I saw The Omen today and really enjoyed it, especially the fact that it was almost exactly the same as the original. The main reason for this appreciation is that it means that there’s an outside chance that they will take this opportunity to go ahead and remake the sequels as well, only this time with less suck! Does anyone even remember the third one? Also it means a whole new generation has the chance to recognize a bunch of familiar movie references.

Before the movie I did a little book shopping, buying Douglas Coupland’s JPod on the strength of Cory Doctorow’s review (any book that can make Cory take a long hard look at himself has got to be worth reading– this is not intended as a cheap shot). The bizarro formatting of the first few pages and the fact that he uses ASCII code to spell out a certain unprintable word {101,100,103,121} is kind of appealing, but points off for not using hexadecimal ;)

I also bought Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness, and am really looking forward to it, since I’ve very much enjoyed his other books. He has a knack for making one feel better about life, without being particularly instructive. A few weeks ago I heard him speak at the Auckland Writer’s Festival, and was impressed by his passion for the topic as well as his sheer WPM.

Eww… Serendipity is on TV and making me gag (John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, 2001). I’m not sure I would find it quite so cloying if I weren’t chronically single and nearly 34 years old…

Another remake I saw recently was Poseidon, again very much in the spirit of the original, although obviously with updated special effects. Enjoyable if you like the genre, but also rather forgettable.

Pixar’s Cars is of course completely original, although in my mind has a crappy premise. Voice talent carries this movie, with the cars themselves being rather disturbing with all these weird inconsistencies in their alternate universe; things like tiny flying cars instead of flies– I mean hello, Earth to Pixar… Couldn’t they have been sparkplugs or something? And for some reason the [normal-sized] cars have big ugly tongues even though they don’t eat (they get refuelled just like real cars). Though still very watchable, coming after The Incredibles this movie is a bit of a disappointment.