Face Time #26 (Halloween special)

Eihi Shiina

I officially have too much time on my hands.

My Listology page. And I thought I had too many distractions before.

Halloween Spotlight: 6 Fascinating Horror Remakes

Nowadays, it seems like every other horror movie that gets released is a remake of a classic, or sometimes not-so-classic, title. From a business standpoint, this makes sense, since by latching on to a proven commercial property the studios can make money on name recognition alone, without having to come up with a new premise. Heck, most horror movies are variations (read: ripoffs) of older movies anyway, and at least the remakes are up-front about it. Most of these movies are junk, but some end up being pretty good, if only as entertainment. In this group I would include 2004's Dawn of the Dead, 2005's remake of Dark Water (still my favorite J-horror remake), and even Rob Zombie's updating of the Halloween legend, which spent as much time following Michael Myers as it did running from him.

But occasionally, a classic horror title will get remade for reasons beyond financial gain. These movies tend to be the work of filmmakers who are inspired by the original films but have their own ideas for interesting directions for the original storylines. Below, in chronological order, I've listed six movies that fall into this category, along with video related to each of the films (original trailers, unless otherwise noted). Some of these movies are better than others- at least one of the titles I've listed should prove to be highly controversial- but they all have more on their minds than simply bringing back the old genre warhorses for a new generation of ticket buyers.



Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Jack Finney's serial "The Body Snatchers" has been officially adapted for the screen four times now, setting aside countless knockoffs. Of the official versions, only Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake can stand toe to toe with the Don Siegel original. What attracts directors to the story is the potency of the story's central metaphor- the idea of "pod people" can stand in for practically any kind of conformity, and prevailing forms of conformity change with the times. Kaufman's masterstroke was to use the pod people to stand in for the creeping, inexorable death of sixties idealism during the seventies, replaced by a rise in Me Decade values (not for nothing is the film set in San Francisco, the epicenter of the West Coast counterculture). One of the creepiest aspects of the film is how easily most people give in to the aliens. "It's painless," says Brooke Adams, right after she's turned into one of them. More than a simple horror movie, Kaufman has made a film about the death knell of the sixties, as more and more people had resigned themselves to a more pragmatic future.



(Note: this isn't a trailer, but rather a scene I think sums up this movie's awesomeness)

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

F.W. Murnau's seminal version of Nosferatu was notorious for being a ripoff of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, designed to get around paying for the rights to the book. But although the cost of the rights had plummeted in the intervening years, I find it interesting that Werner Herzog decided to take his inspiration from Murnau rather than Stoker. Whatever his reasons, this decision freed Herzog from having to live up to the Dracula iconography that came before in favor of a more personalized adaptation of vampire lore. Nosferatu boasts the best cast of any Herzog film, headlined by Isabelle Adjani at her most beautiful, a young Bruno Ganz, and Herzog regular Klaus Kinski as a rat-like Count. Most of all, Nosferatu is one of the few vampire movies that doesn't shy away from the role of the plague in the vampire legend, evoking a small infested town with so much smoke and so many rats that you can practically smell the stench of death. It's perhaps the bleakest of all vampire movies, with even Dracula himself subsevient to the plague- even after he finally meets his end, the plague just keeps on spreading.



The Thing (1982)

Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks had previously brought John W. Campbell's story "Who Goes There?" to the big screen in 1951. But while John Carpenter was a fan of the original film, he nonetheless decided to helm this big-budget remake, with tremendously entertaining results. Like much of Carpenter's work, The Thing owes a great deal to Rio Bravo in its portrayal of hard-working men stuck in a lonely outpost who end up battling a formidable opponent. However, while the cast is made up of over a dozen engaging character actors (from super-cool Kurt Russell in a giant sombrero to Wilford Brimley in a rare villainous role), the real stars of the film are the unforgettably gory special effects, designed primarily by a then-23-year-old Rob Bottin. Many effects date as the years pass, but the sight of a man's head propelling itself across the floor of its own free will is as effectively icky- and wicked awesome- as it was back in 1982. The Thing is perhaps the best example of better special effects actually improving an old story- and as a result, it actually outshines the original movie.



