Apparently, Americans can’t read. And because of that, we’re destroying art. It is the “in” thing to be self deprecating and talk about how dumb Americans are and I normally disagree with that sentiment except that for some reason, we hate to read.
How fucking hard is it to read subtitles on a foreign movie? Dammit! It’s not that difficult! Every time there’s a great movie that comes out and does well at the various film festivals, we have to endure an American remake of it.
Some really good movies are not from Hollywood USA. Get over it. I spend a great deal of time bashing Hollywood because of the blockbuster movies it puts out. I’m not saying that every movie has to be subtitled and black/white. I think pointless-yet-fun movies are just fine, I’m just not the primary audience for them. Not to say I never enjoy them but I want more out of a movie. Entertain me, engage me don’t just dazzle me. To me, special effects are useless if the story sucks. It would appear that I am in the minority here. And that’s just FINE! I like different films. We can all agree that I am not normal.
But when they take the movies I like and Americanize them… I just haven’t seen one done yet that even came close to the original. “The Magnificent Seven” is a great movie. But the original “Seven Samurai” was far better. But that example gets a pass. They took the same movie and replaced feudal Japan with the Old West. They at least did something different with it. Was it enough to warrant its own movie? In this case it worked for me because I saw Magnificent before I saw Samurai and so there’s an extreme bias built in there. All too often, it just doesn’t work. “La Femme Nikita” is FAR better than “Point of No Return”, “Internal Affairs” was so much better that “The Departed”…
“Let the Right One In” is a fantastic Swedish vampire movie. It is a great example of subtlety and imagery coming together to make a great atmospheric film. I fell in love with this movie and so did many other people. And so, we’ll get the Americanized “Let Me In” later this year. The snowbanks and isolation of Stockholm’s suburbs will be replaced by the desert isolation of New Mexico. The silent snowfall at night was one of the images that really ‘made’ the original work for me. Is location change enough to make the new version interesting? We’ll see…
“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is another great example of Swedish film making. It’s a great story and I thought it was well worth the watch. Expect your Americanized version in 2012 with Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt…
What is it that you people have against reading!? Go remake movies that suck. Or remake movies that are old and could use an update. Leave these recent films alone! Just watch them in their original versions. I’ll watch them with you and I’ll narrate the movie to you if you want, just stop remaking these things into duller versions of their original brilliance.
Obviously we don’t agree. These movies keep getting made so obviously people are buying tickets. I think it must have something to do with lowered expectations. Sitting through too many mediocre films stuffed with brilliant explosions have dulled the senses of the movie-going public. Expect more from your movies, don’t allow them to sell you the cheap imitations of great movies. If the movie is good enough to remake, then insist on seeing the original. Otherwise, go enjoy Transformers:3 and leave my foreign films alone!
May 25th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Lets face it, the number of really good foreign films is pretty small in comparison to the number of films released. S o much so that I realized halfway through your rant that I realized you were placing too much emphasis on “foreign films”:
Hollywood needs to stop making crappy remakes of good films. For example: King Kong (1933) great film. Remade twice, both sucked.
and when you get right down to it, sometimes Hollywood does do it better:
I’ve seen “Spoorloos”, for example, and I enjoyed Jack Bauer in a box more.
I’ve seen “Ju on”, and I liked Buffy’s version better
and I’m one of those who thought The Ring was better than Ringu (partly because the effects were much better with the heavier budget)
Sometimes foreign films simply suck – there are a huge number of Akira Kurosawa wanna bees that made Samurai movies at the same rate as the spaghetti western and like those italian westerns, there were a small handful that were good, or at least campy enough to merit a watch, and hundreds that were not. I’ve seen maybe four Bollywood movies that were worth anything and the percentage of good to bad there is such that I don’t even try to watch them anymore.
June 3rd, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Probably right. I’m focusing on foreign films way too much. They’re just in my scopes right now. I think the real problem is remaking recent good movies instead of trying to reinvent crappy movies into good ones. When something is good (foreign or domestic), leave it alone for a while. Wait until it stops breathing before raping the corpse.
But as far as my fears of “Let the Right One In” go, the guys over at Hijinks Ensue sum it up perfectly in this cartoon.
http://hijinksensue.com/2010/0.....-one-down/