Well, I think my head is pleasantly buzzing like I had pop-rocks and coca-cola.  Normally everyone complains about remakes, but I am putting myself squarely in the optimism camp upon the news out of Hong Kong that iconic director Zhang Yimou is currently in the midst of shooting a remake of the Coen Brothers’ debut film, neo-noir Blood Simple.

Titled San Qiang Pai An Jing Qi (basic translation: “The Stunning Case of the Three Gun Shots”), it is great to see Zhang Yimou making films again instead of doing weddings, Olympic Ceremonies and other in-the-moment work for hire jobs.  And a noir-picture to boot (although arguments could be made that several of the directors films are noir-ish, despite his gorgeous colour palettes). 

Well, here is a combination of things.  One, Werner Herzog is in a playful mood.  Two, Nicholas Cage is attempting to outdo his recent Wicker Man remake role in over-the-topitude.  And three, Abel Ferrara‘s fabulous Bad Lieutenant does take itself deadly serious with its earnest violence, aggressive sex and extreme drug use, flirting with parody in the first place.  This culminates in one of these ‘O My God, they are actually getting paid to make this’ moments (and not only the eccentric director, but also Val Kilmer, Eva Mendez, Jennifer Coolidge and Fairuza Balk.  I am not sure how funny the joke or the Freddy Got Fingered stunt is going to play out in the end, but give the trailer a gander after the jump and weigh in.  Who knows, maybe this is not even real but a strange You Tube mash-up or an hallucination.

“You don’t have a lucky crack-pipe?”

Apparently Herzog has been puffing away, and get that iguana of his fucking coffee table. 

(This will make almost sense after a viewing.  See you on the other side.)

Continue Reading "Shoot Abel Ferrara Again.  His Soul is Still Dancing."...

After the blockbuster success of the Death Note film franchise in Asia, it was just a matter of time before Hollywood would get their grabby hands on a remake.  According to Variety, Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to turn the manga into a live-action film and the studio has already hired screenwriters Charley and Vlas Parlapanides to adapt.  For those not familiar with the property, “the story centers on a student who accidentally finds a misplaced “Death Note” infusing him with the power to kill merely by writing anyone’s name on the page while picturing the person in his mind.”  Its expected the film will employ mainly on the best-selling 13 volume manga series, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, rather than the two-part Japanese live action films.

He doesn’t say if he said yes.  He doesn’t even say who asked him.  But Danny Boyle dropped word in a recent interview that he’s been asked to direct a remake of Park Chan-Wook’s Lady Vengeance.  Whaddaya think ... is this as bad as the talk of Nic Cage eating burritos in an Oldboy remake?

Olivier Assayas does not get enough love on this side of the ocean.  Many of his French language films remain undistributed on DVD or, in the case of his English language efforts, such as Clean, Demonlover and Boarding Gate, are largely ignored.  So it is very nice to see this ‘Essential Edition’ of Irma Vep, Assayas love-letter to Maggie Cheung and loathe-letter to the foibles of French cinema get the ‘Criterion’-level treatment from Zeitgeist Films. 

The film opens with a very disorganized production house in the process of mounting a remake of the iconic silent French serial Les Vampires.  The lengthy opening shot follows a prop gun being passed around from desk to desk -  a pretty obvious metaphor for how on edge things are; with accompanying dialogue such as “I know a decision has been made, but I’m not sure what.”  There have been hundreds of movies made about making movies.  Some are good (The Player).  Some are bad (I Love Your Work).  Irma Vep is one of the best (easily in the league of Robert Altman) due it its wild-card:  Maggie Cheung playing herself.  A Chinese actress dumped into the middle of the chaos, brought in by the eccentric director Renee Vidal (played by French New Wave regular Jean-Pierre Léaud) who seems to be oblivious to everything except for the fact that Les Vampires cannot be remade with a French actress (”Musidora is irreplaceable”).  It is no small irony considering Vidal wants Cheung after seeing Heroic Trio, the ‘light bulb moment’ scene is in fact done almost entirely by the actresses stunt double.  Cheung arrives in Paris speaking only a little French (in real life, she is fluent), yet is game to go along with things and brings a warmth into the stress of on-set politics and the usual turmoils of collaborative art.  It is interesting that in most films when actors play themselves in films, the performance often plays as melancholic parody (John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich, Alfred Molina in Coffee & Cigarettes, or Jean Claude Van Damme in JCVD), yet here Maggie is all innocence and charm.  The value of this balancing out the savage satire raises the effect of Irma Vep immeasurably.

Continue Reading "Irma Vep “Essential Edition” DVD Review"...

Now, I’m not a knee-jerk anti-remake guy but, really, this is a bad idea.  I’m of the general feeling that John Carpenter movies are very much products of their time and They Live is a prime example of that, a film that worked when it was made but would be hard to imagine working now.  If it had been done while Bush was still in power at least the politics would still match up but starting into this now is going to require so much revision that you’ll lose all of the stuff that makes the original a cult classic.

If you must do Carpenter - and, yes, I know I’m in the minority here - I’m actually not bothered by the proposed The Thing remake nor by the idea of redoing Escape From New York - though I suspect the failure of Doomsday will quash that - but a They Live remake is just a failure waiting to happen ...

It’s a scenario nobody could have predicted in advance:  Swedish director Anders Banke (Frostbite) directing a Russian remake of Hong Kong action film Breaking News by Johnnie To.  But predictable or not it has happened, it’s called Newsmakers, it stars a veritable who’s who of prime Russian actors, it opens in April and the first teaser is on screens now in Russia.  And thanks to the kind hearted Banke that teaser is also here on Twitch - in subtitled form, no less.  You’ll find it below the break.