(Note: this was practically all I could find from this)

Cat People (1982)

Paul Schrader's remake of the Jacques Tourneur classic can't hold a candle to the original incarnation in the horror department, but it's a fascinating piece of work in its own right. Rather than going for scares, Schrader delves into the psychosexual ramifications of the story (one tagline proclaimed it "an erotic fantasy for the animal in us all") as the heroine Irena finds herself grappling with her darker sexual urges. Of course, her troubles are more pronounced than most in this regard- sex literally brings out the beast in her, as she turns into a jungle cat and must kill before she regains her human form. It's Sex Panther: The Movie! Schrader doesn't shy away from the ridiculousness of his premise, but he also takes the thematic issues seriously, and as a result the film works better than it has any right to. This becomes apparent during the final scene, in which Irena sacrifices her own freedom so that she can be near the man she loves forever- a scene that's almost unbearably sad in context. Cat People is lurid and overblown and a little goofy, and I kind of love it. Plus there's a young Nastassja Kinski at her ripest, so it's got that going for it.



The Fly (1986)

Much like The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly is one of those rare cases in which a remake actually exceeds the original, in this case because the film is as much a relationship drama as it as a horror movie. To begin with, Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis play honest-to-goodness characters, and Cronenberg takes the time to let their characters get to know each other- and for the audience to get to know them- before he unleashes the scares. Consequently, we grow to like them, both alone and together, and so there's a real sense of tragedy when things go very wrong. Cronenberg has said that the film was inspired in part by the death of his own father, who had faced a long and painful battle with cancer, and it feels like the most personal film he's ever made. In addition, the film also works magnificently as an AIDS-era parable, in which the implusive, ill-considered decisions we make have far-reaching and sometimes deadly consequences. But most of all, The Fly is a cracking sci-fi thriller, boasting suitably gruesome makeup design as Goldblum's not-so-mad scientist gradually disintegrates until almost none of his human self remains. It just hits a lot harder than most films like this, because we actually care about him as a character, rather than simply marveling at the cleverness of the effects.



Psycho (1998)

All of the movies I've listed above, in addition to being interesting as remakes, also work remarkably well in and of themselves. The same cannot be said for Gus Van Sant's version of Alfred Hitchcock's benchmark of horror. But then, maybe that's the point. In choosing to take on a "shot-for-shot" remake of one of the most famous, acclaimed, and widely-studied films of all time, Van Sant in many ways has made the most basic of all horror-movie remakes. By mimicking Hitchcock's film as much as he can, he invites us to ponder the ways the two films are different- the ways we're affected by black and white vs. color, the more sexually-explicit imagery, the differing styles of the actors in the same roles, and so on. It's more thought-provoking than it gets credit for being, not least as an experiment in what a studio will let a director get away with after he's become bankable. In the end, Psycho '98 doesn't stand very well on its own two feet, but it's an intriguing bit of cinematic criticism, as Van Sant invites us to consider what it was that made the original Psycho such a singular achievement.

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 5

You won't get very far in a discussion of great final lines without bringing up the name Preston Sturges. The man was one of the greatest comedic minds ever to work in Hollywood, and few could wrap up a movie like he could. Hail the Conquering Hero, the source of last week's quote, was no exception, a comic gem starring Eddie Bracken as young Wilbur Truesmith- son of Marine hero "Hinky Dinky" Truesmith- who was refused military service for health reasons (chronic hay fever) only to end up having to prove his worth in other ways. Only a handful of you were able to identify the quote, which makes me think that some of you ought to bone up on your Sturges, especially if you've never treated yourself to one of his movies. Hail the Conquering Hero isn't one of his very best (personally, I'd give that honor to The Lady Eve, followed by The Miracle of Morgan's Creek) but considering that the guy had one of filmmaking's greatest winning streaks during the 1940s, you can't really go wrong with any of them.

Moving on... This week's quote- hard or easy? It's getting so I can't even tell anymore. Here it is:

“And then, one day, I'll hear my voice, and all these words I'm thinking will get outside my head.”

Submit your guesses to this address. Remember to have them in by 11:59 pm Saturday. See you next week!

