Moe Lane at Obsidian Wings is running a contest:
Posted by DeLong at February 9, 2004 01:45 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postObsidian Wings: Movies That Must Not Be.: Not movies that should not be, nor movies that we wish never were: movies that simply cannot be actually real, because otherwise the fabric of reality would begin to unravel and then we'd have nowhere to put our stuff. All entries to this - well, not contest - must thus be of 'films' that appear to have some evidence of existing for some inexplicable reason. Please note the title, why it Must Not Be and a plausible reason that explains away the aforementioned evidence for existence. For example: Batman and Robin. This 'film' purports to have starred big names in it, but I ask you: would George Clooney have donned an anatomically correct Batsuit? Would Alicia Silverstone have? Don't you think that Governor Schwartzenegger would have had more dignity - or have been able to have been elected with this on his resume? No, sorry, it was an Internet hoax gone terribly, horribly wrong - much like this Watchmen poster* - and those involved should apologize for it.... Star Trek V: THERE WAS NO FIFTH MOVIE.... There was a mistake made with a sloppy graphic artist (who has since been sacked) designing posters for Star Trek VI: he left out the "I".... Highlander.... Rumors of sequels? Distorted memories.... Starship Troopers: While the idea of a Gestapo Doogie Howser does admittedly have a special appeal, if Verhoeven had dared make a movie anything remotely like the rumors he would have been messily assassinated by now by an angry mob of Heinlein fans. He's still alive, right? So therefore he didn't do it and the 'script' that's circulating around is merely a (well-deserved) smear campaign against the director.... You get the drift.
At the time, I admired his courage and committment to a good cause (or thought I did). However, I am now certain that it is only in some other continuum that Ralph Bakshi made a semi-animated Lord of the Rings.
http://www.greenmanreview.com/film/lotr.bakshi.htm
Posted by: Tom Maguire on February 9, 2004 02:31 PMWell I'm sure you remember the Ishtar hoax. The idea that there was this big budget film directed by Elaine May (already impossible) starring Dustin Hoffman that was so bad that reviewers can't fight through the dispair to write a plot summary.
Posted by: robert on February 9, 2004 03:05 PMPaul Agapow's Starship Troopers review on Postviews.
http://www.postviews.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=1156
Brad, is your RSS feed working? I haven't gotten anything since February 1st.
And while you're at it, would it be possible for you to change the feed back to provide the full post, like it used to back in mid-January? Or was that too much bandwidth?
Posted by: fling93 on February 9, 2004 05:15 PMI'm here to tell you that Starship Troopers is an excellent film. If you don't agree, you just don't get the joke.
Posted by: Dave R. on February 9, 2004 05:20 PMtoo easy, Godfather III and Rocky V...sequels that never happened...why would they ruin the perfectly good legacies of Godfather I and II and all the Rocky films (albeit on different levels of "perfectly good")? And I'd add Star Wars' Phantom Menace to that list. No one though Jar-jar was a good plan, so they scrapped that whole idea for prequels, right?
Posted by: ben on February 9, 2004 05:24 PMwhat ben said (dude, you're stealing my material. course i stole mine from TSG, so that's kool...)
Posted by: some dude on February 9, 2004 07:11 PMDune (1984)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/
One of the worst adaptations in cinematic history. David Lynch surgically removed virually all of the novel's greatness. Baron Harkonnen is reduced from elegant larger-than-life master villain to petty third-rate sleazebag. Sting is too hammy as Feyd-Rautha. Gurney Halleck never plays his baliset. Somber Sean Young is miscast as the lively, energetic Chani, who gets not one spoken line.
The novel hammers at the reader constantly about the preciousness of water; this is not translated well on the screen, and some of the key scenes that play a role in this effect - the reference to the palm trees, the banquet, Liet-Kynes spitting in the presence of Leto's aides, Paul "giving his water to the dead" - are gone. The empire's laws against certain types of technology get just a passing mention. The best soliloquy in the book - Liet-Kynes rhapsodizing about the worm/spice cycle in the desert - is gone. The ornithopters aren't real ornithopters - they're just hovercraft with teeny-tiny wings.
Posted by: Alan K. Henderson on February 9, 2004 10:13 PMI'm here to tell you that Starship Troopers is an excellent film. If you don't agree, you just don't get the joke.
