by Daniel Stephens

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

It was only 1996 when Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day talked about strange outer space signals repeating themselves and recycling until there was no more. With controlled build-up, Goldblum's David, showing a sort of stoic heroism said Strange thing is, if my calculations are correct, the signal will be gone in seven hours. The signal reduces itself every time it recycles. Eventually it will disappear.' It's like a Yoga class breath in (and raise the tension: audience at the edge of their seats), and breath out (here's comes the gag'). And then what?' says curly haired chub Harvey Fierstein. Checkmate' replies Goldblum, as a bumbling Fierstein runs down a list of lives he has to save without the addition of his blood-sucking lawyer.

Despite the clinical, tidy, manipulative filmmaking being a well-worn attribute of most flag-waving American blockbusters, it's the metaphor in Goldblum's analysis that's more important here. Like David Naughton in John Landis' An American Werewolf In London going on a murderous lycanthropic rampage every full moon - repeating his quest for human meat every time his Wilkinson Sword became as useful as a camp hairdresser on King Kong's island - today's Hollywood and its total lack of originality is just repeating and recycling itself in any disguise it sees fit. From the remake and the re-imagining, to the book adaptation, the latest superhero craze and anything it can pimp off East Asian horror directors. Unlike Stephen King's Pennywise returning to drag children into the sewers of Derry every thirty years (a book which was adapted into a television movie), Hollywood is repeating itself every thirty seconds. With the general consistency of Michael Palin's stutter in A Fish Called Wanda, the Land of La is hitting us with the same movies over and over and over again.

Yes Hollywood has been doing it for years the literary adaptation is no new fangled idea of course but at least there was still a sense of quality, of characterization, of vitality. Take music for example - The Byrds Tambourine Man', Jimi Hendrix's All Along The Watchtower', Soft Cell's Tainted Love' they're all cover versions of previous songs but in many ways improve upon the originals. In the movie business, Hollywood's latest output reaches the sorts of heights Ronan Keating's Fairytale Of New York' cover climbed - it's worth very little, it's purpose nothing more than musical rape. In any case, would anyone deny The Big Sleep any plaudits because it was originally

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