It Might Not Suck

Yesterday it was announced that Miramax has decided to move forward on several sequel projects including a new Bad Santa and another installment of Shakespeare in Love. While neither of those are particularly interesting to me, I am intrigued by the news that they may also pursue a sequel to Rounders. I always like Rounders, finding it to be a very underrated movie. The thing that made it so good was that it was purely a poker movie which came out years before the Texas hold 'em rush of a few years ago and thus had achieved a cult-favorite status among people who considered themselves poker buffs. By beating the fad and already having loyal fans, it was clearly the best of the slew of poker movies which had been hurried into production trying to catch the tail end of the craze. It was really just a movie about poker which didn't dumb down the poker scenes or try and add a love interest to attract a female audience. If you liked Texas hold 'em before it was popular then you liked the movie and if you didn't it was over your head. It was a movie that was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, when Texas hold 'em was on every ESPN channel the movie got a second life and actually became over-rated, but it has since returned to an appropriate level of appreciation.

Now, because it was such a good movie I am worried about what might happen with the sequel. Sometimes a great movie should just be left alone and the writers should not press their luck with a second movie (see: Caddyshack 2). But, here is why I hold out hope: because such a long time has passed since the original came out in 1998, they may have been spending all these years working on an script and as such it might be good. (I know it's a long shot, but a guy can dream.) Also, the other thing working in their favor is that the poker craze has really died back down. ESPN keeps trying to push it on us, but that is only because they over-paid for the right to broadcast the yearly championship and are desperate to bring some type of audience to the television. Because the wave has already crested I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they won't fall into the trappings that often happen to a movie hunting for an audience and keep it strictly as a movie about poker. Also, I don't think it needs Matt Damon or Ed Norton to come back for the sequel. The main guy they need is John Malkovich. You get him to reprise his role as Teddy KGB and everything else will be ok. I know most of the time sequels fall far short of the original, but I'll hold out hope for the Rounders sequel.

-Earlier this afternoon I was working on my computer when I heard a noise outside my front door. I looked out my window in time to see a girl sprinting down my driveway and into a waiting car, which was parked in the middle of the street with the engine still running and the doors left open. I wasn't sure what she had just left on my doorstep and needless to say I was intrigued. Could these be my instructions about how I was to become a secret assassin? It turned out she was just delivering the new phonebooks, but that might have been the shadiest-looking way to deliver a perfectly legal item that I have ever seen.