Al Pacino has signed on for Barry Levinson’s You Don’t Know Jack… an HBO biopic about Jack Kevorkian.  Now, try not to think of an “assisted suicide” joke as it relates to Pacino’s career.  Impossible, right?

Kevorkian, also known as Dr. Death [Editor's Note: ...], assisted in more than 150 cases of suicide and had beaten the state court system in Michigan numerous times, but was finally convicted after he willingly sent a videotape of himself euthanizing a terminally ill man to “60 Minutes.” He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999 and is serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison in Michigan.  The film will trace his rise as he builds his infamous “Mercy Machine,” conducts his first assisted suicide, and starts a media frenzy with his epic legal battles defending a patient’s right to die.

The only time parody titles work is when the work is an actual parody.  This… doesn’t sound like a comedy.

Adam Mazer (“Breach”) wrote the script, which is loosely based on “Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Assisted Suicide Machine and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia” by Neal Nicol. [THR]

And speaking of titles, when did book names start including Google search terms?  If Homer had written The Odyssey in the 21st century, it’d be called The Odyssey: My Big Fat Greek Love Boat, Messin’ With Cyclops, and the Tale of Too Many Suitors! Book titles are like assholes, in that nothing good comes after the colon.

_{Jä, mein hair ist boxy and efficient, like Völvo}

The other day I told you about how the subtitles for Let the Right One In had been mangled for the US DVD release. Magnet has issued a response: [from Digitalbits via /film]:

“We’ve been made aware that there are several fans ["several fans" - gee,that's not at all condescending] that don’t like the version of the subtitles on the DVD/BR. We had an alternate translation that we went with. Obviously a lot of fans thought we should have stuck with the original theatrical version. We are listening to the fans feedback, and going forward we will be manufacturing the discs with the subtitles from the theatrical version.”

The way to tell the difference is that the new DVDs will say “SUBTITLES: ENGLISH (theatrical),” to differentiate from the other version.  Currently, Magnet has no plan to recall or replace the DVDs with the funky subtitles, nor have they offered any guidance on how to know what you’re getting if you order it through Amazon.  It may be a couple months before they clean up this mess.  But in the meantime, I’ll be selling my own version of the subtitled translation.  Though I should probably warn you, I relied rather heavily on “DUUURRR” and *fart noise*.

Let the Right One In is a Swedish vampire movie that everyone seems to love that I’ve been meaning to see one of these days.  Unfortunately, I may have blown my chance forever, because it’s now being reported that the subtitles for the US DVD version have been badly butchered. Think the TV edit of Big Lebowski in which John Goodman warns about what happens “when you find a stranger in the Alps,” or when Bruce Willis in Die Hard screams “Yippie kai yay, Mr. Falcon.”  It’s like that, only you’d have no way to know the difference.  IconsofFright took some screen shots of both versions for comparison.

Original screener:

Same scene, on the US DVD

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Friday Free for All is a regular feature on FilmDrunk in which I post a video that makes me laugh, regardless of whether it’s film related. Hey, if it’s in video form, doesn’t that automatically make it film-related? Yeah, well fuck you too. Anyway, send tips, praise, and/or naked pictures of yourself to lance@filmdrunk.com.

Today’s video, sent by Fek, is some fun with subtitles using a news story about anti-emo riots in Mexico, as if they weren’t funny enough in their own right.  I’m a sucker for subtitle humor.  My favorite part is the cop.  “I’m not a hater, I love all children.  Young ones… Chubby ones… Occasionally even girls.  I like to eat their hearts.”  Simply brilliant.