Tag Archives: Remakes are stupid

Live-action American Ghost in the Shell film inches closer to reality…

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Ghost in the Shell

A rare image of her with clothes on!


[adrotate banner=”1″]But only if now-attached director Rupert Sanders can find a female lead that he can have sex with!

Okay, MAYBE that’s speculation that the director of Snow White and the Huntress, who ruined his marriage with female star Kristen Stewart, is going to sleep with the star of his new female-centric film. Maybe. But for some reason Rupert Sanders is suddenly hot to trot in the movie world, getting attached to everything ever. DreamWorks has snagged him for their Ghost in the Shell flick, which Spielberg has been wanted to get made forever.

Ghost in the Shell is one of the few anime films I have watched, and my vague recollection remembers it has to do with a secret squad of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission and a female android that is naked a lot. There is a bunch of philosophy that will probably be ignored in favor of trying to turn this into The Matrix (which borrowed A LOT from GITS!)

Rupert Sanders is already attached to: 90 Church – a film about Napoleon, The Juliet – which is called Bonnie and Clyde in space (WTF?), and a remake of Kill List. He’s pretty busy, but a guy’s got to relax, and where else to relax but on a couch. Where’s he’s casting leads…

My take? Expect Ghost in the Shell to stay in development hell, and Rupert Sanders to continue to be sleeping alone!

via Deadline

Links Complex

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Hey, it’s about time I put up a new wall of links. In fact, I had so many that I had saved in various drafts I combined several together for this entry, and will get a separate entry that is links to cool posts on movie blogs later in the week. Learn from me and finish your articles! But let’s get on with the show…

**An awesome graphic about gender inequality in film. Especially relevant since this is the first time in forty years a female-lead movie was tops at the box office.

**Can it be December already so I can watch the new Jiang Wen movie? Gone with the Bullets (一步之遙) will be the followup to Let the Bullets Fly, which was spectacularly awesome. Jiang stars along with Ge You, Shu Qi, Wang Zhiwen, Wen Zhang, and Zhou Yun, and the plot involves a beauty pageant.

**In yet another short gets optioned into a feature film news, Beyond has been optioned by SyFy. Beyond was created by Raphael Rogers, who wrote and directed it on a budget of $1000. Beyond is about a woman who can teleport across space and time, and is the last of her family.

You can watch Beyond here, it is less than 9 minutes long.

**Everyone’s favorite mobile game that’s just the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark will hit the big screen, where hopefully it will be more than just 90 minutes of the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Temple Run becomes the latest of small scale games to get a movie option (preceded by Angry Birds), thanks to Warner Bros., who are increasingly desperate to find a new franchise to milk. Speaking of which, I need to rewatch Raiders of the Lost Ark….

**South African thriller iNumber Number will get an American remake by Universal. No word yet on if writer/director Donovan Marsh will be involved. iNumber Number is about an honest cop who goes bad after being cheated out of a promotion. Soon he has bigger problems when the gang he robs wants revenge.

**I am very excited about the Flawed Dogs animated movie, based on the books by Berkeley Breathed, specifically The Shocking Raid on Westminster.
Flawed Dogs

**Nickelodeon will bring us a film called Boogeymen, where a kid teams with the Boogeyman to investigate paranormal activity. I guess it’s sort of like that old Fred Savage movie Little Monsters, except they do Scooby-Doo stuff instead of just act silly. Boogeymen is based on a pitch from John Sullivan, and Howard Deutch will direct. Howard Deutch directed Pretty in Pink and several random sequels: The Odd Couple 2, Grumpier Old Men, and The Whole Ten Yards

**I’ve been arguing this for years, nice to see it getting some actual attention. It is possible you are made up of more than one genome, due to absorbing other genomes in the womb. It’s a type of chimerism that turns out to be a lot less rare than previously thought.

