Department of "Huh?"

No Comments

• Robert Hunt says:

  January 19, 2011 at 11:23 pm

  I saw a stand-up dis­play for the Sandler film and my jaw dropped when I read “Based on a screen­play by I.A.L Diamond for “Cactus Flower” based on the play by Abe Burrows based on some oth­er play by some French guys…”. I don’t really remem­ber “Cactus Flower” but I can­’t think of any reas­on to remake it.

• FakeLexG says:

  January 19, 2011 at 11:29 pm

  Brooklyn Decker Yep Yep Y’All!

• Victor Morton says:

  January 19, 2011 at 11:33 pm

  Here’s some­thing else weird. If you look up the trail­er for that film, there is no men­tion AT ALL that Nicole Kidman is in the film nor does she appear (unless we see the back of her head for a half-second or somesuch).

• Kevyn Knox says:

  January 20, 2011 at 12:16 am

  Hey, I actu­ally guessed it without Googling. Colour me surprised.

• Fabian W. says:

  January 20, 2011 at 2:29 am

  Really uncool.

• Terry McCarty says:

  January 20, 2011 at 4:25 am

  Another in the line of unof­fi­cial Sony remakes e.g. GUESS WHO? (GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER) and that ROOMMATES Screen Gems thing with Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly and Cam what’s-his-name-from-BURLESQUE (looks like yet anoth­er trip round the mul­berry bush of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE).

• Oliver_C says:

  January 20, 2011 at 5:18 am

  It could be worse. It could be Götz Spielmann’s Hollywood debut or something.

• The Siren says:

  January 20, 2011 at 9:17 am

  The ori­gin­al was an occa­sion­ally cute, quite sex­ist little movie, so much of its time it’s like find­ing go-go boots in Grandma’s closet. And it actu­ally won Goldie Hawn an Oscar, as people here prob­ably remem­ber but it’s worth stat­ing FTR. But of course the LAST thing I want to do is make jokes that would appear to demean or pre-empt the work of a trust­worthy mod­ern film­maker, sight unseen. So much bet­ter to say we won’t know for sure until it’s released, and should­n’t judge until then, because really, that can­’t be said too often and it’s a far more sub­stant­ive obser­va­tion, don’t you think?
  Anyway, I had nev­er seen this poster, and WHO is the woman on the left sup­posed to be? Ingrid Bergman? She looks like Barbara Billingsley. And the slimmed-down, sexed-up Matthau, and the Goldie Hawn pose; this thing is pure joy.

• Tony Dayoub says:

  January 20, 2011 at 12:04 pm

  @Robert Hunt,
  See, I’m of the opin­ion that if one is going to revis­it some­thing, it’s these kind of “weak tea” movies that are per­fect for a remake. Why even con­sider remak­ing a great film like THE WILD BUNCH (anoth­er bit of gos­sip going around)?
  Of course, the point is to improve on it which I doubt is even the inten­tion of Sandler’s film.

• Pete Segall says:

  January 20, 2011 at 12:57 pm

  @Victor Morton: I was going to say the same thing. I almost find that more sur­pris­ing – and sad­den­ing – than the fact that this is Cactus Flower as reen­vi­sioned by the dir­ect­or of Grown Ups.

• Jette says:

  January 20, 2011 at 2:20 pm

  I just hope Sandler and Co. don’t decide to remake KISS ME, STUPID next.

• Unkle Rusty says:

  January 20, 2011 at 3:13 pm

  Seems like Matthau had that brief peri­od as a sexy lead­ing man, did­n’t he? He lam­poons that image bril­liantly in May’s New Leaf, of course. The image did­n’t really take, but he was still good in those movies. Something tells me he found the whole thing very amusing.
  Sandler, on the oth­er hand, I truly believe, regards him­self as Dead Sexy.

