UKC

I've just learned that they've remade '3.10 to Yuma' - one of the best films ever. I will eat humble pie (metaphorically) if anyone can name a remake which is better than the original.

In reply to Pekkie:

The Italian Job

Alfie

I rest my case

In reply to Pekkie: The Maltese Falcon

And, stretching it slightly (seeing as it doesn't so much remake the film as do the original short story more faithfully), John Carpenter's "The Thing"

In reply to The Lemming:

you're having a larf

In reply to Pekkie:

OK then

What about the Wicker Man?

Surely the re-make was just as good?














Haven't seen it myself

In reply to Peter Walker:

What! The originals obviously better to any right-thinking person/discerning film critic (ie me)

In reply to Pekkie: Are you under the impression that the John Huston / Humphrey Bogart version is the original?

It's a remake.

In reply to The Lemming:

>

In reply to Pekkie:

Manhunter was perfectly terrifying as it was. Due, in part, to the chinos, admittedly, but no need to mash it all up again as Red Dragon.

In reply to Peter Walker:

The Maltese Falcon? Remake of what?

In reply to Pekkie: Before Huston did it (in 1941), the Maltese Falcon had been done twice before!

As "The Maltese Falcon" (1931) and "Satan Met A Lady" (1936).

In reply to sarah79:

At last! A useful contribution to the debate. (Sorry - chinos? The detective, red dragon or hannnibal?)

In reply to Pekkie:

Red Dragon wore a stonking pair, iirc.

In reply to Peter Walker:

UKC is better than Wikipedia for learning stuff and that.
But the 1941 one is the classic version so no humble pie.

In reply to Pekkie:

On a serious note

Sone of the Chrismas Carol films have been good.

Not counting the Bill Murry one

In reply to sarah79:

Totally agree..one of my favourite films

And...as for the re-make question..Cape Fear wasn't a bad re-make .

In reply to Pekkie:

John McTiernan's 1998 'The Thomas Crown Affair' is considerably better than Norman Jewison's 1968 original.

There's a fair few others though they slip my mind right now.

INteresting that you think 3:10 to Yuma is one of the best films ever. I had been hearing its praises sung for years, and finally got to watch it a couple of years ago...and...well it WAS good but not the astounding thing I'd been expecting.

Crowe and Bale will be great but director Mangold has a bit of a "workmanlike" style which may work in the film's favour and may not. I will see it (will watch the original again too)

In reply to Pekkie: So, let me get this straight. I've pointed out a remake that is generally considered to be far superior to the original (hell, I pointed two out!), and still no humble pie?

Your basic point is sound (I've just watched the workprint of Rob Zombie's "reimagining" of Halloween, and dear LORD it is one of the worst crimes against celluloid I have ever seen), but won't you concede I've given you two exceptions that prove the rule?

In reply to Pekkie: Casino Royale anyone?

In reply to sarah79:

Only a woman would notice that a terrifying serial killer is wearing a pair of nicely stacked kecs. Reminds me of my wife's comment on the night when Liverpool won the Champions League - 'They're players were better looking than ours.'

In reply to Pekkie:

Sorry but that is a feeble cop-out. You are claiming that it's not a remake. Please please don't be one of those people that starts a thread having made foregone conclusions and dismissing any factual responses.

Oh and some people might say that Wet Gold is better than The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by dint of featuring a nubile Brooke Shields in a shorty wetsuit.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Ah don't think so...

Mick

In reply to Beowulf: I meant to chuck that one in, but I don't think the first version REALLY counts and in any case when the source material is not a film, we can't call a later adapation a remake (or we could say that Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring" is better than Bakshi's "The Lord of the Rings")

In reply to anansie:

Oh no! how can you possibly believe that!

In reply to Blue Straggler:
>Hmm. It did seem a lot better when I first saw it. But let's see the remake (Arghh!) and judge.

In reply to Pekkie:

I suspect there's an unwritten Hollywood law that, although remakes are generally crap, they rarely lose money. A lot of money shaved off promotion budgets on the basis that folk already know about the concept?? Then there are the afficianados who will go to pronounce judgement vis a vis the original.

Didn't Woody Allen say that, if he had his life over again, he wouldn't change anything - apart from going to the remake of Lost Horizon (which was stupendous crap.)

