Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Still No Love For Bismarck?

So the latest premium-cable show that everyone is going to talk about (whether they've seen it or not) is Fargo, more or less based on the 1996 movie. That plot didn't really lend itself to an ongoing story, and this is apparently just in the same setting and style.

I'm kind of surprised. Not just because it's been so long since it first came out, but also because it doesn't seem to be as fondly remembered in the pantheon of nineties movies. Personally, I thought at the time that it was overrated. It wasn't a bad movie, but it seemed like it was jumping on the post-Pulp Fiction violent-thriller bandwagon, and mostly carried by Frances McDormand's excellent performance. The movie was regarded at the time as a masterpiece, but its reputation has faded to the point it only gets three stars in the newspaper TV listings.

But now it is back, sort of, without that character that everyone remembers, and starting guys from England and Arkansas in the Midwest. And I thought the accents were annoying in the movie.

I would watch the opposite of this show; that is, bringing back McDormand's character but removing everything else. But I probably won't watch this show, unless it's out of curiosity as to how they'll drop a woodchipper reference. But here are some nineties movies I would watch a TV series of:
  • Pulp Fiction: The Early Years
  • The Shawshank Redemption - you thought Andy and Red were an odd couple in prison, wait 'til you see them running an accounting firm together.
  • The Truman Show - seems like a natural for TV
  • Office Space - you wanted another season of The Office?
  • Pretty Woman - revisit the same couple twenty years later.
  • A Few Good Men - remember, it was about lawyers at Gitmo; it'll write itself
  • Run Lola Run - it'll be really cheap; you just do the same story over and over
  • Titanic - takes place in the decades between the movie's present and past time periods.
  • Fight Club - you could focus on one of the Project Mayhem cells, and make lots of Men's Rights Activist jokes.

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