| Author | Message | ||
     Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 85.222.86.72 |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun/23/david-cronenberg-jonathan-lethem | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
At last, Cronenberg returns to what he does best - dark cerebral fantasy. I look forward to this... but hope 'The Fly' remake is a nasty rumour (please don't play Funny Games!). | ||
| Mark West (Mark_west) Username: Mark_west Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.39.177.173 |
Sounds good - and I was surprised (and pleased, because if it's got to happen, let's do it right) that he's up to direct "The Fly" remake. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Director's own remakes of earlier classic works really confound me. It just seems such a waste of time and talent. Hitchcock couldn't better 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' and neither could his closest contemporary, Michael Haneke, with 'Funny Games'. Both remakes were good but ultimately redundant when set alongside the frankly unbetterable originals imo. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.74.5 |
Howard Hawks remade Rio Bravo as El Dorado and both films are classics. There's a few changes to the story -- I believe that RB was based on a short story and ED was based on a novel by a different author -- but basically they're the same film. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I prefer Hitchcock's second Man Who Knew Too much myself. And I do think An Affair to Remember is as fine as Love Affair. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.208 |
>>>Hitchcock's second Man Who Knew Too Much I constantly find it astonishing that some folk reckon the first version is superior or even equal to the second. The second version burns in my brain with its unrelenting insidiousness: the 'walk' along the streets, the 'sedating' of Day, the whispering informant, the powerfully choreographed opera/assassination sequence. Stunning virtuousity. And I don't think these masterly techniques make only a cosmetic difference. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.74.5 |
Never seen the original. Only seen the remake with Day singing Que Sera, Sera. Or as Norman Stanley Fletcher would say, kiss her what? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
the powerfully choreographed opera/assassination sequence Oh, yes. That scene is tremendous. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.208 |
I know nowt about films, but didn't Hitch make an unqualified virtue in itself of set-piece sequences? Pure cinema doing what only cinema can do. Same with North by Northwest*: unapologetically entertaining in terms of cinematic spectacles. Spielberg does the same, I think, in many films. Revelling in virtuosity. Nowt wrong with that. * The crop-spraying plane sequence makes little sense because if you're going to try and kill someone, would you really hire a plane in this manner? But who cares - it's fucking brilliant cinema! * Ditto the much debated (here, at least) pharmacist scene in Darabont's The Mist - right, Craig?  | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.74.5 |
The crop-spraying scene makes more sense than Hitchcock's original idea of the villains trying to kill Thornhill by unleashing a tornado. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.154.208 |
That's what Obama's done with BP. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I thought the remake of 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' was brilliant in some of its set-pieces (in particular, the incredibly tense finale) but Doris Day was fatally miscast and the film just didn't hang together as a satisfying whole in the way the rollicking original did - a thoroughly entertaining and wonderfully atmospheric thriller that is up there with 'The 39 Steps' as one of his greatest early classics imho. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
He was on a contract with his American studio to remake one of his English films, he picked MWKTM. That's all there was to that. He was still fresh to Hollywood studios and he had no choice but to do it. Personally I think the second is better. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
You're right, Stu, 'El Dorado' is almost indistinguishably as good as 'Rio Bravo'. If forced at gun-point to pick one over the other I'd have to go for the original though. I've never seen 'Love Affair', Ramsey, and was unaware McCarey remade it as 'An Affair To Remember' - one of my very favourite weepies!! Get this, I've just found out that tomorrow night my local indie cinema is showing one of those all-time monumental cinema classics that I've never seen before... Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless'. At long last, after donkey's years of <don't> expectation I'm finally going to see it! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
To return to the title of this thread, apparently he's got really bad backne - like boils all over his back it is. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 86.29.70.124 |
>>You're right, Stu, 'El Dorado' is almost indistinguishably as good as 'Rio Bravo'. If forced at gun-point to pick one over the other I'd have to go for the original though. I always used to say El Dorado was my favourite. Partly 'cos I remember seeing it when I was a kid but partly 'cos I think it's funnier and has a more exciting ending. Still, RB is a classic too and I'll quite happily watch either of them. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
"He was on a contract with his American studio to remake one of his English films, he picked MWKTM. That's all there was to that. He was still fresh to Hollywood studios and he had no choice but to do it." Are you sure? He'd been in Hollywood for fifteen years by the time he remade the film. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
Just going by what it said in the "making of" doc on my DVD. He was under contract to remake something. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Ah! I must check that out. |