Dream Casting: Highlander

Now now now...don't get me WRONG... there is NOTHING the matter with the Highlander as it stands.  In my humble opinion that film has ONE home and that's the 80's...the cheesey, over the top, Queen is the soundtrack, 80's.  But if you're me and my mister, you can't watch the movie without wondering... could you make this today? 

Not too far back I heard an absurd rumor that "They" were looking at Ryan Reynolds to rehash the Christopher Lambert role...I'm BREATHING okay, I like me some Ryan Reynolds, but as The Highlander?!  Can I be a little cheesey myself here for a second and say, "There can be only one..."

However, that doesn't mean that a discussion didn't get had, and a list didn't get made... so I present you with Dream Casting: Highlander Edition.

Connor MacLeod:   Paul Bettany

Roxanne Hart:   Olivia Wilde

The Kurgan:   Tom Hardy (or Manu Bennett)

Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez:   Liam Neeson

Heather MacLeod:   Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

...and so on and so forth...  and now you want to watch that don't you? 

DREAM CAST: Buckaroo Banzai ...

If you read that going , "Whaaaa??!?!" 

Step into my office and let me introduce to a world that my pop walked me into without knowing it...

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension is a great flick.

It's got everything!!!  Action, drama, love, science, fantasy, CHEESE!!  LOTS of cheese...  especially the red framed glasses that the studio didn't want Peter Weller to sport in the THREE whole scenes he has them on... fantastic!

We had this on during dinner a few nights ago and it came up that this movie was WAY ahead of it's time and we were almost GLAD that it didn't catch on when it did, so it could be a nice little cult classic for us to geek out over and not everyone knows the "secret handshake" about this great little flick.

BUT, the other edge of the sword is that it's great... it really is!  And I would like to spread the greatness to share with everyone!  And I want to say to someone I barely know, "Didn't you just LOVE the bubblewrap glasses?  And the Rasta Alien good guys?"  and they can say "YES!!" instead a mouth agape look of shock and confusion...  that would be nice too...

In conversing about how we sort of wish they would remake this, and not screw it up, we started to say, "In a perfect world..." and all that... so then ... Dream Casting Buckaroo Banzai jumped off the session...

Buckaroo Banzai:  Brandon Routh

Dr. Lizardo:  John Turturro

Perfect Tommy:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Rawhide:  Jacob Pitts

Penny Priddy:  Brie Larson

New Jersey:  Justin Long

John Bigboote:  Jemaine Clement

the rest of them can pretty much be figured out during general casting, but these were our musts and thought they would really make the remake if ever anyone decided to tackle such a thing :)

DREAM CAST: Live Action TaleSpin

If you were a kid in the early 90's, I don't care WHO you were, you watched TaleSpin...

For me it was KCAL 9 everyday after school until the 'rents came home and then it was Wheel of Fortune and dinner and primetime...

I filled my afternoons with the toons of Disney on in the background while I did homework (yes, I know I actually DID my homework)...

The best part of TaleSpin was it was about a 30's era and planes... I was in... even my dad tried to catch it to watch with  me on his few and far between days off.  Reason 472 why my pop would have loved to live in our time...  DVR...

Anyways, carrying on to the Dream Cast bit... Choners LOVES the underdog cartoon as much as I do and now we are turning the kids on to it... so of course THIS conversation had to happen...

Choni: Who would you get to be Baloo if you they did a Live Action TaleSpin?

Me:  Oh damn... let's do it!  Who WOULD we get? **gets pen and paper and writes down the dreamcasting session.

--This is what we came up with...

Baloo:  Kevin James

Rebecca:  Gretchen Mol

Wild Cat: Steve Zahn

Don Karnage:  Kevin Kline

Shere Khan:  Arnold Vosloo

Louie:  Jack Johnson (you know you want to see this guy act)

and Don Karnage's First Mate:  Steve Buscemi.

And there you have it... try getting THAT out of your head ;)

DREAM CAST: BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

Oh yeah, I'm totally going there RIGHT NOW!

I LOVED/LOVE the movie BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA.  It's great, better than great... GENIUS.  I love me some John Carpenter and when you mix up John Carpenter and Kurt Russell there's no stopping their forces!!  I have seen it so many times that I didn't realize that it always felt like something was missing...until one day the wonderful fantastic husband of mine says "Did you know it was supposed to be a western?"...

Uh-huuuuuh...  And then?? 

And how he knew this?  He watches a movie and then if we have the commentary available to us, he watches that too.  If it's great, he tells me it's great and we watch it together...and John Carpenter and Kurt Russell on the commentary are great...  Carpenter talks about how it was SUPPOSED to be a western, but when this was made Westerns were a dead art...DEAD...  They didn't come back until, some say, Unforgiven, I say blasphemy... Silverado was the rebirth of Westerns my friends... TRUST and BELIEVE... But Big Trouble... is '86...  no Westerns...  And that's it...

Western-era San Fransisco and BOOM!  That's what missing!

So talking about this we start to Dream Cast as follows and also imagine that they change the storyline BACK to a Western!


Jack Burton: Chris Pine

Wang Chi: Will Yun Lee

Gracie Law:  Amy Adams

Eddy:  Bobby Lee

Egg Shen:  Jackie Chan

Lo Pan:  Gordon Lie

Miao Yin:  Devon Aoki

and you can basically pick any three top martial arts stunt/actors as the 3 Storms :)

Have fun with that ya'll!!  Cuz we sure did...

Apparently You Can't DREAM CAST Hiding Out...

Over some awesome BBQ Pork, homemade chili leftovers from Ma and cornbread muffins a la Choni, I found out, you can't really Dream Cast  Hiding Out...  We started...  We switched out Zac Efron with John Cryer based on the movie 17 Again, but that's as far as we got much to our chagrin...  It was not our finest hour and I went from "Oh?!? Are we about to have a Dream Cast moment?!?" to "oh hey there's a bus why don't I just walk infront of it..."  Extreme yes, but that's how I felt at that milisecond... 

So I just thought that it would be worth it to know, there's really not a lot to do about Dream Casting movies with three main characters...  Maybe we'll pick this back up again later...  I was thinking switching Jennifer Lawrence with Annabeth Gish... but again..  pretty much stops there... 

Instead we wound our evening down watching Justified off the ol' DVR and to bed we went!!

Hopefully, more Dream Cast-ing to come...

Dream Casting: CLUE

Here is the Dream Cast of "Clue" in the Judd Apatow Universe:

Professor Plum: Jason Segel

Col. Mustard:   Steve Carrell

Mr. Body:       James Franco

Mrs. Peacock:   Jane Lynch

Ms. Scarlet:    Elizabeth Banks

The Cook:       Jonah Hill

Cop:            Craig Robinson

Wadsworth:      Russell Brand

Yvetter:        Kristen Bell

FBI Agent/
Religious Guy:  Michael McKean

Telegram Girl:  Kat Dennings

The Motorist:   Danny McBride

You are welcome!!