The question: Which are worse — sequels or remakes.

The answer: It isn’t even close.

Sequels are usually awful, except for direct-to-video sequels, which are always awful.

Remakes, on the other hand, almost always make awful look good. Execrable would describe them perfectly if it were less namby-pamby.

Just look at the remakes of two Dudley Moore movies (but from a safe distance).

Instead of remaking Bedazzled and Arthur (a local reviewer just awarded the latter a half-star out of four possible, with the half-star apparently the result of giving people on the cast and crew jobs in a period of high unemployment) … re-releasing the originals would have cost less and entertained more.

This is just one way movie-making and software development aren’t parallel,

Metaphors can’t prove a point but they’re terrific ways to illustrate them.

Take project management. Some projects are voyages of discovery (imagine Magellan, consulting a Gantt chart and holding weekly status meetings while circumnavigating the earth). At the other extreme are projects more like assembling a model airplane, where a finite, enumerated list of tasks in a specific sequence makes all kinds of sense.

In between are projects with similarities to painting (a canvas, not a wall), and others that are like making a movie.

Hmmm. Making a movie. I have a source for that. Meet the Godfather of Gore … the co-inventor of the splatter movie and reason why, in high school, my summer jobs were so much odder than anyone else’s, Herschell Gordon Lewis (aka Dear Ol’ Dad).