The Day The Earth Stood Still managed to pull in $30 million dollars this past weekend, which you can mostly attribute to clever marketing, but it’s not a promising number for the much-loathed movie, which is sitting at 21% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Beyond the wooden acting and the eviscerating of a beloved sci fi classic that most people are talking about, there are some moments in this movie that just make my teeth clench. Moments that are so poorly written, thought out, filmed, and constructed that I just can’t keep myself from venting. Read on to see all five, and just in case it’s not clear enough from the header: there are spoilers below.

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One of the biggest travesties about the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still is that Jon Hamm only has a bit part in it. Frankly, if he’d played Klaatu, this might have been a movie worth watching. He’s spent the last two years winning our hearts and wardrobes over as Don Draper on AMC’s Mad Men, and he’s worth a lot more than a small part in a science fiction remake.

WIth that in mind, here are five classic science fiction remakes that we’d like to see Jon Hamm take the helm in. If he brings along any of his television co-stars, that would bring some bonus points. But his slicked-back hair and calm demeanor don’t need any assistance. Check out the list after the break and hope that someone at a studio somewhere is paying attention.

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• Hancock made a bunch of money on Tuesday. Yay, Will Smith IS America!
• All together now, in our best Werner Herzog voice: “Don’t call it a reeeemaaaaake!” But whatever it is, Val Kilmer and Xzibit have joined the cast of Bad Lieutenant.
• Timothy M. Gray’s midyear assessment of the Oscar race finds a lot of ways to say “no one knows anything.” The uncertainty is causing such a frenzy that we’re apparently considering handing out Oscars to Hamlet 2 and (maybe even worse) The Visitor. Please, Toronto, deliver us from this crisis!
• Speaking of: Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna and the Michael Cera/Kat Dennings romantic dramedy Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist have been added to the TIFF lineup.

“Did everybody see the film?” Abel Ferrara cried at the jump of the Cannes press conference for Chelsea on the Rocks, compulsively putting on and pulling off a pair of black wraparound sunglasses, sipping on a can of Budweiser. Several journalists coughed in response. Said Ferrara: “What is this, avian flu? Everybody cough, yeah. We got a Howard Hughes complex as it is.”

The press conference as a whole was a woozy, half-sickly, half-populated affair…maybe typical of anything involving Ferrara meeting journalists, but definitely emblematic of the Festival itself at this point. But! But! Ferrara twice talked about Werner Herzog’s alleged Nicolas Cage-starring remake of his Bad Lieutenant––once in response to a question from a reporter, and once just because he apparently felt like he needed to vent.

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Twitch has linked to a Spanish-language interview with Nacho Vigalondos, in which the Timecrimes director says David Cronenberg is in the running to direct the English-language remake of his time travel film–-that is, since Mario Bava is not available. Vigalondos also says Timothy J. Sexton, one of the writers of Children of Men, is writing the English language adaptation, and that if he were to have his dream cast, it would involve Joan Allen, Adam Brody, and either Bruce Willis or Kurt Russell. After the jump, you’ll find Babelfish’s translation of the relevant portion of the interview. Linguistics are funny! See also Kevin’s review of Timecrimes and interview with Nacho from Sundance.

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• Iron Man had a huge weekend, grossing $104.2 in the States from Thursday night through Sunday, and a total of $201 across all international territories. And yet it appears that no one was interested in seeing anything else––overall, this weekend’s box office was down 13% from last year’s, when Spider-Man 3 had the best opening weekend ever with $151.1 million.
• Production starts today on that Terminator sequel starring Christian Bale, and its makers are determined to deliver a box office-friendly PG-13. “The PG-13 has increased in intensity,” says Victor Kubicek, the film’s broker-turned-writer-producer. Imagine him saying that in an Arnold voice, and I think you’ll feel better about the whole situation. I did.
• British production company Hammer Films will team with Spitfire Pictures to remake Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire film that was all the rage last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the World Dramatic Narrative prize.
• Maya Entertainment, a distributor known for targeting Spanish-speaking audiences in the U.S., has purchased Sleep Dealer, Alex Rivera’s sci-fi immigration drama which premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

• Quentin Tarantino will give the Cinema Master Class lecture at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
• A new New York State budget makes room for a tripling of film production tax incentives, designed to stop the flow of productions running away to nearby states like Connecticut.
• The remake of Prom Night is expected to narrowly beat out Street Kings at the box office this weekend, and Sony distribution president Rory Bruer knows why. “Prom night is a common sort of experience,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. And really, this is what people look for when they go to the movies: a reflection of an experience they’ve had, plus murder.

• With his retro football rom-com Leatherheads is expected to top the weekend box office, George Clooney is finally speaking out about the fact that the WGA’s decision to exclude him from screenplay credit on the film pushed the actor/director to go financial core, or give up his rights as a voting member in order to pay fewer dues. The complexities of the story, outlined here, offer a pretty interesting glimpse into the intricacies of WGA policy.
• Are you ready for designer, non-disposable 3D glasses? Are we sure this didn’t already happen in the 80s, or am I once again conflating the events of Back to the Future 2 with the events of recent cultural history?
• Speaking of the relics of two-decade-old futurism, Bob Weinstein has bought the remake rights to Short Circuit.

We’ve made several updates to our Sundance 2008 Deal chart over the past 24 hours. The most significant news is that the Weinsteins have acquired the doc Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired for theatrical distribution in every territory *except* for the U.S. and Canada. I saw the film this morning and will have more to say about it later today, but suffice it to say for now that the film casts a very, um, “European” eye on Polanski’s child rape scandal, poking quite a bit of fun at American attitudes towards sex and media and, especially, our justice system.

Also of note: United Artists has bought the remake rights to Timecrimes, a Spanish sci-fi film premiering here before hitting theaters under the auspices of Magnolia, as well as the excuse for a raging karaoke party in Park City last night (anything you may have heard about your blogger’s Fred Schneider impression has been grossly exaggerated.) Finally, Celluloid Dreams has signed a deal to rep Lance Hammer’s Ballast for international sale. I hope to see Ballast later today–it wasn’t on my original schedule, but after a colleague described it as “The Dardennes on the Mississippi Delta,” I’m intrigued.

Check out the full list of Sundance 2008 deals here.

If you’re in the habit of visiting websites, you’ve probably seen ads for Interview, Steve Buscemi’s remake of a Dutch film by the same name, which stars Sienna Miller and which opens in limited release this Friday. Buscemi’s Interview is the first in a series of three films (the others are to be directed by Stanley Tucci and John Turturro), in tribute to the director of the original Interview, Theo Van Gogh. In 2004, Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist, who was acting in response to Submission: Part One, a ten minute film about the oppression of women under Islam, made by Van Gogh in collaboration with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. That film is embedded above.

I haven’t seen Van Gogh’s Interview, but I’ve just returned from a press screening of Buscemi’s, and in terms of style, content, weight and intent, it’s about as far away from Submission as you can get. Van Gogh has become something of a martyr since his death; a famed free-speech advocate in life, his body was found with a 5-page “jihad manifesto” attached to his chest with a dagger. His murder has since been used by some members of the Dutch government, as supporting evidence in their quest to limit immigration.

Put simply: the idea that the best way to pay tribute to that guy is to have three American actors remake his films is somewhat baffling. And after having seen Interview … well … am I the only one struggling to see how the solipsistic fantasy that Buscemi has committed to celluloid could possibly be seen as a proper tribute to anything?