**From Pyongyang to Mars: Sci-fi, Genre, and Literary Value in North Korea

**Mel Gibson, Taylor Lautner and the 20-Year Effort to Make a ‘Stretch Armstrong’ Movie

**The Adventures of Pete and Pete is back (sort of) in podcast form!

**The MPAA, RIAA, and various ISPs have come up with their own “downloading is bad” school curriculum for California. A bit of advice: unless this crap is on the state exams, no teacher is going to bother. Though I wouldn’t put it past one of those “charter” schools after the MPAA gives them a sizable donation. Because they’re greedy cesspools.

**The awesome story of young Russian WWII heroine Zinaida Portnova

**Explore hundreds of old movie magazines for free thanks to Lantern/The Media History Digital Library! Say goodbye to your free time!

**After the Cinema of Disgust – A close reading of the renegade New Wave of Tamil Cinema

**Remember in The Wizard of Oz when Scarecrow had a gun?

**Air Bud is real!

**Jon Sorensen – Personal recollections and impressions of working on Alien

**The Great Lester proves even a dummy can go to jail!
The Great Lester

The Weinsteins unite with Miramax for sequels sequels sequels!

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Will Hunting

Phase One of Sequelpocalypse begins!

[adrotate banner=”1″]And more sequels! The sequels, they burn! The Weinstein Company has united with Miramax for a 20 year long deal that will allow the Weinsteins to access the entire Miramax library and create all sorts of sequels, remakes, television series, and stage shows based on the properties. This unexpected development means we’re suddenly going to get a bunch of sequels to twenty year old films, television remakes, and other assorted random things. It’s a great time to be someone like me, who celebrates awful cultural developments!

The new venture will get off the ground quickly with sequels to the Best Picture Oscar winner Shakespeare In Love and Rounders, and they will develop series transfers of Good Will Hunting and Flirting With Disaster. They will also shepherd a development library that includes The Alibi, a comedy scripted by Stephen Colbert about a service that cleans up messes and creates cover stories for cheating spouses, and The Ninth Life Of Louis Drax, a script that was being developed by the late Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.

Never underestimate how much some people like having lots of money! What exactly would Shakespeare In Love 2 give us? Is Shakespeare going to be in more love? Will Shakespeare In Love be combined into the world of Anonymous for an insane Shakespeare film filled with triple conspiracies and triple love? Will someone give Gwyneth Paltrow the dump truck full of money and expensive home decor that will be needed to lure her back?

Rounders, however, is a cult film that guys my age all have in their DVD collections, except me, because I don’t really care about Rounders one way or the other. Not that I’m too cool for Texas Hold ’em intrigue, but that I just don’t find Rounders interesting. But a sequel will find an audience as long as they don’t spend too much money on it.

The Good Will Hunting tv series I can’t be good unless it’s done in the style of the Good Will Hunting parody in that Jay and Silent Bob movie. But who knows, television is the new place to go for good character driven content. Surprises may happen.

One thing I hope does happen is more Clerks cartoon shows, as Kevin Smith has hinted in the past. That is the one and only thing I really care enough about to write in a paragraph about how it’s the only thing I care about. I care just that much! Cares.

Miramax has so many films in its library there is so much potential, I’m just excited!

“It’s like unlocking a kingdom full of gold, which Tom describes as diamonds,” said Harvey Weinstein

It’s DIAMOND GOLD!

via Deadline

Get marooned again as Gilligan's Island casts away to remake land!

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Everyone’s favorite television series about people stuck on an island (suck it, Lost!) is back again for the…let’s see…fourth time in movie form! We all remember the 1960s television series, because it was rerun forever and that’s how 99% of us saw all the episodes over and over again. As you are probably aware, the castaways did finally get off the island, long after the show was canceled after two seasons (not for ratings, but because of scheduling conflicts!) with the made for tv movie Rescue from Gilligan’s Island. It ended, of course, with the castaways being trapped once again. Two more tv movies followed – The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island (which was also a proposed pilot for a revised series) and The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island, which featured the greatest basketball game in the history of film (until Space Jam!) The actors would appear in various skits and things, but even with a reality show version of the original series, there was no real revival.

