Little Shop of Horrors Slated For Big Screen Remake

by Daniel Crooke

Judging by Hollywood’s gluttony with the bottomless box office buffet of remakes, sequels, and reboots, it’s a fair assumption that the average development slate subsists on a diet built purely on previously existing properties. Spider-Mans make for a great snack, Mummys are the perfect midnight meal, and Beauty and the Beast is the latest on Disney’s plate of microwaved leftovers. This week, as Frank Oz’s classic 1986 horror-comedy musical Little Shop of Horrors hits Warner Bros’ menu, the budding beast bellows once more: feed me!

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Beauty & The Beast's First Full Length Trailer is Zzzz

Why are they pretending its not a musical but simultaneous reminding you that it is EXACTLY like the animated film it's based on? Cognitive dissonance! We'll save a Yes No Maybe So until the second trailer since we already YNMS'ed the teaser. 

Beauty and the Beast on Broadway is one of the only stage shows I ever walked out of at intermission. It was painfully faithful to the movie to the point where it felt like the actors were robots dutifully mimicking the exact same line readings as the movie so as not to disturb the audience who had seen the movie a bajillion times. But if you don't bring anything new, why do you exist? Hopefully a second trailer will reveal that they didn't just make a new movie as carbon copy in which the only difference is actors where drawings used to be. 

Podcast: Arrival, Loving, and Cape Fear

We're back to weekly podcasts! This week Nick, Joe, and Nathaniel discuss two new Best Picture hopefuls and one bold remake

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Arrival - thinky empathetic sci-fi just when we're starved for understanding in the real world + Amy Adams!
19:35 Slight spoilery territory on Arrival and comparing it to other movies
27:05 Cape Fear's 25th anniversary. One of our favorite Scorsese's.
33:30 Loving a quiet civil rights drama
41:11 Almost Christmas and goodbyes

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

Loving and Arrival...

Review: "Rocky Horror" Loses Its Edge

by Eric Blume

Last night, Fox TV gave us a remake/update of the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show, a staple of midnight movie screenings for decades.  This update, with the tag "Let’s Do The Time Warp Again," aired at the family hour of 8pm, which pretty much sums up everything that’s wrong with it.   

The original 1975 film is the definition of “lightning in a bottle.” There had been nothing quite like it at the time. It was genuinely transgressive, and featured one of the all-time out-there performances by Tim Curry as Frank-n-Furter, everyone’s favorite "sweet transvestite".  While it’s easy to romanticize the original and ignore its weaknesses, the film does deliver as a warm-heated parody of sci-fi and horror movies as intended. What's more it's actually kinky, sexy, unsettling, and fun...

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Willy Wonka Reboot Unstuck In The Warner Bros. Pipeline

by Daniel Crooke

If a major Hollywood studio acquires the legal rights to the key role in a beloved, recently deceased performer's legacy, is its tone still deaf? Warner Bros. will learn the answer to this question in due time as it develops a new Willy Wonka film after nearly a year of deal-closing with the Roald Dahl estate to own the cinematic future of the literary creation. While the intellectual property lays in Dahl's estate, it's fair to say that Wonka's iconography may belong more readily to the late Gene Wilder's beloved performance in the children's classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Variety reports that Warner Bros. plans to pop the whimsical chocolatier into his own standalone film (sans bratty children) but has made sure to point out that this won't necessarily be an origin story. This will mark the third effort to bring Wonka to the screen - lest we forget the ill-advised bob on Johnny Depp's iteration - but the first time he will serve as central protagonist. While we've seen quicker reboots of the Spider-Man variety - this, a decade; that, three - time isn't the issue with this one but the question of whether or not a studio should tamper at all with such precious goods. Is it fair game to revive the Wonka brand or should Warner Bros. let him rest in peace?