Charlton Heston

The world lost a great actor yesterday when Charlton Heston passed away. He played many epic roles, but the one I will always remember him in is in The Ten Commandments from 1956. It was directed by the legendary Cecil B. Demille who pioneered the world of film. I remember when I was a little girl my dad and I used to watch The Ten Commandments every Easter.

One of the reasons I love movies so much is because they almost seem to become a part of us. We feel like we know the characters. We root for the good guys and sneer at the bad guys. We watch them with our friends, our families and our loved ones. We go on dates to movies. We laugh at them, we cry during them and sometimes, depending on the movie, we say the lines along with them. They’re like a living breathing thing that pulses through the air waves. Whenever I watch The Ten Commandments, I’ll always think of my father and the times we have together. I know that Charlton Heston was also someone’s father and I am thinking of his family today. Thank you for everything you’ve done!

Heston was in tons of amazing movies. I’ll give you a few IMDB links to the ones that are most familiar to me:
Soylent Green (1973)
Anthony and Cleopatra (1972)
Ben Hur (1959)
Planet of the Apes (196
and in over a hundered more movies, television shows, voice overs and cameos.

More sad news…

Okay people. Just because a movie is excellent and has become a cult classic doesn’t, I repeat, DOES NOT, mean that it needs a sequel. Leave the classics ALONE. I just found on FirstShowing.net that The Boondock Saints (another example of an excellent film) has been greenlighted for a sequel. The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day (oh GOD it’s even a cheestacular name title…)

 The only hope is that the announcement was released on YouTube via SlashFilm and seems a little shady. It was almost immediately removed from YouTube, but can still be seen on SlashFilm. The site says that the cast will remain the same as in the original (minus Willliam Dafoe) but that can only save so much. Filming is said to begin this summer.

I hope it falls through. I want some of these writers and film-makers to take a page from Harper Lee’s book. (She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird-one of the greatest novels of all time) When you achieve such greatness, the chances of being that great are slim to none. I feel like I’m being tricked by the studios (which, of course I am…it’s all about the money and just the money) to go watch a movie that I know will disappoint me. Sequels just aren’t my bag, baby.

I honestly hope that this one falls through…even more than the Lost Boys II…seriously.

The Coreys Strike Back.

So, when I started up this blog, I thought that I was going to get more and more excited about what is going on in Hollywood right now. Boy was I wrong. Instead, the more I delve into the current, up and coming films the more and more I get depressed. Seriously…

With that said, I found that sometime in 2008 (the exact date hasn’t been  released yet but ComingSoon states that it is coming straight to DVD (thank GOODNESS)) there will be a sequel to The Lost Boys called Lost Boys: The Tribe. (The link is to the trailer, found on MTV.com) The only redeeming quality that I can see in this atrocity is that The Coreys are going to be acting in it.

I’m a self-proclaimed classic movie nut, and a self-proclaimed Vampire fanatic. The Lost Boys certainly satisfies both of these interests tenfold. It’s a really, really good movie, chock full of sweet dogs, blood, cool music and on top of that, it is deliciously 80’s. Why in anyone’s holy name would you make a sequel to perfection?

In today’s world of sequels and remakes I’m begging for something new and fresh. Where are the Clockwork Oranges  of today? Where are the movies that require some actual talent? I watched No Country for Old Men, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year. Even that was pretty much a disappointment. It took forever to get started (when it did get interesting it was good) and then the end…I mean, pardon my IM jargon, but WTF? Can you even call that an ending? I’m all about the obscure endings too…geesh.

Anyway, that got a little off topic, but seriously. I want something new. Not The Lost Boys II. Not Indiana Jones IV (although, I’m super excited in spite of myself) but something completely NEW! Is that even possible?

Gosh, I hope so.