The summer movie season finally begins to wind down this weekend with the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. So what’s next in Hollywood’s blockbuster pipeline? Would you believe a song-and-dance remake of The Bodyguard starring Hugh Jackman and Miley Cyrus? As of July that was the case, but earlier this month a spokesperson for the Wolverine star denied he was involved in the project.
It’s just as well since “Personal Security” sounded like an April Fool’s Day joke in the first place, but these days it can be difficult to tell when Hollywood’s being serious about its various remakes (The Last Dragon, The Secret of NIMH, and even 1985’s Clue, among many others, are currently in development), sequels (a second Bull Durham, a fourth Beverly Hills Cop, a fifth Indiana Jones adventure), and adaptations of everything under the sun. (By the way, I loved that comment you left on the site that one time. In fact, that comment would make a great movie!)
Can you believe everything you read? Well, of course you can, but that doesn’t mean you should. Without consulting any sources, including all your friends who work at Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, take the quiz below and submit your answers to me via e-mail. A winner will be chosen at random and will receive a prize package that includes Hannah Montana: The Movie on Blu-ray, the first season of Peyton Place on DVD, and a free copy of Jack Wagner’s Don’t Give Up Your Day Job, recently reissued on CD by Friday Music. Hey, remember when the General Hospital star made the jump to the big screen in 1984’s Hard to Hold? Or maybe that was somebody else. Oh well, on with the quiz!
Barton Fink (1991). The Coen brothers’ take on writer’s block and peeling wallpaper won Best Director (Joel Coen), Best Actor (John Turturro), and the grand prize — the Palme d’Or — at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. John Turturro plays a New York playwright hired to write screenplays in 1940s Hollywood. While struggling to write a wrestling picture, the studio puts him up in a run-down hotel where he meets his next-door neighbor, an insurance salesman played by John Goodman. And then, in that typical Coen brothers way, it gets deliciously weird.
Brazil (1985). Think of it as George Orwell meets … well, Terry Gilliam. The director’s take on an Orwellian bureaucracy almost never got released in the U.S. The story is the stuff of Hollywood legend: Universal said the picture was unreleasable. They wanted to completely recut it and change the concept of the entire ending, so Terry Gilliam conducted private screenings against the studio’s wishes. Members of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association attended one of the screenings and voted Brazil best film of the year. Universal then relented and gave it a theatrical release, albeit reluctantly. But beware — the abbreviated, 94-minute cut of Brazil is sometimes shown in syndication, so if you’ve only seen it on TV, chances are you’ve seen the screwed-up version.
The first time I realized I was driving by one of the locations used in The Big Lebowski (1998)- 