tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post5149678430382459302..comments2024-03-18T19:00:03.047-04:00Comments on SleuthSayers: Remakes, Reinterpretations, and RepliesLeigh Lundinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07921276795499571578noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-73538415181157501462017-02-13T19:08:55.631-05:002017-02-13T19:08:55.631-05:00I'm glad you enjoyed the post, Miriam. I agree... I'm glad you enjoyed the post, Miriam. I agree (obviously) about Liberal Arts. The first time I saw it, I was stunned--I can't remember the last time I saw a movie that took moral choices so seriously (and yet managed to be delightfully funny at the same time). The 1974 Murder on the Orient Express is a different sort of movie. It doesn't leave you pondering serious issues, just entertains you with two hours of pure fun, highlighted by Finney's outrageously energetic performance as Poirot. I think you'll enjoy it.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-17040544015947539762017-02-13T08:52:51.967-05:002017-02-13T08:52:51.967-05:00Great post, BK! I thought that the movie Liberal A...Great post, BK! I thought that the movie Liberal Arts was one of the most thoughtful and nuanced movies I've ever seen, and thinking of it as a reply to Manhattan makes me like it even more. (I always found Manhattan so creepy and terrible.) I will admit though that I have never seen any version of the Orient Express! I may have to watch one now, since you seemed to think of it so highly. Congrats on your well-deserved Agatha nomination!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15566966499612585892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-58606920969803246752017-02-12T14:38:35.637-05:002017-02-12T14:38:35.637-05:00Glad you enjoyed the post, Art. I love Manhattan, ...Glad you enjoyed the post, Art. I love Manhattan, too, though I always found some elements problematic--and they began to seem more problematic when when later events took place. I'm confident you'll enjoy Liberal Arts. (John Floyd watched it last night and e-mailed at 1:01 a.m. to say he loved it. So now I guess I really will have to watch The Walking Dead, and John says one or two episodes won't do.)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-70469289988743616642017-02-12T09:18:28.131-05:002017-02-12T09:18:28.131-05:00Great post here, Bonnie. I've been at a confer...Great post here, Bonnie. I've been at a conference since mid-week, so just catching up on things, but very much enjoyed--particularly your comments about how creators are in dialogue with one another, such a good point. I've long considered Manhattan one of my favorite movies (has been since I first saw it), though I haven't seen it in a while. I skimmed through some of your comments about Liberal Arts because I want to see if myself first. Appreciate you bringing it to our attention!Art Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02409008167752619352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-23548074777817317432017-02-11T16:35:29.966-05:002017-02-11T16:35:29.966-05:00Mike, it sounds as if you and I grew up around the...Mike, it sounds as if you and I grew up around the same time. Our family had only one television set, and it got only four channels (five when conditions were just right, and we could pick up a Canadian channel, too). So I spent a lot of time watching television with my parents, seeing the shows they wanted to see. I think that experience broadened my tastes--I didn't have the luxury of always being able to watch things that already fit my interests, so I developed new interests. My parents probably did, too, when I was desperate to see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and persuaded them to do without Bonanza for one week. Now, most families have two or more sets, there are channels to cater to every taste, and parents and children watch separate shows in separate rooms. It's wonderful to have so many choices, but I think something has been lost, too.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-35312354741909355452017-02-11T16:00:07.067-05:002017-02-11T16:00:07.067-05:00" ... younger audiences who don't want to..." ... younger audiences who don't want to watch a movie that's more than a few years old ..."<br /><br />See, when I was younger (longer ago than I want to admit), the only movies that you <i>could</i> see were "more than a few years old". That was what I found most interesting about them - especially when I could see the connections between them and the newer things I was seeing at the same time.<br />TV in the '50s (and the old movies that made up so much of the schedule) was a smorgasbord of history, with as many connections as you could find, if you were willing to look.<br />To this day, I just can't comprehend why anyone wouldn't want to watch something just because it's in black-and-white, or was made before they were born, or had a cast that mainly wasn't alive any more, or any of that.