ENTERTAINMENT
C5
TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2015
The laughable tradition Determining of death of comedy remakes cause may prove to BOBBI KRISTINA BROWN
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JUST STAY AWAY
More often than not, the best advice is just put down the script and walk away. Such was the case for Shawn Levy’s The Pink Panther, which somehow managed to earn a 2009 sequel. Steve Martin is a tremendous performer, but no one should be attempting to follow in the clumsy footsteps of Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau. (Martin has been a curiously frequent remake star, including two Father of the Bride films and the somewhat better Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which came from the Marlon Brando, David Niven 1964 original.)
IN
BRIEF Comedian pokes fun at Ottawa amid fallout from Ashley Madison hack TORONTO — Comedian John Oliver is taking the residents of Canada’s capital to task for their alleged extramarital affairs. The host of Last Week Tonight chastised the inhabitants of Ottawa following a report that claimed nearly 190,000 people in the city were members of AshleyMadison.com, a Torontobased website for people seeking affairs. It was hacked last week. “Let me speak to Ottawa — Ottawa, you cannot let this skeezy website destroy your marriages,” Oliver said on his show Sunday night. “Don’t take this lying down beneath some mulleted stranger wearing a wedding band. The city council of Ottawa needs to fight back.” Oliver, who made a point to note that Ottawa was “known by locals as the city that fun forgot,” expressed his surprise at reports about the apparent popularity of the site in the city. “That’s half the married population there,” he said. “If you live in Ottawa, look to your left, look to your right, both of those people are on AshleyMadison.com and so are you. That’s a fact.” To purportedly assist the city’s residents in staying true to their spouses, Oliver’s show ran an instructional video of sorts, which mercilessly poked fun at the city, describing it as a “depressing, frigid sh--hole.” “Lumberjacks turn off your chainsaws, hockey players stop skating for a second, boys, moose you just keep on moosing, this doesn’t concern you. This is for the married people of Ottawa, sitting at home, thinking about having an affair. Don’t,” the video said. “Having an affair is downright unCanadian,” it went on. “Don’t have sex with someone else’s husband named Gordon. Have sex with your own husband named Gordon. Because Ottawa
be difficult BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Christina Applegate, standing from left, Ed Helms, Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, and Skyler Gisondo, kneeling left, and Steele Stebbins appear in a scene from ‘Vacation.’
EVEN THE COENS CAN’T DO IT
It’s a testament to the difficulty of the task if even Joel and Ethan Coen whiff it. The comedies produced by London’s Ealing Studios in the 1940s and ’50s are comedy royalty that few would have the courage to tackle. But the Coens tried it with The Ladykillers in 2004, attempting a broader comedy that traded Tom Hanks and Mississippi for Alec Guinness and London. It’s among the Coens weaker films, though they can argue that they fell into directing it. They were first signed up just to write the script, but took over directing for Barry Sonnenfeld when he dropped out. Worth noting, though, is that by staying true to the Charles Portis novel, the Coens did give us easily the best True Grit.
RUSSELL BRAND IS NOT DUDLEY MOORE
And Adam Sandler isn’t Burt Reynolds. Brand and Sandler both have their particular talents, but neither were well suited heirs to their remakes of Arthur — the 2011 version of Moore’s 1981 film — and The Longest Yard, which had Sandler sliding in for
. . . is about watching your life float by like so much dirty river ice.” Ashley Madison has vowed to hold those responsible for last week’s hack responsible for their actions. The website, whose slogan is “Life is short. Have an affair,” claims it has more than 37 million members around the world.
Patriarch of Jackson family hospitalized with stroke RIO DE JANEIRO — Joe Jackson, the father of the late Michael Jackson and patriarch of the musical family, suffered a stroke while visiting Brazil and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit of a Sao Paulo hospital, the facility said Monday. The Albert Einstein hospital said in an emailed statement that Jackson was admitted on Sunday afternoon and was suffering from an irregular heartbeat. It did not provide any further details about Jackson’s condition, and a spokeswoman said the hospital did not have any further information. But one of the organizers of a party that brought Jackson to Brazil for his 87th birthday on Sunday said he was doing well. “He is perfectly conscious, he is talking perfectly well without any problems, he is completely dynamic,” said Nogueira Fresco, one of the organizers of the party. The fete marking Jackson’s birthday went ahead Saturday without its guest of honour. Local media reported he was not feeling well enough to attend.
Reynolds in the 2005 prison football comedy. Both originals, like many comedies, drew considerably from the distinct personas of their stars, making for an out of whack chemistry in the remakes. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick had an even higher bar to meet in taking over for Mel Brooks and Zero Mostel in the 2005 film The Producers. If only someone had thought to try it as a Broadway musical instead.
