Let's go to the Movies: Wait...haven't we already seen this one?

Aha, a non-food related post has arrived. 

Where did everybody go? Was it something I said?

I know that I am not the only one who has noticed this, but in the last few decades there have been slew of remakes of older films. I mean they made another Three Musketeers movie and that one has been done countless times already. One of the most ridiculous movies out right now is Battleship; which is supposedly based upon the board game? What? It's been made by the same people who did Transformers, which is clearly obvious aside from the fact that the movie involves alien robots etc. Wow..... My first thought was 'Are they going to make Hungry, hungry hippos, into a movie too? A few weeks ago on SNL Andy Samberg actually made the same point that I had my head about that. Haha =p The copyrights to these movies must have been coming up soon, so out come all the remakes and the re-releases of memorabilia. You can really tell when a movie has just been made for the sake of being made, though; there is no life in them. 

This turned into the movie that is pictured down below???? Okay.....

Whaaaaat?????

Please don't get me wrong though, I know that there have actually been decent remakes of movies out there. One of my favorites is the original Dune directed by David Lynch. When the SciFi (yes it was before they changed their moniker to 'SyFy' which I'm still wondering about....) channel decided to do a remake of it; I was really apprehensive about even trying to watch it. I eventually did  see it and it could really never live up to the original, but they had to work with much different circumstances so; I still have to give them credit. The rest of the Dune series that they did I really did enjoy though. 

So dear to my heart =) 

I had enough room left for this one too ;p

Another one of the remade movies that I was really apprehensive was when they decided to do remake of the 1988 John Water's film, Hairspray. I mean it wasn't too much of a stretch to understand why they did the remake because after all they made a musical of it based on the original movie, but still I thought ' I don't know about this....' I eventually did see the 2007 version of Hairspray, and it is a good movie/musical on its own, but it's hardly anything like the original Hairspray movie; so I couldn't really feel totally let down if it didn't live up to the original. If we have to compare the two, then I would say that the 2007 version is much more chipper and doesn't really get as gritty as the original 1988 version in terms of talking about the issues.

I miss Divine =(

This is a whole different animal!

*I apologize for the weird formatting. I had to copy/paste some text and I am just not in the mood to futz around with the blogger tools right now. =)

Then there is a whole category of films that were remade for the English speaking market. 

Swedish Films:

Män som hatar kvinnor (Men who hate Women), became the American version The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and we all know how well that went over =p

 Låt den rätte komma in (Let the right one in), became the American version Let me in.

The original one was really atmospheric and spooky. I didn't see the American version; so I cannot comment on it.

Japanese Horror:

Who can forget all of the Japanese horror film genre remakes: The Ring series, The Grudge, Chakushin Ari- which was remade into an American version One Missed Call.

Not much to say about them except that yep, they remade them. 

American Horror:

Basically any horror movies that you can think of have been remade: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Psycho, 13 Ghosts, The House on Haunted Hill, basically any Vincent Price movie etc

They did a remake of The Wolf Man not too long ago and I really did like that version. I don't think it did well at the box office, but I've never used that as a way to measure a film's merit. 

French Films:

Le Dîner de Cons, which was remade into the American version Dinner for Schmucks in 2010. I watched the original french film quite a while ago and it was one of the most ridiculous and hilarious french movies I'd ever seen. I think that the American version does stand up on its own version of all the insanity and foolishness. You definitely can tell it's an American film, hehe.

Nikita, was remade into the American film Point of No Return.I think that both films have their merits and I wasn't disappointed by any of the differences.

Léon, became the American version The Professional both of these versions are damn good. Jean Reno is always awesome and also to see a young Natalie Portman, perfecting her craft. Good stuff.

And then there are films that have been re-adapted for a different market. Even though foreign films can be released abroad (obviously) sometimes they still remake them. A good example of this is Death at a funeral, the original English film is really funny and Chris Rock saw it and agreed with me ;p No, but he did see it in a theater and was really struck with the idea to remake it for the American audience. They didn't change a lot of the script except for mostly changing the British English to American English. Chris Rock even describes his version of the film as a 'cover version.' Both of them are insanely hilarious and I highly recommend checking them both out.

I couldn't talk about all the remakes from all the countries because I would never be able to leave my computer ever again (I just thought about all the Robin Hood, Phantom of the Opera and Wim Benders movies... arrrrghhh!) and I don't know about you, but I generally think that not being glued to a seat is a good thing ;p

Have a good weekend everybody!

Love,

Jessica