Until now.

Warner Bros. has decided to bring Gilligan’s Island back, in movie form! As a vehicle for Josh Gad. You know, the famous Josh Gad. He was in Book of Mormon, which I know thanks to reading the handy dandy Deadline article everyone is sourcing this movie news from! As a sign of quality, Warners doesn’t even bother to say which part Josh Gad will be playing. I would have though Gilligan, but Gad is tubby and that’s leading speculation that he will be the Skipper, though I can’t see Skipper being the star of Gilligan‘s Island. Josh Gad will write along with Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez.

I do hope this does lead to what we all want to see on the big screen:

Kickboxer and Bloodsport both getting remakes, but where is the Double Team remake???

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[adrotate banner=”1″]Remaking Jean-Claude Van Damme films is all the rage in Hollywood for some reason best known by the coven of witches who determine which projects are greenlit (the Which Witches, for those in the industry!) But those witches have yet to give us the Double Team remake America craves, instead we’re getting the leftovers.

First up is a remake of Bloodsport from Relativity Media, James McTeigue directs a film that has a completely different plot. How is this a remake again?

Relativity’s version will instead focus on the morally-conflicted life of 21st century mercenaries who clash with the underground world of Brazilian Vale Tudo, the martial arts style used by Donald Gibb’s character in the original film.

It has already gone through a pack of writers and set to be rewritten again, a sure sign of a quality story. No one is cast yet.

Besides Bloodsport, Kickboxer is also getting made, helmed by Stephen Fung, the guy who directed those not very good Tai Chi Zero/Hero movies. Once again, no one is cast yet.

Y’all remember the saga of Kickboxer, right?

Kickboxer 1 featured JCVD coming out of retirement and taking to the kickboxing ring after his brother is crippled by the evil guy named Po. Kickboxer then defeats Po via kickboxing and becomes champion of illegal kickboxing.

Kickboxer 2 features actors who are totally JCVD and his crippled brother being gunned down by Po, forcing the third unknown brother, Cousin Cody who lived in a van in Step By Step, to come out of retirement to kickbox the crap out of Po, which he does.

Kickboxer 3 featured Cousin Cody going to South America and being friends with kids and kickboxing some evil dudes.

Kickboxer 4 ditches the kids, Cousin Cody somehow got married, then his wife is kidnapped by Po and Cousin Cody was framed for murder and is in jail. He’s let out to fight in Po’s latest tournament, where he wears no disguise because jail made him hard or something. Eventually a bunch of people get kickboxed, including the new actor playing Po (a Tunisian wearing yellowface) but Po somehow escapes both the film and the franchise.

Kickboxer 5 features Cousin Cody being murdered via newspaper headline, and then Some Guy (Mark Dacascos, the Some Guy of DTV action films) is the new Kickboxer, and he kickboxes South Africans who wish they were as cool as the South African villains in Lethal Weapon 2.

In conclusion, Free South Africa, you dumb son of a bitch!

Lethal Weapon 2

It’s just been revolked!

Weinsteins giving us English language remakes of Come Drink With Me and The Avenging Eagle

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Chang Pei-Pei come drink with me
[adrotate banner=”1″]Welcome to a world where we suddenly get English language remakes of the classic Shaw Brothers features Come Drink With Me (大醉侠) and The Avenging Eagle (冷血十三鹰), complete with “international casts”. Yep, it’s THIS world! Weinstein Co. is teaming up with Celestial to bring us remakes no one was asking for.

The fact that Shaw Brothers films are being remade isn’t really what I have an issue with (heck, Shaw remade films all the time, Come Drink With Me has been sort of redone as a tv series!) It’s the fact they are being made entirely as an international focused feature instead of telling a good story first and worrying about box office second. Telling clues like “preliminary thought is to have international casts for both pictures,” give away their plan.