<br /><br />All that applied to much of what I saw as a kid (I slightly predate color TV), and Demographics weren't around to tell me what was "too outdated" for me to appreciate.<br />Up to now I thought it was that today's youth didn't have a sense of history.<br />Now I'm thinking it's a loss of curiosity.<br /> ... or something like that ...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05527404061764217504noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-51003910859658242592017-02-11T15:56:57.141-05:002017-02-11T15:56:57.141-05:00Gayle, I agree with you 99%--most remakes are unin...Gayle, I agree with you 99%--most remakes are uninspired and unnecessary. Once in a while, though, there's one that's worth seeing. I do agree that we need more truly original movies and fewer retreads.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-83430166856288320032017-02-11T15:54:26.413-05:002017-02-11T15:54:26.413-05:00John, I'm keeping my end of the bargain--I'...John, I'm keeping my end of the bargain--I've put Season One in my Netflix queue. Good grief. With my luck, my husband will love it and make me watch every episode.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-18335427980896595452017-02-11T13:39:47.991-05:002017-02-11T13:39:47.991-05:00That's a deal, Bonnie! Our friend Deborah Ell...That's a deal, Bonnie! Our friend Deborah Elliott-Upton put me onto <i>TWD</i>, and it turned out far better than I thought it would. <br /><br />Thanks for the tip, on <i>Liberal Arts</i>.John Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04001712728130488485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-32737911410980675282017-02-11T13:27:57.338-05:002017-02-11T13:27:57.338-05:00Thanks, John--I'm glad you enjoyed the post. A...Thanks, John--I'm glad you enjoyed the post. And I'm positive that you'd like Liberal Arts. Tell you what--if you watch Liberal Arts, I'll watch one episode of The Walking Dead. (I'll leave the lights on.)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-35725852987013075942017-02-11T13:26:13.273-05:002017-02-11T13:26:13.273-05:00Mike, I didn't know about all those other vers...Mike, I didn't know about all those other versions of Orient Express. As for demographics, a lot of remakes (e.g., The Karate Kid) feel like attempts to appeal to younger audiences who don't want to watch any movie that's more than a few years old. (My daughters were like that as teenagers, but happily their tastes have matured.) Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-71645334255840043802017-02-11T13:25:39.662-05:002017-02-11T13:25:39.662-05:00R.T.,like you and John,I usually prefer the origin...R.T.,like you and John,I usually prefer the originals, with rare exceptions such as True Grit and The Manchurian Candidate. I avoided the Fargo television series for a long time, for fear it would be a disservice to the movie, but I kept hearing such good things that I tried it and was blown away. As for Sioux Falls, I lived there for eleven years (amazing how many SleuthSayers have South Dakota connections)--we had a couple of bank robberies while I was there, but no shootouts. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-6577727486277364632017-02-11T13:16:14.659-05:002017-02-11T13:16:14.659-05:00No matter how good or even bad a remake/reinterpre...No matter how good or even bad a remake/reinterpretation/revision of an earlier movie might be, I still think if an old movie was great, why redo it. If it was lousy in the first place, why redo it. As a writer I resent other writers "borrowing" a plot and its characters from a fairly recent movie and claiming it as their own. Shakespeare and a few others have been around for a long time and doing a new version of their work doesn't fall into that category. West Side Story was Romeo and Juliet set to music. But redoing a classic for the sensibilities of a younger audience is a poor excuse. Write a new classic. If the writers today can't do that, work as a greeter in K-Mart. Leave the good stuff alone.GBPoolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12190573764848658894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-74745632467728435722017-02-11T12:54:33.587-05:002017-02-11T12:54:33.587-05:00I loved this post, Bonnie. I've seen all the ...I loved this post, Bonnie. I've seen all the movies you mentioned except <i>Liberal Arts</i>. Like R.T. and others, I usually prefer the originals--especially <i>The Magnificent Seven</i>, <i>The Flight of the Phoenix</i>, <i>The Time Machine</i>, <i>The Longest Yard</i>, <i>The Thomas Crown Affair</i>, <i>The Fog</i>, <i>The Taking of Pelham 123</i>, <i>The Getaway</i>, <i>The Stepford Wives</i>, and so on) and I'm especially fond of all the original TV series that spawned ill-advised remakes (<i>The Man From U.N.C.L.E.</i>, <i>The Lone Ranger</i>, etc.). <br /><br />Some movie remakes that I thought turned out better than the original films were <i>3:10 to Yuma</i>, <i>The Thing</i>, <i>True Grit</i>, <i>Heaven Can Wait</i>, <i>You've Got Mail</i>, <i>Ocean's Eleven</i>, and <i>Assault on Precinct 13</i>). You never know.