Posted by Dave R. at February 9, 2004 05:20 PM
Absolutely. This was the movie that Heinlein's idiotic book deserved. The apoplexy that Verhoeven's adaptation inspires in Heinlein fans is an added bonus.
Somebody once did a riff on the possibilities of a version of Dune casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as Chani:
"Tell me uff the vaters uff your homevorld, Usul."
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 9, 2004 10:44 PMSpeaking of water...how about 'Waterworld'? Did that film really happen? Did Kevin Costner really have a career in the 90's?
Posted by: Bhaal on February 10, 2004 02:17 AMI must disregard the evidence of my senses and assert as axiomatic that there cannot possibly be a film version of O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin stories that does not feature Stephen Rea as Maturin.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton on February 10, 2004 04:43 AMAny movie can "be" if the creators are doing copious amounts of cocaine. That's the only possible explanation for a lot of big-budget bombs.
And Starship Troopers (the movie) was at least more self-consciously idiotic than Heinlein's book.
Posted by: rps on February 10, 2004 04:45 AM'Ghost' didn't really happen. I saw Patrick Swayze on ET just last month!
Posted by: wetzel on February 10, 2004 05:59 AM"Tell me uff the vaters uff your homevorld, Usul."
Bundeskartofellausvaterland!
From Obsidianwings Brad links to:
"The whole telepathy/rape thing existed only to be titillating (was anyone?) and to serve as the equivalent of the homing torpedoes in ST VI (which the writers forgot didn't exist on the Enterprise, but on the Excelsior; whoops!)."
I gues that's Peter's Princpiles at work in SF movie mkaing? (Hey I only had two glasses of wine -- on top of thooh ache!)
P.S.: Blent is refined version of Bulent -- I mean my advisor at NCSU once decidied my name shoulşd be prononced "Bolant"! So I though "Blent" would be safer bet -- for Americans. (The French wouldn't have any problems prononcing my name -- given the way they prononce Luc (Luc?) and ... for example, hold it... and "temps"!? )
BTW inspiration for the "Blent" **refinement** came from Wonkette refinement of "blog" into "bleg". Whatdayamean "blog"!? Onşy an oak would say "blog"! It is "bleg"! Repeat after me: "bleg"! Hey, I'm only joking, Thelma! They only misspelled "blog" into "bleg"! (But it was perhaps a Fredudian slip!?)
Posted by: Bulent on February 10, 2004 10:26 AMIn the old times, able people, wealthy people, used to build water fountains for public use.
Times have changed now. These are times when people who possess a different kind of wealth build and maintain different kind of fountains that address to a different kind of thirst, a different kind of need.
Posted by: Bulent on February 10, 2004 11:02 AMI have heard people claim that there was a movie made named "Hook". Supposedly, it was directed by Steven Speilberg and starred Robin Williams as Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. Now, while no one disputes that this group could make a *BAD* film, the rumors about this movie were that it was simply "dull enough not to distract you from estimating this month's PG&E bill", which is obviously not possible.
Posted by: Decnavda on February 10, 2004 01:29 PMFor a long while in the '70s there was a recurring rumor that Roger Moore, (who played a similar character on TV: Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar -- 'The Saint') was also tapped to continue the movie role of Ian Fleming's spy, James Bond '007'. Supposedly several movies were made. In reality, of course, these were straight-to-videotape ABC television "movies", part of their "Tuesday Movie of the Week" series.
The differences between these cheap television productions and actual FILMS, (the Bond MOVIES featured, of course, Sean Connery!) are obvious.
Posted by: Pouncer on February 10, 2004 01:59 PMRambo IV. No way did America's greatest soldier (Stallone) fight to put the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan.
Posted by: Gordo on February 19, 2004 11:59 PMTo be a human without passion is to be dead.
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Ain't no disgrace to be poor - but might as well be.
Posted by: Moraes Chris on June 30, 2004 10:46 AMPessimus inimicorum genus, laudantes - The worst kind of enemies, those who can praise. (Tacitus)
Spemque metumque inter dubiis - Hover between hope and fear. (Vergil)
Non omnia possumus omnes - Not all of us are able to do all things (We can't all do everything.) (Virgil)
Natura nihil fit in frustra - Nature does nothing in vain
Intellectum valde amat - Love the intellect strongly. (St. Augustine)
Malum consilium quod mutari non potest - It's a bad plan that can't be changed. (Publilius Syrus)
Consuetudinis magna vis est - The force of habit is great. (Cicero)