Remakes! A Discussion and Comparison (face palm in post #155) - Page 5

I've long said that this movie would be a great candidate for a remake. The original had a great concept, but rather shoddy execution. A remake could iron out its problems. I don't know that Simon West is the right guy for the job, though.

It now appears that Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement) may be getting ready to remake My Fair Lady, with Keira Knightly as Eliza Dolittle and Daniel Craig at Henry Higgins. I can't imagine that Wright can succeed. I have always had an asterisk beside the well loved original because Marni Nixon's singing voice was substituted for Audrey Hepburn's. I hated, hated, hated that and thought that Julie Andrews, who originated the role in Broadway, should have starred in the movie. I have never seen any indication that either Knightly or Craig can sing a lick. If you can't find an actor with both the singing and acting chops for the role, don't make the movie. Period.

"True Grit" remake is filming now with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn. Release date is set for 12/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1403865/

Couldn't disagree more. I liked the modern one MUCH better, and part of it was Crowe's role.

The original is already bad, why bother...

I thought both were terrific films and, in fact, I recently watched the 1957 version with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. As good as that one was, though, I thought the modern production values and the scariness Crowe brought to the Ben Wade role made the 2007 version slightly better. I thought that Christian Bale gave one of the best performances of his career as Dan Evans. My only disappointment was that it seemed to me the role of Evans' wife, played by the wonderful Gretchen Mol, was woefully underwritten.

Not even having seen the John Wayne "True Grit," I would have thought it a poor idea to remake it; however, I loved the new Coen brothers' movie.

In general, I'd suggest remaking movies that were relatively poorly made at first, but had an idea with promise. So, for example, the two new Colin Farrell projects lwright84 linked would seem like bad ideas.

I wouldn't mind the idea of re-adapting the Philip K. Dick story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" more faithfully, but why continue to call it "Total Recall" in that case? I suspect that the remake will wind up being more of a rehash of the first film than a true re-adaptation.

Put David Cronenberg at the helm and then we'll talk.

The first True Grit, starring John Wayne was a classic but I still thought the Coens remake made sense. The problem with the original wasn't the story the film told but the part of Charles Portis' wonderful novel it ignored. The Coens corrected that by telling Portis' whole story and did it with a cast that rivaled the original's.

Either getting old is really creeping up on me, or it just seems way too soon to be doing a remake of Total Recall.

Ditto.

They're remaking Total Recall? Wow, I must be getting old too. It seems like that just came out, but I guess it was 20 years ago.

Man....stupid getting old.

Originality and imagination are completely outdated and overrated concepts.

I firmly believe that the new generation of today should dispense with trying to come up with anything new. They should just redo, remake, and reimagine all of the plotlines, stories, movies and television that have ever been made. There is absolutely no need to waste your time otherwise.

All of the best ideas have already been used, so there are no more left to be had. Filmmakers should drop this whole antiquated idea of being "artists" (what a pretentious and idealist way to be) and just concentrate on making money.

Filmmakers in the past had to rely on their storytelling abilities for their successes, and in doing so, they completely exhausted all the good movie ideas there are. The sad thing is that they didn't have decent special effects (King Kong was an animated puppet,...the spaceships in Star Wars were minature models...etc), the majority of films in history had inferior audio (mono?? 2 channels stereo? give me a break!), and many had to be made in black and white because they didn't have the technology to make anything look like the real world.

With modern technology, we can make movies as realistic as possible. There isn't anything that can't be done. There's no reason to have to watch FX that look fakey.

People like Martin Scorsese should stop promoting film restoration, and start promoting film remakes. After all, he had the vision to see that an old movie like Cape Fear would be much better in full color with actors people have heard of.

I think that prints of all the movies made more than 10 years ago should all be bulldozed into the ground, and brand new versions of all of them should be made using HD cameras at 240hz (no more grain....Yay!), 10.1 audio, and in 3D.

...and all of them should be 16:9. What's the point of making a contemporary movie if it doesn't fit my TV screen? I hate having to hit the zoom button every time I watch a movie.

Who's with me on ths?

You know, I am really beginning to hate this re-make trend....

He was at the helm once, with Richard Dreyfus as the lead! (They were going for a more cerebral approach.) That fell apart, and then it was an Aussie director (Weir? Schepsi? Donaldson? Can't remember who it was) with Patrick Swayze. Verhoeven/Schwarzenegger was the third go-round and the one that finally got made. I'm betting it was the success of INCEPTION that kicked this remake into high-gear.

Yes, I know. Hence the reason I mentioned his name.

The just remade it few years ago - we need another already? UGH!

Where's that face palm photo......?

larry

Correct. Carrie (2002) was a not very good TV movie, which I made the mistake of watching. Big mistake!