short circuit

8:25AM Defamer Hollywood | Compounding (and maybe even stealing) our acute grief at the news of Short Circuit Redux, LA Times columnist Jay Fernandez today mulls over the pandemic of horror glutting the marketplace. With this week’s release of Prom Night leading the way, Fernandez counts more than a dozen do-overs en route to theatres, including the certain evisceration of classics like Friday the 13th, The Birds and Near Dark; a Stanford professor deigns to comment that audiences can’t be bothered to think and dread at the same time, so they take comfort in the familiar. Kind of like Fernandez himself, in a way, who latched on to our Short Circuit distress by reworking our “End of Ideas” tag for a lede (”Smell that? It’s the decay of original ideas”), citing stars Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy being “at the height of their powers” (we said they were “in top form”) and hitting the 1986 original’s IMDB Quotes page to flesh out our mutual concern over Fisher Stevens’ garish Indian stereotype. We feel your pain, Jay — but you already knew that, didn’t you? [LAT] More »

8:25AM Defamer Hollywood | Compounding (and maybe even stealing) our acute grief at the news of Short Circuit Redux, LA Times columnist Jay Fernandez today mulls over the pandemic of horror glutting the marketplace. With this week’s release of Prom Night leading the way, Fernandez counts more than a dozen do-overs en route to theatres, including the certain evisceration of classics like Friday the 13th, The Birds and Near Dark; a Stanford professor deigns to comment that audiences can’t be bothered to think and dread at the same time, so they take comfort in the familiar. Kind of like Fernandez himself, in a way, who latched on to our Short Circuit distress by reworking our “End of Ideas” tag for a lede (”Smell that? It’s the decay of original ideas”), citing stars Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy being “at the height of their powers” (we said they were “in top form”) and hitting the 1986 original’s IMDB Quotes page to flesh out our mutual concern over Fisher Stevens’ garish Indian stereotype. We feel your pain, Jay — but you already knew that, didn’t you? [LAT] More »

God Sheds a Tear, Shoots Self at News of ‘Short Circuit’ Remake

8:40AM Defamer Hollywood | Mere days after the news of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 3 flared a fresh ulcer in our cultural digestive tract, news over the wire says Bob Weinstein is planning his own Apocalypse Pre-Game Show with a remake of the 1986 hit Short Circuit. The original featured Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy in top form as the annoying flesh-and-blood foils of a stupid fucking wise-cracking government robot named Johnny Five, who gets struck by goddamned lightning and finds Gadget Jesus or some bullshit that changes his whole global perspective to pro-peace/disarmament/”fuck you Ronald Reagan.” But wait — it gets worse. More »