• Partisan says:

  January 20, 2011 at 3:19 pm

  Yes, in mak­ing remakes I sup­pose there are two cat­egor­ies for the prom­ising dir­ect­or. There are movies that are slight but which have poten­tial. I haven’t seen “Cactus Flower,” but I sus­pect that it falls into that cat­egory. Has any­one even seen “A Touch of Class” since 1974? I sus­pect that would be anoth­er movie that Hollywood might try to remake.
  Then there are movies that have a big­ger repu­ta­tion, but which many crit­ics strongly dis­like. The prob­lem here is that it’s not likely that Hollywood would be inter­ested in get­ting the right dir­ect­or. I actu­ally love “Death in Venice,” but I don’t sus­pect we will see Alexander Sukorov’s “Death in Venice.” Nor do I think we could look for­ward to Hayao Miyazaki, Chris Marker and Terry Gilliam’s “Blade Runner” or Chantal Akerman’s “A Clockwork Orange.” On the oth­er hand Alan Parker’s “Alien’ is the kind of movie I’d like to see that Hollywood might actu­ally make.

• Stephen Winer says:

  January 20, 2011 at 3:21 pm

  From Matthau and Hawn to Sandler and Aniston makes me think of an old Mort Sahl line from a dif­fer­ent con­text: “Darwin was wrong!”

• Tom Block says:

  January 20, 2011 at 4:02 pm

  I’ve been hear­ing of a “Wild Bunch” remake for a while, too, but IMDb now shows it’s an anim­ated com­edy about flowers. Rod “Fellini” Lurie’s remake of “Straw Dogs” keeps get­ting pushed back and is now sched­uled for September. Its set­ting has been moved to the Deep South, the cast looks like the kids in “Glee”, and Lurie prom­ises that audi­ences will “go bana­nas” at the end. I just can­’t help think­ing it’s headed in a dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tion than the original.

• Richard Brody says:

  January 20, 2011 at 4:42 pm

  Oh, I for­got: every­one dead is better.

• skelly says:

  January 20, 2011 at 5:10 pm

  “I just hope Sandler and Co. don’t decide to remake KISS ME, STUPID next.”
  Let’s be fair – Kiss Me, Stupid was a remake.

• jbryant says:

  January 20, 2011 at 5:11 pm

  Hey, Sandler and com­pany remade MR. DEED GOES TO TOWN, and that worked out pretty well.… oh wait.
  Actually, I’ve become a bit of a Sandler apo­lo­gist in recent years. While I haven’t seen GROWN-UPS, I greatly enjoyed YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN (even with Dugan dir­ect­ing!), and FUNNY PEOPLE was one of my favor­ite films of ’09. Even less­er recent efforts such as CLICK and BEDTIME STORIES show flashes of, I dunno, ambi­tion? 50 FIRST DATES seems like a good script that got com­prom­ised. THE WEDDING SINGER was a good time. And PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, people!
  Walter Matthau’s 70s run as romantic lead­ing man/tough cop/bank robber/drunken base­ball coach/etc. is one of the joys of that decade.

• Owain Wilson says:

  January 20, 2011 at 6:11 pm

  Warner Bros has announced that they will be remak­ing Lethal Weapon. Now that makes me REALLY angry.

• Kent Jones says:

  January 20, 2011 at 6:28 pm

  jbry­ant, it’s not a pop­u­lar choice but I really love SPANGLISH and I think he’s great in it. And he’s also great in the 9/11 thing with Don Cheadle.

• Victor Morton says:

  January 20, 2011 at 8:07 pm

  “Oh, I for­got: every­one dead is better.”
  That WOULD follow …

• Robert Cashill says:

  January 20, 2011 at 8:08 pm

  CACTUS FLOWER the play is being revived Off Broadway this season.
  CACTUS FLOWER the movie does have a nice scene set out­side the Plaza Theater.

• Jack Gibbs says:

  January 20, 2011 at 10:38 pm

  Oh yes, anoth­er pithy one liner from Richard Brody that entirely dis­misses the acutal dis­cus­sion going on for a reduct­ive gen­er­al­iz­a­tion that is either a mis­read­ing or a disin­genu­ous response. Nobody said the dead are bet­ter, if you read this thread you would see there are many who praise and parse the pur­pose of remakes, but why both­er with that when you can dis­miss and dis­reg­ard it all with an inten­tion­ally (I only hope) mis­guid­ing reply?

• Stephen Winer says:

  January 20, 2011 at 11:14 pm

  Richard, Goldie Hawn isn’t dead. That’s just the face lift.