Face Time #25 (video special)

In lieu of a good picture of this guy, I've decided to post a clip from his crowning moment as an actor. Enjoy.

Thomas Jay Ryan (clip taken from Henry Fool[e])

Movie Moment #29

Also this week:

More Than Ready: A Close-Up Blog-a-thon Postmortem- still up for your viewing pleasure at The House Next Door.

YouTube Cabinet of Curiosities: Son of Dracula (1974)- Nilsson! Ringo! Dennis Price! Moon! Frampton! Bonham! Michael Caine's super-hot soon-to-be-wife! Don't miss it!

The Top 13 Greatest Fictional Movie Presidents, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3- I voted Camacho in '07. Also, I wrote an addendum about a real President in a fictional setting- Brian Keith as Teddy Roosevelt in The Wind and the Lion.

Trailer Roundup- Charlie Wilson's War (aka Mike Nichols' Ishtar) and Love in the Time of Cholera (aka Paul in the Time of Vomiting). The trailer for Blade Runner: The Final Cut got the axe- oh well.

Question of the day

Q: Why would a 43-year-old, Oscar™ winning actress who has worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Krzystzof Kieslowski, Michael Haneke, Louis Malle, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Andre Téchiné, John Boorman, Leos Carax, Philip Kaufman, Anthony Minghella, Patrice Leconte, and Abel Ferrara (with a Olivier Assayas film in post-production) want to pose for the French edition of Playboy?

A: Because she CAN.

Besides, she was looking gooooood when I saw her introduce Flight of the Red Balloon at TIFF this year, so if she wants to get naked- and it's pretty clear she wants to do this, as it's not as though she'd need the money- you'll hear no complaints from me. And it's not like it's Hustler or anything.

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 4

Back in 2001, Christopher Nolan's Memento (the source of last week's quiz) was all the rage among arthouse moviegoers. We couldn't get enough of Nolan's backwards chronology and the clever tricks he and his brother/co-screenwriter Jonathan played on the audience. Buzz about the film spread even to non-movie buffs (my dad, for example) and it ended up playing at my local arthouse for nearly six consecutive months. But nobody really seems to talk about it anymore. Is it that the gimmick has worn off, or that the heyday of the "Twist Movie" has passed altogether? Either way, it was eventually supplanted as the favorite of hip moviegoers by such titles as Donnie Darko and Mulholland Dr. Still, it's nice to remember a time when the idea of a word-of-mouth independent film didn't automatically imply the words "big", "fat" and "Greek." I'll have to check it out again sometime, see if it holds up.

Now, let's take a trip in the Wayback Machine, back to a time when Hollywood could still unashamedly root for the military. Here's the quote:

“I knew the Marines could do almost anything, but I never knew they could do anything like this.”
“You’ve got no idea.”

What's the flag-waving golden oldie? Send your answers to this address by 11:59 pm Saturday. See you next week!

They ain't kidding when they say Limited.

In the opening scene of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, we see an American businessman (Anderson regular Bill Murray) in a taxi, racing through traffic in an unnamed Indian city on his way to the train station. He runs into the station, buys his ticket, and tries to chase down the titular train. As he races down the platform, he's overtaken by Peter Whitman (Adrien Brody), also running for the train. The film slips into one of Anderson's trademark slow motion shots, set to the Kinks' "This Time Tomorrow." Peter catches the train, the businessman does not, and when Peter finally climbs the back of the caboose, he turns to see the other man, still on the platform. It's a lovely bit of filmmaking, and an inspired beginning for the film. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn't live up to it.

The story involves three grown rich-kid brothers- Peter, Francis (Owen Wilson), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman)- taking a so-called "spiritual journey" through India. As Anderson's films are pretty much always about failure, it's no surprise that the boys don't even come close to enlightenment. The most shocking failure of the film is how little weight any of it has. Part of the problem is that none of the characters makes much of an impression. Fully-realized characters have never been one of Anderson's strong points, and that's never been so glaringly apparent as in Darjeeling.

