Thursday 5 May 2011
ADRIAN BRODY READS BIGGIE SMALLS
Congratulations to actor Adrian Brody for paying tribute to the Notorious B.I.G. this week by reading out the lyrics to 10 Crack Commandments at some poetry event in New York. He sounds and looks dumb while he's doing it but maybe that was the point. What do I know? In any case, it seems like a good opportunity to once again flag this up. Fucking love me some Brodyquest.
Saturday 23 April 2011
WHEN AAHHH BURRRRRRRN-AH!
Can't stop listening to this: the vocal recording for Metallica's 1990s hit Fuel. Is there a word for this kind of singing? The scary thing is James Hetfield sounds like he really means it as he bellows out these utterly retarded lyrics. Is it even possible to sound like this without being in some way full of bullshit?
Friday 8 April 2011
Monday 4 April 2011
THE INEXPLICABLE WORLD OF JAPANESE FIGURINES
You may have seen this video before. It's a remarkable clip of a Japanese pop concert with a screaming audience of thousands. Cut to the chase: the object of the crowd's affection is a three-dimensional, all-singing, all-dancing hologram. Her name is Mika Hatsune and like all Japanese cartoon women she looks like a very tall child. Her existence is both impressive and deeply unsettling.
This week an anonymous man in Japan parted with about $6,000 on a Yahoo Auctions site so that he could own a small, naked, plastic statue of Mika. The figurine in question was made by some hobbyist. What in God's name is going on? Even a rabid fanbase as dedicated and giddy as Radiohead's would balk at spending thousands and thousands of pounds on a piece of merchandise made by some Herbert in a garage. Even if it was a model of Thom Yorke with his boobs out.
I have never and hopefully will never understand the nebbish world of Japanese figurine collections. They look awful and are extremely expensive. Usually they're vaguely pornographic too. Displaying a whole collection of them is akin to a person deciding to not ever bathe again. An anti-social gesture, designed to put up a wall between them and all other humans. Once you have shelved and polished your brood of plastic anime sex-children you have effectively snuffed out the light of all future social interaction.
This week an anonymous man in Japan parted with about $6,000 on a Yahoo Auctions site so that he could own a small, naked, plastic statue of Mika. The figurine in question was made by some hobbyist. What in God's name is going on? Even a rabid fanbase as dedicated and giddy as Radiohead's would balk at spending thousands and thousands of pounds on a piece of merchandise made by some Herbert in a garage. Even if it was a model of Thom Yorke with his boobs out.
I have never and hopefully will never understand the nebbish world of Japanese figurine collections. They look awful and are extremely expensive. Usually they're vaguely pornographic too. Displaying a whole collection of them is akin to a person deciding to not ever bathe again. An anti-social gesture, designed to put up a wall between them and all other humans. Once you have shelved and polished your brood of plastic anime sex-children you have effectively snuffed out the light of all future social interaction.
Sunday 3 April 2011
MALLS OF AMERICA
In 1989 Michael Galinsky drove across America to take photographs of malls. And they're great.
Thursday 31 March 2011
DISGUSTING LUXURY IPHONE/PAD CASES
People are prepared to pay through the nose for an Apple device. It stands to reason then, they will not hesitate to buy expensive but distasteful accessories. Here are some of the worst-looking luxury embellishments on the market.
Oscar de la Renta Degrade Python iPad Clutch | $399
What they think it says - So fierce. As fierce as a lion dressed as Paris Hilton, dressed as RuPaul getting euphoric on PCP.
Looks like a gigantic version of something Lil' Wayne would cap his teeth with. Conspicuous and disgusting.
DeBethune DBM iPhone case | $thousands
What they think it says - A call back to an earlier, better age. Lose yourself in the chestnut brown, full-grain alligator leather. Luxuriate in the blue steel clock hands.
What kind of self-hating pseud feels the need to play dress up with gadgets? This is just the fraudulent Shoreditch-gentleman equivalent of putting dolls in pretty dresses.
Personalised steel iPad case | £50
What they think it says - Show fellow cafe-dwellers your cold, hard man-soul. And let them know your name.
Aside from the fact that this probably makes the iPad at least as heavy as a small laptop it also looks like shit.
Dolce and Gabbana iPhone Case and Coin Purse | $545
What they think it says - ACTUAL SALES BULLSHIT: Shimmering sequins and gold chains surround an Italian calfskin carrying case that keeps your phone safe, while a logo medallion dangles form the front.