• jbryant says:

  January 21, 2011 at 10:59 am

  Kent: I left SPANGLISH out only because I was try­ing to stick to films Sandler also had a hand in pro­du­cing, pick­ing PUNCH DRUNK LOVE as an excep­tion for the cap­per (I missed REIGN OVER ME). But I liked SPANGLISH, too: it’s sort of like a sit­com by Renoir. Some find it pat­ron­iz­ing in a limousine-liberal way, but I think Brooks is really try­ing to get at some­thing about cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences. His efforts can be clumsy, but his earn­est­ness is thank­fully min­im­ized by his flair for com­edy. I also find his ram­bling struc­ture rather refresh­ing amid the sea of for­mula that Hollywood usu­ally nav­ig­ates. It’s a heck of an ensemble, too, with spe­cial kudos to the fear­less Tea Leoni, saddled with per­haps the least likable char­ac­ter in recent American film history.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 21, 2011 at 11:13 am

  @ J. Bryant: I did not care for SPANGLISH all that much—I found it wildly uneven, let’s say. But I thought Sandler was good in it, and I’m not anti-Sandler as a rule, by any means. I’ve act­ively enjoyed him, albeit in small doses, since his stand-up days. But please, be care­ful with those Renoir com­par­is­ons. Not because of sanc­tity, but just because…well, I don’t really think they apply. If Brooks is work­ing with­in a tra­di­tion, it has more to do with that of McCarey (who Renoir admired very much) or Stevens (I’m think­ing like stuff such as “The More The Merrier” in par­tic­u­lar) than with Renoir. As for the whole “dead-people” non argu­ment, I was gonna let it pass, in part because I’m try­ing to keep my own powder dry with respect to Mr. Brody because he’s most likely REALLY not gonna like what I have to say about “Uncle Kent” when I get around to it, and because, yeah, it’s a non-argument, it’s always been a non-argument, and it’s par­tic­u­larly irrel­ev­ant here because I was­n’t pro­fess­ing any­thing like a great love for “Cactus Flower” in the first place. My bemuse­ment stemmed from my feel­ing that it’s such a ran­dom film to remake, is all. But even if I were pro­ceed­ing from the “dead people are always bet­ter” pro­pos­i­tion, what would the rami­fic­a­tions of a counter to that idea be? That Dugan and Sandler chose to remake “Cactus Flower” because the ori­gin­al film was such a botch, and they were gonna show I.A.L. Diamond and Walter Matthau how it’s SUPPOSED to be done? Somehow I don’t think that’s the case. Call me crazy…

• Kent Jones says:

  January 21, 2011 at 11:58 am

  Glenn and jbry­ant, I come down on Mr. K’s side of the Renoir ques­tion. However, while I have found most of Brooks’ films really jar­ring on a visu­al level (AS GOOD AS IT GETS in par­tic­u­lar – that one was kind of hair-raising), this one was dif­fer­ent, filled with sun-dappled imagery that Renoir prob­ably would have liked, and that prob­ably has less to do with Renoir fils than with Renoir père and an impres­sion­ist visu­al palette (cour­tesy of DP John Seale). It may have been awk­ward, but I found it a genu­inely troub­ling movie that worked a lot of extremely del­ic­ate ter­rit­ory with real bravery.
  Actually, I think Brooks sort of inven­ted his own tra­di­tion with his tele­vi­sion work, and, like his name­sake and fre­quent col­lab­or­at­or Albert, worked the com­ic side of a par­tic­u­lar type of self-consciousness and self-analysis, straight out of the 70s. When I watch his films, it’s not McCarey or Stevens that come to mind as much as Laing, Reich, Karen Horney and the Esalen Institute.

• jbryant says:

  January 21, 2011 at 12:15 pm

  Well, hey, I did say a “sit­com” by Renoir rather than a film by Renoir. Since we don’t actu­ally have an example of Renoir sit­com, can you prove such a thing WOULDN’T be like SPANGLISH? (ima­gine that being said in the tone of Criswell). 🙂
  Come to think of it, Glenn, I prob­ably got to the Renoir cita­tion through McCarey, who’s just about my favor­ite dir­ect­or. Guess I thought my point would carry more weight if I dragged Renoir into it. Like Beatles fans who make Mozart com­par­is­ons or something.

