Now I'm Completely Paranoid

I knew I shouldn't have written my opinions on short films I'm screening for the FUN OF IT. I also shouldn't have contacted a director whose film I liked. I can only assume that I will shortly be fired as a screener. Since they aren't paying me, and I don't like driving over to the office on Monday, I won't mind.

Anyhow, someone else has seen AO and disagrees that it has shittier dialog and found it cool. My elaboration:

The references to Wizard of Oz and A. Now were obvious thoughout the movie. I did not know that EVERY line was from one movie or the other. That being said, it doesn't make the dialog EQUAL. Dialog exists beyond simply saying the exact words. It is tone, innuendo, and context, and those are just off the top of my head.

You could mix and match selected musical notes from While My Guitar Gentley Weeps and Seven Nation Army and it does not guarantee, nor even suggest the resultant song will be any good. That is my point about AO.

And as far as the story structure similarities, well, there are about 20 (or is it 40) different plots in the entire history of Hollywood filmmaking....so the similarities didn't really strike me.

But all this being said, if you dig the movie, you dig it and that's fine. I didn't.

Additionally, I didn't find the movie relevent today because I don't find Vietnam an appropriate narrative template to apply to the Iraq war. Not because such an analogy is anti-American, but because I think it is intellectually lazy and incorrect.

And I think re-makes in general are due to a bankrupty of ideas and that if you were to do a re-make, pick something obscure or less well known. What's the point of re-making two of the most popular movies of all time on a mini-budget?

It's not the work of a writer or a director. It is a work of a semi-clever producer. So forgive me for not being all that interested in what they have to say.