I'm not an aggressive or violent person but you took one of these out in a public place I would definitely mug you. Not because I wanted the case, or even the dangling logo medallion. But simply because you'd deserve to be harmed.
BONUS RETARDED IPHONE ACCESSORY!
The iVictrola | $400
What they think it says - You'll be the talk of the town once the other over-moneyed nostalgia freaks get a load of your novelty toy. Parp! It's old-timey!
This is an expensive visual gag. One which you will resent having to look at after about three weeks.
Oscar de la Renta Degrade Python iPad Clutch | $399What they think it says - So fierce. As fierce as a lion dressed as Paris Hilton, dressed as RuPaul getting euphoric on PCP.
Looks like a gigantic version of something Lil' Wayne would cap his teeth with. Conspicuous and disgusting.
DeBethune DBM iPhone case | $thousandsWhat they think it says - A call back to an earlier, better age. Lose yourself in the chestnut brown, full-grain alligator leather. Luxuriate in the blue steel clock hands.
What kind of self-hating pseud feels the need to play dress up with gadgets? This is just the fraudulent Shoreditch-gentleman equivalent of putting dolls in pretty dresses.
Personalised steel iPad case | £50What they think it says - Show fellow cafe-dwellers your cold, hard man-soul. And let them know your name.
Aside from the fact that this probably makes the iPad at least as heavy as a small laptop it also looks like shit.
Dolce and Gabbana iPhone Case and Coin Purse | $545
What they think it says - ACTUAL SALES BULLSHIT: Shimmering sequins and gold chains surround an Italian calfskin carrying case that keeps your phone safe, while a logo medallion dangles form the front.I'm not an aggressive or violent person but you took one of these out in a public place I would definitely mug you. Not because I wanted the case, or even the dangling logo medallion. But simply because you'd deserve to be harmed.
BONUS RETARDED IPHONE ACCESSORY!
The iVictrola | $400What they think it says - You'll be the talk of the town once the other over-moneyed nostalgia freaks get a load of your novelty toy. Parp! It's old-timey!
This is an expensive visual gag. One which you will resent having to look at after about three weeks.
Tuesday 29 March 2011
GADDAFI: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
At this very moment Italian politicians are allegedly trying to find Colonel Muammar Gaddafi a way out of Libya. Reports suggest he may be granted asylum in another African country.
If these plans were to fall through here are six suggestions the Colonel might want to consider:
COUNTRY FranceJOB Bistro-dwelling writer / alcoholic
ASSUMED NAME Augustin Lavroche
LIKES Publishing slim volumes of poetry. Discussing la condition de la Francaise while smoking rolled-up cigarettes. Leching over teenage girls in the town square.
DISLIKES Crushing ennui. Le petit salaud Sarkozy. These new authors who write like peasants.
COUNTRY Britain
JOB Controversial news pundit
ASSUMED NAME Malcolm Fadge
LIKES Telling the Question Time audience they "don't have all the facts". Making Chantelle from Big Brother cry when they both appear on Celebrity Come Dine With Me.
DISLIKES People who bang on about the Holocaust. Polly Toynbee calling his Fadge The Facts column in the Sunday Express "a weekly purge of unreconstructed fascism".
COUNTRY Colombia
JOB Judge on Colombian Idol
ASSUMED NAME Danny Pintomunoz
LIKES Flamboyant hand gestures. Calling women "fat bitches". Referring to his 1986 smash hit single Jumbo Jumbo Let's Get Jumbo. Cocaine
DISLIKES Ugliness. Girls in jeans. The other judges on Colombian Idol, especially the whore Nina Vasquez.
COUNTRY AmericaJOB Talk radio host
ASSUMED NAME Lou "Lou-Boy" Fauttuso
LIKES Steering conversations around to the subject of race and immigration. Novelty horn sound FX. Cutting callers off mid-sentence. Ridiculing his sidekick Gooey Mike on-air.
DISLIKES Healthcare. His stomach ulcer. Stuck-up women who don't earn shit but act all superior.
COUNTRY International Waters
JOB Pirate King
ASSUMED NAME Cap'n Strangeface
LIKES Leading the nomadic water tribes of Africa to great victory against the vile, imperial French fishing expeditions. His special crew of voluptuous, Ukranian cabin boys. Elaborate and thoughtfully-customised military uniforms.
DISLIKES Sea air making his hair go frizzy. Everything seems less fun with scurvy.
COUNTRY Deep space
JOB The unsleeping cosmic mind
ASSUMED NAME Nameless and intangible
LIKES Knowing everything and nothing. Existing beyond the realm of conceivability. Playfully disregarding the concept of "time".
