They should change the name of that movie ....

The recently released film "Cop Out," with a minor plot device involving baseball cards, got me to wondering again about what I would regard as a more promising hobby-linked vehicle, the 2008 release “Diminished Capacity,” starring Mathew Broderick and Virginia Madsen, with Alan Alda playing the Uncle with a valuable T206-style card that gets lost.

That movie got an extremely limited release nearly two years and has been languishing on the shelf ever since, but with high-powered talent like Broderick, Madsen and Alda, it’s hard for me to believe it won’t eventually get a wider look. I suppose it could go right to DVD, but I don’t think many movies with that pedigree go that route. And just as soon as I had composed the previous sentence, I checked on some of those online commentary sections on the "Diminished Capacity" website, and some of the readers were talking about having seen the DVD of the film. Go figure.

I tried even more Googling to get some updated information (I know using "Google" as a verb upsets lawyers and maybe even English teachers, which is all the more reason to do it), but there wasn’t much there at first blush. I had read last year that the movie was bought by another studio – or distribution company – and was supposed to get another turn at bat, so to speak.

And here’s my 2-cents worth on that. Change the title and give it another try. I don’t know how much precedent there is for changing the name of a movie after an initial, albeit limited release, but I think they should consider it. “Diminished Capacity” is a lousy name for a movie, and I say that with conviction because in two years I’ve never been able to remember the name of the movie.

And no jokes, please, about the apparent irony of my own diminished capacity.

Just over 30 years ago, the movie "The Great Santini" with Robert Duvall in the lead role was released, but I have been convinced that it had an earlier, obviously limited theatrical release under a different name. It was the late 1970s, so maybe this was some kind of flashback or similarly disruptive emotional event, but I was pretty certain I had seen the film under another, way clunkier name, and then it got renamed and proved to be a considerable artistic success.

The fact that I wasn't able to confirm this via Internet searching barely discourages me at all. Most of the information in the Solar System can be found there, but not all. Any help?