Back to the all-female Ghostbusters cast; if it features any two men who do anything but talk to each other about women, I will be disappointed.
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Excellent point. When I called him “too quick on the draw” I was thinking he overreacted to the way he treated, but, at best, Venkman comes across as a jerk and at worst he seems like he’s got something to hide. In that context Peck’s behavior seems justified.
I’m kinda torn on this. On the one hand I think there’s a sizable demographic that’s still going to see the EPA as part of the evil Big Government that’s creating that whole global warming hoax. On the other hand I think you’re right, but the people who have to deal with flammable drinking water are, perhaps justifiably, going to see the EPA as inept. It should be their best line of defense, but it’s unable to rein in the companies poisoning the water.
Maybe in the reboot the grid breaks down because of crumbling infrastructure.
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It always disappoints me note to see how the EPA, acting rationality, is treated as a villain. Same thing with the OSHA inspector in Hard Hat Mack.
Despite those influences as a kid, I ended up the way I am. Same thing with the treatment of art and artists in popular films I saw, such as The Love Bug. Somehow I managed, despite the narrative intent, to internalize a like for all those things.
Their network is breached by the NSA, to predictable results.
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A Peck type character means you’re not doing Ghostbusters anymore. I’ll just quote myself from above:
“So write a different movie about smart people doing a startup that sounds preposterous and nobody believes can work and run with that. Ghostbusters works because the characters are charming as all hell (and Annie Potts) and they’re having a great time, not specifically because they’re exterminating ghosts. Bill Murray could have been running a goddamned cheese shop as Venkman and it would be amazing.”
I sort of don’t understand what you mean but I’ll try and figure it out through putting this down on the… page.
You’re not ‘doing’ ghostbusters any more because…
…you can’t use the EPA any more to turn off the grid because of the reality of the modern EPA as you outline.
Let’s say I agree and find that to be an interesting point.
You then say
Which engendered in me the idea of an agent who was motivated to keep his job through synthesised incompetence. I was drawing a comparison between ‘fire in the water’ and ‘ghosts in the vault’. He wouldn’t be inclined to stop the ghostbusters from storing fire in the water because of his applied dogsbodiness.
I think I see where your objection comes from. Peck is directly responsible, in the first film, for releasing the ghosts, but in my incarnation would, through inaction, encourage the precarious situation the ghostbusters have created. I’m not suggesting that the Peck character would be directly responsible, just that he or she would have the opportunity to fix a situation and choose not to, leading to the pollution of New York with ghosts. Or fire. Or something.
But perhaps that is not what you meant. In which case, I’m still in the dark. But I ain’t afraid.
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I’m loving this idea.
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You’ve seen the leaked script, of course?
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Is that a reverse bechdel test?
Inverted? It should fail with the men. It’s only fair.
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Dana and Janine totally had a phone call about non-gender specific Ghostbusters.
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Dana saw the commercial. She knew they were dudes. Bechdel grade D+ at best.
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Call me heretic (or simply indiscriminate Philistine), but I liked both versions about the same. Watched them years apart though, so maybe I wouldn’t if I actually gave them a side-by-side comparison.
Never seen him, but damn, he sure looks the part. Was Man on Fire any good? Should I check him out in anything else?
Oh, certainly. Much more often than not, remakes, sequels, and reboots are a lazy attempt to make a quick buck by exploiting a known property to milk every last nickel out of it. Seriously, Van Sant actually said he was remaking Psycho for the sole reason that today’s audiences would never watch the original simply because it wasn’t filmed in color. But even though the track record of remakes serves as a fairly strong cautionary argument against them, I still feel that, as a rule, there’s no good reason why a good-faith effort can’t bring about a solid remake or (less often) sequel.
Yeah, but it was King’s choice. After the success of the WB/ABC miniseries of The Stand, Warner Bros asked King to do another, and he could pick anything he wished. And he really wanted to do The Shining, since he always felt that Kubrick’s version, for all its merits, was a pretty stark departure from the story he’d originally written, and he wanted to take a crack at seeing what he could do with it.