DISLIKES Long periods spent alone. Seeing galaxies born, produce life and then die gets boring after a couple of times.
Monday 28 March 2011
I SAW SOME THINGS
Imagine you're a jobbing, middle-aged actor. You haven't had paid work in a while. Then your agent calls and says a hip, new company called Microsoft wants you to play a leading role in one of their promotional videos. A year later and you're still trying to work out if it's better not to have the words "vest-wearing paedophile" on your resume. Saturday 26 March 2011
ARNOLD GOES TO RIO
About 30 years ago someone decided to send celebrated anti-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Rio De Janeiro. We shall never know why. All we know is that while Arnie was there he made an oddly sincere, yet wholly execrable documentary about the experience.
It would be easy to meekly point the finger of blame at Arnie himself. But this is hardly fair. Like a richer, stronger Paddy McGuinness going through the wrong door and ending up on Newsnight Review, Arnold is simply trying his best. It's not his fault that the "documentary" has no structure and looks like a soft-core pornographic film. It's not his fault that the whole thing is just five minutes long. And it's not his fault he's been corralled into teasing an on-screen romance with a woman (his guide) who looks both repulsed and terrified by him.
The film does however contain Arnold Schwarzenegger's greatest ever line of dialogue, delivered at 2:11. And yes it's even better than the wonderful "cumming" monologue from Pumping Iron (quoted here for posterity): "I am, like, getting the feeling of cumming in the gym, I'm getting the feeling of cumming at home, I'm getting the feeling of cumming backstage when I pump up. When I pose out in front of five thousand people, I get the same feeling, so I am cumming day and night."
It would be easy to meekly point the finger of blame at Arnie himself. But this is hardly fair. Like a richer, stronger Paddy McGuinness going through the wrong door and ending up on Newsnight Review, Arnold is simply trying his best. It's not his fault that the "documentary" has no structure and looks like a soft-core pornographic film. It's not his fault that the whole thing is just five minutes long. And it's not his fault he's been corralled into teasing an on-screen romance with a woman (his guide) who looks both repulsed and terrified by him.
The film does however contain Arnold Schwarzenegger's greatest ever line of dialogue, delivered at 2:11. And yes it's even better than the wonderful "cumming" monologue from Pumping Iron (quoted here for posterity): "I am, like, getting the feeling of cumming in the gym, I'm getting the feeling of cumming at home, I'm getting the feeling of cumming backstage when I pump up. When I pose out in front of five thousand people, I get the same feeling, so I am cumming day and night."
Tuesday 15 March 2011
THERE IS NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS EXCEPT FOR CHILD PROSTITUTION
I recently finished working at one of Britain's best-known celebrity magazines. I learned a lot during my year and a half at the showbiz coal face. I learned that not knowing about your subject matter will eventually get you exposed as a fraud. I learned that unless you really put the hours in and listen to all the Westlife albums in sequential order until you "get" them, your colleagues will see through you. They'll cast you out. A cuckoo in the nest. A paedophile on the bus.
Now free to cast aspersions about everyone I worked with and everything I worked on, I hereby present to you Five Completely True Things I Learned While Writing For A Celebrity Weekly.
Celebrities love the zoo
If ever you want to secure an exclusive, two-hour interview with a famous person you'll need to offer them a trip to the zoo. It's that simple. The showbiz carousel would have ground to a halt years ago were it not for zoo outings. Money, influence, copy approval, a cover line; these are all viable bargaining tools, but at the end of the day every celeb is desperate to go to the zoo. All the time. The number of contracts I saw being passed between lawyers and editors that simply had the word "zoo" at the top beggar's belief.
There's nothing "hot" about black people
Unless you work for a black-interest magazine (Source, Voice or Nintendo Power) sooner or later you'll have to come to terms with this simple fact of publishing. There's no room for your liberal race guilt in the cut-and-thrust world of celebrity journalism. If you're presented with a photograph of a famous black person and a famous white person you must put aside the woolly niceties and go with the former. A blurry camera phone image of a coke-bloated Mischa Barton? Yes please. What about this agency shot of upcoming African American superstar Ciara? No thanks. Try again when she's a little less black.Make no mistake: you're a star too
A lot of people get antsy trying to define the line between "celebrity" and "writer who writes about celebrities". Well let me break it down for you. There is no line. As far as the magazine-buying public are concerned if you write about the stars you are a star. I remember turning up as a reporter to my first awards ceremony and being greeted by flash bulbs, screaming fans and more red carpet than a metaphor about Julianne Moore's vagina. All for me. It didn't make sense to me then. To be honest it doesn't make sense to me now. But I learned to ride the silver tiger. And I rode it across my very own dream rainbow.