Mick

In reply to Mick Ward:
What did you like about the original? I did see it before seeing the remake. I found it to be an bold but ultimately cold and empty attempt to mix Antonioni's Blow-Up style (long silent split-screen sequences of gliding?!) with a fun 60s caper flick. Dunaway was fine but I challenge anyone to generate chemistry with Steve McQueen.

Rene "Bucket" Russo and Pierce Brosnan worked brilliantly together and that whole remake, whilst not being high art, was utterly watchable. I really liked it, against my expectations.

I have not seen the French film "La Totale" but I gather that it is pretty minor fare, whereas the U.S. remake was big bombastic fun.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Hey, I started the thread so I set the rules. I didn't expect real film buffs to reply, did I?

In reply to Pekkie:

Hey to each his/her own. Maybe I was in a funny mood when I saw Ford and Heflin do their thing! Good on you for saying you will watch the remake, hopefully without too much prejudice. Come on, Christian Bale is a smart cookie with a lot of integrity, he picks his projects on merit, for me his presence alone guarantees that I at least won't feel short changed!

Not to sound patronising, but I wonder if you realise that a lot of films that you might think are original, are actually remakes?

In reply to Pekkie:

Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai"/John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven"

Both thoroughly enjoyable, both defining moments in their respective genres.

DJ

In reply to Pekkie:

With a phrase like:

'3.10 to Yuma' - one of the best films ever.'

you bloody well should have

In reply to Mick Ward:
>Ah, Mr Ward, what's a real man of culture like you doing on UKC culture bunker?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Sorry, every post on here has an unspoken 'IMHO' after it.

In reply to Pekkie:

Fistfull of Dollars.

In reply to Mokkel:

Yeh? Remake of Yojimbo (not a film buff but I know that).
Original better.

In reply to Pekkie:

I think I like Kaufman's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" more than Siegel's.

But that's from a book isn't it so it's not eligible. Bah!

In reply to Pekkie:

Both are unofficial adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's "Red Harvest" though. So A Fistful of Dollars MAY not count as a remake (though Leone probably was never aware of Hammett's story...) WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME I WANT TO GO TO BED

In reply to Pekkie:
Yes Yojimbo set in the Wild West.
I prefer Fistfull of Dollars to Yojimbo.

In reply to Blue Straggler:
>Keep bringing em on! Remake good admittedly but original better. Maybe it's one of those laws of the universe that Newton and Einstein missed 'Any remake of a film will be worse than the original'?

In reply to Pekkie: Anyone care to pass comment on Hitchcock's two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much?

In reply to Mokkel:

case rested

In reply to Blue Straggler:

2007 "re-imaging" of both of those:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427392/



DJ

In reply to Pekkie:

I stand by my defence of the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. It is zingier, better paced, has better chemistry between the leads, and is just better.
Just realised that McTiernan remade Jewison a second time with Rollerball, which I've not seen (though the original was hardly "good" anyway)

In reply to Blue Straggler:


It is when you compare it with the remake, believe me.....

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Hmm. Would have to check that. There are only so many possible themes (36?) so at what is the difference between a film with a similar theme and a remake?

In reply to Deejay:

'Both' is wrong, there was already a third - Abel Ferrara's 1994 "Body Snatchers" which while not great as a whole, had some pretty splendid and chilling moments.

"Invasion" could be interesting. The vast majority of the film was reshot by James "V for Vendetta" McTeigue when the studio was unhappy with Oliver "Downfall / Der Untergang" Hirschbegel's work. Generally a recipe for disaster. Hirschbegel wrapped before the shooting of Casino Royale started! I presume the reshoots took place afterward. I wonder if the budget will allow for Hirschbegel's footage to be edited and mastered for a DVD, like hey did with Schrader's "Dominion"

In reply to Pekkie: Classically, I think the number is seven.....

http://tinyurl.com/39c3c7

Although some reckon that an eighth has been added: "The Indomitable Hero" (a la Indiana Jones)

In reply to Peter Walker:

Rebecca Romijn-Stamos notwithstanding?

I believe a lot of McTiernan's stuff was jettisoned in favour o uncredited hack director stuff anyway. Don't forget this man changed the face of the action movie with Die Hard, after having done Predator, and also superbly sent up the genre in The Last Action Hero (before going hypocritical with Die Hard With A Vengeance.....hmmm....)