• Kent Jones says:

  January 21, 2011 at 12:48 pm

  “My friends, nev­er before, in the his­tory of man­kind, have we been con­fron­ted with a con­tra­dic­tion SO shock­ing, SO chilling, SO utterly bey­ond our very COMPREHENSION as HUMAN BEINGS…as s SITCOM dir­ec­ted by JEAN RENOIR!”

• jbryant says:

  January 21, 2011 at 1:04 pm

  Dang, you know, come to think of it, in 1987 Fox did a sit­com ver­sion of DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS (which was based, of course, on BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING). Hector Elizondo, Tim Thomerson, Anita Morris. Thirteen epis­ode. I guess that’s as close as we’ve got­ten to a Renoir sitcom.
  I also find it inter­est­ing to note that Renoir’s THE SOUTHERNER co-starred Barbara Pepper, bet­ter known as Mrs. Ziffle in GREEN ACRES. I bet she shared some great Renoir stor­ies with Eb and Mr. Haney.

• Victor Morton says:

  January 21, 2011 at 1:42 pm

  “I bet she shared some great Renoir stor­ies with Eb and Mr. Haney.”
  Actually, it was Arnold Ziffel who was the Renoir scholar.

• Kent Jones says:

  January 21, 2011 at 2:50 pm

  Let’s not for­get that Percy Kilbride, destined to appear in the proto-sitcom MA & PA KETTLE series, was also in THE SOUTHERNER…thus bring­ing a touch of New England to the South.

• jbryant says:

  January 21, 2011 at 3:03 pm

  Victor: One of my favor­ite GREEN ACRES moments is when Arnold goes miss­ing, and the Ziffels are sure foul play is involved, because they find it hard to believe Arnold would miss his mid-terms.
  Kent: And Walter Brennan is in SWAMP WATER. So maybe THE REAL MCCOYS is like a sit­com by Renoir? 🙂

• Tom Block says:

  January 21, 2011 at 3:42 pm

  Or else the ORIGINAL Beverly Hills sit­com. Granny Clampett was in “Diary of a Chambermaid” AND “Woman on the Beach”.

• Donald says:

  January 21, 2011 at 4:09 pm

  Kent, jbry­ant and any­one else inter­ested: what are your thoughts on “How Do You Know” if you’ve seen it? I saw it a few days ago and can­’t get it out of my head. I found it frus­trat­ing, with its inter­mit­tent spots of real beauty and pathos sur­roun­ded by some very awk­ward, even gar­ish work. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out the extent to which the two might rely on each oth­er – or not.
  Probably my favor­ite fas­cin­at­ing fail­ure of the year, at least thus far.

• jbryant says:

  January 21, 2011 at 5:29 pm

  I love a good “fas­cin­at­ing fail­ure” – Hollywood rarely gives us unal­loyed great­ness any­more, so we take what we can get – but I haven’t seen HOW DO YOU KNOW, and at this point it will undoubtedly be a Netflix thing for me. The reviews have cer­tainly been dis­heart­en­ing, but that’s been the case for the ini­tial crit­ic­al recep­tion to many a dir­ect­or’s late-career efforts, so I’ll try to keep an open mind.

• Kent Jones says:

  January 21, 2011 at 11:00 pm

  Donald, I am unashamed to say that I actu­ally liked HOW DO YOU KNOW. You can feel every­one find­ing the movie as they go along – the tone, the rhythm. So the first half hour or so is very odd, the movie that Anthony Lane was writ­ing about in his snotty review. Nicholson seems lost in his own private miasma, it took a while for Paul Rudd to register (for me at least), and I found that Reese Witherspoon and her char­ac­ter were ever so slightly mis­aligned. But Owen Wilson is great (as usu­al), and as it moves along it becomes more layered and emo­tion­ally affect­ing, and I have to say that I thought the scene with Rudd and Witherspoon vis­it­ing his sec­ret­ary in the hos­pit­al with her new­born baby and the fath­er of her child – the video­tap­ing, the replay­ing of the scene – was very good, and affect­ing (the guy who played the fath­er was ter­rif­ic). In the end, I really liked it.

