Specials: Top 1000 Movies, Pathetic Pink Panther

Today’s specials:

• HALLIWELL’S TOP 1,000 MOVIES INCLUDES SURPRISES
  I’d like to see the full list, because I’m really quite impressed with the Top 100. There are some brave and smart choices here that differ from the usual Citizen Kane-happy lists. The grand list-maker explains his work here.
  
  Have you seen this film? You should.

• PINK PANTHER PULLED; FILMMAKERS SECRETLY ASK THEMSELVES “WHAT WERE WE THINKING?”
  Well, actually, the operative word is “postponed.” After a wave of early-screening bad reviews, it seems the studio execs are finally realizing what anyone with a brain could have told them all along… remaking The Pink Panther without Peter Sellers is a spectacularly bad idea. It’s like remaking “The Bob Newhart Show” without Bob Newhart. Or Casablanca without Bogart and Bergman. Or Dr. Strangelove without… Peter Sellers.Perhaps the saddest thing about the whole affair is that Steve Martin and Kevin Kline ever went along with this idea to begin with.

  I watched a Steve Martin stand-up routine from 1979 earlier this week, and as I laughed until my sides ached, I also felt a pang of regret for the decline of Martin’s humor. He can be such a comedy genius (I think his visit to the David Letterman show in 1988, during which he turned the studio into a pencil-throwing combat zone, was as inspired as anything he ever did), and he’s also proven a surprising talent for dramatic roles as well (The Spanish Prisoner). Perhaps he’ll find stronger footing in Shopgirl, the adaptation of his own novel, when it reaches the screens later this year.

  In the meantime, if anyone participating in this sure-to-be-abominable “re-make” wants to maintain their dignity, I suspect that they should do everything in their power to bury this project where it can’t be found.
  
  Don’t they look ashamed of themselves?