A Midsummer Night's Rant

Liz Penn, author of previously noted mock-heroic blank verse Troy review, has another good piece up. In addition to bestowing a healthy remake rant upon us, she sums up my feelings for Jackie Chan better than I ever could:

The real new Buster Keaton is, of course, the Chinese actor and martial artist Jackie Chan, who’s not so new anymore – at 50, he’s been working in film for over 30 years, and has been a figure in American action movies since the early 80s. Chan has a new film out, a remake of the 1956 farce Around the World in 80 Days, which I meant to see this weekend, but when Sunday night rolled around, I just wasn’t up for mediocre madcap caperings, even with the irresistible Chan, whose wild energy and innocence, the huge gulf between his talent and the vehicles it usually appears in, tend to make me cry.

... and while I don't feel as strongly about Vince Vaughn as she does, her skewering is too much fun to not reprint:

Vince Vaughan is a charm vacuum. He has so little onscreen presence, he’s forced to actually borrow charm from audience members, leaving every viewer of Dodgeball to walk out with 10% less sex appeal than they brought into the theater with them.

Ouch. I, for one, can't afford to see Dodgeball at those rates.