<br /><br />And congrats again on the Agatha nomination!!John Floydhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04001712728130488485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-50953059955251725752017-02-11T12:48:19.447-05:002017-02-11T12:48:19.447-05:00It occurs to me that Branagh's Orient Express ...It occurs to me that Branagh's <i>Orient Express</i> is going to be the <i>fourth</i> version in the forty-odd years since Lumet's.<br />That's not a record, to be sure: Huston's <i>Maltese Falcon</i> was the third pass in less than a decade; others among you can come up with examples of your own.<br />Still, it seems to me that if Branagh is all that hot to do Poirot, Agatha Christie wrote a whole lot of other stories that haven't even been filmed <i>once</i> (save for the Suchet series, of course).<br /><br />I'll spare you all my standard rant on the subject of <b>Demographics</b>, the Junk Science of our lifetime, and the reason that no one wants to do anything different than what everybody else is doing.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05527404061764217504noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-33595488571402289982017-02-11T12:23:32.793-05:002017-02-11T12:23:32.793-05:00Bonnie, I prefer the original to the remakes. I fi...Bonnie, I prefer the original to the remakes. I find myself constantly making comparisons between them and then being disappointed. The original Magnificent Seven was much better, in my mind, but I didn't know for years that it was a remake of The Seven Samurai which I saw decades later and also enjoyed even with comparisons. As for Fargo, I loved the movie and kept looking for comparisons with the TV series, but by the second season, the TV series came into its own and was terrific. Incidentally, I worked eastern South Dakota, and even though the series claimed that events were based on true happenings, the great motel shootout did not happen in Sioux Falls. Darn, would have made the story more real if it had. Must be one of those examples of alternative facts.<br /><br />Nice article.R.T. Lawtonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15523486296396710227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-78466816691267985612017-02-11T11:43:43.773-05:002017-02-11T11:43:43.773-05:00Melodie, I'll admit I've never seen either...Melodie, I'll admit I've never seen either version of Hitchhiker's Guide, but now I'll make a point of doing so, and I'll be sure to look for the BBC version, not the Hollywood one. Eve, I can see your point about the 1974 Orient Express, but the individual segments were so well done that I enjoyed them anyway, and I thought Albert Finney was over the top but completely entertaining as Poirot. Barb, I noticed those references to the movie in the first season of Fargo, and I loved them (especially the suitcase--it was always fun to speculate about what might have happened to that suitcase). I'm looking forward to the third season, too--but, as always, with a little bit of apprehension, nervous that this one might be a letdown.<br /><br />Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about the Agatha nomination. Good luck to my fellow nominees, too!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-44103251840059321922017-02-11T10:34:53.499-05:002017-02-11T10:34:53.499-05:00I was nervous about the Fargo TV series before it ...I was nervous about the Fargo TV series before it started. I had a hard time believing it could live up to the movie. But the TV show is wonderful. And, amazingly, season two was even better than season one, which is so unusual (especially since season one was great). <br /><br />One thing about the show, at times it's a direct take-off on the movie. For instance, in season one, a character finds a suitcase filled with money--the very suitcase that Steve Buscemi's character buried in the movie. And at the end of the movie, Frances McDormand's sheriff character Marge talks to one of the bad guys about what he's done (in dialogue I've practically memorized), "And for what? A little bit of money? There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'tcha know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it." And then, in season one, Allison Tolman's Molly says something extremely similar when talking with a bad guy in the hospital. These little touches make the show that much better.<br /><br />LOVE FARGO! Can't wait for season three to start sometime later this year.