Just as we’d prefer for Hollywood to remake bad films rather than beloved classics, we’d also like to see more TV adaptations of obscure and failed series — as long as there’s going to be such a giant void of creativity anyway, why not go for the forgotten titles and at least make it seem like you’ve got fresh ideas?

Unfortunately, Hollywood continues to ignore our logic and is instead adapting the popular 80s cop show T.J. Hooker for the big screen. It may not be the most familiar or beloved series of all time, but it has enough name recognition to make it a success, a la the S.W.A.T. and Starsky & Hutch movies before it.

We have no interest in yet another veteran/rookie team-up, though, especially a blatantly recycled one. So we decided to mine deeper into our TV Guide issues from the 80s and pick out some lesser-known high-concept shows that would make awesome movies if only they had more of a built-in, nostalgic audience to justify a green light.

Check out our pitches after the jump, and thank us when Hollywood gets wise to the ideas.
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Everyone’s talking about the new R-rated trailer for Jennifer’s Body, a horror comedy starring Megan Fox as a possessed cheerleader. My first impression was that it seems too much like last year’s Teeth, only with less interesting subtext. Alison Willmore of The Independent Eye instead finds the movie reminiscent of 2000’s Ginger Snaps, though she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. Either way, coming from screenwriter Diablo Cody, Jennifer’s Body doesn’t appear original in any way except for its forced, writerly dialogue (”You need a mani bad. You should find a Chinese chick to buff your situation.”). And interestingly (coincidentally?) enough, her Oscar-winning movie, Juno, just so happens to feature actress Emily Perkins, costar of the Ginger Snaps trilogy.

Originality aside (it’s also being likened to Heathers and Species), Jennifer’s Body is being celebrated as low culture, criticized for being worse than low culture and otherwise dividing the bloggers up as only Cody’s feature follow-up to Juno could. Meanwhile, the truly important people (i.e. the teen boys looking at blogs) probably won’t care about what’s a good screenplay or what films this may have ripped off, because they’re probably only paying attention to all the teased Megan Fox nudity (including plenty of footage of that “topless” scene we saw “leaked” photos of last year).

By the way, my second impression of the trailer was that it’s cool they used a Runaways song so that this Bloggery can be linked to last Friday’s posting, in a way. Shows how bored I was with the plot/dialogue/visuals. Also, because you probably won’t see her acknowledged on most posts about this movie, Jennifer’s Body is directed by Karyn Kusama, of Girlfight and Æon Flux.

Now, on to the film blog reactions, after the jump:

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In response to the leaked promo trailer for Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant remake, some people are claiming the film doesn’t look like a Herzog work at all. This is surprising, especially since the scene with the old ladies reminds us of the Aguirre act-at-gunpoint legend. Plus, ever since we heard the news of this “reimagining” we thought it was too befitting for Herzog to rework Abel Ferrara. However, that had more to do with the idea that both filmmakers are batshit crazy, not that their films are really that similar.

Still, wouldn’t it be more exciting to see Herzog take on something even less appropriate for his style and taste? Inspired by the Twitter meme #wernerherzogremake, which began yesterday in connection with the Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans promo, we’ve selected ten films we’d love to see Herzog redo just to see what his warped perspective would bring to these stories. While most of them are slightly tied to something he’s made in the past, each is still a completely unlikely project for Herzog to take on. But hopefully he’ll only see such implausibility as a challenge and actually go with one of our suggestions.
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If you were a movie producer looking to make a lot of money, and you had the chance to do this with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, would you put the project in the hands of the people who made the first film, which was not successful in any way, shape or form, or would you put it in the hands of the guy who wrote the first, crappy film but who later redeemed himself with an enormously popular, long-running TV series adapated from that film?

Obviously, most of us would choose the latter, but then I guess we just don’t know something Roy Lee and Doug Davison (of the Asian-horror-remake factory Vertigo Entertainment) know. The duo is teaming up with Fran Rubel Kuzui, who hasn’t directed a film since Buffy but who “served” as an exec producer on the TV show, and her husband, Kaz Kuzui (producer of the original movie), to relaunch the franchise with a new, darker, event-sized Vampire Slayer movie, which will have nothing to do with the show, and which, as of yet, has no involvement from Joss Whedon.

Due to the success of Twilight and True Blood, I can see why someone would want to kick start another vampire franchise, especially one with name recognition, but is there anyone who would look forward to anything Buffy without Whedon? And even with him, would anyone accept a new actress in the title role after Sarah Michelle Gellar made it iconically her own? Let’s check out the film blog reactions to this ridiculous announcement after the jump:
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The vampires of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels are described as impossibly beautiful. But it’s one vampire, “Edward Cullen,” who is written as having such appealing details that it would seem impossible for a girl not to fall in love with him. In actuality, that’s what has happened to most females, young and old, who have read the books. And while his cinematic portrayer, Robert Pattinson, doesn’t quite resemble a marble statue of Adonis, the actor is still getting his fair share of seven-year-old suitors asking to be bitten.

Cullen is hardly the first vampire to so strongly attract the hearts (and necks) of mortals. But what is it about the bloodsucking undead that turns us on so much? Is it truly their stone-white skin and chiseled features? Or perhaps it’s their ability to go all night long? Let us take a look at the many vampire love interests that literature and cinema have given us over the years in an attempt to find out their sexy secret.

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A version of this review previously appeared during Fantastic Fest. There is a new addendum at the bottom of the post. Let the Right One In opens in select cities today, as the first release in Magnet’s Six Shooter Series.

After months and months of anticipation, encompassing countless breathless reviews, surprise festival accolades, and angry warnings from supporters of the Swedish vampire film that I’d better stop dismissing it as “The Swedish Vampire Film”, there was probably no way in frozen-over Scandinavian hell that Let the Right One In could have lived up to the hype. So — sorry — but I don’t think it’s a masterpiece, nor do I see it breaking significant new ground. In transmuting universal real-world fears of the other and of mortality into the tropes of the supernatural, it’s simply doing what good horror movies have always done, and always should do. That said, it’s hard not to find its widespread popularity to be extremely encouraging. Aside from its lovely cinematography and sensitive child-actor performances, Right One’s real selling point is the humanist gild it lays on its genre lily. Maybe this is why I’m less than blown away — it’s hardly the first film I’ve seen recently which uses basic genre elements to delve deeper into everyday human horrors — but if there seems to be more of an appetite for this kind of horror than the Saw V kind of horror, that has to be a good thing.

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As if the run-of-the-mill high school movie wasn’t scary enough (cough–High School Musical 3), Hollywood has been upping the ante for years by tossing unsuspecting teens into horrific situations. Audiences seem to enjoy watching vulnerable characters having the hormones scared out of them — or else they just enjoy seeing annoying teens get tortured.

Every high school teen horror flick has a stereotypical cast of characters straight out of cliche-ville: the jock/hot guy, the cheerleader/hot girl, the know-it-all nerd (male or female), the misunderstood girl, the new student, and a slew of others who normally end up as a victim for the killer/monster/plague at the heart of the movie. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the acclaimed Swedish preteen vampire film Let the Right One In (which comes out in limited release tomorrow) has been so successful at festivals: it finds ways to rework the nerd/bully/bad guy constructs that Hollywood has been regurgitating in teen movies for fifty years. After the jump, we take a look at the prototypical high school horror stories that make Right One feel so fresh.

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