender's private equity firm, so he must show that he's as cruel as the other executives by bringing an idiot to dinner. Enter Carell as Barry, a geek in glasses who stuffs dead mice and places them in elaborate kitsch tableaux. He's prodigiously unworldly, gormless but good-hearted. Tim invites him to the dinner, even though he has promised his fiancee Julie (Stephanie Szostak) that he will not take part in this cruel game.

Notice the crucial change: the mean one is now Fender, a representative of the financial class that Hollywood recently loves to hate. Tim is just the apprentice, whose soul is at stake. That changes all the scenes between Tim and Barry by lessening Tim's guilt. He's more sympathetic but less funny. If we don't despise him, he's just a straight man for Carell's antics.

There is a wider problem, because Barry isn't a credible buffoon. It's a tricky role because Barry is both a complete nincompoop and a functioning bureaucrat. He works for the IRS, which may explain why he's friendless, but not why he knows so little about the real world. Carell plays him as dumb and smart, innocent and cunning. It makes him funny in patches in the short term, but less credible as a character.

The fact that director Jay Roach - director of the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents franchises - is prepared to settle for that means he cares more about the individual scenes than the overall sweep. That's hardly new in American comedy, where the trailer is now more important than the characterisation, but it was there in the French original. He had to make a decision to lose it in the remake.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/mov ... utostart=1

Wouldn't the world be a better place if they lined Carrell, Sandler, Ferrell, Myers and all the new "comedy actors" up against the wall, and shot them with a canon load of their own bullshit?

[Timster]

I completely agree.

And don't forget Ben Stiller!!! I would rather gouge my own eyes out then watch anything with him in it.

[Sean]

It's worth watching Tropic Thunder just for Robert Downey Jr's performance Timster...

[Timster]

I'll take your word for that Sean. But I like me eyes. Thanks all the same.

[Crackpot]

Stiller is hit or miss. Tropic Thunder (especially if you look at it for what it is: a spoof on the egos that fill Hollywood) is exellent.

[Timster]

See above. I can't stand the man.

[Timster]

He's Not clever. Not Funny. Not entertaining in any way shape form or fashion.

He makes me want to be racist. Fuck him and anything that closely resembles him. FUCK BEN STILLER!!!

ARRRRRRRRGH!!!!#@

[loCAtek]

Roger that, and the horse he rode in on!

[Sean]

I don't mind Ben Stiller actually. Especially after seeing how happy he was to take the piss out of himself and his movies in Extras...

[Gob]

What other option did he have?