Oceans Twelve Movie

Remaking popular films is a dicey proposition. Rarely do the new versions achieve the critical acclaim or box office stature of the originals. Remember the disastrous versions of "Miracle on 34th Street," "Psycho" and "An Affair to Remember"? But "Ocean's Eleven," the 2001 retelling of a 1960 Rat Pack flick, was a rare exception.

During a century of cinema, Americans have enjoyed seeing our anxieties about crime and criminals sublimated in the movie theater in any number of ways. After the gritty-gangster-film craze of the 1930s, audiences turned to the more fanciful western. Sometime later a hankering for reality returned, and movies about beat cops and grizzled detectives took hold. And now, it seems, as the world grows more worrisome, we've rediscovered our need for whimsy on the wrong side of the law.

During a century of cinema, Americans have enjoyed seeing our anxieties about crime and criminals sublimated in the movie theater in any number of ways. After the gritty-gangster-film craze of the 1930s, audiences turned to the more fanciful western. Sometime later a hankering for reality returned, and movies about beat cops and grizzled detectives took hold. And now, it seems, as the world grows more worrisome, we've rediscovered our need for whimsy on the wrong side of the law.

Philip Messina Production designer Latest assignment: Steven Soderbergh's caper comedy "Ocean's Twelve." Challenge: To create the interior of a Roman museum on a Los Angeles soundstage for a heist sequence involving a priceless Faberge egg. The decision to build from scratch: "We were always going to build a small portion of the museum where they housed the egg back in Los Angeles, but we were going to use the grand room of this museum we had selected in Rome.

Philip Messina Production designer Latest assignment: Steven Soderbergh's caper comedy "Ocean's Twelve." Challenge: To create the interior of a Roman museum on a Los Angeles soundstage for a heist sequence involving a priceless Faberge egg. The decision to build from scratch: "We were always going to build a small portion of the museum where they housed the egg back in Los Angeles, but we were going to use the grand room of this museum we had selected in Rome.

Remaking popular films is a dicey proposition. Rarely do the new versions achieve the critical acclaim or box office stature of the originals. Remember the disastrous versions of "Miracle on 34th Street," "Psycho" and "An Affair to Remember"? But "Ocean's Eleven," the 2001 retelling of a 1960 Rat Pack flick, was a rare exception.