The Jewish conspiracy is real
A lot of people will tell you Jews control the entertainment industry. A lot of people will tell you that the Jewish hand hovers above our beloved stars of stage and screen, controlling their every move like the eczema-afflicted appendage of a Hebrew puppet master. A lot of people will tell you that Jewish fixers pay off the Russian police so that when Duncan from Blue gets onto a crowded Moscow subway train wearing his bespoke "frotting shorts" no charges are brought against him. The people who say all of this are correct. The magazine which I worked for may not have had any Jewish people working in it or near it, but let's not fool ourselves: it was dancing to the wicked tune of the Semite. Elders of Zion? More like Elders of Lee Ryan (from Blue)!Don't let the naysayers get you down
Sometimes being part of the showbiz inner-circle is lonely. A lot of "proper journalists" are going to turn their noses up at you when they discover that you swim through the septic tank of celebrity excreta for a living. Sometimes people who aren't even journalists will face you down in a nightclub and call you a "wretched symptom of all society's ills". And yes, bin men, tree surgeons and janitors will throw things at you and accuse you of having no purpose in life. Small children, too young to understand the true importance of celebrity journalism, may chase you out of your neighbourhood on scooters. Even your own mother is liable to kick you hard in the face so (in her words): "you can feel all my pain and shame". But remember: none of these people have had an awkward, halting phone conversation with Peter Andre! None of them know what it's like to ask the Sugababes about which member of JLS they fancy! If your friends and family reject you it's only because of jealousy. Prove to them that you're above it all by using Facebook solely to post photographs of yourself with celebrities. The comments left by people you went to school with and haven't seen for fifteen years will make some of the sadness go away.
Tuesday 8 March 2011
SUBWAY IS BIGGER THAN MCDONALDS
How did we let this happen? Subway - the purveyors of unlovable, damp breadfoods - now has more restaurants than McDonald's. That's right, McDonald's. The wholesome hamburger chain that our mothers and fathers grew up with. Apparently Subway now boasts 33,749 eateries worldwide while Mickey D can only muster 32,737.
This is disappointing. And not because I eat at McDonald's. It's disappointing because at least in its own fetid, lardy way a Big Mac is a thing. A queasy, shiny thing, but a thing nonetheless. The same can not be said for a Subway Chicken Temptation. No one wants the Chicken Temptation. It exists only in the most basic, mundane sense, like a plastic bag lining the inside of a tramp's boot or a Kinder Egg toy lying in a puddle.
This is the future we bequeath to our children? High streets from Burnley to Beijing, lined with empty, terracotta-tiled bread dispensaries? Tiny, miserable huts in which there is usually a man - one poor man who must wear plastic gloves and stand behind a plastic wall - who's sole job is to preside over the sauces and mustards. That's not a future I want to live in.
Saturday 5 March 2011
BRIAN MCFADDEN: ICE COLD AND EVIL
If "sound" is to be qualified as "music" all it needs to do is somehow demonstrate a commitment to rhythm and pitch. Even the most uncoordinated of children can bang a metal pot with a spoon. We can all make music.
The question then, is how Brian McFadden's new single can display all the hallmarks of "a song" and yet be something altogether different. Something undeniably hostile and poisonous. McFadden - formerly of the unattractive boyband Westlife - has penned a tune which scientists are already calling "threatening on a basic, biological level". The fact that it is about date rape (true), contains synth banjos (true), and was mixed in the bunker where Hitler shot himself (probably true) aren't even the worst things about it. The worst thing about it is the voice of McFadden himself. Leering, oddly European and smug, he sounds like a disgraced prince, returning to his homeland after 15 years of exile, completely unrepentant.
The question then, is how Brian McFadden's new single can display all the hallmarks of "a song" and yet be something altogether different. Something undeniably hostile and poisonous. McFadden - formerly of the unattractive boyband Westlife - has penned a tune which scientists are already calling "threatening on a basic, biological level". The fact that it is about date rape (true), contains synth banjos (true), and was mixed in the bunker where Hitler shot himself (probably true) aren't even the worst things about it. The worst thing about it is the voice of McFadden himself. Leering, oddly European and smug, he sounds like a disgraced prince, returning to his homeland after 15 years of exile, completely unrepentant.