IT’S NOT IMPOSSIBLE
An unavoidable fact is that a few of the very best comedies ever made were remakes. The zippy brilliance of Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940) came nine years after the play it was based on, The Front Page, had been turned into a film. It would be tried again, too, in 1974 by Billy Wilder with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and in 1988 — a lamentable swap of TV news for the newspaper biz starring Reynolds. And Wilder’s Some Like it Hot, that majestically madcap 1959 comedy, was based on a 1935 French film called Fanfares of Love. When the screenplay couldn’t be found, producer Walter Mirisch tracked down a German remake of it for Wilder to write from. In the movies, originality can be a mangled, many-authored thing. Nobody’s perfect. well as comedians and musicians. “I’m very pleased to be doing a show that is comedic, yes, but it’s tangential to it, because I intentionally wanted to have something that was more variety based,” he said. “It’s a physical palate cleanser to constant comedy.” Makes sense coming from Harris, a multi-faceted performer who can sing and dance on Broadway as well as perform magic tricks in clubs. His comments come the morning after his first night at Just For Laughs. The festival packs dozens of shows at various venues throughout the city. Harris was “astonished that there were shows happening at 11:59.” He found out that the after parties — where he ran into Howie Mandel, Norm Macdonald, Jeff Ross and James Corden’s Late, Late Show bandleader Reggie Watts — can go on until 4 a.m. The 42-year-old marvels at how the stand-up comedians adapt to rooms little and big and crowds receptive and indifferent.
ATLANTA — An autopsy will be needed to evaluate what led to the death of Bobbi Kristina Brown, daughter of singer Whitney Houston, authorities said Monday, the day after her death. In a statement Monday morning, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office says the time that elapsed from when she was found unresponsive in January until her death Sunday will “compli- Bobbi Kristina cate” its effort Brown to reconstruct events. “Interpretation of autopsy findings and other information will also be challenging,” the medical examiner’s office said in the statement. “However, an autopsy could be helpful to address questions which may arise about the cause of her unresponsiveness and eventual death.” Bobbi Kristina died Sunday at Peachtree Christian Hospice in Duluth, Georgia, about six months after she was found Jan. 31, face-down and unresponsive in a bathtub in her suburban Atlanta townhome. She was 22. A police report described it as a drowning. Bobbi Kristina was the only child of Houston and R&B singer Bobby Brown. “Bobbi Kristina Brown passed away July, 26 2015, surrounded by her family. She is finally at peace in the arms of God. We want to again thank everyone for their tremendous amount of love and support during these last few months,” Kristen Foster, a representative for the Houston family said Sunday. She had been hospitalized for months in Atlanta — eventually being placed in hospice care — after being found in a manner grimly similar to the way her megastar mother died three years earlier. Nick Gordon, who shared her townhome with her, said at the time it seemed Bobbi Kristina wasn’t breathing and lacked a pulse before help arrived. “The Roswell Police Department continues its investigation into the circumstances preceding and surrounding the time of the original incident leading to her death,” the medical examiner said in Monday morning’s statement. The medical examiner did not release a timeframe for the autopsy, but said additional lab testing might take several weeks. Born and raised in the shadow of fame and litigation, shattered by the loss of her mother, Bobbi Kristina was overwhelmed by the achievements and demons of others before she could begin to figure out who she was. Bobbi Kristina — the sole heir of her mother’s estate — did have dreams. She identified herself on Twitter as “Daughter of Queen WH,” “Entertainer/Actress” with William Morris & Co., and “LAST of a dying breed.” She told Oprah Winfrey shortly after her mother’s death in 2012 that she wanted to carry on her mother’s legacy by singing, acting and dancing. But her career never took off. She became a social media sensation, sending more than 11,000 tweets and attracting 164,000 followers. As the news of her death spread across social media, several celebrities tweeted their condolences.
Neil Patrick Harris hosts four shows in Montreal MONTREAL — Neil Patrick Harris has run off with the circus. Or at least his “Circus Awesomeus.” The ubiquitous awards show host and former How I Met Your Mother star is headlining Monday and Tuesday at Montreal’s Place des Arts. Harris will be hosting four shows as closing galas to the 33rd annual Just For Laughs comedy festival. These shows aren’t all comedy, as Harris points out. He was invited to handpick the acts and booked swordswallowers, magicians and puppets as
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NEW YORK — The modern comedy remake is among the most laughable of movie genres. In Hollywood’s reboot frenzy, the movie industry has increasingly turned to reviving classic comedies, only to find that few things are harder to rekindle than the elusive elements — Bill Murray’s timing, John Belushi’s eyebrows— that make up a great comedy. The distance between original and remake is usually as vast as it is between Caddyshack and Caddyshack II. The latest attempt is Vacation, a new try at the classic National Lampoon series that first emanated from John Hughes’ short story Vacation ’58 and was launched with the 1983 Chevy Chase original. Chase makes a cameo in the latest Vacation, but he has ceded the driver’s seat to his son, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms). In some quarters, the movie has not been anticipated warmly. In a column for the Hollywood Reporter, former National Lampoon editor P.J. O’Rourke judged the film from its trailer “posthumoristic” and “a summer cineplex dump-fill featuring the Hangover wimp dentist as leading man.” Whether screwball or satire, comedy only works when it feels bracingly alive. Most remakes, though, tend to feel like they’ve been brought back from the dead, only with all the really good jokes left back in the cemetery. Hollywood is devoted to getting it right, though. The biggest test will come next July when Paul Feig releases his big-budget Ghostbusters. Feig, at least, has had the good sense to try an entirely different track, recasting the leads as female, including Melissa McCarthy and Kirsten Wiig. But there are many others in various stages of quixotic development, including remakes of Meatballs, Fletch, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Police Academy. With that in mind, here are a few lessons to draw from an often dubious tradition.