Hasbro finally broke the board game radio silence, announcing they’re getting close to convincing Peter Berg to direct the movie adaptation of Battleship. Obviously, since there is no plot in the game, details on a possible story are nonexistent, unless saying they’ve going for an epic naval action adventure-y type of movie counts as plot details.

Berg is a passable enough director, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than his middling talent to craft an interesting story out of a game that’s basically a glorified version of Bingo. Jon and Erich Hoeber are going to have the primary duty in creating the story, seeing that they’ve signed on to write the screenplay. The brothers Hoeber are suddenly a hot commodity having written screenplays for four movies that are yet to be released. They did write one movie you may (or probably may not) have seen, Montana from 1998. Eleven years is a bit of a break after having just broken in.

What the Battleship name will lend to a story is anyone’s guess. B-4? Miss. D-7? Miss. A-9? Miss. I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere. Really, there’s even less to go on than the story behind Candy Land, and there is no story behind Candy Land.

If they really wanted to go all out with the movie, they would combine the capitalization of the Battleship name with a remake of The Battleship Potemkin, combining Hollywood’s fondness for pointless adaptations with it’s love of needless remakes. I could just imagine the Odessa Steps sequence in the new movie: soldiers marching down the steps firing into the crowd calling out Hit! or Miss!

The movie, well I guess I should say the original Videodrome, was about sleazy TV producer Max Renn, always on the lookout for some new trash to feed his audience. He thinks he’s found the program of his dreams when he’s introduced to Videodrome. Torture, murder, no plot. It’s got it all. And best of all, it looks so real. Max becomes obsessed with Videodrome and he soon learns his recent hallucinations are an intended side-effect of Videodrome’s brain tumor-inducing signal. It’s not long before there’s no longer a distinction between reality and hallucination, culminating with Max sporting a gaping hole in his stomach, a perfect receptacle for fleshy video tapes. He gets caught up in the struggle between Videodrome and those who want to bring it down. From there, things only get weirder.

The themes of the power of television, voyeurism, and the sanctity of the human body are all still perfectly relevant, but the distinct lack of window dressing in the delivery is what makes Videodrome so interesting. David Cronenberg has a way of visually representing an idea so viscerally that it can make his movies uncomfortable to watch at times.

This remake will “modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.” I suppose modernizing the concept means incorporating the Internet and ditching the cassette tapes and over-the-air TV. The organic corruption of the body will be replaced by some evil nano-bots. And the story of Videodrome, if you’re going to remake it, why change it from a tiny, narrowly-scoped sci-fi/horror movie into an action thriller? I’m hearing: add some digital technology here, some scary science there, and then generic it up about 48 times. And definitely, get rid of that giant vagina on his stomach.

Are the people that enjoy the original Videodrome going to be excited by a remake that fundamentally changes the movie? Probably not. Are the people who never saw Videodrome going to be drawn in by the name? Probably not. So why remake it to reuse the name if it’s not a huge name to use? I’m not sure Videodrome has enough fans to really call it a cult movie, I just don’t understand this at all. I concede that remakes are inevitable, so I’m not really bitching about that as much as the fact that the name Videodrome doesn’t exactly carry a lot of weight. Sure I’ve said it before, but I didn’t really want to believe it: if they’ll remake this, they’ll remake anything.

So it should be no surprise to hear there are a couple dicks that are prepping a Topper remake. Jason Filardi, responsible for scripting the highly annoying Bringing Down the House and the highly derivative 17 Again, is writing the script. And everyone’s favorite choreographer Adam Shankman is directing. He’s directed crap like the highly annoying Bringing Down the House and the unforgettable Cheaper by the Dozen 2, the only movie ever released in Cyprus on March 17th. They celebrate with an annual riot and mass burnings of the DVD.

You may think it a bit rash of me to call these two dicks a couple of dicks, even if they’ve made some bad movies. Primarily bad movies. At a recent press conference, Shankman and Filardi spoke about the remake. Even though Shankman says Topper is one of his favorite movies, he derides it as being “terrible” says the movie “is just nothing” and does not “hold up to modern viewing.” Of course they updated the story because what’s the point of a remake if you can’t screw with a proven winner. But to bash the original, a successful, popular movie, bash it in a way a jerk like me might do to an actual crappy movie (like The Last House on the Left remake, Wes Craven you peckerhead), that disrespectful crap is why I inherently despise any remake.

Dickheads like these two dicks think they’re actually taking some dead pile of garbage and turning into something beautiful. They don’t acknowledge the success or the historical relevance of the original. It was 1937, how could a movie that old still be relevant to today’s audience, they cry. It can’t, so we’ll put Steve Martin in it and give it modern sensibilities- oh, and a few jokes about bodily functions. People love fart and doo-doo and pee-pee jokes. Love them.