Did Howard the Duck have a genuinely good idea? If I saw it, I’ve blocked out the memory. But your point is well-taken. The reboot of Battlestar Galactica is a textbook case of taking a pretty nifty (but heretofore wasted) concept, and turning it into a pretty compelling show.
Oh, yes. A 19th-century version of Jesus Quintana! Yes indeedy!
Nah. Until he gets himself a producer who can shut down his self-indulgences, I want Jackson to take a long, long holiday. First he turns a 1,086-page novel into an eleven hour and twenty-two-minute movie. Then he doubles the length of King Kong. Then he turns a 289-page children’s book into a (so far) eight and a half hour movie. If we give Jackson a 4,250 page opus to adapt, a Hobbit-scale adaptation would run 125 and a half hours. I shudder to think what it might be if his bloat-curve is allowed to continue.
No, it wasn’t very good for a King novel. His good stuff includes The Shining, The Stand, 'Salem’s Lot, Different Seasons, IT, Lisey’s Story… plenty of others, but Insomnia was weak. Definitely not his worst, though.
Not few enough. Googling “EPA overreach” still brings up 176,000 results.
Last I heard, Warner Bros was going to let Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) direct a four-film adaptation. I’m… well, I’m not gonna stand in line for that one. Considering it’s 20 years old and shot on 16mm on a relative shoestring budget, I like my brother’s miniseries version just fine. Except the ending, which is the book’s fault, not his. King painted that story into a corner, and I have no idea how else he might have ended it, but the Hand of God nuking the bad guys? Christ on a bike, that was awful.
I’d rather someone rewrote the last few books first. I kinda loved his pre-accident Dark Tower stories, disjointed as they were, but I kinda can’t stand the last three. I think a filmed adaptation would be doomed.
You know what? We should be writing a movie. You guys are good. 
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I shudder to think about a BBS physical meetup with everyone to sit down and hammer out a film.
So many physical punches would be thrown. So many fedoras would be knocked off.
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He’s quite the unlovable rouge as a corrupt cop in Get The Gringo/How I spent My Summer Vacation, which is what I initially remembered him from.
I think he does the back-stabbing bastard quite well.
[quote=“miasm, post:105, topic:50830”]
I think I see where your objection comes from. Peck is directly responsible, in the first film, for releasing the ghosts, but in my incarnation would, through inaction, encourage the precarious situation the ghostbusters have created. I’m not suggesting that the Peck character would be directly responsible, just that he or she would have the opportunity to fix a situation and choose not to, leading to the pollution of New York with ghosts. Or fire. Or something.
[/quote]My objection is that the minute we start changing Peck we are changing the script. So come up with a new script entirely, it’s no longer a remake. Reboots are nothing but rummaging around in the past trying to get an audience attached to a project because they had good feelings about the original.
For example, if you like Romeo and Juliet but think Juliet should live in the end, write a new script (see West Side Story). If you want Pygmalion to end with Liza heading off with Doolittle, write a new script (see My Fair Lady). Ghostbusters is halfway based on the time and spirit of New York and creating a startup. Imagine them trying to find a firehouse to operate out of in Manhattan these days. “I’m sorry, that space is six million dollars,have you considered Staten Island with your budget?”
They want to reshoot Ghostbusters? Fine, reshoot Ghostbusters. You want to muck about in the script and create something else? Create something else. And yes, I feel the same way about the new Star Trek. All of these reboots are vampiric Bay-esque displays of shiny and new without actually doing any work to make people interested in a new character in the situation in the first place like the original had to do.
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It’s a Tony Scott film, so of course it is!
Not worried about deadlines?
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Are we talking Days of Thunder Tony Scott, or Enemy of the State Tony Scott? There’s a big difference in quality there.
Shit, no. When have I ever let deadlines get in the way of a sprawling, meandering. collaborative storyline? I’ll worry about a deadline once there’s actual money on the line.
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I don’t get why it has to go from ALL men to ALL women?
The all women thing seems like it is trying too hard…what are they going to have a male receptionist?
Can’t we just have a regular mixed group of people bustin ghosts?
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