Wednesday 2 March 2011
GREAT SONGS ON FORGETTABLE ALBUMS #4
Beatles | Hey Bulldog
No middle-aged boring man in his right mind would classify Yellow Submarine as a proper Beatles album. But it is a collection of mostly shit songs released under their name. So it will do for the purposes of this badly-researched series of non-articles.
Hey Bulldog itself is a good song. It's got a proper guitar riff, John's singing sounds weird and harsh and it's got one of those awful/great outros where you can here "the guys" in "the studio" having a "great time, just "joshing about". As with everything on Yellow Submarine it actually sounds like it was recorded in a submarine (and not a magical yellow one either - a rusty, depressing one with no toilet) but that just serves to make the song sound pleasantly unnerving.
The rest of the album (in order) plays out as follows: a trying-too-hard George Harrison dirge; an infuriating and lip-bitingly awful McCartney "happy song"; the Beatles' one attempt at an overlong freak-out jam (with po-faces and shit trumpets); and then about fifty instrumental George Martin compositions which sound like the 1960s as imagined by an unseeing, unfeeling floating brain in a jar.
Great songs on forgettable albums #3
No middle-aged boring man in his right mind would classify Yellow Submarine as a proper Beatles album. But it is a collection of mostly shit songs released under their name. So it will do for the purposes of this badly-researched series of non-articles.
Hey Bulldog itself is a good song. It's got a proper guitar riff, John's singing sounds weird and harsh and it's got one of those awful/great outros where you can here "the guys" in "the studio" having a "great time, just "joshing about". As with everything on Yellow Submarine it actually sounds like it was recorded in a submarine (and not a magical yellow one either - a rusty, depressing one with no toilet) but that just serves to make the song sound pleasantly unnerving.
The rest of the album (in order) plays out as follows: a trying-too-hard George Harrison dirge; an infuriating and lip-bitingly awful McCartney "happy song"; the Beatles' one attempt at an overlong freak-out jam (with po-faces and shit trumpets); and then about fifty instrumental George Martin compositions which sound like the 1960s as imagined by an unseeing, unfeeling floating brain in a jar.
Great songs on forgettable albums #3
Sunday 27 February 2011
CHARLIE SHEEN: BUILT BY WARLOCKS, MADE FOR TWITTER
Some celebrities were made for Twitter. Some celebrities are awful at Twitter. Other celebrities seem like they might be made for Twitter but are in fact awful at Twitter.
Most of the time it isn't possible to predict which celebrities will be good at Twitter. Could anyone have foreseen the awe-inspiring, stream-of-conscience burble that is 50 Cent's feed? Not his newly-humbled PR people, certainly.
One suddenly-relevant actor who this week made his long-awaited debut on the site is almost certain to be an exception. Charlie Sheen, the star of such silver screen classics as A Letter From Death Row and That Awful Shitty Sitcom With That Disgusting Child, has a lot on his mind and finally he has a place to share it.
It should be made clear that what Charlie Sheen literally has on his mind is a thin layer of cocaine residue, solidified over his frontal lobes and almost certainly contributing to his mental deterioration.
But what's done is done. Charlie's gray matter is gone forever. His family will reminisce about those days long ago when he was able to have conversations, look presentable, and take in solids without immediately vomiting them back up into his lap. All that's left for us to do is giggle at the very public unraveling of a man with no shame: Charlie Sheen's Twitter feed.
Friday 2 July 2010
10 THINGS THAT SHOULD NEVER (EVER) BE REBOOTED OR REMADE
The noughties may well be remembered for being the decade where the movie industry woke up in the middle of the night, realised it was peckish and, finding its fridge bare, went down into the basement of cult entertainment to feed on the cultural morsels found there. If a comic or long-dead television series looked like it could provide any kind of box office nourishment it was swiftly remade into a big-bucks event movie.
The only thing that the below list items have in common is that they were all - in their own way - successful. This in the past has proved irresistible to film studios. People loved Dukes of Hazzard in the 70s! Right? And who can get enough of Sean William Scott right now? Exactly - no one! This thing remakes itself, let's go listen to that Linkin Park CD again and clear some space for all our future money.
Here is the list of things I don't want to see Hollywood bundle into the back of a van...
Preacher
Persistent rumblings suggest this is already on the cards. Thankfully I'm too lazy to do even the most cursory of internet searches to find out whether Preacher, the hit graphic novel series, is in fact already being remade for film or television. The comics were hit and miss but stood out thanks to a consistently witty tone of voice and an original premise.
