The new Steve Carell comedy Get Smart opens this weekend and, God help me, I’m starting to look forward to seeing it. I’m not a big fan of revamping old TV shows for the big screen. For every good one like the satirical Brandy Bunch movies you get dozens of lackluster films like The Dukes of Hazzard, I Spy, and The Wild, Wild West. And so when the original announcement came out the they were doing a big screen version of Get Smart, I was less than enthused. With the exception of the perfect casting of Steve Carell in the role Don Adams made famous, I didn’t really see anything worth plunking down ten bucks for. And then the more I started reading about the film the more intrigued I became. It started sounding less and less like an Austin Powers clone and more like an original take on the old show’s sit com oriented formula. The producers wanted to make a real action film and drop an intelligent but completely inexperienced person into the middle of it. Now that sounds like an interesting film I would like to see.
Archive for June, 2008
Apparently the new Hulk movie The Incredible Hulk, which is not a sequel or a reboot of the franchise but is somehow both according to the director Louis Letterier, has some Marvel character cameos in it. A lot of hoopla has been made about Robert Downey, Jr.’s 30 second appearance as Tony Stark at the end of the movie, one online reviewer commenting that he steals the whole movie (which isn’t such a difficult feat for Downey, it’s practically his hobby). But there is also a cameo by the star spangled avenger himself, Captain America. But according to Letterier on Collinder.com it’s a hidden cameo that you have to look for to see. Huh?
Hollywood is once again trying to make a feature film version of Frank Herbert’s classic novel, Dune. His son Brian is co-producing with Kevin Misher and Brian Anderson. The script is to be written by Frank Zetumer and directing chores will be handled by Peter Berg. Though I’m sure the special effects will be awesome, I have doubts that the new film will have the depth of character or thought provoking issues of the SciFi Channel mini-series, but if this is the start of a film series that will see all of the books adapted, I’ll be happy.
