Hello All,

Of late, there seems to be a theme around here of bashing remakes. Now, I don’t want to be left out here, so I have compiled a list (I do so love lists) of the five best and five worst film remakes that I have seen.

Not every remake is a terrible cash grab devoid of merit. In fact some can be quite good! Here are the five best remakes that I have witnessed:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4560181344427335511

1) The Departed: The Departed is based on a trilogy of Asian films titled Infernal Affairs (pts. 1,2, and 3). I’m not usually a fan of the American Remake of an Asian film (it felt like there was a decade of American horror films made this way), but this was superb. The cast was great, Scorsese was at his directing best, and there were no creepy dead girls crawling out of televisions.

2) The Thing: A remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World, this movie made snow, and WIlford Brimley, scary. Kurt Russell was at his bad-ass-est here, and the creature effects were excellent for their time.

3) Scarface: The original Scarface was loosely based on Al Capone, and was fun in it’s time. However, when Oliver Stone (the writer) and Brian De Palma (the director) got a chance to update the story, gone were the Capone references, and bootlegging. What replaced them is the machine gun toting, lady-tiger loving man with little friends that we all love to hate. Who would have thought Al Pacino could play cuban?

4) Munich: Munich was a remake of a Movie called Sword Of Gideon, and both movies are based on the book Vengeance: The True Story Of An Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team. This movie is flat out awesome. I don’t care how good the original movie was, this one was directed by Spielberg. Spielberg!

5) The Fly: In the Original 1958 film of the same name, a scientist and a fly switch heads. The original also featured Vincent Price. Both these are cool, but the 1986 version had Jeff Goldblum as a crazy man-fly! He vomited on( and ate) people!

A special “almost on the list but for a technicality” award goes to Batman Begins for resurrecting the Dark Knight from the oppression of Bat-nipples.

Now, while remakes can sometimes be worthwhile (just look at the list above), most of the time they crap. Sometimes, they are exceptionally crappy. And sometimes they are so tremendously crappy that they make us want to burn down the movie theater just so that no one else has to watch them.  Here are the worst of the worst:

1) Psycho: The original film is a classic. Even today, Psycho (the original one) is pretty dang scary. In 1998, someone thought it would be a good idea to remake Psycho, and the results were terrible. Like a human/ fly hybrid vomiting on you to eat you terrible. I shudder at the thought of this movie. Shame on you Universal!

2) The Wicker Man: The original film is a cult classic starring Christopher lee. The remake has Nic Cage punching hoes in a bear suit. This might sound like an upgrade, but I assure you, it isn’t.

3) Shaft: This movie was devoid of anything that made the orignal awesome. On the plus side, it did have Sam Jackson.

4) The Day The Earth Stood Still: Any time that you take a movie that has been around for over half a century, and remake it with Keanu Reeves in  the starring role, you are going to fail. This is like a rule of the universe or something.

5) Godzilla: Um, yeah.

Alright folks, that’s it for today. Have a great weekend, and good luck if your are going out in search of presents, it’s gonna be crazy!

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

This afternoon, while scarfing my square lunch of beans, potatoes, and a meat that may have been a turkey but I really have no way of knowing, I stumbled upon an odd bit of movie news which completely trumped my original article about the dendrophilia “nature is beauty” cutaways in Terrence Malick films (thrilling to botanists, not so much to the rest of the planet). My discovery of an unnecessary remake with a bizarre choice for director leads us to part two of my “Reboot this” series: “Remaking what now?”

Death at a Funeral was the quirky English (read: British) comedy directed by Frank Oz just two years ago, a comedy of errors that takes place in the course of a day.

The story revolves around the son of the recently deceased, as he tries to muster the courage to perform his father’s eulogy while rationing his time between moody relatives, an acid-tripping friend, and the recent revelation of his father’s secret gay life. The movie had no particular stars to speak of, yet the comedy is absurd, characters likable, and Alan Tudyk turns in a hilarious performance, mostly in the nude.

Today I discovered this poster for the American remake (of an ENGLISH film):

I would like to choose not to partake in this business of remaking films unnecessarily, but cannot help admiring the audacity of the angle the producers have chosen. Here they have taken a concept of a dark comedy revolving around an absurd family, and given it the twist of A)making the family American, and B)making the family black. There is an audience for this in America, and the fact that this is based on a British comedy should hold no water, considering very few Americans enjoyed that first film. The remake has the draw of Chris Rock, Tracey Morgan, Martin Lawrence, Luke Wilson, Cyclops, Uhura, and Danny Glover. DANNY GLOVER.

The fella on the left:

*It should be noted that another Chris Rock remake endeavor, Down to Earth (a remake of the film Heaven Can Wait (itself a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan), performed modestly at the box office in 2001, gaining $64 million, though the film’s budget was a pricey $49 million.

The Death at a Funeral remake is directed by Neil Labute, a playwright turned Hollywood filmmaker whose In the Company Of Men gave us the wonderful Aaron Eckhart, but his remake of The Wicker Man only displayed Nicholas Cage in a bear suit.

Just another argument against remakes.

And here’s the part of the post where I could allow Mr. Wolff to overtake my bearings, to guide my hand on a rant of self-assured righteousness about the negativity of remakes on originality in Hollywood; on the lack of a truly creative, unique film; on a general disregard and disrespect for the American moviegoers who pay $6 for popcorn and pick their teeth through the opening credits while talking on their cell phones, and who refuse to stay for a movie with subtitles.

But I won’t go there. Not yet, for that is not what today’s orders are about. Today is about the MEANING of a remake, and the dedicated artistry behind the process, the will of the filmmaking team to go for broke, and then fix it again, while holding their film to only one standard: that of the original piece.