If Preacher ever ended up in the hands of Hollywood producers it might very well suffer the same fate as Watchmen. That is to say, it would be directed by a hired gun eager to slavishly follow the comic's every frame while its PR would desperately attempt to convince the mainstream that it somehow had universal appeal. It didn't work for Alan Moore's opus and it wouldn't work here.
Metroid
Good games don't necessarily make good films. What might seem like a stable premise for a Super Nintendo game ("he's a fox that flies in the stars! He's a Star Fox!") will probably not be enough to support a 90-minute feature film. Metroid, as original and significant as it was, doesn't boil down to much more than a suited-up lady shooting aliens in space. And actually, in retrospect, the eponymous monsters were basically just jellyfish with teeth.
Redwall
A long-running series of children's fantasy books revolving around the titular Redwall Abbey - a sanctuary for adventuresome woodland animals. It was a great franchise back in the day - and not only because it taught children to discriminate blindly on the basis of species (all mice, badgers and rabbits were "good", all weasals, rats and stoats were irrecoverably "evil").
In an age when 3D films about talking animals regularly rake in millions and millions of dollars it's a miracle that no one big has jumped on Redwall yet. You'd think in the wake of Lord of The Rings and Ratatoille a series about vermin fighting each other with medieval weaponry would be a no-brainer.
Friends
How bleak. How predictable. Everybody went mad over Friends in the 90s. Unlike Frasier it hasn't aged particularly well however. Watching it now, Friends seems absurd. This is probably because unlike Frasier, Friends was a pretty old-fashioned construct. The way the characters spoke and interacted with their surroundings had a lot in common with early sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, while the exaggerated mannerisms of the cast and the easily-pleased canned laughter harked back to turgid 1980s schlock like Married With Children.
But it was popular. And the entire cast - despite doing nothing of note subsequently - are still frequently in the public eye. That means that the temptation for producers would be to kick around some kind of Friends at 40 motion picture where the gang reunite as fat, middle-aged people for one last outing. Or what about an Aliens vs Predator style franchise-mash-up called something like Friends vs Sex in the City? As long as the plot necessitated some kind of mutual assured destruction visited upon all the entire cast I would probably watch it.
Visionaries
A moderately successful franchise in its time, Visionaries is - in fairness - probably quite low-down on the list of things destined to be remade. Which is of course no guarantee it won't be. Did anyone anticipate Alvin & The Chipmunks becoming a money-spewing super-title? Was there a single right-thinking human who thought they'd see the day that these guys would get their own major motion picture?
So a Visionaries film, upon reflection, isn't as unlikely as it seems. Obviously said film would be a monstrous carbuncle. The original cartoon relied on a peculiar kind of apocalyptic 1980s morosity, also found in Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Any attempt to recreate this would end in misery for everyone involved.
Robocop
Oh God, have you seen Robocop recently? It's awful. Even with Paul Verhoeven's customary, pointless nude scenes it's a real effort to watch this or the sequel and take either seriously. The action sequences stand out, even in the context of the 1980s, as being aggressively unpleasant and, unlike something like Hard Boiled, the carnage can't even be called stylish.
In fact all Robocop has going for it is the iconic design of its roboprotagonist. It's one of those cultural tropes which refuses to go away. A Robocop Returns-type thing would obviously just try and milk that shitty-looking suit for all its worth. In fact, in the wake of Iron Man's success this doesn't seem at all unlikely. Expect a teaser trailer which opens with a close up that black visor. It all goes dark. "Your move, perp." Gunshot. Yawn.
Top Gun
A film so full of tropes, memes and visual trademarks a sequel would most likely write itself. Top Gun was massively successful in its day (as well as proving very durable culturally) so it's a miracle its brand has thus far remained untarnished. I say untarnished. The truth is Top Gun - like Robocop - was highly tarnished from the offset because it's no good at all. It can just about be enjoyed ironically, but, like everything Tony Scott touches,the whole thing feels like one long, miserable advert. For the remake we can also probably look forward to a Paramore cover version of Take My Breath Away.
Akira
Another title that's been on the lips of film execs for what feels like forever. It's hard to justify a live-action Akira. Sure, it's massive and epic and thought-provoking and panoramic, but it's also willfully baffling. And if there's one thing that big-budget doesn't do well it's baffling. In fact Akira's entire plot premise is so of it's time that remaking it now would be an uncomfortable filmic exercise in trying to fit a round, cyber-punky peg into a square, post-millennial hole.
