The Daily Trade Round-Up / Dustin Rowles
Trade News | July 13, 2007 | Comments (45)
Confession: I’m not a big pot smoker. In fact, I haven’t smoked up in a few years now — me and the cannabis aren’t on particularly good terms anymore, you see. We’ve had a rough history together and, a few years ago, we finally had a falling out. The last time that Mary Jane and I hung out, in fact, we got in a bit of a tiff and she poisoned my mind with some wicked harsh imagery. I guess it was a very potent combination of marijuana and microwave Swedish meatballs that did me in, but goddamn it: I had visions. No joke. And they were all from the same fucking film: Jacob’s Ladder. And trust me on this: When everyone else is happily baked off their posh blue rockers, you don’t want to be the guy freaking the hell out because Elizabeth Pena’s Jezebel and a group of horned creatures are fucking with your buzz. It’s not a good scene.
I’ve since left my pot-smoking days behind (alcohol and I are still on pretty decent terms), but memories of Jacob’s Ladder have stuck with me, and they look like they will be rekindled, sadly in the form of a remake. I haven’t actually seen the film since I was 16, but the goddamn thing apparently stuck with my subconscious. I recall, at the time, feeling like it was a particularly thought-provoking — no — deep horror flick, and one that I couldn’t quite make sense of. There was a lot of Biblical stuff in it, as I recall, and I think if I saw it today, I’d probably think it was both too obvious and completely nonsensical — that it had all the subtlety of an Oliver Stone biopic. But man alive: Fifteen years later, I can still conjure up a good deal of the film’s unsettling imagery, specifically those demons that haunted him in the subway and the way his wife morphed into Satan while the two were having sex. Fucking creepy is what it was.
Not that whatever director is tapped to remake Jacob’s Ladder will manage to duplicate the disturbing hallucinations or strike anything resembling Adrian Lyne’s tone. I can’t say if the original was a masterpiece, but I can safely say that the remake won’t be. There’s very little known about it, beyond the fact that Alison Rosenzweig (Windwalkers) is producing, but why do I get the idea that Jacob Singer will now be a veteran of the Iraq War, that he will be played by Nic Cage, and that a director known more for his torture sequences than storytelling ability will be hired? And that, in all likelihood, the Sixth Sense twist will be more prominent than the political overtones? I will say, however, that if Rosenzweig is smart, she’ll hire Mikael Halfstrom, who — judging from 1408 — might be able to do justice to the original’s disconcerting imagery.
Elsewhere, the headlines for this item generally run along the lines of “Christmas Comes Early for Jim Carrey,” while the more appropriate header might’ve been: “Christmas Ruined Again. Thanks for Nothing, Asshole.” That’s because Carrey has been tapped to play the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Future, and Present in Robert Zemeckis’ remake of “A Christmas Carol.” And yes, Zemeckis will be using the same horrid-looking animation technique he used in The Polar Express to interminably screw up your fond associations with this story and, as he did in The Polar Express, make all the black characters look as though they just escaped a blazing inferno. Carrey will tackle A Christmas Carol just as soon as he’s done fucking up Horton Hears a Who, due in March 2008. And while we here at Pajiba enthusiastically agree with most of our readers, who firmly believe that rape is never funny, clearly Carrey disagrees when it come to childhood memories. Thanks for nothing, asshole.
Only one review this weekend: Check back later today for Dan’s thoughts on Harry Potter.
In the trailer watch, pay close attention to the narrator’s voice in this one, for Catacombs Her name is Alecia Moore and, if you’re like me, you have no fucking clue who that is until the 1:48 mark, when it becomes horribly, dreadfully apparent. And what’s worse is that Alecia Moore is clearly the heroine in Catacombs, which means that it’s not just another goddamn torture porn flick, but that Moore will likely survive it. (At least someone will be happy.) Note also that Catacombs wins the award, hands down, for fitting the most number of screams into a theatrical trailer.
Comments
Posted by: Tiki at July 13, 2007 8:27 AM
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I thought that Carrey was being considered to play Scrooge. Maybe he'll just start to play all the characters in his movies, Eddie Murphy style. Well that would finally be a truly scary Christmas movie - Black Christmas you wish you were that horrifying!
And congratulations Dustin!