Will Miyazaki's "Ponyo" ever hit U.S. theaters?

Actually, the most depressing news out there is that Jackie Earle Haley has signed on to play Freddie Krueger in Platinum Dunes' remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Digest that for a second.

Now, on paper, Mr. Haley as Freddie isn't that much of a stretch. He certainly has the manic look down, but any news about what Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes company is up to just turns my stomach and makes it do flips.

Remaking fun movies like "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare" aren't exactly bold artistic moves, but neither are they really high cinematic crimes. But the Platinum Dunes folks have no plans to stop there; they've got real classics in their sights too.

Further along is a "retelling" (the dirty little euphemism used to claim you're not making a "remake") of Hitchcock's "The Birds." I'm still hoping this will never happen, but assuming it does it will star Naomi Watts in Tippi Hedren's iconic role and have Martin Campbell of "Casino Royale" fame as its director.

Even more insidious but still in pre-infancy stage (if that's possible) is the company's plan to remake what remains my single favorite horror film, Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby." If anyone out there has the power to stop all this madness, please do!

OK, enough of that. This was supposed to be all about Hayao Miyazaki, a subject which makes me much, much happier.

It seems that not only does his new film, "Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea" (to be retitled simply "Ponyo") finally have a U.S. release date of Aug. 14 (more than a friggin' year after it debuted in Japan!), but it also has some kids in the lead voice roles that just might give it enough cache to even open in my little corner of the world.

Ensuring that Billy Ray Cyrus will apparently be able to live off the talents of his kids forever, it seems there's another little Cyrus running around, named Noah, and he has landed the titular role of the goldfish princess who just wants to be human. Just in case that's not enough Disney for you, it seems that yet another of those Jonas kids, someone named Frankie, will voice the role of Sosuke, the young boy who befriends Ponyo.

I really have no idea who any of those people are, but if that's what it takes to finally bring this to American movie theaters, bring it on. Among the adults involved in this are Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey and Liam Neeson.

And in even better news that only impacts, well, me, I'm off to see "Adventureland" today at 2:15, and I'm fairly confident it's just going to rule. Peace out.

Keep your dirty mitts off of "Rosemary's Baby"!

Be warned at the outset: All the news today has something, good or really, really bad, to do with Michael Bay. As my only other warning, I'll just say I promised myself a few months ago I would stop writing about thoroughly unnecessary remakes both because there's just so damn many of them and because it can't do anything good for my blood pressure.

But thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Bay and his company, Platinum Dunes (even that name sucks!), I now have to break that promise. I didn't realize until this morning that it isn't just a company, but instead some kind of vast conspiracy out to ruin many of the things cinematic that I hold dear.

So, before I get consumed with rage, let me just lay it out there: Thanks to the enterprising folks at Shock Till You Drop, I woke up this morning to this new possible spawn of Satan: A remake of "Rosemary's Baby."

I'll give you a second to mull that over. Swear if you want to. Virtually nothing offends me at this point.

Platinum Dunes has staked its still-declining reputation (if you can even call it that) on such horror remakes ("Friday the 13th," "Nightmare of Elm Street" and, yes, even "The Birds" are all in the pipeline, and they've already taken down "Amityville Horror," "The Hitcher" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" - remember I'm just the messenger.) I could dismiss just about all of those except "The Birds" with a shrug, but when it comes to "Rosemary's Baby," well, now it's personal.

I realize I'm probably far from alone here, but Roman Polanski's fun flick really represents for me two things: Both my single favorite horror movie of all time and a crash course in what used to be great about horror flicks (atmosphere, suspense and an actually riveting storyline, imagine that.)

What has replaced those ingredients of late? Well, first there was the slew of torture chic flicks, which apparently (and thankfully) seems to have bottomed out with "Captivity." If the next trend is simply to steal every idea you can find, I can only call that a lateral move at best.

There has been one nearly sensational horror movie I've seen of late, J.A. Bayona's "The Orphanage." I obviously fear, however, that this one pure drop can do little to stop the rapidly filling bucket of bad blood.

And now in better news ...

Whew! Let me make sure all the bile's out of my system before continuing.

Another thing that makes the above story so sad is that, when they actually bother, Bay and company can still come up with projects that don't make me vomit in my own mouth. (And for the record, I really thought "Transformers" was a heck of a lot of fun.)

I found the first mention this morning of a horror flick of a different sort (meaning at least from an original concept) that Platinum Dunes is producing for writer/director David S. Goyer. In what could be described as an odd twist on "The Exorcist," Goyer's "Unborn" tells the tale of a Jewish girl tormented by the soul of a boy who died in the Holocaust.

Should the Holocaust be off limits for such fare? Perhaps, but I'm relatively confident that Goyer, who co-wrote both "Batman Begins" and the upcoming "Dark Knight," can come up with something at least slightly tasteful and thoroughly entertaining. And besides, it's rapidly attracting a four-star cast.

Odette Yustman (Beth McIntyre for anyone who saw "Cloverfield") will play the tormented youth, and it just gets better from there. Carla Gugino. who I'd probably enjoy watch eating crackers, will play her mother, and, believe it not, Gary Oldman as a rabbi and "The Wire" alum Idris Elba as a priest will be performing the exorcism.

So, is there still hope out there for horror? Not much, but projects like "Unborn" make me think there just might be a glimmer. Peace out.