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This weekend sees the opening of the new version of Shall We Dance with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. As many people hopefully know this is a remake of a fabulous Japanese original movie.

Despite my dance background, I don’t intend to see the new version as I can’t see how it works. What makes the original so great is the premise of the man going behind his wife’s (and his culture’s) back to take dancing lessons, thereby freeing his soul from the sad life he has fallen into. The remake tries to keep this premise intact but I don’t see how anyone can take such a thing seriously in Western culture. Whilst they might be fine actors I don’t see Gere or J.Lo portraying the dignity that is evident throughout the original.

So far, I’ve read a bunch of reviews that agree with me so I am confident that I am not going to miss anything by not seeing it. Rather I’ll dust off my copy of the original and spend a sure two hours with Koji and Tamiyo. And, no matter whether you see the remake or not, I urge you to do the same.

In other movie news, I see that one of my favourite movies ever in the whole universe is finally out on DVD – Betty Blue. I’ll be buying my copy real soon, and you should rent this too though it’s content is less suitable for children than Shall We Dance.

Hey, why not have yourself a foreign film night?

This story from the BBC describes how the French government is backing a move to install cell phone signal blockers in all cinemas and theatres. I wish the same would happen here – it is very annoying to have your movie disturbed by cell phones lighting up around you as their owners text message oh-so-important information to each other. Hanging’s too good for ’em!

One of the neat things about computers is that you can timestamp any thing to pretty much what you want. Its easy to encode a picture with a false date, edit it to show things that weren’t there and no one is the wiser. And so it is with this sorry collection of pages that I call my blog, thoughts that were once expressed have been unexpressed, wiped from the ether as if they had never happened. And now that I think about it, maybe they never did ?

Somewhat different from last week’s choice, this week’s top pop pick is First of the Gang To Die by Morrissey. It is somewhat interesting that both artists are 80s icons making it big (again in M’s case) in 2004. I was never a big fan of Morrissey first time around but when I hear his music now I find myself enjoying it.

Sad news from the world of entertainment, the great Rodney Dangerfield died yesterday. I hadn’t even heard of him before discovering Caddyshack where I think he pretty much stole the show. A very funny guy, indeed.

I’m struggling not to post a thought about the current election campaigning here in the USA. I decided this blog wouldn’t touch politics, religion or sex (hey, my mother reads this!) but I’m not sure I can hold it in much longer. As a colleague of mine once said a long time ago, clenching is bad.

The tune of the week has definitely been Chocolate by the delicious Kylie Minogue. Its amazing to me how big she has become these days since she’s been around forever in the UK, having started out in the soap opera Neighbours before trying her hand at singing and having tons of hits before ‘breaking out’.

Her album Body Language is highly recommended.