• Vincent says:

  January 22, 2011 at 12:59 am

  So am I to pre­sume that Jennifer Aniston is play­ing the Goldie Hawn role in this remake? That’s non­sensic­al in that Aniston is about 40 now, where­as Hawn had just turned 24 when “Cactus Flower” hit theat­ers in late 1969. And Goldie had genu­ine charm and likab­il­ity, where­as Aniston seems merely a device used by the magazine industry to boost sales at super­mar­ket check­out counters.
  If Columbia is try­ing to remake its old prop­er­ties, what next? “The 30-Foot Bride Of Candy Rock,” with Anna Faris (already eyed in anoth­er Hawn remake, “Private Benjamin”) suc­ceed­ing fel­low University of Washington alumna Dorothy Provine as the tit­u­lar blonde giantess?

• jbryant says:

  January 22, 2011 at 3:34 pm

  Vincent: Judging from the trail­er I saw, Aniston has the Ingrid Bergman role.

• Donald says:

  January 24, 2011 at 3:06 pm

  Kent and jbry­ant, thanks for your thought­ful replies.
  Kent, you make a very good case for “How Do You Know” and even if I’m still not com­pletely sold on its over­all effect­ive­ness, it’s cer­tainly one of the most ambi­tious movies I’ve seen in a while. That hos­pit­al scene you men­tion is a real knock­out (I was cringing when I real­ized where it was going but swoon­ing by the end). Very likely worth anoth­er look…

• Cadavra says:

  January 24, 2011 at 10:55 pm

  Yes, Aniston has the Bergman role; Hawn’s is played by a swim­suit mod­el named Brooklyn Decker. Apparently they could­n’t find an actu­al actress.
  Count me in as a HDYK sup­port­er. The busi­ness with the Play-Doh was sub­lime, and I loved how Witherspoon actu­ally seemed to be listen­ing when the oth­er char­ac­ters spoke and react­ing accord­ingly. On the oth­er hand, Owen Wilson’s lout­ish goof­ball schtick is los­ing its charm real fast…

• FakeLexG says:

  January 25, 2011 at 4:51 am

  HOW DO YOU KNOW is excel­lent. It’s my favor­ite James L. Brooks movie, actually.
  I don’t want a rehash of last August’s unpleas­ant mater­i­al by any means, but just ask­ing inno­cently, and I DO know the inclin­a­tions of the SCR audience:
  Doesn’t the whole “EVERYTHING USED TO BE BETTER” shtick ever get a little tire­some? What did Tony Soprano say about nostagia?
  Movies today are as good as they’ve EVER been.

• Oliver_C says:

  January 25, 2011 at 4:55 am

  And the ‘fake’ LexG is just as much of an ass. I won­der if Kevin Smith’s ‘retire­ment’ will last longer than yours?

• FakeLexG says:

  January 25, 2011 at 4:57 am

  I’m just say­ing, you wanna see REESEY LOOK AT HER in LITTLE BOOTY SHORTS and bare feet, or you wanna hear that godaw­ful depress­ing TERMS OF ENDEARMENT synth music?
  I’ll take PIECE OF SPOON’s booty shorts any day o’ the week.

• jbryant says:

  January 25, 2011 at 5:48 am

  FakeLex: I don’t really see any­one here claim­ing CACTUS FLOWER as an untouch­able clas­sic. What’s tire­some is that every time someone online com­plains about a remake, some young pup pops up to assure every­one that movies are just as good today, as though that were the point.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 25, 2011 at 6:20 am

  As someone who did NOT much like “How Do You Know,” I find the argu­ments of its sup­port­ers here per­suas­ive enough that I’m cer­tain to give the pic­ture anoth­er look…and yet I sus­pect I’ll still have many of the same objec­tions. I thought the pacing was logy, the sta­ging awk­ward, and both of those ele­ments had me overly aware of things that I ought not have been aware of in order for this sort of mater­i­al to do its job on/with me, so to speak. I also felt the hos­pit­al scene was just a little too indul­gent of its own tour-de-force-ness. On reflec­tion, my exper­i­ence of it reminds me a bit of how I felt about Cameron Crowe’s much-trashed “Elizabethtown:” Head and heart in the right place, so to speak, exe­cu­tion all over the damn map.