To read the words of Shankman and Filardi is to understand why many people like myself feel movies are dying. Every movie will be remade, nothing is sacred, and like corrupt souls are wont to say, it’s just business.

Mattel is pulling the old Mason doll out of the bottom of their toy chest, developing it into a movie as a vehicle for Tom Hanks. I’m sure Hanks would fondly remember playing with his Major Matt Mason doll seeing as he brought one along to a development meeting, but I’m wondering why Mattel would make a movie around a toy that many have never heard of, and those that have probably forgot about until they read that it’s going to be made into a movie.

G.I. Joe I can understand. It got it’s start in the 60′s, carried over into the 70′s, and saw a huge resurgence in the 80′s. And now those kids from the 80′s are in their 30′s and presumably have the most disposable income to blow on a nostalgic movie. Major Matt Mason disappeared in the 70′s and hasn’t been seen since. The kids who loved that toy are now in their 50′s and represent a much smaller demographic, as far as spending money on movies goes.

The most likely solution to bridge those age groups is to update the Major Matt Mason universe, bringing it into the 21st century. But then wouldn’t that kill all those childhood memories attached to the forgotten space dude? It seems like it would turn into something along the lines of Thunderbirds, and no one wants that. What made that special was that in the original show they were marionettes. It was different and interesting. What made the movie crap was that it was unmemorable and schmaltzy. Making Major Matt Mason a modern astronaut would seem to do the same thing.

I will admit that it sounds like an immensely better idea than Stretch Armstrong since at least Major Matt Mason has a story and not just rubbery limbs.

To assemble, or cause to be repaired or completed, an object, device, machine, or project from duct tape as the preferred repair tool, but in its absence, other items, (normally common, ordinary and mundane such as a rubber band or paper clip), not normally used for that purpose, where others would assume one needs a manufactured part, as per the design. Especially: if the items are used in ways significantly different than their intended use.

Even if you never saw MacGyver, there’s little doubt you know all about the premise about a secret agent who was so resourceful he could literally make anything out of anything. I believe he once made a fission reactor out of Pop Rocks, Silly Putty, and an empty Pringles can. I never saw the show, but I still know it’s a complement when someone talks about the way I MacGyvered something.

Since the year is now 2009 and everything that graced either the big or mall screen at some point is getting remade, what about MacGyver? If a MacGyver movie sounds like the exact sort of ridiculousness the De Laurentiis family would be involved with, you’re spot on. There will be a MacGyver movie, with Dino the executive producer and Raffaella and Martha producing. There’s no mention if Giada will do the catering.

Seeing as how it’s hard to separate actor Richard Dean Anderson from the legend of MacGyver, you’d expect he’d be involved at some point, if not the star or co-star. He’s so synonymous with that character that it’s hard to know where one begins and the other ends.

This may be exciting news to you, but no matter how excited you are, there’s no doubt Patty and Selma just had an orgasm/aneurysm and lit up a cigarette.

MTV was able to get the scoop on a couple of these movies and it seems, just like we may ponder about how the hell it could translate into a movie, the filmmakers haven’t a clue either.

Monopoly executive producer and Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner says Ridley Scott has “built these great big worlds of imagination” and the script is about “about real people kind of playing a real-life game of ‘Monopoly,’ not the board game, although they’re icons of the game. And then you really get the idea why this story could make sense right now.”

Ridley Scott says, “I have do direct it.” Then after thoughtfully making up a story to fill out the interview says, “We’re in progress right now. We’re having it written. We have identified a pretty good story and it is fundamentally a movie, not a game, probably describing in a way the characters in the film, the passion of the game, and how the game came about.” Translation- we’ve got no clue how to turn this into a story so we’re making up some crap and including some Monopoly elements.

So it’s a movie, well it’s fundamentally a movie (what the shit does that mean?), about the real icons of Monopoly (top hat, shoe, thimble, wheelbarrow) playing real-life Monopoly in a big world of imagination. And it’s an origin story. And it’s pretty good. And it makes sense.

Then there’s Candy Land, a game with basically no premise. Golder describes the story as “Imagine if you took that basic idea of going to a better place, and then allowed the audience to go to that same place together. But then you come to find out, like every other place that’s promised to just be all better and all sweets and candy, you come to find out there’s actually some controversy there as well, that of course the stars of the movie have to solve for.” He goes on to say that it’s “very human and very natural.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds an awful lot South Park’s Imaginationland. It also sounds a a damn lot like Hansel and Gretel. It also sounds pretty lame.

If these are the best undescriptive descriptions that can be given for these two extremely popular games, what are they going to come up with when they roll out Trouble or Pass the Pigs?