Sunday, January 11, 2009

ON MOVIES ~ Play It Again Sam...



Feature Presentation...

MONDAY MOVIE MEME

Molly looked around for a weekly meme about movies and did not have any luck. So therefore she decided to start her own! Andy will play along as well - hopefully you will too. Leave a link to your blog post where you’ve shared your response or, if you don’t have a blog, share your response in the comment section at the end of this post.

This week's movie topic is all about Re-Makes...

This weekend we saw a commercial for the upcoming release of Friday The 13th. Huh? Why? What could top Kevin Bacon getting shish kabobbed? Not to mention the fact that in the basement Molly has a glow in the dark hockey mask with "I know where you live..." scrawled on it by Kane Hodder who played Jason in the latter half of the series. As irritated as we are to see that Hollywood just can't leave well enough alone with this one we do realize this is nothing new. In fact, every now and then a re-make is actually as good or better than the original. Here are some of our choices...what are yours?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I may be in the minority on this, but I much prefer Charlie and The Chocolate Factory to the original Willie Wonka.

Kristi said...

My favorite is Miracle on 34th Street.

Jenners said...

Let's see... a remake that was better than the original. This is a difficult one. I'm totally cheating and looking at the comments and I agree with Julie -- I kind of liked the Johnny Depp Willy Wonka over the Gene Wilder one. And I definitely agree with Ocean's 11 -- I don't even think the first movie was in the same league.

And I prefer the American version of La Cage Aux Folles (The Birdcage) to the French one.

And "Dangerous Liaisons" was far superior to "Cruel Intentions.

And I prefer the "modern" film of "Little Women" with Winona Ryder.

ShannonW said...

My list is posted HERE

01. "The Exorcist"
02. "The Ring"
03. "Shaft"
04. "Dawn of the Dead"
05. "King Kong"

Eidin said...

This was really interesting to mull over. Usually, when I hear of a remake I think, "why?" I didn't understand why Gus Van Sant remade "Psycho."

But, thinking about it some more, there are some remakes that are outstanding. Reality is though, the originals are usually better.

We share one film. Can you guess what it is?

Here's my list.

Sandy Nawrot said...

This was a tough one. Most remakes are just horrible. I came up with:

The Grudge
Titanic
Cape Fear
The Fly

Here is my post: http://sandynawrot.blogspot.com/2009/01/monday-movie-meme-play-it-again-sam.html

The Bumbles said...

Glad to hear there are so many worthy remakes out there - we did not see both versions of many of them to be able to say - like The Fly (missed the orig.), Charlie & The Choc. Factory (missed the new), The Bird Cage (missed the orig.) or King Kong (missed the new).

One that I would like to see that we didn't mention was 101 Dalmations - loved the original and thought the live action one looked like a lot of fun with Glenn Close as a perfect Cruella.

Mojo said...

I thought the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland outdid the original.

But it's not just Hollywood that runs out of original ideas and repackages a film. The 2002 Hong Kong film Gin Gwai (The Eye) was remade in India as Naina in 2005 and then in the US as The Eye in 2008. Which has to be some kind of record for three remakes in the shortest time.

Although The Ring might challenge for that title... I'm not sure.

Natsthename said...

oH, YES, I also prefer the remake of Cape Fear, and found that DeNiro was much more menacing than Mitchum in that role. I didn't even hate Juliette Lewis as much as I usually do! ;)

I generally prefer the originals, though. I know that if anyone ever has the cahones to remake The Godfather, it will SUUUUUUCK.