This is the further evolution of the Editing for China model that movies have been doing – producing content specifically designed for China. In fact, I would wager these films will be budgeted so that they become profitable entirely on Chinese box office alone. I really don’t think they will find a real audience in the US beyond special screenings/limited releases. The announcement hints more titles are in development, though these two will be the testing ground. Everything depends on who is cast. I will also expect that the film’s marketing in the US will try to play up the Quentin Tarantino connections as he likes these films (and was even attached as the director of a remake of Come Drink With Me waaaaaay back in 2007!)

What is odd is the target audience in the US includes the types of people who will be mad that these are being remade! Luckily, the exact titles are obscure enough for a fan who just buys the occasional martial arts film, but those that live and breath Asian cinema are far less likely to be pleased. That vague “international casts” thing means we might have random white people wandering around Ancient China. Or it will just be a Man with the Iron Fists redux, in which case enjoy losing lots of money, Weinsteins!

John Fusco is attached to write both the scripts, he wrote the Young Guns movies and is writing the Crouching Tiger sequel. Fusco is a black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu and is friends with Jet Li, so he’s not a complete unknown to the world of martial arts.

Full text of the announcement:

New York, NY – July 23, 2013 – The Weinstein Company (TWC) and Celestial Pictures Limited (Celestial Pictures) announced today that they are partnering on remakes of two classic 1970s martial arts titles: THE AVENGING EAGLE and COME DRINK WITH ME. Both original films are part of the renowned Shaw Brothers library, the largest Chinese-language feature film library in the world. The two films with TWC will mark Celestial Pictures’ first English-language martial arts remakes of Shaw Brothers’ films. Harvey Weinstein and David Thwaites will be producing; John Fusco, who is also set to pen the screenplay for the upcoming sequel CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON II: THE GREEN DESTINY, is confirmed to write both projects.

In the thriller THE AVENGING EAGLE, a cabal master known as King Eagle raises orphans to be his own personal thugs in an outlaw band called The Thirteen Eagles – The Assassins Of The Iron Boat Clan. One of the orphans decides to rebel and strike out on his own, leading the rest of the group to want him dead. He joins up with a mysterious warrior and proceeds to take down King Eagle. The original film, directed by Sun Chung, was released in Hong Kong in 1978, winning awards such as “The Most Outstanding Actor” (Ti Lung) at the Asian Film Festival and “Best Editing for Drama” (Chiang Hsing-loong) at The Golden Horse Awards.

A ruthless band of thugs kidnap a young official as hostage to exchange for their captured leader in COME DRINK WITH ME. The prisoner’s sister, highly skilled martial artist Golden Swallow, is sent to free him. Although she is able to handle the overwhelming odds, she is hit by a poison dart, and needs help from a beggar who is really a Kung-Fu master in disguise. With his help, she forms a plan to get her brother back. The original film was directed by King Hu, who is best known for directing various wuxia (Kung-Fu) films in the 1960s and 1970s. This was his first success and remains a classic of the wuxia genre, catapulting the then 20-year-old starlet Cheng Pei-pei (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) to fame. The original film, released in Hong Kong in 1966, participated in various film festivals such as New York Film Festival, Festival de Cannes and Tokyo International Film Festival.

Said TWC Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein: “Shaw Brothers and Sir Run Run Shaw were responsible for ushering some of the first great, legendary Asian filmmakers and acting talent onto the world stage. It’s an exciting opportunity to be bringing new life to these two classic films and taking them into the global market with Celestial Pictures.”

“Audiences in Asia and indeed the world over have enjoyed classic titles from the Shaw Brothers library for decades,” commented Ralph Marshall, Director of Celestial Pictures. “With Harvey Weinstein and TWC, we have the best possible partners to reinvent THE AVENGING EAGLE and COME DRINK WITH ME for a new generation. With further productions in development, and the imminent release of library titles globally on digital platforms, Celestial Pictures will continue to showcase its rich, enthralling and iconic stories and characters in new and innovative ways”.

The deal for THE AVENGING EAGLE and COME DRINK WITH ME was negotiated by David Glasser for TWC with Kristen Tong for Celestial Pictures.