That can be a valid approach, but if the most distinctive thing about a given property is the main character, and you really change the main character, why acquire the property? Odd way to build a franchise.

This reminds me of a bit in Monster: Living Off the Big Screen by John Gregory Dunne. A script that he and his wife wrote about Jessica Savitch was turned in Up Close and Personal. At one point, after Redford and Pfeiffer had signed onto the movie and the movie plot had been completely changed, Dunne asked the producer, what the picture was really about. "It's about two movie stars," the producer replied.

I was just over at IMDB, where the Movie of the Day is Erin Brockovich. I followed the links to the external reviews of the movie, and read the NYTimes review, which has one of their classic ratings blurbs at the end:

"Erin Brockovich" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It contains a scattering of obscenities and sexual references and displays of female cleavage in the service of a noble cause.

I just saw Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

I understand the love now. God, that was fucking hilarious. When's Harold and Kumar Go to Amsterdam coming out?

I think this may be my favorite review of Constantine yet -- Things We See Keanu Do In Constantine.

A few selections:

Be wet. A lot. Like, drenched. In something like half the film.

Straddle lots of people. Female people, male people, demon people, angel people, half-breed people. Usually he's grabbing them in some passionate fashion while straddling them. Yeah, baby.

Chant in Latin. (Once while drenched! Yay! Also once in unison with another slashable guy! Double yay!)

Lean into the faces of men he's talking to. Constantine is much with the heavy eye contact with men and the whole intimidating "I'm so close I'll either kiss you or punch you" vibe.

Hold a cat.

Have now seen movie. And so bearing in mind that I am (a) very large with the Keanu love, and (b) almost totally unfamiliar with the source material, having only encountered Constantine before as a minor character in Sandman, I thought it did not suck. I wouldn't say it was a good movie, or even really a fun one, but I was frequently entertained, and not bored. (For reasons, see (a), above. Tilda Swinton also fairly rocked.)

I'll echo Jessica's opinion, though I am very familiar with the source material. Once you get past the sheer wrongheadedness of casting Keanu as a character whose primary personality traits are scheming intelligence and a predilection for biting, witty insults, it can be a fairly enjoyable flick. As expected, Tilda Swinton blew the roof off.

There were a couple of things that made me scratch my head, though. Like Methos in that awful Highlander movie, Hounsou's Papa Midnight just disappears from the film without explanation shortly before the climax. And it turns out the scenes that were (pretty effectively) used to portray Hell were what I'd heard described as Heaven in an apparently pathetically off-base advance article. Thus making me think that it had a much edgier and more revolutionary depiction of metaphysics than it did .

I, too, thought it did not suck. It was not spectacular, but it was totally passable, and I liked it. When I say it's not spectacular, it's not that I can identify specific flaws but that what was there wasn't spectacular enough.

I'm a fan of good vs. evil battles and such, so I dug the mythology. Once I get around to reading Sandman, I should check out the comics.

It's fairly competently directed, though I felt a lot of scenes ended on odd notes. Maybe I can blame the editor for that sort of thing. And it was much slower than I expected, which was good because it's nice when a movie takes its time but bad because sometimes it drags.

Question: Gabriel's motivation reminded us of both The Prophecy and Dogma, but I swear there's another movie, maybe something recent, with an almost identical scene of a higher being of good expressing jealousy of God's treatment of human beings. It's not fair, etc. I can see it in my damn mind, but I don't know what movie it is. The whole part about bringing about hell on earth so that humans could be worthy of salvation was new, though.

Oh, and if you're not a credits-watcher, do stay, as there's a short scene at the end.

Huh. Did we know that they were remaking Brideshead Revisited? It looks like it'd be a feature film instead of a miniseries this time. Paul Bettany is a good choice for Charles, but I don't know about Jennifer Connelly as Julia. And of course, they *must* get Jude Law for Sebastian.

The trouble with redoing Brideshead (and I include Jude Law in this assessment) is that whoever you get for any given part will inevitably be second-rate compared to who they got for the Granada TV series. I mean how could you possibly beat John Gielgud for Charles's father (even if he was approximately 1000 years too old to play the part, even then)--or Claire Bloom for Lady Marchmain?

The whole part about bringing about hell on earth so that humans could be worthy of salvation was new, though.

That was a neat new twist on the idea. While we'd seen a Gabriel that wanted to bring about armaggedon before, this one was doing it out of love rather than jealousy. Rather than begrudging humanity God's love, he/she/it wanted to make sure everyone lived up it .