Now This is Fun!

Although I read it pretty often, I rarely link to items on the website Pajiba. The two main reasons are that they practice a very free-range vocabulary that not every reader of a minister's blog might appreciate -- and they almost always do it with the exact same wit, thought and maturity I employed using the same kinds of terms when I was 11 -- and because they're a textbook example of how some people think that the way to look smart is to not like anything except really weird stuff no one else has ever heard of, let alone enjoys.

But since this post is about forty-seven million kinds of awesome, I'm breaking my rule. The idea is that you take some of our recent glut of superhero movies and you re-cast them using famous actors of bygone days. The post's author, for example, suggests that Gregory Peck play Superman, or Jimmy Stewart the Green Lantern. Start digging through the comments and you will see some fabulously creative choices. A couple that jumped out to me were the idea of Humphrey Bogart playing Watchmen's Rorschach or James Garner taking Stewart's place as Green Lantern (I like that one better myself). Heck -- Bogie as Batman? You probably only have to shoot two or three scenes of him in the suit and he still owns the character. Charlton Heston as Captain America -- too obvious? Maybe, but you know he'd believe in the part.

Think how many toadyish villains or villiain sidekicks the great Peter Lorre could do. Or the baddies that could be brought to life by Christopher Lee or Boris Karloff. Or -- and this is one where modern Hollywood really pales compared to the days of yore -- what Lois Lane would be if brought to life by Lauren Bacall instead of Kate Bosworth. Or by Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. Or we could watch Maureen O'Hara kick megalomaniacal tuckus as Sue Storm or Wonder Woman.

This, to me, seems like a worthy endeavor for the latest CGI technology, and I hope someone somewhere gets cracking on it.

ETA: Jimmy Cagney or Burt Lancaster as the Joker. Or Lancaster as Batman. Vincent Price as dang near any villain you care to name. Boy, I hope I live to see the software that can do this.