From the Brow of Zeus

There's rumor over at Dead Central.

It starts off like a dream:

According to our source all four Ghostbusters -- Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson -- have agreed to return to the franchise.

But then the dream girl rips off her face, revealing the Freddy Kruger beneath:

Apparently the ‘Busters will be handing over their proton packs to Seth Rogan and the crew from 40 Year Old Virgin!

A great man once said --

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Look, humor is subjective. Everyone is entitled to their own taste in comedy, provided said comedy wasn't squeezed out by one Judd Apatow.

Judd Apatow -- I just don't like him. I'm not impressed with his movies. (Update: Okay, glancing at IMDB, he's actually produced a lot of fine comedies. Until now I had always assocaited him with Superbad and The 40 Year Old Virgin, but Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Anchorman are some of my favorites.) Steve Carell hasn't made me laugh since Jim Carrey was pulling his strings in Bruce Almighty, and Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan look like some shrewd Hollywood types tried to clone Napoleon Dynamite and kept them in the tanks too long.

Dread Central actually tried to put a positive spin on things:

Some may roll their eyes at this, but think about it; these guys are doing the same thing Murray, Ramis, Ivan Reitman, John Candy and their whole crew did back in the 80’s, churning out comedy after comedy, so it makes sense they’d take over these reins as well.

Rob Schneider churns out comedy after comedy. Let's give him the series! He can form a super team, along with Dane Cook and the Blue Collar Comedy Team and together they can prove that when it comes to comedy, staggering, inexplicable success is more important than actually being funny.

Ghostbusters is my favorite movie. Seriously. I grew up wanting to be a Ghostbuster. The Sega Master System game is one of my all-time favorites (open-world, car-based, mission objectives -- it's Ghost Theft Auto!) I own a Ghostbusters halloween costume. (Not that one.) I had a battery-powered proton pack that projected ghosts on my wall. There's nothing with the Ghostbusters logo stamped on it that I don't like.

But this?


Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. That's what a Seth Rogen Ghostbusters 3 would be like.

Labels: movies

Ever notice that most big name directors start out doing horror movies?

• Stephen Speilberg [Indiana Jones], Duel (1971).
• Sam Raimi [Spider-Man], The Evil Dead (1981).
• Peter Jackson [Lord of the Rings], Bad Taste (1987).
• Guillermo Del Toro [Pan's Labyrinth], Cronos (1993).
• James Cameron [Titanic], Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1981)
• Francis Ford Coppola [Godfather], The Terror (1963).

It's like the Correct and Unalterable Path of an A+ Director is to start out doing horror movies and end up making big budget action features.

Also helps explain why everyone hates Michael Bay. After directing a Playboy video or two (heh), Michael Bay's first picture was the action buddy cop movie Bad Boys. Only after directing successful action movies like Armageddon and The Rock did he dabble in horror, producing remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th.

Other reasons no one respects Michael Bay: Pearl Harbor, his face, and that two and a half our Shia LeBouf romantic comedy with some robots in the background.

Note: Thanks to Googleshng for helping me come up with this list.

Labels: movies

I'm sorry, I just don't see the point of trying to show that Beowulf wasn't a super-strong badass who could rip off a monster's arm with his bare hands (as in the poem), THEN giving him all these ridiculous Spider-Man powers (endless backflips, rope-swings and super-human agility).

I mean, what are they going for? The "real" story, where Beowulf isn't all he's cracked up to be, or yet another ragdoll super-spinny CGI flip-fest fightscene where the hero swings around on ropes, spins like a dreidel and always lands on his feet?

People don't really move like that. It looks fake and silly. Either stick with the original, badass, arm-wrenching, catch-as-catch-can wrestling Beowulf, or have him fight like a normal man and not some backflipping Ninja Turtle.

UPDATE:

Some disagree:

I think that fight scene may have been a commentary on how legends, as told, don't always truthfully tell what really happened. Heck, this was demonstrated right in the movie: we clearly see Beowulf using the door to "chop" Grendel's arm off, and the very next day the story is being told about how he ripped his arm off with his bare hands.

Look, I realize what they were trying to do. I'm just saying that in doing so, they've created yet another heroic layer of bullpucky.

It's like they're saying, "Beowulf wasn't REALLY super strong, kids. But he COULD jump twenty feet in the air, do a 540 spin, and land on his feet."

And in twenty years, there'll be another movie.

"Musclebound Beowulf wasn't REALLY more agile than an acrobat -- he actually had laser eyes."

Labels: movies