Which One Is This?

I'm finding that as people in Hollywood continue to recycle ideas, they have also begun to recycle movie titles. While that is understandable if it is for a remake of an older films, such as Star Trek, it can get confusing when the two films have no connection whatsoever. This can specifically become an issue if you are just flipping around, see a movie with a title you are familiar with and enjoy and, assuming that is the only one, you do not bother to double-check the guide. You go in expecting one movie and come out with another one entirely. For example, did you know there are two movies named Black Sheep? One is comedy starring Chris Farley and while it isn't his best work, it will do if there is nothing else on. The other is an extremely low-budget horror film about killer sheep on the loose that looks like it was written and filmed in about four days and for $100. In other words, one of them is fine to land on, while the other sucks. Guess which one was on TV multiple times this week?

The reason this annoys me is because it is just so incredibly lazy. Don't these people have access to the Internet and IMDB? How long would it take to double-check if the title you had in mind was already used? There are hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, I'm sure it wouldn't take more than twenty minutes coming up with a different set of words to use for a movie title that would be equally clever. (Obviously, in the case of the horror Black Sheep, that time was invaluable, because they only had twenty minutes to build the entire set and write the ending of the script, but I'm talking about the other times there have been movies with recycled titles.) So, here is the offer I'm willing to make the screenwriters of America: let me worry about your movie's title. Just email me a short synopsis of your film and, for a small fee, I'll write back with three or four title suggestions. Don't worry, I'll do my research and they will be completely original. Anything to prevent me from getting excited over the prospect of watching Denzel Washington's Man on Fire, only to discover it is the one from the mid-1980s.

-I feel like I watch certain television shows with the wrong frame of mind. For example, this afternoon I watched a couple episodes of How It's Made. For those of you who have never seen this program, it shows, step-by-step, how everyday items are put together either by hand or machine. Well, after watching a woman spend hours of her life weaving a hammock together, only to tie it off with one knot at the end, my first thought was not to appreciate her craftsmanship, but to realise that the entire project could be undone by simply cutting that one knot open. I highly doubt that is the purpose of the show.