You're Gonna To Need A Bigger Rug

Abide from Dave MacDowell for his solo show at Thinkspace on April 30th. Seems that the Coen Brothers are on people's minds these days.

Previously on Popped Culture...

The Dude Invitational

Big Lebowski Last Supper Abides

Oompa LoomPacino

How Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Should Have Ended

"I was having the worst nightmare. There were aliens, fake Russian accents... and millions and millions of heartbroken fans." And what was that about Blade Runner 2: Attack of the Replicants? (How It Should Have Ended)

Previously on Popped Culture...
Nuke The Fridge
How Lost Should Have Ended
Star Trek: How It Should Have Ended

LegoFellas

Clearly inspired by the Lego recreations of iconic movie posters (and not a desire to make buckets of cash out of childhood nostalgia), Warner Bros. announced that they are making a Lego film.

While no details have been announced, Variety reports that it will be a "family comedy that will mix live action and animation. Warners is keeping the plot tightly under wraps, but it's described as an action adventure set in a Lego world."

Most reaction has fallen into the "what the hell are they going to make out of that" camp, but why fight it? Hollywood will turn anything into a film — plot be damned. And there are already plans for a View-Master film so why not.

With that in mind, Vanity Fair is already suggesting directors and story lines:

Steven Spielberg: Troubled by her parents’ divorce, a little girl (Elle Fanning) builds her own fantasy world when she discovers she has the power to give life to Lego.

Wes Anderson: A precocious child spends four years locked in his bedroom in a fevered attempt to make Lego coruduroy.

Martin Scorsese: A regular Lego guy from the Lego neighborhood gets sucked into the Lego mob after shooting a Lego cop.

Thanks to @poppysmum for the tip.

Previously on Popped Culture...
David Croenenburg's Cabbage Patch Kids
If You Watch Jaws Backwards...
Madness? This... Is... Lego!
The Seven Jack Nicholsons & The Enchanted Mental Hospital

Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss

I appear to have a naively misguided belief that there are creative impulses at work in the movie industry, in which writers, directors, actors and producers are attempting to create, if not art, at least original entertainment. That’s why I’m disheartened at the return of some creaky old heroes to the multiplex. Among the never-say-die characters shuddering back to life are The Terminator, Detective John McClane, Rocky, Rambo, Indiana Jones and some nasty dinosaurs.

I loved each one of the original films and in the case of Indiana Jones, all three of the series, but when they have been laying fallow for many years and are now coming back with fours (a sixth in the case of Rocky!) it is time to say enough. Who is funding Sylvester Stallone’s rage against the dying of the night? What 60-year-old could return to professional boxing or professional soldiering for that matter? The last versions of those films were 16 years ago (Rocky V) and 18 years ago (Rambo) and I don’t recall anyone clamouring for new chapters in their lives.

Bruce Willis’ return in Live Free or Die Hard is almost as problematic, as the plots and titles are becoming equally clunky. In his early 50s, it is reasonable that McClane is still a working cop, no matter how improbable it is that he stumbles upon yet another elaborate scheme – this one involving terrorists and computers. If Willis is going to keep playing the same character, he should do it in other films, a lá Sin City.

The Terminator is going back to the future, sans Schwarzenegger, to tell the tale of Skynet and the apocalyptic nightmare humanity has in store. Prequels are a handy trick to explain away the absence of the star who appeared in the original film and may also explain the lack of an audience. The flick could do okay if they spend Arnie’s salary on new special effects. As I haven’t even seen the third incarnation, I’ve got no interest in this one either.

As for Jurassic Park, hasn’t this storyline been exhausted? We get it, velociraptors are brilliant hunters and the T-Rex is an eating machine. Sure, nature finds a way, but how hasn’t this island been wiped off the map? Perhaps some get lose during a cargo transfer to some uber-rich guy’s private reserve, resulting in Jurassic Park IV: Dinosaurs on a Plane. We should be so lucky.

The only one of the bunch I’d be interested in is the one that seems that furthest away from fruition. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford have been unable to agree on a script since 1993, despite all of them being interested. Ford now is older than Sean Connery was when he played his father in The Last Crusade, but I’d still be willing to go on another adventure, as long as he wasn’t still chasing Nazis in the 1960s. If this one doesn’t happen, I will be satisfied with the trilogy as it is.

An Entertainment Weekly piece heralding the return of these films suggested that in new hands, film series can be reborn in the same fashion Christopher Nolan breathed new life into Batman Begins. But none of these characters are being torn down and rebuilt, it is just the studio returning to the same old mine and hoping there is still some gold left over. I just wish they would go and look for some new gems.

Hack vs. Auteur

Just got back from seeing Munich and it got us talking about Steven Spielberg. How can he put together such a dark, nuanced film about the compromises made when a nation abandons its morals and also direct the one-note, rah-rah, War of the Worlds?

Munich was about Israel's response to the killing of their athletes at the Olympics -- sending assassins after the planners of Black September. But it was also an allegory about the American response to September 11. Whereas War of the Worlds was just a story about how if people just buckle down they can overcome any foe, no matter where it comes from.

Yeesh, guess which one will end up having done better when the box office is tallied?

Not many directors or actors can straddle the line between blockbuster and art -- and it is a line, there are even fewer films that are both. Spielberg seems to move back and forth, though I would prefer he would commit to his muse and stop chasing the dollar.