Movie List

I've been imploring Ashby for weeks to heed my challenge in our latest bloglist face-off. He has come through. The question, or category, is take a good movie and ruin it by replacing the director with a known hack. Here goes.

5. Glory if directed by Lars Von Trier
I don't think Glory is really all that great a movie, but it's certainly all right. I saw it when I was a little kid, but I went to bed before the movie was over. Or it was so violent, my mom made us leave the room. Anyway, she told us it ended with them running up a hill but neglected to mention they get their dead bodies shoveled right back over.

Anyway. This is Glory if directed by Lars Von Trier: Abraham Lincoln raping a slave with the American flag. That's it, that's the whole movie. Lincoln would be played by Morgan Freeman.

Knowing American film critics, it would be lauded as a daring morality play in the tradition of magical realism because American film critics are self-loathing putzes. I bring this up just because Von Trier seems to think it's original to point out that America has been hypocritical about race, because no one has pointed this out ever ever EVER. Suck our Twain, douche bag.

4. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind if directed by Ron Howard.

I love this movie. If it was written by Akiva Goldsman, which most Howard movies are, I would probably have to fulfill my life long plan to kill him with his horn-rim glasses. And Ron Howard for keeping him employed. If you're curious why they bothered with the almost hilariously extraneous rise and fall of Paddy Considine's drunk, abusive, Hooverville inhabiting character in Cinderella Man, you're much like me.

Anywhosies, if Confessions was written by Akiva Goldsman, there would be a heart-rending b-plot about an earnest do-gooder who is a friend of Chuck Barris at the start but eventually gets chewed up and spit out of the showbiz cycle as Barris makes his name, thus painting Barris as ungrateful and a thoughtless bastard and ur-reality television entertainment as a metaphor for death. A clanging, totally obvious metaphor for death. In fact, it ends with Barris realizing the error of his ways and renouncing the evils of television.

3. Nashville if directed by Paul Haggis

The populist politician who has a car encircling Nashville, playing a recording of the politician spouting off folksy tales and encouraging citizens to yearn for a higher calling is replaced by an evil, corporate, racist Republican. And his man in town who gladhands all of the Opry players is instead running around killing black people, until he falls in love with one, and realizes that racism is wrong. You can tell if a character is a good guy or bad guy within their first three lines; no racial slurs by then, you got yourself a good guy. Shots are characterized by languid close-ups that show a character agonizing over a decision of whether or not to play into a totally obvious stereotype. And Barbara Jean dies because she doesn't have universal healthcare. Which I'm totally for, by the way, I just think Haggis would unnecessarily shoe-horn this in and then win an Oscar because he is a twat and empty liberal twattery is always rewarded in Hollywood. Movie ends with the characters realizing their travails would have been relatively stirring in the early '90s, not so much in 2008.

2. The Ten Commandments if directed by Tom Shadyac

Moses is accompanied by a talking camel (voiced by David Spade) that sasses back God whenever he issues a new set of orders for Moses. Aron keeps getting hit in the nuts by different objects whenever he's about to say something important. Also, people think Moses is gay because of his lisp, which leads to a lot of unnecessary double entendres, like, High Priest: "Your staff just went soft, Moses!" Moses: "That ithn't my thtaff, it'th a thnake!" High Priest: "A trouser snake?"

Instead of the angel of death taking every first-born son, the angel of tickling tickles everybody and everybody laughs when they get tickled because they're ticklish. The angel of death is played by Robin Williams, who vamps and frequently goes off script with his gay hair-dresser voice - "Hmm, Lamb's blood - what did Liza just come through?!"

When the water comes crashing down after the Israelites cross it, Pharoah shakes his fist and comically yells, "Mo-ses!"

Also, God is played by Morgan Freeman.

1. The Great Escape if directed by M. Night Shyamalan

The camp is actually in Utah, the year is 1997, and Steve McQueen never had a baseball mitt.