Tag: wtf

No. No. No.

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Can you say “no”, as in “No bloody way, no”. Warner Bros. is thinking of remaking the Wizard of Oz. Quoting from the article:

One project, called “Oz,” currently lives at Warner’s New Line label. It’s being produced by Temple Hill, which is behind a little franchise called “Twilight,” and has a script written by Darren Lemke, a writer on the upcoming “Shrek Forever After.”

A second “Wizard of Oz” project, set up at Warners proper, skews a little darker — it’s written by “A History of Violence” screenwriter Josh Olson and focuses on a granddaughter of Dorothy who returns to Oz to fight evil. “Clash of the Titans” producer Basil Iwanyk and his Thunder Road Pictures are behind that one. (“Spawn” creator Todd MacFarlane is potentially involved in a producerial capacity, to give you some idea of the tone.)

Now, I’m not saying “The Wizard of Oz”, or related properties, shouldn’t be remade. The film version of the musical “The Wiz” was a reasonable idea, although executed completely wrong. A non-musical version of Greg Maguire’s Oz-themed books, “Wicked”, “Son of a Witch”, or “A Lion Among Men” could be quite good. Even adapting the musical “Wicked”, as long as it wasn’t just a filmed stage version, might even work.

But not these ideas, or these proponents. I have no confidence, especially returning to Oz to fight evil. Trust me, “Alice” is succeeding not because it is a fairy-tale property, but because it is a fantasic envisioning. But then again, who am I to talk? People are flocking to Avatar, even though it is just a retelling of Pochahantis.

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No Shit, Sherlock!

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

And you wonder why California is wasting money. Sigh. I just discovered this while working on the highway pages:

ACR 112 (Portantino and Smyth): Cuss-Free Week:

WHEREAS, The California Legislature invites the people of this state to take the No Cussing Challenge each year during the first week of March to improve our relationships, to set a tone of harmony and connectedness in our communities, and to inspire ourselves to higher endeavors; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, the Senate thereof concurring, That the Legislature designate the first week of March of each year as Cuss Free Week; and be it further
Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly prepare copies of this resolution for appropriate distribution.

This hasn’t passed yet. I’m thinking I should send a letter to my assemblyman (who happens to be Cameron Smyth), indicating he should stop fucking around and wasting my tax dollars on this shit. I wonder if he would get the irony.

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Hows That Again?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

The LA Times has provided an update on Gary Coleman’s condition. If you didn’t know, or didn’t care, he was rushed to a hospital around 8 a.m. Wednesday after an apparent seizure.

What caught my “huh?” button was this quote about a meeting Coleman was having with respect to his latest, ahem, film:

[Coleman’s agent] says his client was in town to meet with producers about removing an allegedly unauthorized brief scene of frontal nudity from the film. “He was very upset to cancel this meeting … because there’s a shot of a penis in the film,” the agent told E! “Supposedly it’s his, and he’s not happy with it.”

Read that last sentence again. Perhaps that’s not quite what he intended to say.

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Theatre News (of the NC-17 variety)

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Some theatre news that made me go “huh?” [yes, this is all real news. I haven’t followed the non-news links, so they may be NSFW]:

  • Playbill is reporting that “the plan to stage ‘The Deep Throat Sex Scandal’, a new play by David Bertolino, turns out to be anticlimactic — at least for now.” Yup, that’s how they said it. The announcement was made by “When Harry Met Linda, LLC”, the producers of the new play about the famed porn film, “Deep Throat.” As for what the play is about, the producers describe it thusly: “It all started as a little movie that nobody expected to do much at the box office, certainly not gross over $600 million. Or spark the sexual revolution. But that’s exactly what ‘Deep Throat’ accomplished. The Deep Throat Sex Scandal, a new play, takes you through the historic, chaotic and controversial episodes that would determine what Americans consider obscene. From the film’s creation to the players that would become legends, including Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems and trial attorney Allen Dershowitz, to the arrests, bans, courtroom drama and political fallout, this bizarre journey gives you an unprecedented look behind the scenes of the adult film industry. And it will inevitably ignite conversation and debate about freedom of speech, expression, and of course, sex.”
  • The Los Angeles Times is reporting that a stage musical on the LA Porn Industry is in the works. The production is a partnership between New York’s experimental group the Civilians and L.A.’s Center Theatre Group (i.e., the folks behind the Ahmanson, Mark Taper Forum, and Kirk Douglas theatres). The still-untitled show “will explore the real-life stories of the people who work in California’s pornography industry,” according to CTG. There is no opening date yet for the musical, which is being developed under CTG’s New Play Production Program. You can learn more about it by following @pornmusical on Twitter.
  • Playbill is also reporting that a rock musical is in the works about Lizzie Borden. With music by Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt, additional music by Tim Maner, and lyrics by Cheslik-DeMeyer and Maner, the musical tells the story of the brutal 1892 murder of Andrew and Abby Borden, father and stepmother to 32-year-old Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted of murdering the two with a hatchet in their home. As the producers describe it, “This dark, hard, campy, bloody, sexy, loud show offers a glimpse of these infamous events through the eyes of Lizzie, her older sister Emma, Lizzie’s close friend Alice, and the housemaid Bridget. Packed with kick-ass original songs, four fierce rocker divas, and two very bloody murders, our tale of repression and patricide sheds some light on why Lizzie Borden took that axe, and why we see her as a heroine for doing it.”

It sorta makes one long for simpler plays, like “Puppetry of the Penis”.

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Maybe It’s A Purple Onion…

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

And in more evidence that the world has become a parody of itself:

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