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The
Boycott Begins
By Will "The Thrill" Viharo
Exerpted from
www.thrillville.net
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Courtesy AOL/Time Warner
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I
am opposed—ideologically, philosophically, culturally and every
which way—to most remakes, including the impending rip-offs of
beloved sci-fi classics Forbidden Planet and Barbarella,
neither of which could possibly be improved upon in any update. In
boycotting the remake of the Rat Pack classic Ocean's 11, my whole
point in a nutshell is this: Why not create something totally original,
that is as significant to our era as those films were to theirs?
Plundering
the past for ideas is nothing new, but at least please give the new
version its own identity by calling it something else. Case in point:
Stephen Soderbergh's needless but inoffensive remake of the classic
noir Criss-Cross, which he called The Underneath.
It wasn't nearly as good as the original, of course, but the fact
that he chose to give the remake a new moniker allowed us to reckon
with it on its own terms, and reduced inevitable comparisons.
Now Soderbergh
has completely blown it, and alienated me forever. Like he cares.
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Courtesy AOL/Time Warner
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For
one thing, he isn't even a true fan of the original Ocean's
11—he simply wanted to update the concept of an
all-star heist flick. Fine. Not even Sinatra has a patent on
that idea. But why not create new pop culture instead of warming
over a legend from another time and place? The original Ocean's
11 was a time capsule travelogue of Classic Vegas, and
a grand showcase for the timeless, matchless charisma of the
Clan. The plot was incidental, and hardly cried out for a modern
spin. The fact is, Ocean's 11 is widely regarded
as the Rat Pack flick (though they subsequently
made several films together, detailed in my article in the Fall/Winter
issue of ATOMIC Magazine). Remaking it is on par with remaking
I Love Lucy. If you really just have to get together
a bunch of movie stars and have them hold up Modern Vegas—ugh—go
ahead…but don't call it Ocean's 11, that's been done already!
In a
recent interview, Soderbergh expressed disdain for what he deemed
the "smugness" of the original. Newsflash for Stevie Blunder—that
detached attitude is called COOLNESS, you clueless snob! Frank,
Dino, Sammy, Angie D., Richard Conte, Cesar Romero and company
were really cool, they don't have to act
cool, like Clooney, Pitt, Damon, Roberts and Garcia will lamely attempt.
The trailer for the remake looks like Mission:Impossible 3—another
pop culture franchise taken over and ruined by a pointlessly revisionist,
egomaniacal, irreverent mentality. On Letterman lately, someone told
me Dave asked Julia Roberts if she'd seen the original. She replied
she'd tried twice but couldn't get through it. What a bimbo! Obviously
the marketing minds behind this mess want to sucker in potential fans
of a Rat Pack remake (even though the Rat Pack is not even referenced
in the new film or on its soundtrack), and here a star of the remake
disses the beloved source material on national TV! Pitt, Roberts,
and Soderbergh are the most arrogant airheads in Hollywood, the direct
antithesis of what the Rat Pack and Ocean's 11
were all about.
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Courtesy AOL/Time Warner
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This
is culturally criminal, and I won't just sit back and let it happen
without a fight! As for George Clooney—I actually like George.
He has an old fashioned charm and is one of the few charismatic movie
stars we have today, relatively speaking. He's fine in stuff like
O Brother Where Art Thou and From Dusk Till Dawn—but
not in roles originated by Frank Sinatra, a true icon and legendary
talent. Sorry, George is not "Danny Ocean"—that role belongs
to Sinatra for all eternity! Can you picture Sinatra as ER's
Doug Ross? Would you even want to? And Brad Pitt? Ever see that bum
on television interviews? He's a slob, the stylistic
opposite of Dean Martin, the King of Cool! And I guess Matt
Damon is today's feeble answer to the suave sophistication of Peter
Lawford? That says a lot about the pitiful times we live in. Don
Cheadle is one of several token black guys in the new 11, but he is
not "Sammy"—even though he effectively played him in the
HBO biopic, and was in fact the best of that bunch.
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Courtesy AOL/Time Warner
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How
could all this be allowed to happen? From now on, when you walk into
a typical video store and ask for Ocean's 11, some pimply
faced punk will hand you a fucking Brad Pitt movie. Kids today need
to be edified about classic cool and historical pop culture—to
casually and cynically "re-imagine" our past for modern minds is ripping
off their present and our cultural future, not to mention our sacred
past, which we will ALL be relegated to someday, remember.
Ocean's
11 is and will always be a Rat Pack movie—and
these modern bozos are the anti-Rat Pack. That's what my sign
will say: BOYCOTT THE ANTI-RAT PACK!
Addendum:
Will's boycott was subsequently covered by The San Francisco
Chronicle and Entertainment Weekly, as well as in
this article from The
Las Vegas Review-Journal How about the reaction on the
East Coast? Check out this article from Orlando
Weekly, which mentions Swingerhead
bandleader Michael Andrew.
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