My spouse was allowed to collect donations when playing original stuff at Starbucks, though he wasn’t paid.

Busking is more fun than gigging, anyway.

The only thing about Labyrinth that was badly written was Sarah’s character. Gods, how I hated her. She wasn’t really written all that realistically–as a teenager, she felt like she was written by the adult that just throws up their hands and says, ‘I don’t understand you kids! What’s the matter with kids these days??’

People want to hear songs they know, and that’s it. It’s a little sad.

Also, the puppetry in James was armature covered by latex foam, just like the puppetry in Nightmare Before Christmas.

I love the other animation in James as well, though. That movie scared me to death, as a kid–but I knew it was supposed to, because it was a Dahl. I think people who complain about this need to go back and read some Dahl, for serious.

We don’t remake films like we used to do… (nostalgic nostalgic comment of the year)

There are people out there, making the original films, it’s just that the conservative nature of finance means that they are very much marginalised whilst the generic remakes get all of the money… I suppose it is the same in every creative industry.

I completely agree how out of steam Hollywood seems to be these days. Every year you hear that they’re out of ideas, but it’s really really becoming hard to ignore the lack of anything new – it’s sequel, remake, or tv/game/book/comic as the source.

The adaptation of Bicentennial Man was passable though. Robin Williams helped.

Narf, just read Roo’s comment above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekkon_Kinkreet

But I agree, I certainly saw more of the book in the Burton version. The Squirrels rather than the geese being the stand-out point.

I was always a big fan of The Twits myself… the idea of convincing someone they are going insane by gradually adding bits of wood to all the chairs, tables and walking sticks to make them think they are shrinking. Genius.

I do seem to remember finding The Witches film passable, but from memory I can’t figure out if it was close enough to the book to compete here… and wasn’t there an adaptation of James and the Giant Peach?

I think you’ve mentioned something important here, that a film isn’t the work of a single person, rather a series of processes run by many different people, all of whom can really screw a film up.

It makes me wonder if they know when they are working on a turkey or not…

I do hope that doesn’t happen, the discovery of any ‘formula’ can only be bad news for those of us that find the word ‘formulaic’ an insult.

And as is rightly pointed out below, TRHPS is indeed being remade – against the wishes of Richard O’Brien, the creator of the original. I hear they’ve even writeen ‘new songs’ too. Joy.

Seriously, Steve Martin, what happened?

…hope no one tries to remake The Jerk… especially if they are going to get modern Steve Martin to be in it.

It just feels a bit defeatist, to recylcle ideas from mere decades ago rather than creating new and exciting ones.

Tekonkinkreet – thanks Roo, I’d never heard of it and now I must find it.