I recently discovered that a remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is in post-production. My gut reaction: “What are they doing that for?” Copying an earlier version of a film has become a dreary tradition. In Hollywood, ersatz adulation equates to creative flaccidity when assessing the relative merits of film remakes. The only remake that comes to mind as significantly better than the original version was The Maltese Falcon (1941).Warner Brothers shot blanks with The Maltese Falcon (1931) and Satan Met a Lady (1936). Cinematic adaptations of Hammett’s classic detective yarn proved to be notably unsuccessful until John Huston decided to film the book and got it right. As a general rule, most remakes represent a ham-handed attempt to cash in on a prior, successful project. The recently released reconstruct of The Day the Earth Stood Still represents the grotesque nadir of this obtuse corporatism. Although...

    Have a Safe and Happy Holiday Season

Lenny Bruce once remarked, “Chicago is so corrupt it’s thrilling...” After this week's events, there is a perverse sense of certitude that for the Windy City and the Illinois statehouse, the thrill is never gone. In perusing the latest scandal to emanate from the Land of Lincoln – a moronic sociopath of a Democratic Governor was recently overheard on federal wiretaps chatting about selling President elect Obama’s soon-to-be vacant Senate seat for a million large - it occurred to me that the more things change, the more they stay the same ...particularly in Chicago. In a region where reform equates to the redirecting of graft from one administration to the next, corruption in Illinois has evolved to being truly bipartisan. Four of the last eight Illinois governors have gone to prison with the previous chief executive, Republican George Ryan, currently serving a seven year Federal sentence for corruption. Ryan cut his...