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Current Talk '07 I / Re: DS Actors in BURNT OFFERINGS
« on: February 23, 2007, 05:51:17 PM »I know I saw Burnt Offerings once many years ago, but I can't remember much about it.
Consider yourself lucky that your memory of it is dim.
Well, whatever you do, don't read the book beforehand. The movie is a travesty of the book. It's not without reason that in Variety's review they wrote: "'Burnt Offerings' is a trite, murkily plotted, and talky supernatural pic, which will probably move quickly to double bills [MB Note: meaning it will quickly drop out of the limelight as the primary film attraction and will slip to the secondary on a double bill back when it was customary for two movies to play together in a theater]. Lots of doors fly open and shut, actors behave strangely, and eventually three people die, but it's a long 116 minutes. Karen Back and Bette Davis supply some marquee interest for the United Artists release, but none comes off well in the heavy hands of producer-director Dan Curtis..." (And that's actually one of the film's "good" reviews. ) And I doubt it's a coincidence that one of the reasons the film is such a travesty of the book is that DC collaborated on the screenplay adaptation.
And as for casting DS stars in the roles, absolutely no offense to Brian because I know his intentions are good, but I wouldn't want to saddle any of them (not even the ones whose talents I'm less than fond of ) with having to appear in the production.