The rebooting syndrome....

There is one Jim Belushi film that I like and wouldn’t you know it, Hollywood is going to reboot it in 2014.  Now some reboots I can understand.  Total Recall rebooted its premise and its cast and traded up, in my view, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was replaced by Collin Farrell.  But the About Last Night reboot troubles because it’s based on a screenplay that was based on a stage play by David Mamet.  This begs the question, how do improve on the work of David Mamet?  Better yet, why reboot the one film where you can actually watch Jim Belushi present himself as an actor without wanting to gauge your eyes out?   Is there such a lack of ideas in Hollywood than someone thought it would actually be a good idea to a take a film by the late John Cassavetes and replace the extremely talented Gena Rowlands with er…. Sharon Stone.  Not only Sharon Stone but her faux Brooklyn accent to boot.  There’s actually talk of rebooting Raging Bull.  Yes, Raging Bull.  The same principle applies to the film I just mentioned, as it does to Scorsese’s epic bio about former pugilist Jake Lamotta.  How do you get any better than Martin friggin Scorsese?  But should this lack of ingenuity and or cinematic smarts surprise you?  Hollywood is the place that spends billions of dollars trying to bring TV shows with a niche following to the big screen.  Often times the result is a box office dud with the fallout of a Chernobyl blast.  And if it isn’t Hollywood trying to constantly rewrite itself, someone is trying to make a musical production out of whatever film struck their fancy way back when.  The latest one to get the musical treatment is Flashdance.  What’s next, some Broadway producer decides to make a musical out of every sex comedy ever made.  I wonder what the premise of the Flashdance musical will be.  Will the actress in the Jennifer Beals role break out into song at some point while holding a welding torch?  In case you’re not as fossilized  as I am, the main character in Flashdance was a welder who had aspirations of being a dancer.  Myself, I want to see Scarface the musical.  I want to hear musical numbers like “F*** The Diaz Brothers” and “Don’t you ever f*** me Tony.”  You can make a musical revue out of the scene where poor Omar Suarez gets hung from a chopper after Tony’s future drug partner, Alex Sosa, finds out he’s a rat.  I’ve got rhythm….. I’ve got ya yo…. Who could ask for anything more?  I fear that this epidemic in Hollywood of rebooting films will spread to other aspects of our culture as well.  Someday the literary world will find itself short on ideas and someone will say…. Let’s do what they do in Hollywood.  And voila…. Someone is commissioned to reboot literary classics like a Farewell to Arms.  I can imagine that brainstorming session now.  Make it happier, maybe Hemmingway finds the chick he loved and they reconcile.  And maybe she doesn’t kick the bucket after all.  Why stop there?  Why not commission a fledgling writer to reboot War and Peace in print or perhaps Moby Dick?  I say, let’s not stop at books and films in terms of rebooting.  Let the rebooting begin in the art world too.  Give me some watercolors and a few days of training and I’ll do those painting just as good as Pablo P did them way back when.