In his previous films, Anderson has always found room within the story for small, indelible bits of character business that really cements them in our minds- Dignan's 150 year plan, Blume's relationship to his sons, Margot's secret smoking habit, Hennessey's reaction when Steve comes to rescue him. Here there are plenty of character quirks, but none of them feel especially illuminating. They just feel quirky for quirky's sake. Also, I didn't simply make the above list of characters from Anderson's previous films to be a completist- I remembered each and every one off the top of my head. I doubt I'll be able to make the same claim about anyone in Darjeeling a week from now, with the possible exception of the lovely Rita (aka Sweet Lime), played by Amara Karan.

For years I've defended Anderson's tendency towards whimsy in his films, but I fear that he's lost me this time around. Darjeeling is a marvel of design, but there's no soul underneath. Everything feels calculated rather than felt. I think the difference between this movie and Anderson's earlier, better films is that this one lacks a grounding character, a principal figure in the story who is somewhat detached from the whimsy. In both Rushmore and The Life Aquatic this character was played by Bill Murray, a master of wry melancholy whose very presence provided a rueful commentary on his surroundings. Similarly, The Royal Tenenbaums had Gene Hackman's Royal, a salty old coot who was literally on the outside looking in, a contrast to the Salingeresque Tenenbaum family proper. I was hoping that the skeptical Peter might turn out to be that character in Darjeeling, but no dice- despite some initial resistance, even he gets swept up (by rapids, to be precise) into the spirit of the journey. That Adrien Brody gives easily the best performance of the three principals only makes it more unfortunate when the character proves to be something of a non-starter. In the end, it all got to be a little much to bear. (Happy now, Steve?)

Also, the baggage at the end? Probably not a good idea.

Despite this misstep, I believe Wes Anderson remains a major artist. Unlike some people, I don't hate The Darjeeling Limited, but- not to put too fine a point on it- if he wants to truly progress as a filmmaker, he'll need to extract his head from his ass. In the mid-90s, both Wes and another Anderson (Paul Thomas) emerged as important new voices on the cinematic horizon. But while Wes quickly honed a trademark style to the brink of becoming a schtick, P.T. continued to challenge himself in new genres and styles. Wes Anderson has already been anointed the next Scorsese by Scorsese himself, but if he really wants to become twenty years from now what Scorsese is today, he's going to need to step outside his comfort zone sooner rather than later.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Face Time #24 (Is she supposed to be Haut or Bas? Because she sure ain't Fragile.)

Marianne Denicourt

When Good Directors Go Bad #13

"Scooby Dooby Doo, we got some work to do now!"

Also this week:

Trailer Roundup- Sweeney Todd. There Will Be Blood And It Will Be So Red and Awesome and Bloody and Awesome in My Opinion. August Rush.

Top 10 Instances of Religious Propaganda Where We Least Expected It, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote up The Incredible Shrinking Man and Signs. Guess which one I liked?

Good Directors Gone Bad!

Back in the spring, my then-Screengrab editor Bilge approached the staff with the idea for a regular feature called When Good Directors Go Bad. Intrigued by the idea, I latched onto it and somewhat unwittingly claimed it as my own (sorry fellow 'Grabbers). What I liked most about the idea was the way it caused me to re-examine the careers of some extremely talented filmmakers. Most directors' fans would like us to think of their heroes' careers as a nonstop string of classics, but in reality these filmmakers, while often brilliant, were capable of subpar or even terrible movies. Even Ingmar Bergman has a Serpent's Egg leaving an unpleasant smudge on his filmography.

Soon after I started writing the pieces, I had to decide not only what they were going to be, but also what they weren't. Since the first of the year, I've been enjoying Nathan Rabin's regular My Year of Flops posts over at the AV Club Blog, which are always hilarious and often perceptive as well. But it quickly became apparent that When Good Directors Go Bad had to be something different. For one thing, we're not always drawing from the same pool of movies. He's chosen some works by talented filmmakers, but just as often he's tackled junk like Battlefield: Earth and Catwoman, whose semi-forgotten directors stand little risk of being selected for a WGDGB piece. In addition, the MYoF pieces have an occasional tendency to sacrifice critical insight for pop-culture-savvy humor. Now, I don't begrudge Mr. Rabin this- how would YOU write about The Island of Dr. Moreau? But that sort of thing just isn't my bag. He does it well, and I wouldn't want to step on his toes. Besides, I wanted to help Screengrab carve out its own identity, rather than looking like an AV Club wannabe.

