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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Cos Gort won't work
Without Michael Rennie...
Did you mean to do that?
"extract tuna-salad sandwiches from train-station vending machines without paying."
WHOOOOOAHH!
Thats Kewl!
That alone is worth ten bucks.
Does it have a theremin?
Who's cares about that other stuff?
Well, maybe except the tuna salad sandwich.
Many critics (including this one) seem to be in competition for the "Most Senselessly Cynical" Award that there still isn't (but should be) an Oscar for. Mr. O'Hehir begins his harangue with the most widely abused faux paux of his breed, having nothing better to say than to call the movie "lame". Perhaps he can actually write better than this and is merely trying to sound modern instead of bitter.
I haven't seen this movie yet and may not have chosen to watch it, but I am certainly going to now, if for nothing else to defy the smarmy piece here. You might consider employing writers whose talents and abilities include more than just spewing vitriol. And no, I have no attachment to the movie industry or this film. I'm just an ordinary movie-goer.
Science fiction is too important to be left to Hollywood sleaze merchants, especially ones with big budgets. I've felt for a long time that the Michael Rennie original could be redone, but that it would take more imagination than I've seen displayed in any mainstream scifi film, ever--and that goes for anything from Spielberg or Lucas.
The remake should've been tasked to some lean, hungry outsider with a real love for classic SF. Instead, if O'Hehir's review is accurate, we get CGI and what passes for humanoid emotion these days.
I still plan on seeing this--maybe some shred of the original, which is an essential experience, remains. I suspect that Mr. O'Hehir, like most non-SF people, has little patience with the rather elaborate suspension-of-belief mechanism needed to get through the door with most SF. But for devotees it's worth the cover charge.
Do they at least say the words?
"Derrickson's previous directing efforts have ... 'Hellraiser: Inferno,' and there's nothing in those mid-level movies ... that he has any particular aptitude for the craft."
Come on!!! "Hellraiser: Inferno" was a big improvement over Hellraiser 3 and 4. I can't believe the reviewer glossed over this fact. Waahhh.
'The Day the Earth Stood Still'is one of my favorite old SciFi films. It's profound in a very hokey sort of way but pretty fun when you look at it in the context of the paranoid cold war mentality that was so prevalent in the 50's. So why the numb nuts in Hollywood decided to remake this picture is beyond me. The charm of the original is that it captures a certain zeitgeist of the times. Did these unoriginal morons really think that giving the movie an environmental message and some expensive special effects would bring this picture into the twenty first century?
Michael Rennie was the one and only Klaatu
And Gort the giant silver robot
Was his inter-galactic
Law enforcer
His trusty number 2
The original "Earth Stood Still"
Was directed by the awesomely talented director
The late Robert Wise
Who never, nearly ever
Made this kind of acid refux rehashing
This sort of:
"The Space Turkey From Computer Generated Skies"
Just some brief examples of Wise's body of brilliant work:
"Curse of the Cat People"
"The Day the Earth Stood Still"
"Westside Story"
"The Haunting"
"The Sand Pebbles"
"The Andromeda Strain"
"The Hindenburg"
"Star Trek the Motion Picture"
Seriously, what have you left out - is it about the environment because that would be the lamest thing of all.
Not that I expected anything else.
P.S. to chandalar: Speaking of smarmy ...
OK, I understand why some movies are remade. But if the original is a timeless classic I have seen before, I am not capable of avoiding a bias that will prevent me from enjoying the remake. But that's just me. Lots of people will feel differently. Plus, there are probably millions of younglings out there who have never seen the original, because black and white is so ancient.
All that being said, why is Keanu Reeves in this movie? Is he really going to play Klaatu? He lacks the acting chops, much less the gravitas, to pull off that role.
Oh, wait. I just thought of Klaatu first. But that's wrong, isn't it.
Reeves is just perfect to play Gort.
You are going to see a movie out of spite? Spite for the reviewer?
Wow.
Just, wow.
And don't forget, regardless of your stated disdain for Salon and its reviewers, you are allowing a Salon movie review to control your movie viewing choices.
I'd pay to see that. (Not that I have anything against Gore, of course. I'm just saying.)
Environmental message movie using recycled and reused bits of other, better movie: brilliant metaphor or brilliant stupidity?
Negro please.
The only two I can think of are "The Producers" (except they left out the concierge talking about the boids) and "The Ten Commandments" (with that great scene of the obelisk raising and the great line "there's a man among the sheep!").
But in both those cases, the original director remade his own work.
Let's see...recent remakes:
"Sabrina" - Who could do Bogart and Audrey Hepburn?
"The Flight of the Phoenix" - James Stewart in a movie about an airplane. Perfection right there.
"Titanic" - Worth the price just to see Kate Winslet naked, even if she does yell "JACK!" about 10,000 times. Special effects are a bonus, but "A Night To Remember", with its careful British understatement and greater historical accuracy, is still the best Titanic movie.
Alas, still super skinny, eh? I guess I'll skip this sad remake altogether and rent "The Rocketeer," made when Jennifer Connelly was "Jennifer Connelly!"
They call it a remake, but is that an accurate word if the entire thesis of the movie has been changed, and only the names have been kept? In the original, Klaatu came to warn the Earth that unless humans behaved and quit making war, the superpeacekeepers that his race have created, like Gort, will destroy it. In this, according to your review, Klaatu has become the superbeing, and does all the threatening himself. It was important, in that movie, which is over fifty years old now, that Klaatu was caught in the same trap as humans.
It had its lame moments, yes--Klaatu explaining that he comes from a planet several millions of miles away, maybe Saturn, which is a physical impossibility, and so on.
But I do remember that movie. Will probably not see this one, not because of your review, but because I have learned to avoid movies with Keanu Reeves.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
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