Re-imaginings are nothing new, especially in the world of Sci-fi and Fantasy…a world in which I toil most happily. Case in point, the last book I attempted to read for pleasure was one such re-imagining…

And if one were to grade a re-imagining solely on, say, inventiveness the The Looking Glass Wars would definitely deserve an A. I tend to judge books on actual writing ability, though, and this one probably rates a C- where that’s concerned. The idea is great, and I was very spirited in my reading for 100 pages or so…at a certain point, regardless of how much I wanted to ignore it, the plain fact that the book is not written well just became too much of a hurdle, and I put it down about 2/3 of the way in. Thanks to work, school, the kid, the website, and my own attempts to scratch out what fiction I may, my time for reading is limited and I just can’t devote energy to something that isn’t enthralling. I’ll likely finish it at some point, since I’ve never left a book unfinished indefinitely, but that time is not now.

Besides which, there is a wholly amazing re-imagining taking place right now on the Sci-fi channel, Tin Man.

While the special effects aren’t quite what I’d like…granted, it is a Sci-fi original, I understand that the budget probably wasn’t great…the writing is very good. I think for a re-imagining to be successful, it needs both a fresh take on the original content, and the writer (or writer’s) needs to be committed to actually creating something wholly new. In this way, the source material becomes a framework on which the actual (new) story is constructed. Broadly speaking, this is how Shakespeare worked.

And I think that Tin Man is a very good representation of this. By the end of the first episode, we had already seen nearly all of the “source” material used up and evolved, and the series was moving into its own creative territory. Plus the line by line writing is very, very good. This, in my mind, is the ultimate lynch pin. It is where The Looking Glass Wars fell short, in fact. All the imagination in the world cannot save a writer who is unable to construct a compelling sentence.

And it doesn’t hurt Tin Man that both Zooey Deschanel and Kathleen Robertson play the heroine and villain respectively…

There’s a couple of women that would definitely be on my stalking list if I still did that sort of thing…which I totally DO NOT…seriously, I’m completely cured…

Considering that she previously had a $26,000 appearance fee, and now it’s all the way down to 3 grand, it’s likely that you could get her to do all sorts of things for 3 large.

Think of the possibilities…and I’m not talking in a sexual manner.

For 3 grand I bet she’d wash your car, vacuum your house, and wash your dog all in a clown suit.

That’d be money well spent!

That’s not a clever title.

Thanks to Fritz at PMJA Newswire, and I have to agree with his assessment that, “As I grow older, these things hurt me more and more.”

Maybe it’s a stupid connection, but just two nights ago I was watching Batman Begins on FX (instead of writing) and I was reminded how much that movie rocked. Which, in turn, led me to consider that the next installment might be the greatest comic movie ever in no small part because of Ledger taking on the role of my favorite all time comic book character…

I’m not a HUGE Heath Ledger fan, but I’ve enjoyed him in every movie he’s done. And even though it was heavily hyped, Brokeback Mountain really was poignant as hell and one of my favorite films from the last few years.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m older than Heath Ledger…

At this point, unless you do not own/turn on a television, radio, or internet capable computer (and, if you don’t have that last, what ARE you doing reading this) you have no doubt, at the very least, heard that Lindsey Lohan posed nude for a photo shoot in this week’s New York Magazine…

and here’s your link…and yes you are welcome….

My initial reaction was, mostly, apathy. I mean, I like seeing naked girls as much as the next guy (unless that next guy happens to be gay, in which case I like seeing naked girls way more than him…), but other than that I really didn’t have a reaction.

Then I start reading stuff like this, an entire article devoted to a bunch of PR people saying what a bad career move it was. And then this, which I’d rather just excerpt…

Yes, it’s the height of taste for a young, reckless actress to imitate the patron saint of young, reckless actresses in a copy of that iconic last photo shoot before Monroe died of a drug overdose.

Now let us back up for just a moment.

The photo shoot in question, according to what I’ve read was actually Bert Stern’s idea. Bert Stern, by the way, was the man who took the original pictures (of Marilyn Monroe) that this new set is a recreation of. Stern was the one who approached Lohan.

And as she admits in the accompanying New York article, Lohan’s response was, basically, when will I ever get a chance like this again?

Never.

OK, so now we have the factors surrounding the shoot, what about the pictures themselves? If you read that Radar article, you might think she’d posed for Hustler. First off, any quasi-savy interwebz search will reveal both boob and crotch shots of Lohan, so it isn’t as if people all over the world didn’t already know Lohan’s anatomy in an intimate way.

Secondly, it’s a photo shoot with a well known and respected photographer appearing in a well known and respected publication. Why would that be a bad career move in any context? Oh, right, you can see her nipples. I forgot that, in this country, nakedness automatically equals bad.

The quality of the photos is another conversation. The originals are, without a doubt, amazing. These ones…maybe not so much. There is, I think, one good shot from those posted by NYM, and the best is actually one of the “behind the scenes” shots….

The Deciever post that I excerpted basically said, well, what it says. It was poor taste for a reckless celeb to “rehash” something already done by a reckless celeb. Well, I’d say that makes it more poignant, myself. Look, it would have been tasteless if, say, Mandy Moore (or some other, more squeaky clean celebrity) had done the shoot to “show off her Marilyn” side. Lohan, being who she is, was a much more inspired choice because of what she could bring to the shoot from her own experiences….didn’t really pan out that way, I don’t think, but hey they tried.

Basically, my point here is, can’t we just separate the tabloidy crap from the equation and really consider what is (I think) the important question; are the pictures good?

No, this isn’t a joke. He has, in fact, died.

Not sure who he is?

He directed, among other films, The English Patient, for which he won an Oscar, Cold Mountain, one of my all time favorite movies, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, one of the few films I’ve actually walked out of even though everyone else seemed to love it.

It is, I think, a big loss for Hollywood.