In the end, I believe in the philosophy of hoping everything I see will be good. Despite the When Good Directors Go Bad name, I don't approach the films with knives drawn. The movies I've chosen so far have been critically savaged, but I hope for the occasional misunderstood gem, something I finally found when I wrote up Woody Allen's Stardust Memories last month. By extension, it gives me no pleasure to witness a filmmaker I admire or even love make a movie that doesn't work, which is probably why I have yet to write up The Bonfire of the Vanities. But it does give me a certain amount of insight into that filmmaker's style and his obsessions, the kind of insight that can only be gained by seeing them applied in a way that ultimately defeats him. And with a few exceptions, the films are fascinating even when they don't work. I guess I'm just a big softy, something that should serve me well on my next two pieces, in which I intend to tackle a couple of the most notorious Hollywood genre movies of recent years. Wish me luck!

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 3

While some would debate the quality of my first week selection, The Big Lebowski, there's no getting around the fact that the source of last week's quote, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion, is a classic. It's certainly one of the first in the genre to transcend the traditional good vs. evil formula, with Renoir's much-remarked-upon humanism making even the German officer a complicated, vulnerable person. And that cast! Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Fresnay, the great Erich von Stroheim, and even a small role for L'Atalante star/Madonna muse Dita Parlo at the end of the film.

As luck would have it, Grand Illusion was DVD #1 for the Criterion Collection, and consequently the lucky winner of this round will be able to apply his or her shiny new $20 gift certificate from the Criterion Store towards the purchase of the Grand Illusion DVD if he or she so desires. However, there are also nearly 400 other available titles to choose from, as well as assorted Criterion and Janus gear. Perhaps you could purchase a Criterion baseball cap:

It's certain to impress movie lovers of a certain stripe, and confuse the non-initiated into wondering what the hell team you're rooting for. If nothing else, you'll certainly feel more sophisticated than the non-South Carolina fans who think it's funny to wear this hat:

But then, who wouldn't?

Anyway, here's your quote for this week:

"Now... where was I?"

Common enough, but at the end of the film? Remember, e-mail your answers to this address by 11:59 pm Saturday. See you next week!

Face Time #23 (guess who Paul's seeing tonight)

Not Cate Blanchett

"You think I'm over the hill/
You think I'm past my prime/
Well let me see what you got/
We can have a whoppin' good time"
~ from "Spirit on the Water"

Movie Moment #28

Also this week:

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4- I wrote up the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien saga

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007, Shekhar Kapur) [3]

If there was an Oscar for Most Direction, Kapur would be running neck and neck with Across the Universe's Julie Taymor for this year's award. Clearly, the dude has never met a snazzy angle or completely gratuitous attention-grabbing camera movements he didn't enjoy enough to use it a dozen times. After all, why shoot characters straight on when you can shoot them from around pillars, from ultra-high angles or rotating the camera around them? The ironic thing is that the stylistic overload is practically the only thing worth mentioning in regards to this film. The screenplay is a sketchy distillation of history at best, an outright fabrication at worst, with Elizabeth portrayed as a bulwark of enlightened, forward-thinking humanism in the face of the devious attacking forces of Catholic Spain. I was a little troubled by the film's portrayal of Catholicism until I realized that pretty much the only knowledge the film displayed about the Inquisition could be learned here:



No less troubling is how The Golden Age flaunts the hoary cliché of the successful woman who is troubled by the lack of love in her life. The film's screenwriters paint Elizabeth as a woman so smitten with the rougish charms of Sir Walter Raleigh that she takes private audiences with him, knights him to prevent him from embarking on another voyage, and flies off the handle when she discovers that he has fallen for her favorite lady-in-waiting. Now, I don't begrudge powerful women their romantic whims. But I find it pretty patronizing that the filmmakers feel the need to turn Elizabeth- a paragon of strong, powerful women- into a lovesick girl who despairs of never being able to find a man. Could a film get away with doing the same thing for a male protagonist? Doubt it.

