the end of ideas
Nirvana on Elm Street
2:47AM Seth | Samuel Bayer, director of the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video, will reboot Nightmare on Elm Street. Odd choice? Not when you consider the iconic things he’s done with striped tops and jumping girls. More »
‘Karate Kid’ Remake To Make Do Without Karate, Miyagi or Valley
7:07AM Kyle Buchanan | Call us 80’s purists if you must (it’s a fair charge — after all, these Betamax tapes of Space Camp aren’t gonna watch themselves), but when remaking The Karate Kid, some things are essential. More »
Success of ‘Twilight’ Spares World From Remake of ‘Near Dark’
6:23AM STV | The 1987 vampire classic Near Dark has been on the industry’s equivalent of death row for a while, with Michael Bay producing a remake for Rogue Pictures. But Twilight just issued a stay of execution. More »
Good Morning. Your World Is Ending.
1:40AM Seth | As many times as we heard it from that filthy, bearded man standing outside the Farmers Market with a big sign (Alan Rosenberg—is that you?), we never really believed the Pop Culture Apocalypse would soon be upon us. Well—we guess we were wrong! Try not to panic as its four horsemen—Nicolas Cage with a suspiciously luscious head of wizard-hair, Jay Baruchel conducting a broom army, Russell Brand getting his naughty bits scrubbed by an Oscar-winning manservant, and Rowdy Dwayne Johnson—ride in after the breaking of the seventh remake, followed thereafter by the arrival of the beastly Endtime Ruler (Kathleen Turner). Your coverage awaits! More »
Egregious Lack Of Banana-Stuffed Tailpipes Hurts Leaked ‘Beverly Hills Cop 4′ Draft
9:56AM STV | We’re not sure which of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief we’ve hit in our consideration of Beverly Hills Cop 4. Denial and anger seem ages ago, as does bargaining. And a script review appearing online today has us skipping depression altogether for what we suppose is something akin to acceptance — if you call “believing there is actually a studio cynical enough to greenlight this with Brett Ratner behind the camera” acceptance, or if that just throws us back to the beginning again. Help us sort it out, will you? More »
10:08AM STV | Holding Out For a Hero? Here’s one for the End of Ideas Hall of Fame: The ’80s TV comedy The Greatest American Hero is being talked up for a feature-length film revival. Writer-producer Stephen Cannell and star William Katt tell the LAT it’s just a matter of time before their series about a schoolteacher-turned-bumbling crimefighter returns for a new generation. “We have a script,” Cannell warned. “We have a director. I’m in the middle of making the deal now for distribution. We have a bite now. It will happen. [...] I want all the 7-year-olds to be able to go and their parents will remember the show and want to share it with them.” It it OK if we just point them to the DVD set and call it good? Please? [LAT] More »
Great Ideas In Australian Cinema (Brought To You Telstra)
12:40PM Jess McGuire | Can we expect a film version of the life of Emperor Nasi Goreng to hit the big screen soon? Not quite. But Telstra have decided to approach funding bodies in order to get enough money to bring the tale of Daniel and Patrick, the father and son who appear in Telstra’a BigPond commercials, to cinemas everywhere.
No, really.
Telstra, one of the nation’s biggest advertisers, plans to seek millions from taxpayers to make a film featuring the father-and-son characters from its BigPond “Rabbits” commercials.
More » 
Harrison Ford All But Confirms ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of the $100 Million Payday’
8:00AM STV | It would be too easy to say that Harrison Ford hit the Crystal Head Vodka a little hard before today’s interview at the LA Times; how else to explain his eagerness to jump aboard Indiana Jones 5 so soon after the franchise’s fourth installment? He’s 66! George Lucas can’t settle on a script! And Shia still has months of recovery ahead for his pinkie and balls. All signs but the dollar say “stop,” but that’s all the actor apparently needed to wax fantastic about the potential pouring forth everywhere from the box office to cereal aisles: More »Top Gear Australia Perhaps Misguided In Hoping Being The Cause Of A Traffic Jam Will Lead To Even More Viewers
10:33AM Jess McGuire | I was reading the letters published in yesterday’s Green Guide in The Age, and there seemed to be an overwhelming sense of disappointment over the Australian remake of the popular British program Top Gear. Having not seen much of the original show and not seeing any of Top Gear Australia, I’m in no position to judge (but hey, you are! Did you like it? Hate it? Let us know!), but I am fairly certain that bringing havoc to Melbourne’s roads probably isn’t the best way to win over potential viewers.
The boys from Top Gear Australia took to the swank streets of Melbourne yesterday morning for a spin in a tractor. Hosts Steve Pizzati and Warren Brown trundled along Chapel Street and Toorak Road to a chorus of honking horns from angry motorists banked up behind their $200,000 slow-moving farm machine.
Again, I don’t watch either version of the program, so I cannot be sure if it is typical motoring show behaviour to hammer home the important concept that farm machines do not go as fast as normal automobiles and have no place on public roads.
And hey, what do Green Guide letter writers know anyway, other than how to sook? Because the ratings for the launch of Top Gear Australia were top gear indeed. More » 