One could say that Roman Polanski’s Macbeth is a remake. The source material has been around for hundreds of years, and even Orson Welles gave it a go back in 1948. But I daresay that simply holding an original film’s title is not enough — simply recycling the script is not enough. With that in mind, Neil LaBute’s “Death at a Funeral” has lost points already. But has it lost enough?

The concept is the same, and the jokes will most likely try be absurd as the original was. You know another remake that tried to be a comedy but failed in retrospect? Bad News Bears. And that had another respected director at its’ helm: Richard Linklater.

Look, the truth of the matter is that we can go on and on about remakes — both American and foreign — and argue about what’s better, the original or the new one, the classic or the update, or the third update, for that matter. But the point of it all is — what is the point? Come up with something original once in a while. Charlie Kaufman can do it. Even when he adapted a book, The Orchid Thief, he still managed to create a wholly original script based around it. That’s the beauty of creativity and film. In the end, anyone can make something slightly different enough, and justify calling it original.

Look at the remake of 3:10 to Yuma. Virtually identical scripts from original B/W film, now with Russell Crowe’s eyes shining back at you. Or Kenneth Branagh’s breathtaking Hamlet. That was a film that was nominated for a best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. It was a word-for-word rendition of the Bard’s classic play. What was adapted? Well, assuming there wasn’t a glitzy hall of mirrors in Denmark, I’d say just about everything but the dialogue.

Sometimes, that’s all it takes to liven up an already familiar world: A little polish of your surroundings, and the rest will sound good as new, even though it’s much the same. Take it from me. I once tried to grow a beard, change things, next thing I know I’m loading a musket for a Civil War Re-enactment. I don’t shoot play guns. I shoot for real. (What now?)

At ease.

Sgt. Angle.

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty! Short and sweet this week, as I’m on deadline for resting mine eyes.

I’ve just been pontificating what’s in store for all you heavy readers and viewers out there in the upcoming MYTHOI: BIRTH issue to be released soon, and words cannot describe what only pictures can. See for yourself.

Then again, words cannot describe all that music has to offer. Music has that uncanny ability to actually represent more than the lyrics tell you. Thanks to contrasting melodies, choral harmonies, and dizzying sound engineering, music can be known to make our hearts beat faster, or stop them all together. Which brings us to Michael Jackson (Effing Segues). THIS IS IT is the documentary revolving around MJ’s rehearsals for his final “curtain call” tour of London. As of today, “…It” has earned over $34 Million at the US BO. I haven’t offered money to the Jackson Family Fund seen the film yet, but I hope that you do, sirs and madams, and that you tell us about it. However, I do know that Jackson’s dance steps will live forever, just like Keanu Reeves is immortal, and was AKA King Charlemagne. Or a vampire.

Until you get the chance to watch the source of Neverland Ranch dressing King of Pop in his final dance moments, you can think long and hard about how to spend the next five years of your life building on the moves and creations of others.

For instance, you can join the recent Hollywood trend of remaking character-driven foreign films to fit the American filmmaking mold.

I don’t have a large axe to grind with remakes. The Departed was a fine film. So was 3:10 to Yuma. What I have a problem with is the idea that American audiences “on a wide scale” cannot already see “Let the Right One In” as it was intended to be seen, in the glorious Scandinavian snow quality. Why remake it at all? Why not plop down a huge chunk of change if you love the movie so much and blast it out into theaters across the country, tell the audience “you should see this,” instead of allowing the director of “Cloverfield” to lay his handheld fingers on it? Just screen the original. If you screen it, they will come.

I want that to be your mantra as you also think about the movie reboot of Battlestar Galactica. This is a property that has been a cult favorite ever since the original TV series in the 70s, and has already had a spectacular “reboot” which began in 2004, thanks to the creative, adaptive vision of Ronald D. Moore.

The Moore reboot added layers of philosophy and religion, of humanity in every one of the characters, and developed an entire universe that is similar yet unique from our own. What will Bryan Singer bring to the table, and why now? Could he be capitalizing on the recent success of Moore’s series and the title in question?

A type of reboot I can usually get behind is the movie-to-TV launch of a popular film, or at least, a film worthy of deeper exploration. Think of Friday Night Lights, and I’ll take you there. What Peter Berg was able to lift out of the book for the film, he made fly for the TV series. Now entering its’ fourth season, FNL is more than football, more than teenage drama. It’s about heart. It’s about hope. And it’s about a coach who still stands for integrity and decency despite his losses, because in life, it’s not about losing, it’s about how you deal with the loss. Have clear eyes (a clear vision for your future) full hearts (pumping blood through your veins and hope through your mind) and you can’t lose (you will always emerge victorious). This is a show that began as a true story, was written in a book by H.G. Bissinger and adapted into a film starring Billy Bob Thornton. The characters beat through the heart of America, and their weekly lives have become a dramatic mirror of clarity for millions of viewers.

I can think of reboots that work (Star Trek, Casino Royale, even) and remakes that are terrible and unnecessary (the wood block of Keanu Reeves gave only stiffness to The Day the Earth Stood Still, and is Leo DiCaprio seriously thinking of tackling The Third Man? Orson Welles shall roll over in his grave!). Can you? Perhaps venture into foreign lands and discover the French films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet before he jumped over to the Alien franchise (again, another reboot) to see how original movies from other lands can be. Broaden your horizon over the ocean once in a while, please.

But back to the subject at hand: This Is It. Michael Jackson. Did he have a heart worth beating for another 50 years, or did it just give up because he thought he’d lost everything? Dance your words into our comment section, and tell us: Is This It?

So Say We All.

Sgt. Angle