Any kind of Brit-pop cash-in
At some point someone will try and mythologize the 90s Brit-pop scene, either on television or film. They'll look at Backbeat, 24-Hour Party People and Telstar and ask why nobody has yet tried to do the same thing with the guitar-band boom which seemed to dominate music like a persistent fungal infection for so long.
What seems like a good, sure-fire money-spinning idea on paper is in fact an awful, sure-fire money-spinning idea. When the Brit-pop scene is looked back on objectively, and without the benefit of rose-tinted glasses, the pickings are decidedly slim. Sure Blur and Pulp have a couple of good albums, Oasis have the athems, but let's call a spade a spade. Brit-pop was absolute tat. It's guitar music without any guitar playing. Apart from the bands mentioned above who else is even worth mentioning? Menswear? Elastica? The fucking Boo Radleys? Exactly.
The Games Workshop
Sporadically popular throughout the 80s and 90s and then extremely popular for a short while in the noughties (thanks again Lord Of The Rings!), The Games Workshop are a company that make table-top wargames designed to allow adolescent boys to forget how much they fear the real world for a few hours. Crucially - as far as Hollywood is concerned - the games (Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000) are also designed to rob said boys' parents of as much of their money as possible.
At this point in time the only tie-ins that I'm aware of are a couple of PC games, but it can't be long before an exec realises how fertile the Games Workshop would be for a series of dull, humourless films, set either in the distant future "where there is only war", or in the distant past where there is "no time for peace".
The inevitable problems connected to such a series of films stem from the fact that nothing - absolutely nothing - in the entire Games Workshop universe is either original or compelling. Dune had that Spice stuff, Battlestar Galactica had a strong post-911 message , even Conan had an anti-religious bent and a worryingly Nietzschian sub-text. The Games Workshop has this. Billions of guns firing in every conceivable direction. Forever. The Warhammer universe has about as much depth as the Micro Machines franchise. And at least girls "got" Micro Machines.
The only thing that the below list items have in common is that they were all - in their own way - successful. This in the past has proved irresistible to film studios. People loved Dukes of Hazzard in the 70s! Right? And who can get enough of Sean William Scott right now? Exactly - no one! This thing remakes itself, let's go listen to that Linkin Park CD again and clear some space for all our future money.
Here is the list of things I don't want to see Hollywood bundle into the back of a van...
Preacher
Persistent rumblings suggest this is already on the cards. Thankfully I'm too lazy to do even the most cursory of internet searches to find out whether Preacher, the hit graphic novel series, is in fact already being remade for film or television. The comics were hit and miss but stood out thanks to a consistently witty tone of voice and an original premise.If Preacher ever ended up in the hands of Hollywood producers it might very well suffer the same fate as Watchmen. That is to say, it would be directed by a hired gun eager to slavishly follow the comic's every frame while its PR would desperately attempt to convince the mainstream that it somehow had universal appeal. It didn't work for Alan Moore's opus and it wouldn't work here.
Metroid
Good games don't necessarily make good films. What might seem like a stable premise for a Super Nintendo game ("he's a fox that flies in the stars! He's a Star Fox!") will probably not be enough to support a 90-minute feature film. Metroid, as original and significant as it was, doesn't boil down to much more than a suited-up lady shooting aliens in space. And actually, in retrospect, the eponymous monsters were basically just jellyfish with teeth.Redwall
A long-running series of children's fantasy books revolving around the titular Redwall Abbey - a sanctuary for adventuresome woodland animals. It was a great franchise back in the day - and not only because it taught children to discriminate blindly on the basis of species (all mice, badgers and rabbits were "good", all weasals, rats and stoats were irrecoverably "evil").In an age when 3D films about talking animals regularly rake in millions and millions of dollars it's a miracle that no one big has jumped on Redwall yet. You'd think in the wake of Lord of The Rings and Ratatoille a series about vermin fighting each other with medieval weaponry would be a no-brainer.
Friends
How bleak. How predictable. Everybody went mad over Friends in the 90s. Unlike Frasier it hasn't aged particularly well however. Watching it now, Friends seems absurd. This is probably because unlike Frasier, Friends was a pretty old-fashioned construct. The way the characters spoke and interacted with their surroundings had a lot in common with early sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, while the exaggerated mannerisms of the cast and the easily-pleased canned laughter harked back to turgid 1980s schlock like Married With Children.But it was popular. And the entire cast - despite doing nothing of note subsequently - are still frequently in the public eye. That means that the temptation for producers would be to kick around some kind of Friends at 40 motion picture where the gang reunite as fat, middle-aged people for one last outing. Or what about an Aliens vs Predator style franchise-mash-up called something like Friends vs Sex in the City? As long as the plot necessitated some kind of mutual assured destruction visited upon all the entire cast I would probably watch it.