Some people have singled out Blanchett's performance here for its regal star power. But while she certainly holds the screen, I thought she looked visibly bored with the film she was starring in. At one point, she's being berated by a visiting emissary from the dreaded Spain, but instead of reacting to what he was saying, Blanchett was sort of smirking and swaying her arms back and forth as though she was listening to her iPod. The Golden Age is a film that seeks to make its heroine appear not quite of her time- the better to portray her as forward-thinking. But to have her act as though she's practically in another film altogether isn't really the way to go about it.

Knowledge is power... for REAL.

After I saw the remake of The Heartbreak Kid over the weekend (verdict? Meh.) I got to thinking about Ben Stiller's career. It's been a while since he really did anything noteworthy. Put it another way- when was the last time he made a movie I would've gone out of my way to see? Far as I can tell it was 2001, the year of The Royal Tenenbaums and Zoolander. Since then, a whole bunch of junk, with a few good cameos sprinkled in for flavor. What does it say about Stiller's recent filmography that the most I've laughed at the guy in the last six years has been in his cameo in Anchorman and his guest appearance on Arrested Development?

What happened to the guy who was for a while one of the best comic minds around? A guy who gave us the hilarious, doomed sketch comedy series The Ben Stiller Show, with wonderfully bizarre sketches including some of the greatest showbiz parodies ever shown on TV? Or even the guy who gave us this:



Yes folks, that's the entire pilot for the Stiller-directed Heat Vision and Jack, a parody of 80s cheese TV that Fox failed to pick up. It's hard to tell whether it would have worked as a series, but standing alone it's pretty damn funny. And isn't it nice to remember Ben Stiller as the king of hip, knowing comedy on TV? Or to remember Owen Wilson as the mellow, spaced-out dude we grew to love? Or to remember Jack Black as... actually, Jack's pretty much the same as he ever was here, only he hadn't yet made Envy. Which co-starred- well, wouldja look at this- Ben Stiller. *sigh*

Famous Last Words- Round 1, Week 2

Plenty of you were able to pick out the first week's quote, which of course was taken from the Coen brothers' cult classic The Big Lebowski. As one participant submitted, who else would have a character talking about sarsaparilla? To be precise, Sam Elliott's (not Sam Shepard, as one of you thought) enigmatic, formidably-mustachioed Stranger was often seen swigging Sioux City Sarsaparilla out of the bottle, and it must be said that the man has fine taste in beverages. As another folksy philosopher might say, gosh it's tasty.

Lebowski has amassed quite a following over the years, with its off-kilter humor, hazy plotting, and gallery of strange characters. One of things I love most about the movie is how it imagines Los Angeles- or "Loss Ang-uh-less"- as a kind of real-world Island of Misfit Toys. In the Coens' all-embracing L.A., there's always room for an unreformed hippie, a hawkish Vietnam vet, a purple-jumpsuited pederast, or even a schlubby landlord with a yen for interpretive dance. Why not a cowboy who might have just stepped off the prairie?

But look at me... I'm rambling again. Moving on- this week's Famous Last Words is actually an exchange:

“Don’t shoot- they’re in Switzerland.”
“All the better for them.”

This one should still be fairly easy for you. I hope to make them progressively more difficult as the round continues, although who knows if I'll succeed? Send your guesses to this address by 11:59 pm (Eastern Daylight Time) next Saturday night. Good luck.

When Good Directors Go Bad #12

Also this week:

The Top 11 Worst Scenes in Great Movies, Part 1 and Part 2- I wrote up that dumbass cot scene in Lolita, and suggested another scene that will be featured as a point/counterpoint next week

Trailer Roundup- Juno. Youth Without Youth. The Bucket List.

Face Time #22 (You've taken my calendar)

Emily Watson (more on her to come)

Reminder...

Guesses for this week's Famous Last Words are due in no later than 11:59 PM this Saturday night, a little less than 2 days from now. Don't forget- send your answers to lastwordsquiz@yahoo.com. Check back Sunday for the answer and a new quiz.