Thanks, Fonebone. I was pretty sure they weren't going to go with the whole last-man-on-earth becomes the new mutant civilization's devil (or bogeyman, or what have you) which I thought was the most amazing thing about the book. Oh well.

That's a pretty cool idea. Maybe I should read the book.

Yeah, the film's ending is more conventional, which is a shame, but not a huge surprise. The closest a movie ever came to recreating the book's ending was the Vincent Price version The Last Man on Earth, but even that was tweaked somewhat as I recall.

Matheson wrote the screenplay for the Price version, I think. I'm excited to see the film.

And the cuts are all very thoughtful and work to craft an entirely new version of the story that has its own internal consistency of tone. Unfortunately for my own tastes, the tone of this version did not overall work for me. It's too dour, too solemnly tragic.

I've seen some of it on youtube, and this is my problem and also the entire look of Johnny Depp and HBC. The stage version was so dirty and shabby and George Hearn and Angela Lansbury looked so ordinary. My sister commented that Sweeney Todd should like an average guy - completely normal except for a slight twinge that somewhere inside a wire got badly crossed. That's what makes it scary - that it could happen to anybody. I don't get that sense with what I've seen of the Tim Burton version.

Matheson wrote the screenplay for the Price version, I think. I'm excited to see the film.

He hated the result because they took several liberties with his screenplay, IIRC. Price ain't a bad choice, but it was low-budget, Italian-financed production, so it was never going to be the book.

Yeah, the film's ending is more conventional, which is a shame, but not a huge surprise.

See, I would have LOVED a Will Smith movie to end on that kind of note, and I think he could pull it off (after SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION I won't put anything past him acting-wise, and I don't think that was just a fluke), but he seems to have chickened out on anything that isn't an important (aka ALI) movie In fact, given all the fights on this movie, and Ridley Scott's long involvement that ended due to budget reasons, I wouldn't be surprised if keeping the ending wasn't one of the stumbling blocks. But how the HELL do you keep that title without the ending? And why? I love the book, and it's a genre classic, but hardly a title the general public is going to know by name.

Honestly, I think OMEGA MAN would have gotten more recognition, though I'd love to be wrong.

Huh, my first ever double-post. No idea why that happened.

They do retrofit the ending so that the title still makes sense. Again, it's not the book's ending, but it is an ending that allows for those words (it's the last line of the movie as I recall).

I've neglected to mention that cineastes really should get the two recent volumes of Kenneth Anger's short films which have been released in the last year.

I'd seen the later stuff like "Scorpio Rising" but I hadn't seen his earliest experimental shorts. And it's truly revelatory. Aside from their formal daring and beauty and sexiness you just tick it off in your head: "Oh that's where Tim Burton got that. Oh, that's where Fassbinder got that. Aha! Scorsese, you scamp, you thief. You totally ripped that off."

Seminal (so to speak). But very cool and pure eye candy too.

Oooh fun! John Sayles is gonna be in town tomorrow! [link]