Gutbrain Records

Friday, 04 March 2005

I made up my mind a while ago not to see any remakes of movies. Mere awareness of some recent remakes is corrupting my ability to find comfort in the recollection of intensely pleasant movie-watching experiences. It's distressing that my first response to the mention of, say, The Ladykillers, should be a groan. It used to be a sigh of contentment.

Apparently not content with trying to destroy Sgt. Bilko, Steve Martin is hoping to ruin The Pink Panther for everybody by taking on the role of Inspector Clouseau in a remake. Ving Rhames is starring as Kojak in an upcoming cable-TV series, called (what else?) Kojak. There's a multitude of other bad ideas coming our way.

This week I read about an upcoming remake of The Amityville Horror. Whoever wrote the blurb was of the opinion that the original wasn't very good and so wondered why anybody would want to remake it. This shows how backwards things are. I think it's a fine idea to remake bad movies. The idea of a new Amityville Horror doesn't bother me at all. Somebody, anybody, should take a shot at making another movie of Casino Royale. (There's a late-1950s TV adaptation of that novel which is also pretty bad, but Peter Lorre's in it.) Go ahead and remake The List of Adrian Messenger. The world could benefit from a good Modesty Blaise movie that uses Peter O'Donnell's original screenplay. Likewise, a film faithful to Nabokov's Lolita script has yet to be attempted.

There are countless near misses and squandered opportunities which people could try to redeem. Meanwhile, I hear Martin Scorsese plans to remake Kurosawa's Drunken Angel with Leonardo DiCaprio tackling Toshiro Mifune's part. Oh, well.