August
7
I'll Never Forget Whatever It Was Called
[Posted by Steven Gaydos]
Today's Variety reported that Paul Schrader's new project, Dying of the Light, is "about a CIA agent who's forced to retire because he's begun to suffer the effects of Alzheimer's and finds he's racing the clock when he takes on a final mission."
Funny, but I seem to remember a wonderful Belgian detective movie from 2005 called The Alzheimer Case (aka The Memory of a Killer). In that one, Jan Decleir plays an assassin who starts showing symptoms of Alzheimer's and instead of completing a contract on a child, turns on his employers before he succumbs completely to the disease.
Now I'm having flashbacks of a great little picture back in 2000 called Memento, which featured Guy Pearce as a fellow suffering not from Alzheimer's but short-term memory loss, who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife...
Guess that's what I get for reading loglines on "new" film projects in a town where Deja Vu is both a hit film and every studios' development slate. Forget the line about not remembering what you had for breakfast, this is the place where no one remembers what project they developed before breakfast.
In fairness to Hollywood, it's worth noting that IMDb lists more than 500 films about amnesia, so audiences must love watching actors remembering the lines of characters who can't remember who they are. Which raises the obvious question: Does anyone remember their favorite movie about forgetting?
(And the less obvious question: Am I the only person out there who remembers Tom Poston?)
Subscribe to this blog's feed
See, you're supposed to suffer from amnesia yourself to the extent where you don't remember that they're just copying an old idea.
Memento was quite good.
Posted by: Liz | August 07, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Tom Poston was a genius. Won an Emmy in 59 for his work with Steve Allen, and rose to fame again with Bob Newhart. I get warm fuzzies remembering that he and Suzanne Pleshette fell in love and married late in life. I like to think that their 6 years together were the happiest in their lives.
I can't stop hearing his voice as I type this. A wonderful memory indeed.
Posted by: Tim W. | August 08, 2008 at 06:16 AM
Steve Allen's Sunday prime-time series was one of my favorite shows as a kid. Poston was always superb, from that show to his late-in-life turn as a suicidal clown in the too-short-lived sitcom COMMITTED.
Posted by: cadavra | August 09, 2008 at 03:46 PM