Wow, watched “Bad Day At Black Rock” earlier and it was really really cool. Just very tight and lean, not a wasted moment in the whole movie. The “set” for the town was impressive. The back of the movie box has a quote from Laurence Olivier, “I learned more about acting from watching Spencer Tracy than in any other way.”

After I made coffee this morning I sat down in the blue chair and turned on the TV and “Today” happened to be on. Katie Couric was interviewing Tom Cruise about his new movie, “Vanilla Sky.” It’s a remake of that Spanish film “Open Your Eyes.” I knew it was gonna be a cheesy interview when Katie asked Tom how he would describe the movie and he said, “It’s a love story.” Then things turned horrifying. Katie was gushing and everything and she said something like, “Oh I heard that Cameron Crowe and you guys saw the original and you guys said, wow, we have got to remake this film, because you just loved it so much …” When I heard that I literally jumped up out of my seat and changed the channel it made me so sick.

I mean, my god, what do they think they’re doing? Who are they fooling? Who remakes a movie out of love for the original?! That’s just absurd. No serious director is gonna look at a movie and say, “Boy, that’s so great, I should remake it!” No, they do it because they’re greedy (“Oh I bet I can make some money from this”) or just plain stupid (“Well, I bet I can do ‘Psycho’ better than Hitchcock, sorta update things for a modern audience”). Spielberg and Gus Van Sant are just putrescent for that. Or even worse it gets done because even though the original was great, it wasn’t in English and “American audiences just won’t stand for subtitles.” That’s hooey. “Amelie” was in the box office top ten last week. These people make me so mad.

Or maybe the original WAS bad, and THEN you have license to remake it … Soderbergh is really cool for doing that with “Ocean’s 11′ because it’s sort of a remake and homage to cheese at the same time. He has the right to do something like that because he’s doing it in the right spirit. I hope that Andy and I end up going to see that on Thursday.

Ugh, I have a knot in my throat and I bet it’s a cold coming on … drinking lots of orange juice to ward it off. I’ll try to go to bed early but not too early. Pretty boring night. No one’s called me and no one’s online. Looks like I’ll end up seeing “3 Women” on Thursday by myself. O well, I don’t care, I’ve been wanting to see it since I was 16 and if I have to go alone then I’ll go alone.