Another classic to be mangled by the SciFi Channel

The Wizard of Oz is the latest classic piece of literature destined to be mangled by the SciFi Channel. Clearly not having learnt anything from the disaster that was Legend of Earthsea, an adaptation so bad the books’ author Ursula K Le Guin has written an article explaining why it’s so bad, they’re taking The Wizard of Oz to “the next level” where they hope to “make it relevant, modern and fresh to a new generation”.

The only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope is that Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle will be writing it: they created the excellent NBC series The Pretender. But:

Using adjectives such as psychedelic, twisted and bizarre to describe “Tin Man,” Sci Fi said the mini turns Dorothy into a young woman named DG, who finds herself plunged into a netherworld called the Outer Zone. Other celebrated characters are reimagined in “Tin Man”: the cowardly lion as a wolverine-like creature without backbone, the wicked witch as a sorceress called Azkadellia and the wizard as a larger-than-life figure called the Mystic Man.

Doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it, book-lovers?

Film reviews

Review: The Prestige

The Prestige

So in a fit of Daniel Craig-inspired self-loathing, I spent a few hours down the gym on Saturday. Now my normal Daniel Craig-esque physique is restored. Phew. But since my wife wanted me out the house for a while more – she works hard, she does, and I’m somewhat distracting, thanks to my aforementioned Daniel Craig-esque physique – I went to see The Prestige, a tale of two Victorian conjurors trying to kill each other.

The trouble with The Prestige is that it revolves around a single magic trick, done in three different ways. If you can guess two of them, it’s not a great movie but it’s still very interesting and fun; if you can’t, you’ll feel cheated when you hear how they’re done, but it’ll have been worth watching.

Continue reading “Review: The Prestige”

Ronald D Moore to write new version of The Thing

Battlestar Galactica exec producer Ronald D Moore is to write the script for a new version of The Thing, according to Variety (via SciFi Wire). The classic John Carpenter movie isn’t going to be remade: instead, the new film is to be a ‘companion piece’ to the original (itself a remake of 50s film, The Thing From Another World, which was based on a John W Campbell short story, Who Goes There?).

I have high hopes for it. If there’s one thing RDM has demonstrated in the last three years, it’s that he’s the king of remakes…