Waterlogged

Hey folks,

I know it's been a while since the last Fugue, but things have been a bit crazy. Dealing with a four and a half month old kind of takes all priority and when I do have a moment to sit and write, I tend to get distracted and move on. I've got a few Fugues pending since the beginning of October and I'm sure at some point I'll sit down and start to bang them all out and finish them...but for now you get this one...hope it suffices...

I've always been a big fan of disaster films. While the more recent ones tend to get bogged down in the special effects rather than develop character, I still enjoy them...but the repeatability factor is pretty low (unless you feel the need to have a "poke fun at Volcano or The Day After Tomorrow party). So, it was only a matter of time that the better films of the 1970s got looked at again for a modern day interpretation.

So...we're not just getting a new big screen remake of my favorite, we've also gotten a new small screen remake of The Poseidon Adventure (which also has been made into one of the funniest musicals you will probably never see...but you can buy the cast album...and all of these are derived from a novel that I've actually never read...maybe I need to correct that oversight)...

Anyway, NBC just aired last night what should have been titled Tom Clancy's Op Center: The Poseidon Adventure as this "modern" remake added some unnecessary scenes of the "rescue team", an entire subplot featuring terrorists (as they are now the cause of the ship flipping over due to an explosion and some vaguely dubious physics) and some inane reality show references (Bryan Brown essentially plays Simon Cowell). They've also changed around enough of the characters from the original to make them seem less human and more cardboard. In fact, Gene Hackman is so memorable in the original that it takes almost every male lead at various points in the film to replace him (and yes, that includes philandering father Steve Guttenberg).

In the midst of all the TV CGI (hey...they're never as good as Movie CGI), there are surprisingly a couple of well done moments that actually improve on the original. The most memorable is Belle Rosen's death (Sylvia Syms barely coming close to Shelley Winters) in which a dying widow (yeah...no Manny to make it out this time) asks Bishop Schmidt (Rutger Hauer substituting for Gene Hackman in this scene) whom she thinks is her husband to describe the park across from their apartment. It's very touching and reminds one that Hauer can actually be a great actor when he's not starring in schlock (heck...he's a great actor when he is starring in schlock).

Unfortunately, all of this adds up to a lackluster effort. So many things are gone from the original (Stella Stevens in her underwear to name one...heck...Linda Rogo doesn't even exist as a character as Mike Rogo -- Adam Bladwin -- is a Homeland Security agent now) that made it so memorable that you miss every one of them and the few lame in-jokes (C. Thomas Howell playing Doctor Ballard and Peter Weller as Captain Gallico -- the name of the original novel's author), the few bright spots and the somewhat surprising and inspired twist at the end (the unexploded bomb has to be used to blow open the other side of the hull to get out) don't make up for it.

So now we just have to wait for the big screen remake to see if justice can be done to a story that probably doesn't need it. Simply entitled Poseidon it opens May 12, 2006 and stars Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Josh Lucas, Andre Braugher, Emmy Rossum and Kevin Dillon...and according to the IMDB none of the cahacter names are the same...so in my book it's already got a strike or two against it. But going for it is director Wolfgang Peterson who so masterfully knows how to get claustrophobia of ships on the big screen (something the TV movie is lacking).

Well...that's all for now. I hope to be back sooner rather than later with reviews of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (seen it already just wanted to incorporate it with a review of the 6th novel but I haven't even started that yet), the special edition DVDs of all the recent Batman movies, the current TV season so far and DC Comics Infinite Crisis miniseries (it's a direct sequel to their 20 year old miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths and two issues in seems like it's going to undo everything that was done then...but I'm betting in the end it won't...but so far it's a great read).

I will leave you with a quick update on Malcolm... he's almost 5 months old and he's got two little teeth sprouting through his gums. We just started him on solids three weeks ago...so far he's had rice cereal, bananas and carrots (this week's intro food as we're doing a new food every Monday). So far the most interesting aspect to this dietary change is the "output"...bananas + cereal + breast milk = greenish cement once every 24 hours...ick...

Anyway...until next time...

Be seeing you.