What are you watching? (TV/Movies)

[ZetaBladeX13]

Watched seasons 1-4 of breaking bad =D

[Etrian Veteran]

Love that show. It's so good!

Was pretty weird at first to see dad doing anything other than being goofy though.

[Trifkin]

^ I agree on all points.

@PLA - There is only one, yes? The American version is Let Me In. I haven't watched that one yet. Why to we have to remake EVERYTHING? @_@

[Reynard-Miri]

[Starfe]

There are a lot of negative connotations to "remakes", mostly because a lot of remakes are really bad, but I would pose to you that it can also be a very good thing. "Yojimbo" and "A Fistful of Dollars" are the same movie, so much so that the production company behind "Yojimbo" filed a lawsuit and won. But both of those movies are good, and they both bring something to the table by having totally different mise-en-scene. Remakes CAN be a good thing, and they can add something to the film world that is worthwhile.

"Let Me In" and "Let the Right One In" are movies that are at once very different and very similar, and both very good. I prefer the original, but "Let Me In" is still worth seeing.

Books can be overly obvious when they are derivative, where as films have a full range of audio-visual elements to rely on which allow a filmmaker to take an identical story and an almost identical script and shoot it in a different way in order to create a different, and hopefully interesting, film. One of my favorite examples is the incredibly stark difference between the 1968 "Romeo and Juliet" and the 1996 "Romeo+Juliet". That story has been beat to death, the script is almost identical, yet those movies are very different, and very good, despite being so similar at their core.

So I would put to you that remakes aren't inherently bad, and can actually be a worthwhile creative pursuit. Its just that SO MANY remakes are bad, that one must actively pursue the ones that are good, and try not to become jaded. Film, and her younger brother video games, are very young art forms in comparison to their peers and so it can seem as though we are very rapidly recycling through stories and themes, but I ask you, how many times has Venus been sculpted, engraved, or painted, and we still have not arrived at a definitive version?

[Trifkin]

I definitely agree with pursuing the remakes that are worthwhile. It isn't that I'll refuse to watch a remake purely on principle. I just get tired of seeing rehash after reboot after sequel after Americanized adaptation of a foreign best seller. I understand that there is pretty much no such thing as originality and everything is derivative, I just wish it wasn't so. I guess I'd rather see someone remix elements from more than one source and use that instead of taking one movie and just doing it over. The American version of Ringu was terrible, and those are the kinds of things that I don't care for; it seemed like nothing more than an attempt to cash in on another country's highest grossing horror film at the time. I know it's probably naive but I wish people only made things they cared about rather than just to make a buck.

That said, I can still appreciate many remakes and especially movies based on books because it's crossing from one form of media to another. As you said, the audio-visual elements give them so much room to explore, create, cast it in a certain light that the movie can stand on its own merit. My favorite example of this is Everything Is Illuminated. I saw the movie not knowing it was based on a book, but they did such a fantastic job with it that it's a top-five favorite for me to this day. I later read the book (I love Jonathan Safran Foer SO FREAKING MUCH) and loved it with an equal but altered fervor. That movie introduced me to one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite bands (Gogol Bordello) of all time, and stands as a shining example of How It's Done, at least for me.

[Starfe]

Japanese horror is a good example of where remakes go wrong. There is a different sensibility about film making in Japan, for one thing budgets are much lower, and so the horror movies that they make tend to be much more about the uncanny than American horror. They don't have the budgets for big CGI/makeup/costumed extravaganzas so they tend to rely on the more terrifying aspects of human nature, and the faintly supernatural, rather than giant demons and monsters. American producers are reticent to use many of these "more foreign" elements, because they worry that audiences wont buy into them, and will find the films boring, so when they port Japanese horror movies they produce an almost universally worse result.

The problem with that genre is that in the United States it underwent a dramatic transformation during the 70's and 80's as a result of the increased number of B movies, particularly of the slasher sub-genre. Film equipment and processing became cheaper, and so lower budget films were more likely to be made, and made quickly. Studios saw that these were incredibly profitable, not because they made lots of money (many didn't), but because they were so cheap to make that the profit margin was huge, and they could pump them out constantly without having to deal with auteur directors. "Sleepaway Camp" only cost about $350,000, and made something like $10,000,000 in the box office. "Halloween" was made for less than $500,000 and earned something like $60-$70 million at the box office. The slasher sub genre was a big contributor to changing the horror genre into its current incarnation, where its about gore, sex, and jumping out of your seat at non-diagetic noise, and a lot of it has to do with profitability. Horror movies are still seen in the United States as a means for movie studios to turn a profit, and so when they import plots from other countries, like Japan, they think they need to infuse them with elements of the profitable American horror film or they wont make any money.

(I could talk about movies all day, so I'm going to cut myself off and go play Crusader Kings)

[Trifkin]

I know! And it's so frustrating! Blargh. Money.

(I should stop checking my email and actually FINISH PACKING AAAGHHH--*ahem* I'm almost done, I think.)

[Reynard-Miri]

Money makes the world go down.

[zamisk]

Speaking of remakes, I'm watching the 2004 Punisher. The 1989 one is garbage, and so is the 2008 one, but this one is pretty good. They're all separate movies. Also, the 2008 Hulk is a remake of the 2003 one, and is leagues better. All I really watch are superhero flicks, so I can't talk about anything else really. I guess some movies need it when there's wasted potential with the first attempt.

[PLA]

[Reynard-Miri]

Libel, actually.

[zamisk]

Slander is spoken.

[Starfe]

Actually I believe it was criticism, since the statement is likely based on the truth, and it doesn't negatively affect an entities reputation. Also the difference between slander and libel is REALLY hazy in an electronic setting.

[PLA]

^ Money is elegant and necessary. Where would you keep enough cowhides and axehandles to trade for a car? And how would that make lazy remakes better?