In reply to Blue Straggler:


Everything - bar the clumsy eroticism of the chess scene. Have seen the original dozens of times (and the remake twice). Despite the cute 1960s filming, the original is utterly iconic. ('Who is the hunter/and the prey/I do not know.') Dunaway was stupendously beautiful and elegant, McQueen inscrutable. After the chess scene, she should have known that, when confronted with losing, he would simply change the rules of the game. At the end, they have lost each other forever. All that they continue to share is their pain.

Apart from the silly ending of the remake, I quite enjoyed it. And Rene Russo is lovely. But Brosnan himself sensibly admitted (in suitably diplomatic 'actorspeak') that it wasn't in the same class.

Mick

In reply to Pekkie:

Ok, i know lol!!...i just have always had a 'thing' for Robert De Niro and he has nice tats in it and..i'll get me coat :-P


I do think The Thing was a good remake though.

In reply to Peter Walker:

You are recalling an Empire article from the early 1990s with frightening precision

Hang on...

In reply to Blue Straggler: Agreed: Last Action Hero is in no way the trainwreck that film history would have people believe it is. Its crime that summer was not to have dinosaurs in it.

And I consider Die Hard: With A Vengeance to be a guilty pleasure film; it wasn't very good, but I still seemed to watch it, somehow.....

In reply to Peter Walker:
>Getting a little out of my depth here, arguing with someone who clearly knows something about it... but... Weren't they the Ancient Greek ones? Seem to remember a book 'The 36 Dramatic Situations' (or someat?)

In reply to Pekkie:


Eh? What?? Gerroff!!

< Staggers to feet, shuffles off... >

Mick

In reply to Pekkie: Well, let's call it evens, eh? I can quite imagine that there might be 36 Dramatic Situations (can't remember a book of that name, but that doesn't mean there isn't one), but a situation is a component of a plot. And there are seven/eight basic plots.

In reply to Blue Straggler:

I am pleased to recognise a fellow sufferer

In reply to Pekkie: King Kong.

In reply to Pekkie:
Barb Wire is a classic, and far better than Casablanca...

In reply to Pekkie:
Michael Mann`s remake of LA Takedown is way way better.

In reply to Pekkie:
Nosferatu. The original was brilliant, largely because of the awesome and mysterious Max Schreck, but Herzog's remake has a bleak, twilit gloom that sucks your will to live, and I don't mean that as a negative comment.

In reply to Pekkie:

The Thomas Crown Affair


Night of the Living Dead

In reply to BrianT:

I was thinking about that, but I haven't watched Herzog's yet, oops!

Oh it was Max Shrek. Max Shreck was the Christopher Walken in sequel-better-than-first-one, 'Batman Returns'

In reply to Pekkie:

Is this a self-prophesying thread i.e. will you just refute or deny knowledge of all suggestions of any remakes that are better than their originals?

In reply to Blue Straggler:

If I actually watched all the suggestions made I would spend all my time watching films! And some of you out there are obviously seriously knowledgeable film buffs. Maybe I should have said 'in my (limited) experience remakes of classic films are (very) rarely better than the originals and you usually feel let down when you have watched them'.

In reply to Pekkie:



Sorry I was being unnecessarily curmudgeonly.

In reply to Blue Straggler:
No it isn't.

In reply to graeme jackson:

Yes it is

In reply to Blue Straggler:
Oh no it isn't

In reply to graeme jackson: The original had the most beautiful ferrari 275 GTB - the remake didn't. Nuff said.

In reply to graeme jackson:

Does your yellow hi-fi stand match your lounge in a considerably better manner than did the blue one?

In reply to Blue Straggler: yes. I'll send you a pic.

In reply to graeme jackson: Assuming your email hasn't changed....

In reply to graeme jackson: the Nicolas Cage Gone in 60 seconds was better than the old one (though only cos the old one was sooooooo bad)

In reply to Pekkie:

I nominate "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956) to be better than the original "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1934)

In reply to Pekkie: "Heat" - the one with Bob DeNiro & that bloke who shouts a lot. I think the original was called "LA Takedown". A good film but not as good as the remake. The same director made both so I guess he thought he could make a better version.

In reply to Pekkie:

hills have eyes

In reply to Nevis-the-cat:

night of the living dead, yep good film

In reply to Pekkie:

The Departed was a bit better than Infernal Affairs.