Continue Reading "Johnnie To Goes To Russia!  First Teaser For NEWSMAKERS Arrives!"...

A wee piece of news here that actually broke on Friday but is worth mentioning and since nobody else has, here I go ...

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the prospect of Will Smith and Steven Spielberg teaming up to make an American version of Oldboy but Smith has offered up some reason to hope for the project.  How so?  According to an interview here the American Oldboy will not be a remake of the Park Chan Wook film but will instead be a fresh interpretation of the original Japanese manga - source material that Park himself strayed significantly from.  So, not a remake but a different version from the same source.  It may be splitting hairs but I feel better about this.

So ... this leave the Gore Verbinski produced remake of The Host as the next logical target for anti-remake-angst ...

Everything is still at the talking stage and potentially starring Will Smith.  *Ducks and runs for cover* 

After turning out a pair of brilliant but largely overlooked films it appears that Norway’s Erik Poppe is finally getting some well-deserved love with his third effort, De Usynlige (Troubled Water).  While the film followed Poppe’s normal pattern of being mysteriously passed over by the big name festivals - I’ll never understand why the big programmers aren’t picking up on this guy - it’s been winning awards wherever it has been seen, had a very well received release in Norway and just got some serious love in Variety.  And - more importantly from a commercial sense - Poppe is about to be introduced to a much larger audience with word that the film has been picked up for a Hollywood remake by producer Basil Iwanyk of Thunder Road.  Yes, yes ... the remake debate rages on but the simple fact is that Poppe’s first film is completely unavailable while his second received only a tiny DVD release in North America so anything tht puts his name out there is a good thing.  And making it a better thing is the word - circulating widely on Scandinavian film sites, though I’ve yet to see it picked up in English - that Cate Blanchett is attached to the English version.

Hit the link below for an extended six minute promo from the film to see why this matters.

Continue Reading "Erik Poppe Gets Some Love."...

I’m going to just post this one up and then duck and cover, okay?  Because a whole lot of you really aren’t going to like what you’re about to see.  It’s the trailer for The Uninvited, the US remake of Kim Ji-Woon’s much loved Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters.  Possible talking points for the anti-remake brigade: 

1.  They’ve obviously skewed the target audience much younger.
2.  What’s with all the t&a shots in the trailer?
3.  They’ve introduced a completely new ghost subplot that dramatically alters the whole who’s dead and who’s haunting thing that drives the movie.

This looks to be one of the remakes that borrows a few shots and a concept or two from the original film far more than it is a close, literal adaptation which means while it may end up being a decent movie in its own right - questionable based on performances in the trailer - purist fans of the original are going to be incensed.  It’s below the break, courtesy of IGN.

Continue Reading "Trailer For A TALE OF TWO SISTERS Remake THE UNINVITED"...

I guess the remake street cuts both ways now with Hong Kong director Benny Chan’s remake of Hollywood’s Cellular, and while I had enjoyed the original with Chris Evans running around like a headless chicken, I embrace this version with Louis Koo in the leading role wholeheartedly as well.

Continue Reading "Review of CONNECTED"...

So, sitting here on the couch when I see a note over at Bloody Disgusting that they’ve got the brand new poster for DreamWorks Korean horror remake The Uninvited.  “Hey!”, I thought, “I didn’t know anyone was remaking The Uninvited!”  So I hopped over to check it out.  And what do I learn?  This Uninvited is the American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters.  So, yes.  The producers of this film bought the rights to one Korean film, decided they didn’t like the original title and retitled it with the name of another Korean horror film.  Irony ahoy!

A while back there was rumblings of JJ Abrams being interested in the Let The Right One In remake.  Today Screen is reporting that Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is set to take the helm and try to recapture the magic of Tomas Alfredson‘s Swedish vampire instant-classic.  I quite dug Cloverfield.  It had a lot more going on in the aesthetic and tone department than the gimmick that it could have been.  Still, the usual remake rules apply:  I doubt that Reeves remake can find the razor thin balance of emotion that Alfredson managed.  The film is delicate and I am a bit skeptical that it will survive remake mauling.  (the usual statement applies:  If you haven’t caught the original at a festival yet, when Magnet puts it out in the cinemas:  Run, don’t walk…)

The newly reminted Hammer Studios own the rights for the remake and are behind the production.  It is interesting that they are going back to their vampire roots, but taking things in a very modern direction.

Continue Reading "Matt Reeves chosen to LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, in English"...

Hong Kong’s Benny Chan is an object lesson in the value of simple competence.  His films never vary too much from that basic middle line.  They are never really spectacular but they are also never really bad and so the director has carved out a very successful niche for himself in the Hong Kong industry, gradually moving up the line to bigger casts and bigger budgets.  And Chan’s latest effort is drawing attention all around the globe both because the freshly released trailer looks very, very good and also because this new film, Connected, is a remake of recent Hollywood flick Cellular.

Now, I’ve seen a few people out there saying this is the first time Hong Kong has remade a Hollywood film which is not even remotely true - Jet Li’s Bodyguard From Beijing leaps immediately to mind, and there are others - but it certainly happens more the other way around.  Louis Koo takes the lead - and everything I said about competence in regards to Benny Chan applies equally to Koo - with Barbie Hsu taking on the Kim Basinger role.  If the trailer’s any indication Chan has ramped up the action quotient considerably.  Check it out in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Hong Kong Remakes Hollywood With Benny Chan’s CONNECTED"...