“Upcoming movies: Awesome or awful?”

How about a snarky appraisal of some upcoming movie projects courtesy of Salon.com’s columnist Andrew O’Hehir’s “Beyond the Multiplext” column:

OK then, here’s a pop quiz for pop-culture mavens. First, identify each of the following proposed movie projects. Second, identify which one I just pulled out of thin air. Or to put it another way, identify which one was not pulled out of thin air, or some darker, moister region, by someone sitting behind an extremely nice neo-retro desk in Los Angeles. After that we’ll get to the subject of whether any of these motion pictures should exist at all.

• A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source, that features four different actors playing the same role and also includes the final performance of a recently departed star (no, really — his final final performance), directed by a one-time rebel genius now viewed as both a loose cannon and box-office poison.
• A bewildering adult fantasy, adapted from a literary source and shot almost entirely in a green-screen, effects-driven process that makes its director (he says) “jittery and crazy.” Said director is a one-time rebel genius now viewed as an underperforming Hollywood hack.
• A remake of a breakthrough American indie crime drama of the ’80s, made in a foreign language by a director who himself made more than one breakthrough indie crime drama in the ‘80s.
• A remake of a breakthrough foreign-language film of the ’60s about an intense, crypto-erotic relationship between two women, sexed up and made contemporary as a comeback vehicle for two flagging post-teen stars.
• A remake of a red-meat, Red Scare action film of the ’80s, sexed up and made contemporary as a vehicle for the offspring of a flagging mega-star.
• Approximately the umpteenth adaptation of a tear-jerking literary classic read widely by teenagers, to be scripted by a major American writer who seems uniquely unsuited for the task.

For the answers, go here.



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