Yes! I’m just rereading The Stars My Destination again and was thinking the same thing. It’d the original revenge movie for nerds!
I’ve said it before, but it cannot be said frequently enough: A Canticle for Leibowitz should be the Next Big Trilogy.
I’d also like to see some of Paul Quarrington’s better novels adapted for film. They did a pretty good job of Whale Music, but the source is really not his best work. (Although it’s still one of the greatest comic novels ever written.) What I’d really like to see is a big, spectacular production of Civilization (And Its Part In My Downfall).
It’s as funny as hell, but full of pathos – and it’s an ode to nascent Hollywood, with tons of in-jokes that will stiffen film historians. Larger than life and full of bizarre, cartoonish characters (who are nevertheless human and sympathetic,) it was meant to be a Cohen Bros. project. Please, oh please. It’s got bubbies, too. What’s not to like?
Don’t we all wish. The issue is the film rights, which are jointly held by MGM/Sony and New Line. Because the film is practically guaranteed to make a mint, it’s going to take an army of winged monkeys in sharp suits several years to decide how much silver exchanges hands before there’s a chance of a greenlight. It’s a ridiculous situation because Peter Jackson’s LOTR films have increased the perceived value of the property that MGM’s been sitting on all these years.
I’d like to see a film adaptation of The Fifth Sacred Thing, the post-eco-apocalypse novel by the famous neopagan and ecofeminist Starhawk (Miriam Simos). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Sacred_Thing It’s a well-paced exciting tale, with lots of action, that would adapt very well to the screen.
But I’m not holding my breath. A film that glorifies witchcraft* is just too, too radical a step for “liberal Hollywood.” It would be like the controversy over The Last Temptation of Christ was nothing.
*Don’t tell me about The Craft, that was just a supernatural thriller/teen movie. The Fifth Sacred Thing, OTOH, carries messages, spiritual and political. It’s like a Wiccan version of Left Behind.
Also – when TFST opens, one of the protagonists, Bird, has been in prison several years and, while amnesiac, he has been having a sexual relationship with a fellow prisoner who is a teenage boy (can’t recall his age, but definitely well under 18) – a relationship he continues (with some reluctance, at the boy’s insistence) after recovering his memory. Paging NAMBLA! I just can’t see Hollywood tackling that just yet . . .
Super-spy genius recovers from rape by seducing her nurse, then goes off to other planet to have baby because she is unwittingingly duped into being surrogate mother…
Maybe not
I have another movie I’d like to see Moby Dick. The book itself is unreadable, but I think there’s a good story in there somewhere.
I just gave up reading it after getting a third of the way through. I see why Herman Melville never sold much while he was alive. If he had concentrated on the story, instead of writing an essay about the wonders of whaling, oil production, the history of Nantucket, etc… he probably could have been a good author. The man needed an editor to slap him and say “What the hell is this crap? Cut out this nonsense and concentrate on your characters!”
The Stars My Destination would be, if done properly, the greatest sci-fi movie ever made; the book is wonderfully cinematic and breakneck paced. However, my faith in Hollywood doing it right is about zip, so I’d really rather they didn’t even try.
Full Body Massage II has my vote. Use the same actors; I’ll bet Mimi is still able to play the part.
Friday has the dubious distinction of being the first book I started but didn’t finish. What a feeling of freedom to realize that I could just put it down and never pick it up again.
I do agree that the man-in-woman’s body (or vice versa) theme has never been done properly. Surely there must be more possibilities in the premise than idiot slapstick or the simpleminded realization that, hey, women are people too. :dubious:
The only two problems are: Gully’s time in the jaunte-proof prison and the big breakout would be hard to put across without significant changes, since it all occurs in pitch black. Maybe they’d have to change it so that prisoners were temporarily blinded?Also, people would complain that the Gully’s acceleration and super-slowmo perception during fight scenes was ripped off from The Matrix.
I think the Steve Martin comedy ‘All Of Me’ explores it pretty well. Yep, it’s a comedy, but the woman-in-a-man’s-body theme isn’t all played for laughs and isn’t all about slapstick gags, and Steve Martin won lots of praise for his portrayal of this situation.
When I first saw the OP, I thought it was for remakes we’re getting and don’t deserve. So what came to mind was a remake of The Wizard of Oz what with the Broadway success of Wicked and a new made-for-television The Ten Commandments.
See, I kept seeing Sigourney Weaver as Sirocco Jones, but that was when she had just finished Alien.
I’m waiting for a movie that takes the style of a spaghetti western flick to new heights, much like Sin City did for noir. The anime series Trigun had some ads that ran on Cartoon Network that looked very much like what I’d love to see in such a movie. Almost inhumanely twitchy fingers reaching for pistols, extremely grainy and yellow filtering of the animation, wonderful overhead shots of huge desert landscapes where all objects in the sand cast vivd shadows, steady stares between people, and not a sound throughout the commercial except that of a sqeaky windmill…until Vash pulls out his gun, cocks the hammer back, and shoots it.
I want to see and hour and a half of that.
Or even more. I’m sure most Sergio Leon fans would threaten me for saying this, and tie an exceptionally thick string around my neck so I don’t forget their warnings, but I wouldn’t mind seeing The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly remade, with the backdrop being WWII, or perhaps one of the Gulf Wars. How cool would it be to watch three people constantly stabbing each other in the back while looking for treasure in the Mideast, with stinger missles blowing up random buildings in the background? To see a Arabaic equivalent to Tuco? And then the western genre thrown into another part of the world?
I would see it if the performances were good, and the style was dead on.
I wonder how they would redo the +5 minute stand off…
