Back to where this all began...

When I first created my blog, over 2-1/2 years ago, my first post wasn't about politics. Heck, I wasn't even living in Tucson at the time. It was a rant about the lack of originality of movies coming out of Hollywood. I was sick of seeing trailers for remakes of movies and movies based on old tv shows.

Well, everyone must return to his/her roots every once in a while.

I heard this morning that they are going to remake one of the greatest guy flicks of all times: The Dirty Dozen. That just goes too damned far. How in the heck can you remake that classic without completely f-ing it up? You can't! That movie is a timeless classic with a great cast, ok storyline, and great action. It is such a classic that it is even referenced in one of the greatest chick-flicks of all time, Sleepless in Seattle.

The Dirty Dozen has some classic lines that just won't sound the same with someone else saying them:

-Killin' generals could get to be a habit with me.

-Shoot any officers you see in there.
-Who? Ours or theirs?

-Doesn't give me anything. But along with these other results, it gives YOU just about the most twisted, anti-social bunch of psychopathic deformities I have ever run into! And the worst, the most dangerous of the bunch, is Maggott. You've got one religious maniac, one malignant dwarf, two near-idiots... and the rest I don't even wanna think about!
-Well, I can't think of a better way to fight a war.
(from IMDB)

Worse than remaking the Dirty Dozen is word that they are making a movie based on Land of the Lost, a campy Saturday morning tv show from the 1970's. You remember, Marshall, Will and Holly, don't you? Surely you remember the Sleetaks!


Didn't these morons in Hollywood ever read a book? How many great, or even mediocre books have never been made into a movie?? I bet there is a library full of them.

I know that remakes of movies is nothing much when one thinks about 4,000 dead soldiers and countless dead Iraqi civilians, but I feel that the issue is a reflection of a serious problems we face in America: laziness, no originality and a lack of creativity, and/or a fear of trying something new.

Maybe instead of remaking an old movie like the Dirty Dozen, we could learn something from them. Let's take a bunch of thugs and ne'er do wells,, give them guns, and send them to Iraq!
Oh, wait, we already did that. They just call it Blackwater instead....