<br /><br />And congratulations again on your Agatha nomination! Looking forward to Malice Domestic in the spring.Barb Goffmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16013123434790272424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-77459135137975324972017-02-11T09:33:55.794-05:002017-02-11T09:33:55.794-05:00Thanks, Janice and Paul. It would be hard for me t...Thanks, Janice and Paul. It would be hard for me to say which version of Body Snatchers I prefer. I have a sentimental preference for the original, but I think the 1978 remake is a well-done, scary movie, too, and I even like the 2007 version, which most critics despise. Among other things, it's interesting to see the changes in the way psychiatry is portrayed: The psychiatrist in the first two versions spout some psycho-babble to explain the my-husband-is-not-my-husband phenomenon, while Nicole Kidman just gives her patients more pills. Here are some interesting tidbits I came across while reading up on the movies: Kevin McCarthy, who starred in the original, makes a cameo appearance in the 1978 version, as the panicked man who runs into the street and tries to stop Donald Sutherland's car; and Veronica Cartwright, who played Nancy in 1978, has a small role as Nicole Kidman's first panicky patient. And Paul, I couldn't agree more about The Haunting: Scenes that are quietly terrifying in the original come across as silly in the remake.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17673578800047888317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-62125967964617015932017-02-11T09:30:27.268-05:002017-02-11T09:30:27.268-05:00BK, best of luck with the Agatha! And I look forw...BK, best of luck with the Agatha! And I look forward to the Branagh remake of Orient Express; I think the one flaw of the 1974 version was that it was so star-studded that every person's turn was a mini-movie of them. Maybe this will be different. (And I agree, Branagh's "Dead Again" scared the living CRAP out of me - a great movie.)<br /><br />Melodie, I entirely agree about the BBC series version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I HATED the Hollywood remake. <br /><br />On the other hand, before we bash all remakes, let us never, ever forget that the Bogart "Maltese Falcon" was a remake - the first version was done in 1931, and no one remembers it. And I thought BOTH versions of "Cape Fear" - 1962 and 1991 - were pretty damn good. Eve Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03015761600962360110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-48531582016792940232017-02-11T09:24:38.686-05:002017-02-11T09:24:38.686-05:00BK, Oh! How appalling it is, when Hollywood remak...BK, Oh! How appalling it is, when Hollywood remakes something that destroys the magic of an earlier version! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie by Hollywood is my particular gripe. BBC did an absolutely wonderful TV series (long ago) that perfectly carried over the wacky humour of the book. Hollywood's version is clunky,stodgy, without the breezy and brilliant wit that characterizes the book. A travesty!<br /><br />Congrats on the Agatha! I'll be clapping from Canada.Melodie Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07870938103759179132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-79391445925952978252017-02-11T08:21:42.583-05:002017-02-11T08:21:42.583-05:00That should have been "sci-fi" movie, ab...That should have been "sci-fi" movie, above.Paul D. Markshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15466234708772287399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-90601196501997469032017-02-11T08:20:56.055-05:002017-02-11T08:20:56.055-05:00Great post, B.K. And you've really given us a ...Great post, B.K. And you've really given us a lot to chew on. More than often than not I probably prefer the original to remakes, but that's because it's what I know, what I'm used to and what I expect. But also because I think in many remakes they go more for sensationalism than craft. You mention The Haunting. The original of that is a truly haunting and scary movie, but very subtle. The remake is a loud, ludicrous piece of garbage. And worst of all stupid, but not scary, at least to me. And while the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is tied for my fave sci-movie (with Forbidden Planet) and I didn't at all like the Donald Sutherland remake when I first saw it it's grown on me over the years to where I can enjoy it in its own right.<br /><br />I think sometimes it's good to bring a great movie to a new generation. Unfortunately the newer version often doesn't stack up and I wish younger people would watch the originals. I guess some do, but many don't. <br /><br />As to why Hollywood does so many retakes, well that's an article in itself...Paul D. Markshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15466234708772287399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3119105822589181967.post-5744616531707466352017-02-11T08:08:48.250-05:002017-02-11T08:08:48.250-05:00Best of luck with the Agatha!
Count me as someone ...Best of luck with the Agatha!<br />Count me as someone who much prefers the original lovely black and white version of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers even if the acting is only mediocre. California looks like paradise in it!janice lawnoreply@blogger.com