Visionaries
A moderately successful franchise in its time, Visionaries is - in fairness - probably quite low-down on the list of things destined to be remade. Which is of course no guarantee it won't be. Did anyone anticipate Alvin & The Chipmunks becoming a money-spewing super-title? Was there a single right-thinking human who thought they'd see the day that these guys would get their own major motion picture?So a Visionaries film, upon reflection, isn't as unlikely as it seems. Obviously said film would be a monstrous carbuncle. The original cartoon relied on a peculiar kind of apocalyptic 1980s morosity, also found in Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. Any attempt to recreate this would end in misery for everyone involved.
Robocop
Oh God, have you seen Robocop recently? It's awful. Even with Paul Verhoeven's customary, pointless nude scenes it's a real effort to watch this or the sequel and take either seriously. The action sequences stand out, even in the context of the 1980s, as being aggressively unpleasant and, unlike something like Hard Boiled, the carnage can't even be called stylish.In fact all Robocop has going for it is the iconic design of its roboprotagonist. It's one of those cultural tropes which refuses to go away. A Robocop Returns-type thing would obviously just try and milk that shitty-looking suit for all its worth. In fact, in the wake of Iron Man's success this doesn't seem at all unlikely. Expect a teaser trailer which opens with a close up that black visor. It all goes dark. "Your move, perp." Gunshot. Yawn.
Top Gun
A film so full of tropes, memes and visual trademarks a sequel would most likely write itself. Top Gun was massively successful in its day (as well as proving very durable culturally) so it's a miracle its brand has thus far remained untarnished. I say untarnished. The truth is Top Gun - like Robocop - was highly tarnished from the offset because it's no good at all. It can just about be enjoyed ironically, but, like everything Tony Scott touches,the whole thing feels like one long, miserable advert. For the remake we can also probably look forward to a Paramore cover version of Take My Breath Away.
Akira
Another title that's been on the lips of film execs for what feels like forever. It's hard to justify a live-action Akira. Sure, it's massive and epic and thought-provoking and panoramic, but it's also willfully baffling. And if there's one thing that big-budget doesn't do well it's baffling. In fact Akira's entire plot premise is so of it's time that remaking it now would be an uncomfortable filmic exercise in trying to fit a round, cyber-punky peg into a square, post-millennial hole.Any kind of Brit-pop cash-in
At some point someone will try and mythologize the 90s Brit-pop scene, either on television or film. They'll look at Backbeat, 24-Hour Party People and Telstar and ask why nobody has yet tried to do the same thing with the guitar-band boom which seemed to dominate music like a persistent fungal infection for so long.What seems like a good, sure-fire money-spinning idea on paper is in fact an awful, sure-fire money-spinning idea. When the Brit-pop scene is looked back on objectively, and without the benefit of rose-tinted glasses, the pickings are decidedly slim. Sure Blur and Pulp have a couple of good albums, Oasis have the athems, but let's call a spade a spade. Brit-pop was absolute tat. It's guitar music without any guitar playing. Apart from the bands mentioned above who else is even worth mentioning? Menswear? Elastica? The fucking Boo Radleys? Exactly.
The Games Workshop
Sporadically popular throughout the 80s and 90s and then extremely popular for a short while in the noughties (thanks again Lord Of The Rings!), The Games Workshop are a company that make table-top wargames designed to allow adolescent boys to forget how much they fear the real world for a few hours. Crucially - as far as Hollywood is concerned - the games (Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000) are also designed to rob said boys' parents of as much of their money as possible.At this point in time the only tie-ins that I'm aware of are a couple of PC games, but it can't be long before an exec realises how fertile the Games Workshop would be for a series of dull, humourless films, set either in the distant future "where there is only war", or in the distant past where there is "no time for peace".
The inevitable problems connected to such a series of films stem from the fact that nothing - absolutely nothing - in the entire Games Workshop universe is either original or compelling. Dune had that Spice stuff, Battlestar Galactica had a strong post-911 message , even Conan had an anti-religious bent and a worryingly Nietzschian sub-text. The Games Workshop has this. Billions of guns firing in every conceivable direction. Forever. The Warhammer universe has about as much depth as the Micro Machines franchise. And at least girls "got" Micro Machines.
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