Think Ingrid Bergman with a traffic cone bra

Madonna wants to remake Casablanca with herself in the Ingrid Bergman role.

Perhaps I should have suggested you sit down before you read that. Pick yourself up off the floor and have another go. Yes, it's that Madonna, the one with the preposterous "Like a Virgin" song and the really nasty book that no one actually read (except Charlton Heston in that SNL sketch) and the Kabbalah infatuation and the twelve dozen adoptive kids, all named Sean Penn Ritchie.*

Yes, it's that Casablanca, the one with Bogart and Bergman. Not the Marx Brothers film, although if Madonna tried to remake that one too, I'd still be cross enough with her to publicly burn a Vogue CD.

Pass out again, did we? All right, up off the floor. Deep breaths. In, exhale, in exhale. Feeling better? Ready to continue?

She wants to set the film in Iraq.

I'm glad I brought the smelling salts.

With Madonna's cinematic track record, you'd really think the Material Girl would be doing remakes of Revenge of the Dead and Robot Monster (just think of the possibilities with the bubble machine). Obviously, her ambition has exceeded her agent's good sense. At least, she's stayed away from Welles and Kurosawa films. Otherwise, Roger Ebert, even in his weakened condition**, might have gone right for her jugular.

Still, this is an alarming trend. Even if the film doesn't come off, and there's every chance that some producer is Lamborghini-starved and ill-mannered enough to take a shot at it, the precedent is a distinctly bad one. It was one thing to let Gus Van Zant do a tepid remake of Psycho. This would open the bleeding floodgates.

How so? Well, if you thought Anne Heche as Marion Crane was a little slice of hell, just imagine the following in your worst nightmares:

• Gone with the Wind - starring Ben Affleck as Rhett Butler and Jennifer Garner as Scarlett O'Hara. The fight scene in the playground as Atlanta burns would be something though. (Riffing by the RIFFTRAX/MST3K crew - Great to see them back together again)
• L'Aventura - starring the cast of Sex in the City. As Daffy Duck might say, "Easy, stomach."
• The Seventh Seal - starring Martin Lawrence as the Knight and Raven-Symoné as Death. Strikingly similar to College Road Trip, only with chess.
• The Graduate - starring Jonah Hill as Benjamin Braddock and Joan Rivers as Mrs. Robinson
• Singin' in the Rain - starring Justin Timberlake as Don Lockwood, Britney Spears as Kathy Selden, and Dane Cook as Cosmo Brown. Let's just say that the dancing will be a bit more "exotic." Wardrobe malfunctions will abound.

Sadly, the novelty of it all could actually improve Hollywood box office returns.

*I'm just kidding about that last one Mr. Ritchie. We'd still love to do a film with you provide we get to keep our clothes on.
**We're pulling for you Roger! Get well soon!

Celestial Fertility Drugs?

Well, just when you thought you'd seen it all, news from the world of cosmology (via old-standard Yahoo! News) informs us that old stars are giving birth again.

I was particularly alarmed at the prospect of Joan Collins or Elizabeth Taylor unleashing their demented progeny into an already dangerously unstable entertainment world. Then I remembered that "cosmology" was about the study of the universe and not the same thing as the make-up bird on What Not to Wear* (as charming as she may be). However, this was only somewhat of a relief.

Ancient stars giving birth unexpectedly may seem like loads of fun to bored astronomers and physicists, but from where I'm standing, just about 93 million miles from one of those ancient stars, it's simply more weight on the troubling old existential boilerplate.

Think about it this way, one minute we're all not looking at the sun, just like they tell us not to do becuase we'll burn our corneas off. Then, without so much as a "Doctor Wilson to Obstetrics...stat!" over the celestial intercom, "Splat!" and in comes Earth Junior, knocking us out of our rightful place in the Solar System, much in the same way that Jay Leno beat David Letterman to The Tonight Show back in 1992. Only in this case, instead of hightailing it to CBS, we'd be smashed flat as a flapjack and sent careening in the general direction of Andromeda.

Why can't these ageing stars simply adopt, like Madonna and Brangelina? It's safer for all concerned and doesn't result in any disfunctional planets and the sudden demise of comedy-blog writers, their families and their small but deeply dedicated fan base. The paperwork can't be that intimidating, can it?

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*Don't blame me. Mrs. Fando enjoys the programme and it's seeped into my subconscious.