What not to title your movie: 'how', 'legend', 'American', 'dawn'

More bad titles axed!

I asked for the worst, most unimaginative movie titles ever created, and Daily Herald readers responded!

Dann: All titles that begin with the word "How," as in "How I (Something)," "How We (Something)," "How Stella (Something)," "How to (Something)." Is there really such a demand for instruction manuals to be consumed during leisure time? There is one exception, and that's the subtitle to "Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," which I'm pretty sure hasn't been used more than once. - P.S. Colbert

Dear Dann: This is spooky. Just last evening I was thinking that "Die" (and its variations) is overused in movie titles. I made a mental list, but, after reading you in Time Out, some free-associating produced this: "I Want to Live and Let Die Hard" or "Night of the Living Dead Man Walking Tall." - Susan Klein, Long Grove.

Dann: Some of these might not be ready for prime time, yet:

1. "The Legend of (Somebody/Something)"

2. "American (Somebody/Something)"

3. "Nightmare on (Something)"

4. "Dawn of the (Something)"

5. "Revenge of the (Something)"

6. Anything involving "Twilight" (hard to believe Rod Serling's genius was besmirched by Stephenie Meyer) and "Vampires." - Rick Dana Barlow

Dann: My choice for most overused title is "(Something) II." Talk about lack of originality! "Rocky II," "Halloween II," "Lousy Movie II," etc. - Ray Michalski

Dear Ray, Susan, Rick and P.S.: Thanks for your splendid suggestions for movie titles that should be instantly and permanently placed on moratorium. As a side note to this, I also would like to wag my finger at Hollywood marketing geniuses who, instead of creating provocative titles that actually suggest what the movie's about, merely slap on the inane title of a pop song.

So, Stephen King's short story "The Body" (about kids who discover a dead body) inexplicably becomes "Stand By Me." And a biopic about a baseball bat-wielding, tyrannical high school principal gets a soft, mushy title, "Lean on Me." - Dann

Reel Life review: 'Looking for Eric'Ken Loach's "Looking For Eric" is the wackiest, wildest riff of a fairy godmother fantasy I've ever witnessed. A Manchester postal worker named Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) is so depressed over his loveless, unrespected life that he tries to kill himself. So, Manchester United soccer superstar Eric Cantona magically appears and helps him sort out his miserable life. Why? How?Dunno.And Loach doesn't care. Working from Paul Laverty's deliberately foul-mouthed screenplay, Loach fashions a modestly compelling tale of second chances with the working-class Eric as Cantona's Cinder-fella and Stephanie Bishop as the wife he left years ago. "Looking" gets blindsided when Eric discovers a gun being kept by his stepson for a local thug. This slam-shift in subject and tone throws Loach's movie into a tale-spin, and it barely recovers by its end, a sports-fan-oriented reminder for the working classes that the collective is mightier than any single man."Looking For Eric" opens today at the Century Centre in Chicago. Not rated, but contains lots of adult language. 116 minutes. #9733; #9733; #189;Reel Life review: 'Princess Kaiulani'Marc Forby's "Princess Kaiulani" aches and yearns to be compared to those stately Merchant Ivory prestige period pieces such as "Howards End" and "A Room With a View." That's not going to happen.Seriously.Writer/director Forby takes a potentially incendiary true story - how white men with guns hijacked a nation and a culture while America nodded with approval - and stuffs all the rage and rebellion into a dramatic corset.Princess Kaiulani (a striking, underplayed performance by Q'orianka Kilcher) witnesses her beloved Hawaii fall under the rule of American business interests. Her people are stripped of their land and voting power, which both go to white colonists. She engineers the best strategy she can to help a seemingly hopeless cause.Had "Princess" been stoked with passion and outrage, it could have pricked the consciences of fair-minded Americans and made a lot of tourists feel really bad about taking the islands for granted.Instead, Forby squeezes out the emotions in stingy measures, imitating the languorous surface of a Merchant Ivory drama, but never replicating the conflict roiling below."Princess Kaiulani" opens today at the Century Centre, Chicago. Rated PG. 97 minutes. #9733; #9733; #189;After Hours' 'Vincere'The After Hours Film Society presents Marco Bellocchio's "Vincere," a fictionalized account of Benito Mussolini's (Filippo Timi) rise to power and his brutal treatment of his first wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). Rated R for violence, language. 128 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Tivoli Theater, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. General admission costs $9. Call (630) 534-4528.