New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

So I'm glancing over the latest batch of movie news, looking for fresh victims. Let's see here... some new Ron Howard thing... a Cameron Diaz-Benicio del Toro romantic comedy (really?)... a Brad Pitt-Natalie Portman romantic comedy (really really?)... The Rock making another action movie... well, sounds more okay... so far so good. But wait... what about... sequels? Remakes? Reboots? Where have thou gone? No news of Garfield 3? Not even an RV II announcement for my troubles?!? You really don't know how much you might miss something until it up and disappears.

To be fair, it wasn't really all gone. A few remakes and sequels slipped through the cracks. But it was mostly small potatoes: Final Destination 5 now has a screenwriter, but odds are you won't recognize his name; there'll be a follow-up to The Haunting In Connecticut (no kidding? So all those BOP people who said there'd be a sequel weren't crazy?); those remakes of Escape From New York and Footloose are getting directors (Breck Eisner and Craig Brewer, though I forgot who is directing what); about four more Pixar sequels have been announced, or at the very least one has been (Et tu, Monsters, Inc.?); Cary Elwes will be back for Saw VII, a fact that will be very important to Saw fans but completely meaningless to anyone else (at the very least, it'll wrap up one long-standing loose end, in what will likely be the last film); and a few more movies will be converted into 3D under the cover of night (namely - The Green Hornet, The Last Airbender, and, uh, the latest Woody Allen movie, I think). All that aside, these last two weeks appeared distinctly lacking in really outrageous news.

But let's see here. Perhaps I somehow missed a sequel announcement from the few weeks before? No, no luck there, either. We've already trashed Scream 4, bashed Harold and Kumar 3, and thoroughly condescended to Harry Potter parts 7 and 8 (and 9, just in case). There's that Arthur remake that's now moving forward with Russell Brand and Helen Mirren, but is there really a devoted base of fans out there fuming over that one? Same story for the Private Benjamin re-do.

When faced with a situation so thoroughly lacking in potential snark, the intrepid movie news watcher must look deeper into the latest weeks' news, and trawl upon items that are perhaps intriguing in a way that is not conventionally maddening. Why don't we do that and see what we can come up with?

Well, for starters, it looks like that old 1992 book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus will be getting a film adaptation, and none too soon. No, the book is definitely non-fiction, and no, I have definitely not ever read it, although I have childhood memories of being distinctly disappointed to find out that the plot did not involve murderous, mal-nourished, mal-adjusted, misbehaving carnivore shapeshifters from beyond the stars. That could change when the film comes around, though, giving me a belated victory.

Continued:       1       2