BEFORE: With less than three weeks of movies left in the year, it's time for me to start thinking about next year. I'll describe this process more in the upcoming year-end wrap-up, but I've got just over 132 films on tap for next year - I've organized films by topic, actor, actor's birthdays and even where the films have taken place. What's left? How do I figure out the order for the films that are left to watch?
Well, February's easy - I just pick the films that seem to be most about love and romance, and then figure out which actors appear in more than one film - (Julia Roberts will be represented well next February, as will Dermot Mulroney). Quite by accident I have just over 28 such films, and I was able to navigate a linking path through them.
Today I couldn't help but start to think about how to start next year's chain, and more importantly, how to end it, in case it ends up being the last year of the project. I made some small building blocks, like 5 films with Laurence Olivier, or 6 with Edward Norton, and then I set about putting the blocks together. The past couple years I've started the year with animated films, but I don't have very many of them on the list right now - so I picked a starting point for January 1, and a couple loose topics, like "crime/killers" and "Audrey Hepburn" and I built a 31-film chain that ends where the romance chain begins.
Then I figured out where the year's list needs to end in December (hint: it rhymes with "Star Wars") and backtracked from there - I can't wait, because the last few films of the year will feature some of the most nimble, surprising linking I've done. When I was done tearing apart my watchlist and putting it back together, with some of the films from the beginning moving to the end and vice versa, I had to look back upon it and marvel. Right now there are only FIVE films orphaned at the end of the chain, connected to nothing in particular. And I've got January through March 2015 programmed, and also October through mid-December (I'm guessing) with an indetermined space in between. As I add more films now they'll probably get put in the middle, and as I add them to the framework maybe I can even find homes for those 5 unconnected stragglers (You try linking to "Grand Illusion", it's not easy! The other orphans: "Dangerous Minds", "Gandhi", "Stella Dallas" and "Lust For Life").
Linking tonight is suspended due to my new "remake rule". See yesterday's post for details.
AFTER: This is the terrible dilemma faced when remaking a film - should one stick closely to the plot-points that have been done before, or take chances and strike out in new directions? I think, generally speaking, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
The makers of "Mr. Deeds" had to decide what to leave in and what to leave out - what elements of the 1936 Frank Capra film needed to be kept, and which needed to be updated? After all, the Depression-era mindset was no longer an issue. So they upped the dollar value of the inheritance - from $10 million to $40 billion. They turned Longfellow Deeds from an amateur poet to an amateur greeting card writer (and pizza-store owner).
The reporter/love interest is still a reporter - but I think she works in television now, since her boss is more of a reality-TV show host/producer. The template was probably something like "A Current Affair", but since that genre has only gotten bigger with shows like "TMZ", this seems sort of prophetic in the end.
What they kept the same - Deeds is still a simple fellow who's not above solving business problems with his fists, and he's still naive enough to think that businesses are supposed to be run above-board, and with principles that make sense.
Some of the other tangents that were added seem to go exactly nowhere - like a visit to the reporter's fake hometown, which turns out to be a real place. How is that even possible? Make up a name for a city, and then find it on the map? I'm not sure what this was intended to prove - that there are a lot of small towns with weird names? The rescuing of the cats from the burning building is another new wrinkle that falls pretty flat.
The ending is also quite different - instead of Deeds being put on trial with his sanity questioned, his fortune is put in jeopardy through something more akin to a hostile takeover, and then there's a last-minute solution that seems sort of thrown together or pulled out of thin air.
Starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry"), Winona Ryder (last seen in "The Age of Innocence"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Sex, Lies & Videotape"), John Turturro (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Jared Harris (last seen in "Lost in Space"), Erick Avari, Peter Dante, Allen Covert, Conchata Farrell, Steve Buscemi (also last seen in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry"), with cameos from John McEnroe, J.B. Smoove, Harve Presnell, Rev. Al Sharpton.
RATING: 3 out of 10 butlers
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